Words from The Crone

The earthquake in Haiti is like the fire in the forest – a natural disaster that wipes its path clear and leaves utter decimation and destruction in its wake.  The world stands in awe of its mighty power and weeps.  We weep for all those souls who died from the almighty power of its strength.  We weep for all those souls who are wounded and maimed and need healing.  We weep for those who survive and now must live with not only the enormous loss of one, or two, or more loved ones, but the loss of home and hearth and light and water and only God knows what else has been lost.  We weep for all those souls.

We are a resilient race, us humans, and somehow, someway, we pick ourselves up and go on.  We give, we love, we care, we help, we support, we are present, we come together.  And, it is together that the rebuilding and the healing takes place.  It is who we are and it is what we do.  It doesn’t matter whether we are all strangers or all related or something in between…when the greatest upheavals occur, we band together in a relationship of survival and renewal and life.

Please make a donation to Episcopal Relief and Development online if you possibly can, at www.er-d.org, or telephone 1-800-334-7626 ext 5219.

My spouse and I are having an ongoing discussion on the dirty, grimy, nasty condition of his eye glasses.  They are the big aviator kind with lenses forty times the size of his eyes and they consume one-quarter of his entire face.  When I sit next to him and look at him I can see through the side of the glasses through a thick film of disgusting particulate collected over God knows how many months.  I wonder how he sees anything.  Maybe he doesn’t.

One morning, as I was cleaning my glasses (that happen to be small and attractive and only cover most of my eyes), I asked him if he would like me to clean his glasses.  Annoyed he told me that he just cleaned them.  “Just” I pondered?  “How many months ago was that?” I asked sarcastically.  “Yesterday,” he replied, “But, if you want to clean them again, be my guest.”  I left the room.  He followed me.

Then he went on to continue our regular discussion of what constituted “dirt” on a pair of glasses. Sigh, it was getting so old.  “Well, I said, “You brush your teeth twice a day because of the moss that grows on them, and you should clean your glasses every day like I do, (think halo over my head).”  He shot back “Moss doesn’t grow on glasses!”

Well, of course I had no valid response to that so, being a stubborn, outspoken, opinionated, old crone of a woman, I said, “Does too!”  He walked out of the room!  Done, I thought.  Not.  Two minutes later as we were sitting at the table having breakfast, he said, “Moss would only grow on the north side of glasses.”  I smirked at him.  Then he said, “Maybe it is lichen that you see on my glasses, not moss.”

Sitting there bantering on about moss and lichen and particulates was just more than my funny bone could take.  My mental picture of lichen or moss growing on the north side of glasses just cracked me up and I began laughing and laughing and laughing.  My spouse joined in and soon it was that wonderful, uncontrollable laughter when tears dribble down your cheeks, your chest heaves as you try to catch your breath, and you just can’t stop laughing.  Finally, when you do manage to collect yourself you feel amazingly refreshed. 

 So who cares if he can’t see through his glasses.  But, I did notice that he cleaned them up real good before he went off to his Council on Housing meeting!  Hah!