I am filled with thanksgiving to witness another baptism in our family and to know that Laura and her family are a part of a church community that will support their vows.
We had lunch afterwards and then headed home for just an hours' ride instead of the 12 or 13 hour ride we would have had after previous baptisms.
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| A path to the canal |
But that made me think about other dreams I have had that probably or definitely will not take place. Travel dreams come to mind in particular. I actually once had a place reserved for a Greek island cruise that included Patmos but I backed out of it. Later I was not sorry when I realized that seeing Patmos from a cruise ship would be an exercise in crowd control. I think that if I ever got to see those white buildings on Corfu or the other islands, I would feel as if I had been there before because of the many photos I have seen. The same goes for Cinque Terre along the Italian coast--a place I have visited with Rick Steves more than once.
I don't know why I think I want to see the Grand Canyon. I loved seeing Bryce Canyon but when I walked even a few steps down into the canyon, I thought I might have to crawl back up the path because my acrophobia kicked in hard!
I asked Jim if there were any dreams he had that were unfulfilled and he mentioned dunking a basketball. Well, that is a different kind of dream and he is right. That will not happen in his lifetime. He said he might like to spend enough time in Israel so that he could be able to speak Hebrew which he reads easily and does so daily. But he is not seeking out such opportunities.
I hope I can take NJ Transit into NYC again--maybe even in the next several months. I hope we can make another Florida trip or other warm weather destination next year. Next November should be a trip to San Antonio for Jim's annual convention which we hope will not have to be virtual again. On a more limited scale, I will be happy to head to the Jersey shore for a few days in April and maybe another trip to the Catskills again for a friend's wedding celebration in June and to see Dan and Alex while we are in the area. And they hope to have a celebration of their own wedding possibly next fall.
With our vaccines done, we can begin to hope to branch out a bit more. I don't have big regrets about what is left undone. We have done lots of travel and I have many memories of good times.
March 2020--the WHO labeled Covid 19 as a "pandemic." It's been more than a year now that we have been worshipping at home on Sunday mornings, doing choir "gatherings" on Zoom instead of rehearsals at church, wearing masks, avoiding errands, and getting take-out meals instead of eating in restaurants. All of this seems somewhat normal for now. I have a desire to summarize the year and I really do not know how to do so. Maybe my desire is a wish for closure but there is no closure yet.
Instead I could record the new normal for this week--for the first few days gone by and what is to come.
Sunday morning sitting on our sofa, we attended a wonderful adult church school class that had been videotaped earlier in the week. Dr. Shane Berg, professor of New Testament at Princeton Seminary, sits across from Dr. Dave Davis, our pastor at Nassau Presbyterian Church and discusses the gospel lectionary for the week. This Lenten season the gospel is from John with a theme of "Presence in Absence." Dr. Berg presents the history of scholarship on the passage and the two of them talk about how to make that relevant for preaching. It's a 20 minute glimpse into a process that follows up on our Lenten small group discussion earlier in the week and leads into better focused listening to the sermon that follows.
We worshipped via a livestreamed service from the Nassau Church sanctuary. We followed the service via a pdf of the bulletin and sang along with the hired choir section leaders who lead us in the hymns. Sometimes we have communion participating with our crackers and water. This past week we had a congregational meeting after church via Zoom in which we voted "Yes" to a 2% bonus for the clergy by raising our hands--clearly shown on the screen.
At least live sports are back on TV unlike last spring so Jim watched the Players tournament recalling his memorable play one time on the Sawgrass course and then lots of NBA basketball. The NCAA brackets were posted and for the first time in decades Duke is not in the tournament. They missed the ACC tournament due to Covid issues as well.
Most weekdays pass by with nothing to record. I try to take a walk listening to "Pray as You Go" on my iphone app as part of my Lenten discipline. We eat a light lunch as part of my efforts to lose weight. Sometimes it is a yogurt smoothie. Jim has his work which this week involves reading a doctoral dissertation (one of his last ND students is defending in April) and starting research for his new project on the Second Temple. I read lots and look for more to read.
Tuesday is my day for Bible study Zoom meetings. I meet with 6-8 women from our church in South Bend. I love seeing their faces and it is so good for me to think about other people's concerns as we share prayer requests. Tuesday evening is our Lenten small group from Nassau Church. We are about ten of us on the Zoom screen. We are led by two young seminarians and we always begin with an "ice breaker" which can take quite a bit of time as each one tells his or her story.
