Escape to the old & ordinary : )

Morning temp: 48°F
Afternoon high: 64F
Tonight's projected low: 44F
Humidity: 93%
Moon: Waning, 41%

It's looks to be a rainy day, with a steady east wind at 10 mph. So, it's a good day for indoor tasks such as sweeping & moping floors, cleaning bathrooms and restocking the fireplace.

1. My wife (M) and I live in a large, two-family home that we share with my parents (J and C). We live downstairs, J and C upstairs. For nearly 25 years, my grandparents lived in the downstairs, and when they passed-away we just happened to be looking to move from Lookout Mountain, Alabama back to Atlanta (M had just been accepted into an accelerated nursing program at a nearby University, and I had had been offered a three-year teaching contract at that same University). Understandably, my mom has been slow to let go of my grandparents' things. So, even now, some four years later, M and I live our daily lives in a home filled with my grandparents' antiquated, and (I think) quite charming things. Just now, for instance, I'm listening to a baseball game on an AM-only Panasonic radio (I discovered it just this afternoon), sipping organic espresso from a bright red, tin, camping-coffee cup in a bedroom (now my office) crowded with circa-1950s bedroom furniture. M is eager to have our own place, and fill it with furniture of our own choosing, which I can surely understand (and I feel this way too). But these old things make me think about what life might have been like in past decades, what we've gained since then, and what we've lost.

2. With the steady mist and rain, I did little in the Garden today, save cut some lettuce for dinner and empty a nearly-full, 5-gallon bucket of kitchen scraps into the compost bin. One more bucket (probably by next week) and I'll have a nice, two-inch layer of green material on top. Then I'll add a shovel of top soil, a bag of composting leaves, and a handful of straw, until we've saved up more kitchen scraps.

3. I went to the tire store this afternoon. As I was waiting for new front tires to be put on, I noticed a photograph of beautifully restored, 1969 Mustang GT. Above the bright-yellow 1960s sportscar it said, "Escape the Ordinary!". After initial, knee-jerk agreement, I began to wonder whether this was really the way to live well, which was clearly the point of the poster, and which is also a value evident in many places within our current cultural pattern. Indeed, we continually bombard ourselves (and each other) with this same message, "Be extra-ordinary!". But, is this realistic, and aren't the things and people I truly value entirely ordinary?

I looked at the tall, old oak and pecan trees out beyond the tire-store parking lot, at the mist that hung everywhere in the air and watched the cool Spring breeze stir the young leaves. I thought about our Garden, about the bluebirds and blackbirds that sing day and night, and the deep, dark and rich soil of all ten Garden Beds I'd recently dug, and the pictures M took of last year's Garden at mid-Summer. I thought about the family and friends I'm close to, about my very excellent wife, and about the young fellows changing my tires. All of these people and things are thoroughly ordinary. I can depend on them precisely because of this fact. And, if I've got my head on straight, that's all I'll ever really need. The "escape to the extraordinary", I believe, is in large part an illusion, most likely unattainable and, if attained, unsatisfying.