Sunday, Sunday, Someday.

Someone once told me that the yin and yang of Chinese philosophy represented the natural ebb and flow of everything in life. That is essentially (and I’m taking my own liberties here), there is dark and light and like the yin and yang, they move in a very circular pattern, by moving from large periods of light waning to large periods of dark and waning again until you return to the opposite force. While I’ve never taken the time to research the philosophy, for practical purposes it makes sense. After all, even science knows that for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction, no? And assuming this is so, I would have to say that we’ve probably left the ‘dark’ period that was last week and last night was the beginning of our light.

Last weekend, tired from the house hunt, we promised we would not step foot into another house. Only while on a sunny, Sunday drive we broke that promise and stopped into an open house that we had visited several weeks before. Details aside, we realized that the house was perhaps the only one that we had thought of since our first days of the search and I remembered how my heart pounded the first time we walked into it. But at the time we had just begun looking and after much deliberation, thought it better to look around before buying the first thing we saw. Thirty-odd houses later we returned to it by chance and decided to make and offer which was accepted later that evening.

Last night we took a walk through it with an inspector and were pleased to find that all the failing items were mostly minor and could be expected as a house ages. We began to shop for insurance with a small local insurance agent, resident in our new neighborhood (along with the family members that also worked in the agency) and were pleased to find savings that we wish we could have realized years ago. Not to mention the personal touch that only comes with small locally owned businesses. We drove deeper into the city, passing a multitude of small shops and local vendors, but not far from the super sized commercialistic comforts of the larger metro area. We had dinner at the local restaurant and bar on the lake -- a popular hotspot for the local boating community in the summer – and bumped into the same insurance agent, who stopped by our table to welcome us to the area yet again. And while the whole experience was flooding back memories from my own childhood summers spent on the sun-worn docks of Door County, WI, I realized that we had finally found home.

posted by paula 9:33 AM

Father's Day

In lieu of a new post this Father’s Day, I went back through the archives and found a post I wrote last December about my father and a particular incident that defined his image in my eyes as a child. I’ve decided to share that one again. Happy Father's Day to all the fathers that we know.

Begin post:

I’m currently making my way through a book called “I Thought my Father Was God” by Paul Aster; a compilation of stories submitted to the National Story Project on NPR. Although I have yet to reach the story that gives the book its namesake, I have to admit that it’s a good read, proving that there are millions of unpublished Americans who write well and have amazing stories to tell, regardless of their desires to be published.
In short, I believe I was attracted to the book for two reasons: 1. It’s very low commitment. Most of the stories are a page to two pages long which is just enough for me to make it through a few stories without actually committing any time to it. 2. The title caught my eye in the bookstore.

I grew up Roman Catholic and went to a Catholic grade school so there was never an opportunity for me to confuse my father with God. But recently I’ve been contemplating childhood and the reverence and awe that we have for our parents during that time. When I was probably too young to understand the complexity of life, I adored my parents. To me, their marriage was perfect, my family was perfect and my father in particular was the epitome of what it meant to be a father in life. If there was something to be known about a particular subject he knew it. If there was advice to be sought about the worldliness of the birth and death of animals and particular hues of the sky, he would know it just as readily as his library of knowledge about endless subjects from sailing to saddling a horse. During the day he was a mindful, skillful business owner and during the evenings and weekends he crafted wood, metal and dirt into more useful purposes like fences and rolling landscape. I admired and respected my father with the admiration that only a six year old could have.

There is one instance in particular that was pivotal in sealing the deal on my amazement of my father’s abilities. When I was about five years old, my parents and I were spending a Saturday afternoon on the deck in our back yard. The hummingbirds were out and about for the season and they dropped by our feeders and flowers on occasion, but never nearly as much as I desired. That afternoon my father was lounging in his chair, boasting about his bird calling abilities. I the skeptic, dared him to confirm his talents by calling a hummingbird for me. Then he did the unforgettable: He leaned back in his chair, tilted his head back slightly and with a rather sing-song tone of voice he said “Here hummingbird, hummingbird, hummingbird” much like one would call the family cat. In an instant the hum of the bird’s wings could be heard approaching in the distance and one appeared, stopping for a drink at the feeder near our table. I was awestruck, realizing that my father had abilities that in my lifetime, I would probably never realize. By no means was he God, but to me he was pretty damn close.

Now that I’m older and awe comes less often than it does when you’re a child, I realize that the hummingbird instance could have just been happenstance. It doesn’t mean any less to me, since the part of me that’s still a child questions whether the episode was just chance, although I know that my father was probably just as amazed as I was that afternoon. Still, he’s the most intelligent man I know and I can appreciate that it’s quite possible I may never realize the entirety of his knowledge and experience.

posted by paula 9:14 AM