Our Trip to Orlando

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p_ygTw4reA&w=560&h=315]

I’m still recovering from our trip, and trying to get my mojo back.

It wasn’t supposed to be about writing, but our Orlando trip — which was for the express purpose of visiting Disney World and Universal Studios — ended up having its measure of drama. (Thanks, Emma.)

Seeing The Wizarding World of Harry Potter was the main attraction. I read the books aloud to the girls when they were little, and being in Diagon Alley was just as exciting as this documentary promises.

Amazing to think that this all emerged from the imagination of a writer.

Father’s Day

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dadI meant, yesterday, to post something about Father’s Day. Then I saw the Lynda Barry video and got distracted. I’m sure my dad would understand.

Yesterday was our last Sunday at Maplewood Presbyterian with our wonderful Pastor, Barry Keating. There was a video during the service, which my family was too distracted to have a picture included in. A section of the video was of different church members holding up a chalkboard with Pastor Barry Taught Me — and whatever they had filled in. Real footballs are round, for instance.

If I had been present the Sunday they made the video, I would have written, It’s All Sacred, something Pastor Barry told me when I was asked to lead a church retreat in Bellingham and came to him for advice. I had been teaching, at that time, for about 15 years, but not, I confessed, in a sacred setting. Pastor Barry leaned back in his chair and frowned. Then he leaned forward and said, in his lovely Belfast voice, “Bethany! It’s ALL sacred!”

So, it’s Monday, and not Father’s Day. Happy Father’s Day, anyway, Dad. Thinking of you.

The View from Here: Poetry and Survival

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I just loved this. Credit to The Boynton Blog for posting it first.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3JIkjrz4h0&w=420&h=315]

Home again, home again, jiggety jig

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I’m exhausted. Six days in Orlando on our BIG family vacation — an average of about 94 degrees (plus humidity!) and 4 days of theme parks — and this mom is tapped out.

What has sustained me is getting up in the morning before my daughters to read Ruth Stone’s poetry. Reading her poetry in Ordinary Words (the only poetry book I brought), and writing in my journal…

So here’s a sustaining poem for you, courtesy of The Poetry Foundation. 

The Mother

BY RUTH STONE

Here where the rooms are dryly still
Who is this dustily asleep
While juicy children run the field?

Where is her ever deepening well
Whose buckets to a fullness dip
For needs compassion must fulfill?

Like freshets they themselves may yield
A little to the turned up cup,
But death is in the long dry spell.

Run children, run, the light grows dull,
And she who keeps the well must sleep,
And rain is unpredictable.

December 1951

Source: Poetry (June 2012).