Words from The Crone

It has been a long time since I saw a “midnight” and a longer time since it was “clear.”  My loving spouse and I got into the habit of celebrating a Mid-Atlantic New Year’s Eve many moons ago.  It occurs at 9:00 p.m. EST because at that hour it is midnight in the mid-Atlantic.  Pop, fizz, toot horns, toast each other, clang bells, kiss, kiss, Happy New Year – we are asleep by 10 p.m.  Now I’ll clear up this thought about it not being “clear.”

I can remember living in southern California in the late 1940’s and gazing up at the night sky in utter wonderment over the galaxies of stars above me.  It was my favorite thing to do at night – just lie on my back in the soft grass and gaze.  I was never any good at finding all the constellations, but I was able to see the dippers and Orion’s belt.  Everything else was just a beautiful array of billions and billions of stars.  The sky was crisp and clean and clear.  Very clear.

Today, I live on the east coast in a rural area of the Delmarva Peninsula.  One would think the air would be crisp and clean and clear.  But no, it is not.  On a good night there may be a million stars, sometimes only thousands.  We have polluted our air not only with smoke and smog and soot, but with of all things, light.  One would think that light is good.  Certainly I am a child of the light who is buoyed up by all things light and bright.  But I have discovered that not all light is good.

Drive up and down our major highways, or a look at a map of the earth at night (you can google earth at night from space or go to this link:

            http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0810/earthlights2_dmsp_big.jpg

and you will see the magnitude of our light pollution.  It is a wonder that we can see any stars “Upon a Midnight Clear,” not to mention the electricity we are wasting and the carbon footprint we are creating.  Not a very clear legacy to leave those coming after us.

What is saddest however, is that our children and their children and generations to come will never know the wonder of a truly starry, starry night.  A night so filled with stars and other wonders of space that we are pulled into the magic of the mystery of their very being.  And, even with the advent of the Hubbell telescope and the awesome splendor of its images sent back from billions of light years away, there is just simply nothing at all like lying there in the grass on your back being sucked into the enormity of our universe.  Oh, how I miss that.

 Twas was the day after Thanksgiving and all through the house not a creature was stirring – they were all out with the mouse – shopping, and dining, and playing soccer, oh my.  Then one old man, one grown man, one young lad, and a mostly old crone appeared in the house and clattered down to the finished basement for a game of pool – a nasty one named “Cut-Throat.”  It was meant only for three so the grown man played coach to us other brave pool sharks.

The old man and the lad had played pool as recently as the day before.  They were polished and practiced and ready for more.  But the old crone, well, she hadn’t hefted a cue stick in well over ten years and her scratches and misses spelled doom for sure.  As hard as she tried her efforts proved nil and even the coaching of the grown man helped only a bit.  No pool shark she.

Meanwhile the lad and the old man kept hitting away, dropping balls here and there with nary a quiver and only a few scratches that helped the old crone stay alive.  The object you see, of the game they were playing was to sink your opponents balls and keep yours afloat – or at least on the table top.  A scratch meant you got to resurrect one of yours from the deep of the pocket – another chance to keep playing.

All seemed doomed for the old crone with two of her balls remaining and the lad taking bead on a nearly sure drop.  The old crone called to God with this silent prayer, ‘Come on God, we aren’t going to let these guys beat us, are we?”  It wasn’t a serious prayer, more like a plea, but what happened next you won’t believe.

The lad missed the shot and it was the old crone’s turn with seven balls left on the pool table.  Crack, one in the corner pocket.  Crack one in the other corner pocket. Crack, one in the corner and one in the side pockets both at once.  There was high-fiving and OMG’s as the crone simply smiled.  Three balls left – two of them hers.  If she could sink her opponent’s ball she’d won the game.  Considering her previous three shots it seemed highly unlikely she’d succeed yet again.

The men were all coaching her – hit this, no hit that, hit high, no hit low, hit here, hit there.  None of those hints seemed just right, so she listened to that Spirit of God within.  “Hit this one a touch on the lower left side and one great big winner you will be.”  Ready, aim, shoot – CRACK – two balls headed each for its own pocket – drop, drop, SUCCESS.  Sitting alone and jubilant in the middle of the table was the winner’s ball – you guessed it, it belonged to the crone.  “Thank you, God,” she said in her head – didn’t want those guys to know the divine help she’d had!  But her heart chuckled a bit as she thought to herself, “the pool shark lives!”  WOO HOO!