Wednesday has meant another Zoom meeting at one pm because I signed up for a ThinkND four week course on sacred music led by J.J. Wright. I remember J.J. as a conducting student when I sang in a rehearsal choir at ND several years ago and it is fun to see him taking charge of this course and leading the Folk Choir. There will be no Nassau Church "choir gathering" tonight because there is a church wide hymn sing on Zoom instead. I don't know if we will participate.
Thursday is usually my day to practice the organ for an hour at the Kingston Presbyterian Church but tomorrow I will not practice because it will be a red-letter day for us, I hope! We are scheduled for our second vaccine--me at 8 am, Jim at 9:45 am. This will mean a very early start for our 56 mile trip to Rowan College in Gloucester County. Getting this vaccine will not make a big difference in how we live at first at least but I will feel so relieved to have the process over. As I have written more than once, there was a lot of stress in getting an appointment. Jim emailed with someone in Ottawa, Canada this am who is having even more difficulty. So we are thankful we were able to be this far along in the process.
Friday we have no plans. We may have some side effects from the second dose. Many people do have chills and fever and aches. We shall see. It is supposed to be a sign that the immune system is working the right way!
Friday night we always watch Washington Week on PBS for a 30 minute talk show about the news of the week.
Saturday is our pancake, or for me, waffle day and then a grocery shop at McCaffrey's. We wear our masks and try to avoid being close to other customers. The cashiers are behind plexiglass shields. The shelves are full unlike some times last year when there were shortages.
Saturday has also meant a curbside pickup of my requested books at the Princeton Public Library. Jim parks the car in the alley and I go up to the doors where there is a librarian waiting to get my books. What a great service!
And that is a pandemic week. I revel in any emails I receive or phone calls. Sometimes it is a Facetime call which is how Dan and Alex keep in touch.
We think about what we may do after we are vaccinated but we will probably not fly anywhere distant. I hope we can see more of our children and grandchildren. I'd like to eat in a restaurant again. I hope Jim can give his presidential address at the Society of Biblical Literature in San Antonio in November in person. We might go to the Jersey shore for a few days in April to see the ocean and the sand--a change of venue in a beautiful place would be lovely. We both have bloodwork to be done in the next two weeks so I would like to be relieved about those results so we can go on a mini-vacation feeling more carefree. "Carefree" has not been the word that comes to mind to summarize the last year!
--------------------It's Saturday afternoon and the first day of spring. The huge pile of snow by our garage has melted. I bought pansies today and put them in a larger pot on our deck. We went for a walk through the fields to the canal.
We have had no side effects from our vaccines other than a sore injection site. We stayed "hydrated" as we were advised to do. Maybe that helped. Although this was our third trip to Rowan College, I put the wrong campus into my iphone and we were lost! By asking a passer-by and putting Rowan College of South Jersey into my phone again, we got on the right track. We were a bit late for my 8 am appointment--although early for Jim's 9:45 am appointment, but no one seemed to notice or care. The process went smoothly again--maybe even better than our first vaccine. We are very thankful to have the vaccinations done and are eager to have our children and grandchildren vaccinated as well.
I have mostly finished perusing "Book Girl" by Sarah Clarkson. I think I found this book by reading the blog "Modern Mrs. Darcy." Both of these sources gave me suggestions to add to my "want to read" list on Goodreads.com.
Last Wednesday I thought that I had absolutely nothing scheduled and no errand to run and no particular chores to do. I know that for many that would be a blessing but in our retirement and Covid isolation, it is good to have some things to do. Actually that wasn't quite true because I do a "choir gathering" (not rehearsal) via Zoom on Wednesday evenings. But anyway, I ended up spending a couple of hours going through my Goodreads "want to read" list and eliminating books that no longer had any appeal and then following up on several others so that I could enjoy reading them.
I have three sources for accessing good reads. We do not live in Princeton as such even though that is our postal address. So I pay $70 a year to join the Princeton Public Library and that is money well spent. I put many books on my hold list. Several came available so Saturday morning I picked up another four books at the Curbside Pickup lane.
Another source is Better World Books where I find out of print and older books for less than $5. Shipping is free and within a week there is a packaged book in our mail box. Not all the books are in pristine condition and sometimes I add them unread to the bag of donations I have ready to go in our garage, but it is not a big investment wasted. Recycling books and employing people who need jobs is a business model I want to support. I have visited their Mishawaka, Indiana warehouse when they donated picture books to Family Literacy which I administered for several years in South Bend. I "dove" into bins to retrieve treasures for our preschoolers.
