This is what I saw in your eyes: Defiance. Intensity. Love.
Didn’t you know how strong you are? How powerful? In a burst of passion you would make your break to freedom and then graze blissfully along the shore as if nothing had ever happened out of the ordinary. What a pleasure to watch you run unbridled, feet pounding, earth shaking, grass flying.
I will never shape your words, or presume to finish your thoughts. I will only seek to understand who you are, and stand my ground in awe and wonder as you gallop nearer and nearer to me.
At the end of day, I will come to you with a handful of simple pleasures and lead you home. And it will be full of warmth and light and laughter and friends.
And you will always be free.
(Dave Clark, August 5, 2001)
All posts by Helen C
The First of August
Today is the Swiss National Holiday. I grew up celebrating this holiday at a family picnic hosted by the Swiss Home in Mount Kisco, NY.
The Swiss Home was a retirement home for elderly Swiss Nationals. As kids, my brothers, sister and I couldn’t have cared less about the inhabitants of the home. The attraction for us was to spend the day running amok with the offspring of other Swiss immigrants.
There was bratwurst to eat, a roulette game that was so exotic to us, a large bell on the hillside just daring us to ring it and a band playing the Swiss Landler music that our parents loved to dance to. Best of all, at dusk we walked in a “lampion” parade from the bottom of the property to the site at the top of the hill where a bonfire was lit. It was magical.
Tonight it is too hot for a bonfire, but I miss it all the same.
The best laid plans
I had plans for some good blogging this week — about the train ride we took on the White River Flyer last weekend, and how you should go this weekend (particularly since Dave will be playing guitar down there at the station before the train leaves and hope to play on the train as well). And about seeing “An Inconvenient Truth”. Oh, and I completely forgot to post about Wimbledon (and how it is not Wimbleton or Wimbledown). Other stuff too: I’m writing a town news column for our local paper every week now. I’m a little panicked about what to write for next week. I need to get out and talk to some people.
Instead I’ve been spending time visiting a friend who broke his leg. It was a big break. He is in the hospital, done with surgery and beginning recovery. My folks are still here as well and it’s been nice being with them. Mom and I are watching DVDs of the “Upstairs, Downstairs” series from the 70s. We watched them back then, too, but I never saw it from the start.
They’re here for another week but I’m not sure we’ll have time for the next disc. Netflix is doing their deliberate thing to slow down my viewing. They have me returning discs to Worcester, MA this week. Last week it was Manchester, NH, and before that White River Junction. I expect we’ll jump to Kansas City next.
I’m not sure I understand their need to slow me down in particular, but I get the concept. Apparently this is some kind of standard business practice of theirs. They start you out with a nearby facility so the discs during the trial period are exchanged swiftly. Then as soon as you are a paying customer, they find ways to delay your shipments and keep you to whatever they think is a reasonable number of discs. I haven’t decided to get irritated about it yet. Frankly, the discs arrive and I don’t exactly have time to sit down and watch them immediately. That and there are so many other things in life to irritate, why focus on that?