Morning Comments

My daughter and granddaughter are enjoying a morning hot tub, their last before our 9-hour car ride back to San Francisco. My other daughter and grandson are doing a Mad Lib. My wife is packing her bags, my son-in-law already returned to Portland to get ready for work on Monday and I’m seated here observing it all. That’s the trademark of a writer, a profession I’m considering when I grow up. In the words of Mary Oliver:

 

“Each morning, the world says to you, ‘Here I am. Would you like to make a comment?’”

 

And if you’re a writer, you do. If not, you might make a painting of what you see, a composition out of what you hear, a dance from the motions beckoning from within. You might arrange numbers so everything tumbles into place, take raw ingredients and gather them into the food that delights and sustains us, gather children in a circle in the school and show and tell what’s happened recently. One of the great gifts of a human incarnation is the multiplicity of choices. Like all choices, it can also be our downfall as we make and sell guns, drugs that addict, laws that repress and oppress. 

 

But we know all that. On the day after Christmas and six days ahead before the year turns, no need to go down that dark tunnel. It has been a happy, happy week. There’s a long car ride ahead, made palatable with the kids with an Audible Alice in Wonderland, more Mad Libs, listening to Hamilton, talking, laughing and reminding the kids not to touch each other or scream in the car. And then a week ahead with them in San Francisco filled with yet more delights.

 

Breakfast awaits. These comments are pedestrian and are not likely to inspire, uplift, comfort or even interest anyone else, but a writer often just writes like a jazz musician just plays, starts with a word (or a note) and sees where it leads. Apparently this one is leading me to heating up the bagels. 

 

Best wishes to all.