Into Each Life

It’s raining as I write this, but in early April we’ve had worse weather, at least in the 50+ years I’ve been in Minnesota and Wisconsin. No buds are evident yet on our trees and the woodstove still gets a workout. WPCA-FM has been broadcasting my story readings the first Tuesday night of each month, but it’s a “drop-in” so the “drop” gets missed every once in awhile. Tonight was one of those “once in awhiles”. I can’t complain; I’m not paying for the airtime and I am very grateful for the privilege of having my stories heard. It’s a privilege few authors enjoy.

As I’m about to end my stint as president of the Osceola Senior Citizens Club, what we had hoped would not happen has happened: our Senior Citizen space now has a sign on it advertising it as the Polaris Community Room. Eventually, there will be a larger sign above the door that reads “Senior Citizens” and I suppose a dual-purpose room is what is intended, but the building policy is that Seniors get priority over the use of that space. I figure if we fill the room(s) with activity, in peoples’ minds it will be the Senior Center that people are coming to know and use. During my tenure I’d hoped to have nipped that encroachment on our space. Obviously, I was unsuccessful.

Family has prevailed on me to start writing down my growing up experiences, especially the theater and performance years. I’d avoided it because it seemed to me to be just a recitation of famous names, but now, several thousand words into the writing, I find it’s more than that. It is true, though, that you can Google almost every person with whom I co-starred and performed with. They were Academy Award nominees, Emmy Award winners, Grammy Award winners, Tony Award winners and others who made their living in the performing arts. I learned from some of the best and I was good enough to more than  hold my own. I have the reviews to prove it. This was in southern California and Hollywood, where the competition back then was as ferocious as it is now.

Next Sunday is Palm Sunday. Our pianist is away that day, so I’ll be leading our service with the guitar. I’ve been working up some callouses on my fingers; it has been a long time since I’ve used my trusty old guitar in public. I’ve had it since 1957, when I bought it for $10 from a kid who’d had it at the beach and cracked it. My mother found a violin repairman in downtown L.A. and he fixed it so well that you could barely see the former crack. Since then I’ve had it repaired twice more, once a “butcher job” and more recently a very well done job. Of course I’d like to tell our You Tube audience that our massive choir and full orchestra will be missing, but I figure that it’s not polite to lie about things, especially when in church.

Marina had a major birthday yesterday and Grandson Erik had the elegant solution for her celebration, since she has trouble handling large groups of people: people would bring/send elements of the birthday dinner separately and at different times, so Mom/Grandma could focus on each person and give each person individual time. It worked very well. My benefit? The food was very good and all I had to do was the dishes.

Easter reminds us that Spring does come and so do new beginnings. God is a God of second, third, fourth chances–and many more–so our lives can have many “Springs”; we never are beyond repair, forgiveness and God’s grace. Repent and be forgiven. It’s easy. The only tough part is seeing that we have things to be repentant about. And not to forgive ourselves is a form of blasphemy. So, here’s to Spring–finally!