Spring is Springing

So, this is one (only one, mind you) of the great things about living where I do... spring starts early here in the deep South. I planted these bulbs last fall. And now, here they are! Sweet!

Planting bulbs in the fall is one of my favorite things to do. It seems positively... hopeful. You do what you can to pick the right spot, protected but not hidden. You need to dig the hole deep enough, but not overly so. You water em and pat em and then cover em up and hope for the best. You hope that they are taking what you've given them and what they have stored inside of themselves and growing some roots, absorbing the things they need, and that, eventually, you'll see them sprouting above ground, sometimes when you least expect it, and blossoming into what it was they were supposed to be. Sometimes they struggle a bit when they first start to peak out of the ground. Maybe there's too much mulch. Or an unexpected cold snap. And you do what you can for them, really you do. But most of what they have to do, they have to do on their own. Really, they do.

Hey, wait a second... are we still talking about daffodils? 

Noel - a blessing from God

So, this all happened a long time ago, and you'll have to excuse me if a few of the details have faded. But recently a friend of mine sent me this photo from his hotel room window in Tokyo...

Anyway, I'm not sure why, except for the fact that he is now in the country that figures a little bit in this story, but it triggered the memory of Noel. She was a tiny precious little girl, born to the Youth Minister and his wife at my church when I was in high school. They knew, I think, pretty early on that something was wrong with her. But, as I know all too well with infants (and yes, that story is one that will be told here later), these things can be difficult to diagnose. By the time they had figured it out it was - for all intents and purposes - too late. There was some hope, though, and that was where Japan comes into the story. Apparently there was a doctor there who specialized in the kind of microsurgery that had the potential to correct the problem and save this child's life. So, money was raised and the three of them went. And the surgery itself was successful, I suppose, as far as those kinds of things go. I mean, the problem was corrected but her little body could not rally by that time to overcome the damage... She died a few months after her first birthday. We had her party at our house - it was an understated affair as by that time we all knew what was going to happen. My mom still has the pictures from that party on the wall in our den. She was smiling then, at the lit candle in the cupcake set in front of her.

When her death was announced in church, a couple of days after she had passed, I was, of course, already aware of it. But the preacher stood in front of the congregation and told everyone else. And then we moved on with the service, standing and singing the Doxology: 'Praise God from whom all blessings flow; Praise Him all creatures here below; Praise Him above ye heavenly host; Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.' I cried bitterly then. And I'm pretty sad now, remembering. But that's the thing, isn't it? Children are a blessing. No matter how long they are with us.

What happens to us, then, that we somehow go along the way from finding the other people in our lives as a blessing to something less than that?

In my write mind...

I've got a million stories here. OK, well, maybe not an actual million. Could be more. Could be less. Who knows? Oh, well, I know that there's someone out there who knows, or at least thinks he does... someone who's good with numbers and such. But that's not me. I know, I know. A lot of people say they aren't good with numbers. And what they mean is that they can't do math. But I'm not like that. Math is good and generally quite useful. I don't have any kind of particular phobia or whatever with math and all its ramifications. Math is fine. It's the counting that's the problem for me. (OK, well, there was that one time, the first day of my college calculus class, when the graduate teaching assistant said that if he took a step toward the wall that covered half the distance between where he was and the wall, and then another step that was half of the remaining distance, and then halved the distance again and so on and so on, then he would never reach the wall.... Let's just say that I took one look at his size 13 clodhoppers and concluded that he was a bit overly optimistic of his ability to walk a fine line. But that's not really what this is all about now, is it?) Anyway, as I was saying, I've got nothing against numbers, per se. It's just that I can't, for the life of me, remember them. I punch in my zip code when I'm trying to key my lunch account code. Forget telling me your phone number. Birthdays I can generally do, cause there's only so many possibilities for those, after all, but street addresses? Nope. I'm quite certain you'll have to tell me more than once. Or better yet, write it down. You know how they always wanna give you some sort of confirmation number over the phone for stuff? Ha. Expect me to remember that? It'd be more useful to expect me to remember all the words to American Pie. (Actually, I kinda do remember all the words to that song, but then again, those aren't numbers now, are they?) Anyway, so, yeah. A million stories? Who the hell knows? Certainly not me.

But here we go, the first one. It's short, so don't worry.... How the hell did this blog get this crazy name?

Well, I'm a band geek. More accurately, I suppose, I'm a former band geek. Marching band, starting in 7th grade and going all the way through college. (Auburn University in the 70s... 5 football seasons and not one bowl game. How's that for numbers?) Anyway, the title, if you know anything about marching bands, stems from that. More specifically, it stems from my brother - Rupert's his name and I shall be telling you stories of him soon, I'm sure - giving me a journal for my birthday one year. He had inserted a page in the front with suggested titles. Most of them I don't remember but one stuck.... You guessed it.