I Love a Rainy Day

It's blissfully quiet now. First time in a long time.

Sunday morning.

Rainy Sunday morning. I thought that I'd catch up on some reading.

One of the first places that I go to catch up on some reading is The Feathered Nest.

Deloris has a keen way of putting many things in perspective succinctly.

On Thursday Delores spent some time Absorbing the Green. Yes...you can do that.

I think that there are few things better in this life than a nice persistent rain when it's needed. Although admittedly in my area we've been getting a lot of intermittent rain for many days now. The green here is very absorbable.

Today is Sunday, and Delores' rain is now falling upon me. My world this morning is an echo of what Delores had on Thursday. Quiet, but deeper. Rain and snow seem to deaden harsh sounds noises.

I can't for the life of me fathom why some people don't like the rain. It's too often not looked upon, I think, for the grace that it is. Why do I like what so many folks would call "dreary" weather? I'll submit that my definition of "dreary" is different from the mainstream definition as it applies to this conversation.

Visitors that almost always come to call on a rainy day, but seldom come on a day that is not rainy:

Quiet - such an elusive ally - comes to call on a rainy day. Quiet has had wanderlust the past weeks, and has been errant my doorstep, but today, at last, she has come to visit...at least for a cup of coffee in the morning. She arrived in the night while I slept, though she does not know how long she can stay. We shall see.

Calm - Quiet's twin - has also while I slept nestled into my home. Calm usually visits only after Quiet has been in residence for a while. Calm is insidious, and I am generally not aware of his presence until he leaves. I am glad that he came in the night; he's always easier to spot in an empty room.

Peace - first cousin to Quiet and Calm - is here today as well, and often comes to me with the gift of limited, optimistic prescience. Peace whispers in my ear on a rainy day that it is unlikely that my home will be invaded by visitors. Visitors aren't a bad thing, really, but they pretty much are guaranteed to chase Quiet and Calm (both of whom are the quintessential introverts) out through the back door. Peace arrives on the heels of my sense that Quiet and Calm will share more than just a quick cup of coffee with me. The twins, I think, will be here for most of this morning.

Satisfaction - not a stranger by any means, but a (if I may use the word) polymorphic friend - comes with the rain in a particular way. Often, Satisfaction points out to me a job well done, or a soccer game well played. On days that are not rainy Satisfaction is often accompanied by Exhaustion (an often welcome visitor, Exhaustion is a high-maintenance visitor who wears out his welcome pretty quickly) and shows up after I've had a fair wrestling match with Honeydo. On a rainy day, like today, Satisfaction is joined by one of my favorite allies: Reflection.

Reflection - often a neglected friend of mine - grows into my home very much like a plant. Reflection needs sunlight, to be sure, but also needs the rain, and on rainy days, just as the parched plants in my yard (and in Delores' yard, it seems) raise their faces to the rain-soaked sky in adoration and seem to come to proper life, Reflection proliferates due to the rain. For me, Reflection is always easier to find (and therefore visit with) on a rainy day. Reflection is a philosopher, which may be why I enjoy her company so well. She is inquisitive and provocative, and asks sometimes hard questions that need answering, but that always lead to deeper questions, which lead me along warrens and paths to eventually find and recognize Reflection's children:

Contentment, Pleasure, Gratitude, and Sufficiency - but four of Reflection's children (there are too many to list comprehensively) play at my house on a rainy day. This morning, the house is not spotless - my own laundry is left incomplete and is draped over the back of the sofa, dishes are in the sink, and there are many things out of place (the natural effect of living in a home, really), and there are a lot of what should be irritating things similarly watching me and silently wondering when they will be attended. But after my conversations with my rainy day visitors I like to watch Reflection's children play. They tell stories of my own children at times - how they are growing or have grown into fine specimens of humanity (if not yet humility). They remind me that through all of our trials, my lovely wife of so many years (who yet slumbers under Peace's kiss) is still my best friend and biggest fan...the one person in the world who legitimately and unfailingly has my best interests in her heart. They also remind me that in this world so full of suffering and strife where so many are without, my house is full of food, laughter, good will, and all manner of things that make worthwhile those times when my rainy day visitors are off to parts unknown.

