"I have been but little in," said Ninian hastily...

My thankfulness for yesterday: storms. Specifically thunderstorms. I love them--the wind, the sound, the energy, the outpouring of rain. We had a big one last night; there was only a little thunder, but there were buckets of rain. Everything outside is washed down as if a giant hose had been turned on it. Those leaves that were still wavering about coming down have fallen, adding to the carpet of yellow and orange and brown and startling red and pink. There are high, soft clouds in the blue, blue sky, and plenty of winds to push them along.

( Read more... )

We Flew Without Guns

I was looking for something else (as I always am) when I found this. It's an autobiography of a guy who flew "over the Hump" for the China National Aviation Corporation, a "private" company that supplied the Nationalist Chinese government in southwest China by flying across the Himalayas from India. They flew out of Dinjan, in Assam, the same airfield used by the US Army Air Corps and where, I'm pretty sure, my dad was based during the war. So they were almost certainly in the same place at the same time, and they may even have run into each other.

From another oft-quoted poet.

One of the things I miss about my childhood is that spring used to be filled with daffodils. My father, the perfect combination of consummate gardener and absent-minded professor (I know from whom I get my jackdaw-minded way of pottering from one project to another), planted masses of them, and each year when green started coming back into the world it was accompanied by a great deal of yellow, and we would always have jugs of them about the house.

( The Daffodils )

I had conceived, at some point, the idea of posting a favourite poem each day during April, it being National Poetry Month. Obviously that hasn't happened, but I will try to post thirty all the same; same idea, just starting a bit late.

( Poem #1 )

I've had some strange dreams lately.

One involved being somewhere (not quite sure where) having a friendly chat with redactrice's parents. That was followed by running into someoen I knew in high school and quietly talking to and making out with her (as our 1980s selves, not who we are now--I've not even seen her for donkeys').

Then the night before last I had a dream in which I was back at my parents', and I was about to put the kettle on, asked around, and my father said he didn't want any tea. At the time, in the dream, I recall saying "That's how I know this is a dream--if this were real life, you would *never* refuse a cup of tea!"

Not exactly sure what to say to you, dad, on this second anniversary of your death.

I'd like to say that I miss you, but I don't think I was ever close enough to you to say that.

I loved you, but because I knew that I ought to and because I couldn't help loving my father, not because I believed I knew you or felt the sort of closeness that I would have needed for that to be really true.

I know you loved me; I could see that very clearly, on one or two occasions certainly. Sometimes when you were most frustrated or confused by things that didn't make any sense to you, you were the most open and human. I know you were proud of me for what I accomplished, and that it didn't matter to you what I accomplished as long as I tried my best. For your sake, I wish I accomplished more, and I wish I tried harder than I do.

I learned some things from you. Some things I learned from your example, like a love of reading, a love or learning in general, a thirst to know and understand as deep to the root of a thing as one could. I learned honesty from you, certainly. I learned a desire to be kind and open-handed and to see the beauty of nature.

Some things I learned to avoid, or try to avoid, from your mistakes. Your certainty that you were right, that you understood everything, even when you didn't. Your inability to admit mistakes. Your inability to communicate with, or even really understand, your life partner, no matter how much you loved her (and you loved her deeply).

Some attributes I wish had not carried over to me. I wish I didn't have your temper, so quick to anger. I wish I didn't have your intellectual arrogance, the dark side of a love of knowledge. I wish I didn't have your knack for starting an argument with someone you cared deeply for, for driving away the very person who meant the most to you. I have heard myself say and seen myself do things you said and did that I swore I never wanted to be part of me.

But you inspired true affection and respect with the career you never wanted, the career that became your life. You wanted so much to be a priest, and in telling you that you could not do the one thing that you desired most, the bishop suggested that you try teaching instead. And I don't believe I could count the number of people whose lives you touched by taking that advice, the number of students whose lives you changed. I saw the grown men and women who stopped you everywhere you went to thank you for what you gave them. I read the tributes in the newspaper when your obituary was published, in the tributes of your colleagues at the school and the gallery. I know how much you meant to all of them. And I only hope that some day, in some way, I can make that kind of difference, that I can bring that kind of benefit to the lives of others.

And I hope that I can find the same kind of creative spark you had. Yes, it was channeled in a very formalised and regimented way, but you could create, and I admire and envy that gift. I hope some day I'll find a way that I can engage in that kind of valuable work, the work of bringing something into the world for others to enjoy that wouldn't have been there without you.

I don't know if I will ever be even the sort of father you were. I wish you could have been the traditional father--dynamic, active, physically engaged. But that wasn't the sort of person you were, and I arrived, I think, too late in life for that to happen. I hope if I'm ever a father it won't be too late for me to do those things with my son or daughter.

I wish you had been the sort of father I could confide in, the sort of person I could come to for advice and counsel. You always seemed uncomfortable with that role. I'm sure there were reasons for that, but I hope if I am ever a father that I can, perhaps, do that a bit better than you did.