My third source is my Kindle app and purchases from Amazon--sometimes free (in order to get me hooked on a series?), but usually $2.99 or less--often only 99 cents.
I need good books to read as an escape. But sometimes the escape motivation is not enough. In the last two weeks I have finished three books that were really worth reading. Jesus: A Pilgrimage by James Martin was devotional in nature as it gave me a glimpse of the humanity of Jesus. Tough Love by Susan Rice was an interesting account of her life and of the issues our government faced during the Obama presidency. Now that she has a role in the Biden administration I will be looking for her in the news. Today's NYT tells that she is burning sage in her new office to clear it of the spirits of Mr. Miller who promoted some of President Trump's worst schemes. I enjoyed a classic on my iphone app--Lost Horizon--and wondered why I had never read it before.
And I did enjoy two mysteries: Blood Grove by Walter Mosley and Final Arrangements by Rich Curtin. Mosley's books have too many characters and too complicated a plot but I enjoy the "voice" of Easy Rawlins. Final Arrangements was a story of revenge and terrible evil but I like the setting and Detective Manny Rivera. But I abandoned Aspire to Die by MS Morris when there were multiple deaths, incest, and adultery--just too much degradation and sordidness. Goodreads says that I have abandoned 66 books since joining and that I have read 294 mysteries.
I just finished Latest Readings by Clive James. When he was diagnosed with leukema he knew he did not have long to live so he decided that "if you don't know the exact moment the lights will go out, you might as well read until they do." He writes about the books he never read and still wanted to read as well as the ones he wanted to re-read. He motivated me to look for The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway but I noted on Goodreads that I had already read it and did not appreciate it as much as he did! One more reason I like Goodreads--to remind me that I have already read a book and forgotten!
I am so thankful for the eyes to be able to read and for the sources to find good books to read and the ability to access them. I have always been a "book girl" but during this time of social isolation it is even more of a blessing to have a stack of books ready for me to dig into.
This morning I joined with several much younger women in a Tuesday morning Bible Study from our church in South Bend. With Zoom, it is possible for me to meet with them--in the same way they are all meeting from their homes even if I am 700 miles away. It is good for me to hear of their concerns and requests for prayers--many of which have to do with their anxieties about their children. Raising children always has its stresses but even more so these days with social distancing and virtual schooling.
It made me think about grandparenting and the joys of being with grandchildren without the stresses and responsibilities of their daily care and nurturing. I thought about some of the highlights of 2020 and how many of them were times when we were with our grandchildren as individuals, not with their parents or siblings.
Before the pandemic struck, we went to see J in his middle school musical. We took him out for McDonald's milkshakes and had quite the conversation which I will treasure and keep private. Then over the summer, we had overnight visits from both grandsons and our granddaughter--all of which I put in blogs at that time. However, looking back, Jim and I were amazed that those visits were not even a year ago--seems like longer than that because time seems to go so slowly these days.
At some point when the weather was warmer, we did On the Border takeout with our oldest grandchild K and her boyfriend. We sat at picnic tables near her graduate student housing and enjoyed margaritas--grown up drinks with a grownup granddaughter. Then later in the fall we stopped to see our oldest grandson in Troy, New York. We picked him up at his off campus housing and had a great dinner on a patio overlooking the Hudson River.
As I look back a bit further, there were times alone with two other grandsons in 2019. We stayed with M when Jeff and Susan went to Hawaii and A came to spend time with us when the rest of his family travelled out of state.
My new year's resolution was to find more ways to be in touch with our grandchildren. That has not been easy when we are so fearful of the Covid virus. I have tried to text or Facebook message more.
R calls me on her Gizmo watch sometimes and in the last week we have been meeting via Facetime to read The Boxcar Children together. I loved that book as a child and suggested it to her. I purchased her a copy of the original 1924 version and downloaded it on my Kindle app so that we have the same words. We have read several chapters taking turns reading. I hope it has been as much fun for her as it has been for me. Plus it gives us a chance to chat a bit--about her softball clinic, an orthodontist visit, and life in general in her family's world.
So grandparenting is the reward of raising children--or else one would never have grandchildren! We can leave their parents with the need to feed them, keep them healthy, and educate them. We can just enjoy them!