Soon the inhabitants of my home will wake. Quiet will be the first to depart, though she may linger to greet the first one or two who rise up to join me. Quiet does not like to be around lots of people at once. Calm rarely lingers when Quiet departs. He is protective of his twin. I don't usually see Calm show up, but I always know when he leaves.

Reflection is chased away pretty quickly too as life returns to my little house, and Peace is a bit capricious, really. and may linger or not as people wake up. You just never really know.

Satisfaction and reflection's children, however, do linger typically. The children like to watch as new stories are made - stories that they can replay for me during later visitations - and they have sharp minds and wits.

Thus do I find myself on a rainy day reacquainted with Recollection. Recollection is one of my favorite visitors. He is a small imp, much like Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream. He is imperfect, and causes different people to relive the same set of event in different ways. Recollection reminds me of events often differently than he reminds others of those same events. Like Puck, Recollection is a peculiarly magical entity. 

Recollection causes me to relive my life in such a way that He leaves out critical players (like Anger, who may have slipped in under the door or Resentment who likes to poke those who do not like to be poked), which allows me to today laugh at things that transpired in my life that at the time made me very angry or hurt, or even frightened.

Have you ever had one of those experiences that, at the time, was very tumultuous, but you or someone said something along the lines of, "Someday, you'll look back on this and smile (or laugh)"?

That transition from the experience itself (from yelling or crying) to the recollection of the experience (now displaced by years) when you *do* laugh or smile at it, is the work of these rainy day visitors.

They may not come to your house on rainy days, but that's when they visit me, and that's why I Love a Rainy Day.

Happy Father's Day!

Let me first say a genuine "Happy Father's Day" to all the fathers out there.

Now, acknowledging that I have thus far had a very nice Father's Day, in this year of 2012. My lovely wife went pretty far out of her way to treat me extra nice today, and she and I even took three of the kids (the oldest is working) golfing! This is something that we have never done as a family, and she and I, due to medical issues, have not golfed in 4 years. We did have a splendid time, and now I'm bushed!

That all said, I do have a long-standing whine about Father's Day, and I'm going to share that with you fine folks.

It is said that the busiest day of the year for the telephone companies (here in the US, at any rate) is Father’s Day. That is to say that people all over the country are calling their father on that special day to speak with him. On the surface, this seems like a very sweet gesture: reach out and show that you care. When I heard this statistic I thought it odd: Father’s Day gets more attention than Mother’s Day? 

But after some thought and conversations with friends I came to be aware that the reason for this seeming anomaly - this apparent preference for fathers - is that on Father’s Day, offspring call their sires to say “Hi” and “Happy Father’s Day”. On Mother’s day, you’re in a load of trouble if you call. You bloody well had better show up. You need to take that special woman to breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner. Bring her flowers, chocolate, gifts, cards, praise, etc. For dad, you don’t even need to get out of bed. Reach over to the phone, hit the speed dial, and hope that the answering machine picks up. That’s Father’s Day.

Here’s another interesting point: on Mother’s Day, Mom wants to have people around her. She wants everyone to show up and kiss her cheek, and (most importantly and most difficult) get along. On Father’s Day, what does Dad want? Dad wants to be peace and quiet. Some calm. Some tranquility. Get the hell out! Leave me to have a day of peace. Unfortunately, there’s no football on. But a day off is what dad wants.

This, of course, based upon what I've heard at the Father's Support Groups.

"Hi. My name's Dave, and I'm a father."

[collectively] "Hi, Dave."

Fishing comes up quite a bit. Golfing. Usually Father's Day looks very different from a day on the lake, however.

The problem here is in who plans the events for each of these days? Daughters and wives, that’s who plans them. So mom gets to have her family around on Mother’s Day, and on Father’s Day dad gets…the same thing that mom wants: to have his family around.