Being a girl (way back when, now I’m a woman) I wasn’t particularly interested in football.  Oh, sure, all the girls put on their cutest jackets, scarves, and gloves and faithfully attended all of the high school football games, but, it wasn’t because we had a clue what was going on.  No, it was because the biggest, handsomest, jocks were playing and every girl on the sidelines was drooling at the prospect of dating one of them – maybe even going steady with one.  Even those perky, peppy, bouncing boob-ed cheerleaders didn’t know a touchdown from a fumble.  It was all about being noticed by the guys and of course, being a cheerleader was an advantage.  I wasn’t a cheerleader because I couldn’t jump high enough, so I was a side-line girl.  Until college, and then I learned and joined the university drill team.  We were noticed.

 Then came marriage and football.  Suddenly, it wasn’t a Saturday afternoon only affair.  It was college football on Saturday and professional football on Sunday – on television – in my home – with a husband (my first) glued to the TV.  Since we both worked during the week the weekends were supposedly for “us.”  Yeah, sure.  If I watched football that is.  So, I watched – still as clueless as before. 

Then I got religion – sports religion of a sort.  I decided that rather than be bored with the whole thing and watch it in form only, I would learn the nitty-gritty of the game.  Now mind you, this was before instant replay, microphones on referees, announcers who drew pictures for you on the screen, or graphics that showed you the line of scrimmage and the “down” line.  Let me tell you, learning a game with invisible lines and men in striped shirts making weird hand signals was a challenge.  It was a full season before I understood the line of scrimmage and another year before I memorized all those hand signals.  I must say though, as a young girl I did enjoy watching those young men’s buns!

 Fast forward fifty years.  Now my husband (the second one) is really impressed with my sports prowess and complete understanding of and engagement in his favorite sport – yes, football.  I knew every coach, every quarterback, every standing, every receiver by name and number.  I was awesome.  We went to his college homecoming games, we watched the Saturday and Sunday games and then some idiot invented “Monday Night Football.”  Oh, God, not more football.  Well, at least modern technology has given the referee a voice and the instant replays, arrows, lines, graphics, jerky circles and lines showing past plays make it much more understandable.  Even a two year old should be able to understand the game these days.

 But, quite frankly it is getting out of control.  Another idiot decided we now needed Thursday night football.  (Finger down the throat).  Four out of seven nights we have football to watch and not only watch, but act like idiots ourselves screaming and yelling for our team and at the other team, using  terminology reserved only for this insidiously weird game where grown man try to kill each other over an oval ball but in some legal way that doesn’t bring on a penalty. 

Well, I am going to get my revenge and get this football fanaticism under control, by gosh.  From now on I have picked one team, my team, The NY Giants, and I will only watch their games – period!  Don’t care what the others are doing, just want to cheer on my Giants and see them win the Superbowl from time to time.  Cuts out the riff raff, after all they only play once a week, and after sixteen games and some playoff time on the field, poof, off to the Superbowl and I’m done for the season.  I can be done sooner if my team doesn’t make the playoffs.  And finally, when my guy is off into basketball or soccer or hockey or what other silly ball game he wants to watch, I will take his credit card and go shopping big time.  He won’t even mind; in fact, he won’t even know I’m gone  if he’s glued to the TV watching the game!

We all know what a bad hair day is, right?  I have them regularly, like right now.  Today is my soulmate’s birthday and here I sit with bad hair.  Well, into the shower, wash, wash, rinse, rinse, condition, blow dry, poof – “Good Hair Day!”

 But what is a “Good Hair Day?”  Really?  I recall my wedding day (both of them) and one of the main priorities was that my hair look perfect!  Not close, or nearly so, but perfect.  If that meant hours at a hairdresser and a bag over my head until the event, so be it.  There is something about hair that we women obsess over.  Ask my daughters – I nag about their hair all the time.

