The first week of May is now passed, and we can see the world beside us, behind us, and we can imagine it, in front of us. As always, it doesn’t disappoint in its way of keeping things interesting.
It is all so very interesting.
A great example is Spring. It should be springing along by all accounts. The Spring Equinox was way back on March 19th. But here in Camden, Ohio, it is anything but. They are forecasting snow for Friday. Yes, snow. To flitter down in fluffy flakes as late as May 8th.
As the old saying goes, April Showers bring May Snow. Or something.
Regardless of the weather, we enlisted our pool company, the same ones who installed our current pool 15 years ago, to give us a nice refinish. It is a gunite pool, and they say it needs to be recoated every decade. We believe this to be true. The demolition phase began the day before Ohio went on its lockdown, and since then, the work has been sporadic at best. Yesterday, they came out to do the final coat of gunite, an eight-man team, armed with little trowels and such. During the first installation 15 years ago, they used a huge sprayer, taller than a two-story building, looking like it had leaped from the pages of a Dr. Seuss book. Yesterday, they came with a little concrete mixer hitched to the back of a pick-up truck. They said their big sprayer is feeling under the weather — it is down and out of service. It seems to be the trend these days. They also took up all the coping around the pool. When I asked about the repaired pieces, they said their distributor’s coping machine is also not feeling well. It seems that we drew the short straw on this project, all the way around.
It is okay. It isn’t swimming weather. To reiterate, we are expecting snow. But the pool will be finished all in good time.
And since we are speaking of keeping good time, I should mention that today is the master composer’s birthday, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s birthday. Born in 1840, Russia. Died 53 years later, some say by suicide. It wouldn’t surprise me. His music is beautiful, but at times, it is extremely sad and depressing. We went to a concert featuring his music down in Cincinnati a few years ago. The second part was so sad, we were slumped over, crying in our box seats by the time it was over. I would write more about him, but then I would have to spell his name, over and over again. That would make me weepy too.
But the opposite of crying is smiling. As we do for the camera. So I feel it equally necessary to mention the birthday of Edwin Land. He is the guy who invented the Polaroid Camera. He was born in 1909, Connecticut. I’m not sure what all he did in his early life, but midway through, he was a co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. He came up with the idea of a little camera that would spit out its own film, developing a picture in 60 seconds or less. The Polaroid Instant Camera went on sale in late 1948. Most of us have had some serious fun with the Polaroid. It was like magic when I saw my first one, flapping it in the air, helping it to dry.
So yes, a little bit of happy, a little bit of sad. As I mention, life is all around and through us. It swings in low and close sometimes. Other times, high and flighty. Either way, it is ours to be in, to learn with, to reflect on.
Depending on the day, my lessons change. Sometimes, even when they are right in front of me, I still don’t understand them. It is at those moments, I look to the sky, and say, “What exactly was THAT supposed to mean?”
We can only try our best. That is the most we can do. We learn our lessons and grow from there. One snapshot at a time. In measured time.
Some people rarely figure this out. And others do it well.
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“Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.”
― Walt Whitman
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“We are all butterflies. Earth is our chrysalis.”
― LeeAnn Taylor
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“I think… if it is true that
there are as many minds as there
are heads, then there are as many
kinds of love as there are hearts.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
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