The other problem with Father’s Day is that it is in the middle of the sunny season. I say that this is a problem because at this time of year there’s a lot of crap to do around the house. Mowing, raking, landscaping, home repairs, home improvements, auto work, you know, that list that never ends. There’s a host of jobs around the house that can only be done in the sunny weather. Also, at this time of year is when people have their weddings, christenings, graduation parties, cook-outs (at which it is usually dad manning the grill).

Not to blow my own anonymity, but we do have a distant family member who had a baby on my very first Father's Day. This in and of itself was not an issue, until a year later when she decided that the little tyke's birthday part was going to be ON Father's Day. This meant, of course, that I was socially obligated on Father's Day, which is exactly what I DON'T want. I was similarly socially obligated on the next 9 Father's Days.

Get that? My first 10 Father's Days were spent at a family party, when all that I wanted was to relax and get away from people (especially being as introverted as I am).

Father’s Day needs to be moved to early January. At least in my neck of the woods, this is the perfect time of the year to have a Sunday whose purpose is for dad to have a day off. There can be no cook-outs. There can be no house painting. Nobody graduates in January, and fewer people want to have weddings in the winter, leading to less opportunity for Dad’s special day to be commandeered by social obligations. Also, there’s no yard work. You don’t work in the driveway on your car unless you really have to. You know what there is on Sunday in January? Football. And not just any football; it’s the playoffs. That’s what dad wants. To top this off, people are just coming off of the holidays, which means that they’re in debt, drunk (or at least hung over) and with luck, snowed in.

Peace.

Quiet.

I'm hoping that I'm not the only one who wants to move Father's Day into January...anyone else interested?

The Kids and Stormin' Norman

Today, as I roamed the forest in my never-ending search for Lyme Disease, I got to thinking of my precious children. I got to thinking of how smart they are. They are, in fact, smarter than I am (not that being so is setting the bar too high). But they are scary smart.

You know how siblings are always fighting? You know how they don't seem to be able to work together to get ANYTHING done? It seems like the wouldn't be able to work together to fill a glass with water if one had the glass and the other was operating the water faucet.

 However, why is it then that they can collectively launch an assault on my sanity on four simultaneous fronts. Their synergistic attacks would bring a tear of pride to General Normal Schwarzkopf's steely eye.

Here's how it goes:

It's a peaceful morning and amidst the omelet, toast, and coffee, there's a sense of karmic balance that can't be surpassed.

Then, the second boy and the girl start fighting over...what? Nothing, really. Peeling that particular onion, it's a “he hit me back first” sort of thing, but I can't get to the bottom of it before the youngest lad drops a plate or some other breakable object on the kitchen floor (which, naturally, is ceramic tile). Now there's a million tiny (nearly invisible) shards of glass all over the place, not to mention the contents of that glass / plate. Gotta go and clean that up.

However, there's not enough time to complete that before the phone rings, though I can't quite get to it in time while trying to clean and arbitrate a fabricated argument (and heaven forbid someone else answer). I am pretty sure that the eldest is dialing the phone and hanging up *just* as I grab the handset. That's when I notice that the young one...who I rescued from the glass shards...is eating my breakfast.

When I'm lucky, my wife shows up and puts me into time out before that vein on my neck pops and bores a hole in the kitchen cabinet like a power washer.

I'm telling you, the simultaneous presentation of half a dozen fights, accidents, and mishaps is nothing other than a well-planned, well-executed, timely attack on my peace.

Sometime during the month, these little monsters PLANNED this event. I don't know how they do it, as they seem so completely incapable of being near each other without fighting, but SOMEone is calling and scheduling a meeting, and SOMEone is setting an agenda, coordinating a trigger or a start signal, and SOMEone is taking notes.

I want to know who this SOMEone is. I want to know where the meeting is, and when; I want to know who sets the agenda, and where they got their criminal brilliance. And I also want to know how it might be that they can execute it better than any military assault, but cleaning their rooms is well beyond their capabilities.

Is it just mine, or do all kids hold these meetings?