Looking For…?

What would brighten your day instantly? Is it a food item you’d love to devour just this instant? Or might it be an aroma you have long missed smelling? Maybe it is a favorite personality you haven’t visited with for a long time? Maybe that special person died a while back and you long for their presence?

Or maybe you hanker to see an old neighborhood you used to live in and now wonder what it is like. Would it have the same trees as years ago? Would the houses and people seem the same to you now?

Maybe a trip down nostalgia lane would help? Viewing a collection of old cars, smelling their interiors, feeling their old but once familiar lines. Feeling amazed at the old size of the cars back in the day, much smaller these days, but those were the normal size cars we rode in and drove. At 27-cents a gallon of gas, however, 8 or 9 miles to the gallon was just fine. Try doing that today!

As I ponder this weekend before me, I will attend a morning meeting at the church, then maybe stroll by the car show at the annual summer street festival, then go home for lunch and a nap. At 4 we have a memorial service for a famed local artist who died recently. She was a most special person, the type of wonder who melded life’s experience into so many different artistic expressions. A tour of her home will follow the service so we can see once again the awesome works of art she produced continually throughout her life.

Sunday is church, of course, and then our full traditional breakfast, followed by a nap. In the afternoon we are to visit my son’s family – beautiful wife and 5 month old son – at a backyard cookout with some of his in-laws. It is a rare visit these days. John and Eduenis are in the process of renovating an old house before they move into it. The reno work will consume 8 months of craftsmen and trades reworking the systems and floor plan in major ways. It should be a wonderful home when it is completed. In the meanwhile John and family are living with the in-laws. Lucky them! They are sharing the daily ‘first times’ of baby Jax journey through babyhood. I know it complicates living arrangements but this sort of thing also grows new people skills and family memories that will last more than a lifetime. It is a special time of joy for them.

So that’s the weekend plan. What else could I be doing that would suddenly brighten my days? Here’s a few I ponder often:

-A slow drive out west to Wyoming and Montana to see afresh the mountains and wide vistas, the grand open spaces of this portion of our country.

-Another slow drive through the New England states. Rocky has never really seen Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont or much of Massachusetts. But then there is Rhode Island and Connecticut to be explored as well. It is an enchanting section of America, rich in early history of our nation’s founding.

-Another slow drive out west, this time to the southwest: Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona. To smell the aromas of the dessert landscape, and the sparse vegetation. To view the enormous landscape constantly expanding from horizon to horizon. The feel of the air – hot and dry and somehow embracing like a balm that warms the skin and the bones underneath.

-To taste a freshly made potato salad with fresh corn on the cob along with the sizzle of a freshly grilled steak. Now there’s a menu that puts a zing into life!

-To think about the many casserole dishes I've consumed and would love to do so again! The lowly, cost conscious casserole – so inviting, so bubbly, so gooey and rich with sauces and cheeses while tantalizing taste buds with chunks of chicken or sausage among succulent vegetables – all nestled in one pot, one tempting dish of smells and tastes and eye popping memories. So good to eat, and so good for the body, too.

Those are some of the things that would suddenly brighten my day. Oh there’s music, too, or a well-worn book read for the umpteenth time. Relaxing in a favorite chair surrounded by familiar things and listening to the music that trained the mind while reading the prose that also trained the mind. But this is for a winters day, not summertime.

We’ll explore that another time.

August 5, 2014