 At a conference recently a black woman said that white women obsess about weight and black women obsess about hair.  I disagree.  I think women of any color obsess about both of them!  The scale may just tip a bit more to one side than the other for some.  Skinny women with perfect hair don’t obsess about much of anything,  but perfect women like that are actually robots.  Fat women with rotten hair obsess about both and then there is everyone in between and you can place yourself wherever you want on the continuum.

I wonder however, if we would know a “Good Hair Day,” when we had one.  You see, a “Good Hair Day,” is as much about how we feel about ourselves as how our hair actually looks.  I have had one of the best hair days in my life lying in the ICU after having major surgery and surviving it.  I know my hair looked like hell, my face was bloated beyond recognition due to the eight hours of surgery lying face down on the gurney, and the hospital gown did nothing to enhance the blob of body lying in that bed connected to a dozen kinds of tubes.  But….it was a “Good Hair Day!” 

I think too that a “Good Hair Day” is also about how good we feel when we say or do something that makes someone else feel better or live a better life.  Or how we feel when we’ve done something to help ease the aches and pains and sorrows of the world around us.  For Christmas last year and this year, I gave several bee hives, with instructions and all the parts including the bees, to families in third world countries to help them earn a living.  I felt good about that.  It was another “Good Hair Day.”

 Have a “Good Hair Day,” even if you are having a bad hair day!

 My husband, my cousin and a professional colleague just don’t seem to get Facebook.  All of them have joined this social networking phenomenon, but after mastering their username and password they seem at a complete loss.  “So, Mary went to see the movie “Blind Side, what do I care?”  “Joann lost her brother-in-law?  I didn’t know he was ill?”  Or, “I don’t plan to play with this toy very much.”  But then, I notice how they sneak a peek to see what they might be missing.  I am not sure what they expect, but what I suspect is that they don’t know what to say in that little “Update Status” thingy.

For example, my husband said, “what shall I say, that I shaved my face today?”  “No, sweetheart, tell them that you are putting together an important report for your Council on Housing Policy Meeting tomorrow.”  “Or tell them you feel that Christmas is coming too soon and you are trying to convince your wife that you already have everything you need.”

My take on this kind of behavior is that these people are not yet really connected into the cyber-hood.  Everyone has experienced a “hood” of some kind.  Maybe it was the Italian hood where all the kids played in the streets and nobody told on anybody.  Or maybe it was the Irish hood where all the girls were beautiful and all the guys were gorgeous and they made beautiful blue-eyed, red-haired babies.  Or maybe you were in an English hood where young mothers and nannies took children for walks in the parks and Mrs. Nosey One knew everything that went on in every house on the block.  A place where it was safe and fun and girls giggled behind the curtains as handsome boys rode by on their bikes.  Where the local pastor walked down the street greeting the moms, and the local cop stopped and chatted with all the little ones to assure them that they would be safe.  Or men exchanged jokes and tools over the fence.

Today, we often don’t have that kind of land-based neighborhood.  But, we do have a cyber-hood and it is called Facebook, MySpace, U-Tube, or Twitter although I find Twitter a bit restrictive.  I mean, really, what woman can say anything meaningful in 140 characters?  In my cyber-hood I keep in touch with a myriad of people on a day to day basis who tell me all about the straying neighbor or the kid who needed some discipline.  They told me how they decorated for Christmas and where the best shopping was found.  We cried together when a friend lost a dear brother-in-law, and we discussed how commercialized “Christmas” has become, and who is God.

Yes, my Facebook friends are my community, my cyber-hood, and they are the folks who touch me briefly from time to time just as I touch them with all the little things that happen in a land-based, face-to-face neighborhood.  And it is good!  I know my clergy friends spend a lot of time writing great sermons.  I know that the lady who lives by the river has solar heating and loves it.  I know the movies and the parties and the riding events that my granddaughter attends.  It isn’t a perfect hood, but it is my cyber-hood and I love it.   Until you engage and embrace this new kind of hood, my cyber-hood, you cannot know the joy that comes from having a group of people who know what you do on a daily (or almost daily) basis.  And, the magic is that we are truly friends and neighbors – at least in our cyber-community.

Come on, join Facebook, get your feet wet and your curiosity stoked and see what this new community is all about.  This hood is happy and safe if you just let it be what it is meant to be – a cyber-hood as small as a few friends, or as big as the universe!