I Interrupt This Poetry Slam To Say...

...that gosh and begorrah, it seems that the Google Blogger Team's "Blogs of Note" page has gone and selected...

...Irish Gumbo...

...as the Blog of Note for June 7th, 2011.  Click on the link just to see, and to browse some other good things out there.

How about that?  Irish Gumbo: It's not just a blog, it's a digital Post-It!

(Poetry slam continues tomorrow)

Early Summer Poetry Slam #1: Summer Morning, with Companion

Dew, honeysuckle
Pale sun gilding cool blossoms
Sweetness on our tongues

Time To Grow Up: Addendum #1

Having had some time to meditate on my post of Sunday, I realize I may have left the impression that the life-altering events that shaped my transition to 'growing up' were all of a negative or traumatic nature.  While it is true that a lot of powerful and heart-breaking things did happen, it is also true that good, great things happened.  First and foremost among those was the birth of my darling Wee Lass.  There may be some close seconds, but that she came into this world is the first on the list of Great Things What Happened To Gumbo.

I bring this up because events of great joy, like those of great trauma, also take a certain level of maturity to fully process and enjoy.  It is certainly easier if it is something happy, because those happy things don't hurt.  But to fully internalize the joy, to really appreciate it, takes a certain amount experience because experience gives us a way to compare and contrast what we we feel in the present with what we have felt in the past.  It helps one to truly understand what matters.

When I was younger, nice things could happen and I could be happy along with them, but perhaps I was too casual about joy.  Because our parents worked to protect us from petty slights and from the worst the universe could serve up, sometimes it was difficult to understand that joy, like pain, is transient.  Enjoyed or endured, they pass.

Once I had the "benefit" of experience*, though, I wrapped my head around the bittersweet.  I learned to temper my joy with a memory of the pain, and vice versa.  It sounds weird; after all, who really wants to be reminded of hurt and trauma?  I was afraid of that at first.  However, as I have practiced it, I find that the joys have gotten better, and the pains easier to endure.  Things balance themselves.

Understanding that, I think, is a key component of growing up.

---

*I once told myself, in the midst of some of the worst pain I ever experienced upon the deaths of my first two children in 2003, that if knowing pain is in some guise what it means to be wise, I'd much prefer to remain a fool.  While I would never deliberately go back to a situation like for the sake of learning something, I do have a greater appreciation for what I learned.

Time To Grow Up Now

Many years ago, back when I was College Boy Gumbo, I had the occasion to head out one night for some carousing with some friends and acquaintances.  And by carousing, I mean pizza and copious quantities of beer.  Not that pizza and beer is unusual for a night out in college.  Quite the contrary, it would almost have been weird if we had not consumed mass quantities of both.

No, what made this particular night different was what occurred in the aftermath, as I was walking (read: stumbling) back to the dorm, trying to navigate my way to a horizontal surface.

The path back to the dorm went straight across a wide, open field.  I recall it being a cool night, and babbling the inanities one typically does when cousin Ethyl has stopped in for a visit.  Nothing noteworthy there, either.  Until we were about halfway across the field.  My friends told me later that I stopped, looked quizzically at my hands, and said:

"Time to grow up now, and get a new wallet."

I shook my head, and then we continued on to the dorm, whereupon I achieved blessed horizontality and managed to sleep it off with only minor effects the next day.

A great epigram it was, and it achieved minor myth status in my social circle.  On the surface it appears to be nonsense, silly but without real meaning.

Decades later, though, that bon mot has come back to me.  This time, it actually made sense.  The one in the picture above, I had so long I forgot when I bought it.  It was falling to pieces, ragged, threadbare and grungy.  Today, while out shopping for some new shoes, I saw some wallets on sale, and knew it was time.  I finally got a new wallet. 

The old wallet I bought long ago, in a time when my life was very different.  The boy (and I use 'boy' deliberately, even though I was in my 30's then) I was had no clue what was in store for him as he strolled in blitheful ignorance into his 40's.  He had no clue the tragedies awaiting him, the emotional hurricanes and the deep blacknesses lying in wait.  He just kept stuffing money and business cards and plastic in that wallet, never noticing just how much things were fraying and tearing.

He had no idea just how badly things would fall apart, and when they did, he clung to that wallet because it was familiar and fit him and he didn't want to throw it away.

But today, upon pulling it from his pocket for the last time, to pay for the wallet that would replace it, the boy knew he had given way to the man.  It was time to clean things up, no matter how small they seemed.  It doesn't do to try and keep things in a container that will no longer hold them, from the holes and the tears that turned things into lace.

No, it would not do.  It is, after all, time to grow up now.  He has a new wallet.