I have the prayer book you gave me when I was confirmed. I have the beautiful box that you made for the 1773 BCP Chris gave me. I have in my heart the memory of the days I wish I could have shared with you--my conversion, my bar mitzvah, my wedding to Neta (o, how I wish you could have been there for that!). And I'm sure there will be days to come that I will think of you and be sad you couldn't be there to participate in them. I'd love to share UUCSS with you the way I did TRS--I think you'd admire Rev. Lerner as I do.

But for now, let me close with the only words that seem appropriate to who I knew you to be and to what I did, at last, briefly share with you.

Yitgadal v'yitkadash sh'mei raba b'alma div'ra chirutei, v'yamlich malchutei b'chayeichon uv'yomeichon uv'chayei d'chol beit Yisrael, baagala uvizman kariv, v'imru, Amein.

Y'hei sh'mei raba m'vrach l'alam ul'almei almaya.

Yitbarach v'yishtabach v'yitpadar, v'yitromam, v'yitnasei, v'yit-hadar, v'yitaleh, v'yit-halal sh'mei d'kud'sha, b'rich hu, l'eila min kol bichata v'shirata, tushb'chata v'nehchemata daamiran b'alma, v'imru, Amein.

Y'hei sh'lama raba min sh'maya v'chayim, aleinu v'akol Yisraeil, v'imru, Amein.

Let the glory of God be extolled, let God's great name be hallowed in the world whose creation God willed. May God rule in our own day, in our own lives, and in the life of all Israel, and let us say, Amen.

Let God's great name be praised for ever and ever.

Beyond all the praises, songs, and adorations that we can utter is the Holy One, the Blessed One, whom we yet glorify, honor, and exalt. And let us say, Amen.

For us and for all Israel, may the blessings of peace and the promise of life come true, and let us say, Amen.

May the one who causes peace to reign in the high heavens cause peace to descend on us, on all Israel, and on all the world, and let us say, Amen.

Dad, you believed what you believed, and I believe what I believe, and they are very different things. I've even believed a multiplicity of things in my life, and for all I know, you did too. But I can certainly say, with all my heart

Oseh shalom bim'romav, hu yaaseh shalom aleinu v'al kol Yisrael, v'imru, Amein.

May the Source of peace send peace to all who mourn and comfort to all who are bereaved. Amen.

Kenneth Franklin Spoor, d. 4 April 2007

Martin Luther King, Jr., d. 4 April 1968

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Today's score at Highland Lane: One tub of spackling almost exhausted during the course of repairing one large and several minor bits of wall damage as well as patching innumerable nail holes. Two sections of carpeting (damaged by Nicholas) replaced. The guy who soccer_fox found to do the carpet work was on time, quick, and did good work; I would recommend him. Also five loads of paper brought up from the basement for recycling. Finally, eight loads of insulation board, beaverboard, shelving, piping, and other old junk brought up from the basement to the kerb for pickup by the Weee Haul Eeet Awwwl man tomorrow.

This in addition to the work that soccer_fox and I did at my mother's over the weekend, carting about half a dozen cartons of junk from my dad's study plus about fifty years' worth of Times Literary supplement (estimate: they filled up the back of a Volvo station wagon to the roof, and I know I saw some from the mid-1950s, which means that he *moved* them to Newport News!) And, of course, driving there and back in successive days, since N's WAWSL team ,the Vixens, had a match on Saturday morning (and a good thing she went, too, as she was their only sub!)

Exhausted! Time for a shower, a change of clothes, then in to work. Home after to unload bits and pieces we brought back from NN and do a bit of cleaning chez Scarpari/Spoor.

I was going to write something about the announcement that all US Army tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan are now being extended to 15 months, but I realised I just don't have the energy for another round of anger and frustration at how badly this war is being run. I'm too tired and dispirited. ( Read more... )

Neta and I were at the Screaming Eagles viewing party, watching the end of the second leg of the DC United-Chivas de Guadalajara Champions Cup series, when my phone rang. It was my sister Cornelia, calling to let me know our dad had died.

I feel as if I had a chance to say goodbye the last time I was there, and I don't feel as if he, the person I knew and loved, has really been there for a while, so I'm not sad I wasn't there at the last. My mum went to see him the other day, and C. says he was just overjoyed to see her and they had a very happy time together, so I hope she won't be having any lingering feelings of guilt, which I was afraid of before.

I'm sad, of course, but mostly I'm mystified as to exactly what happened. It sounds as if he was lucid and happy, but in considerable discomfort, so his going now was probably for the best. But the reports I've heard have seemed so completely disparate (one minute he's in a decline, then the next he's talking and eating and getting stronger), and so little actual medical explanation for what's happened has been forthcoming that I'm terrifically puzzled.

But, in the end, that isn't really what's important. What's important is that he seems to have been relatively happy and calm at the end, instead of furious and unhappy as he was when he went to the hospital. That we all got a chance to see him and say goodbye. That he isn't suffering in body or mind anymore.

Being the English teacher he was, I know he'd like to be remembered in a poem. I looked for one and had a hard time choosing. For now, I think this is a good one.

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you wake in the morning hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starlight at night.

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there, I did not die!