Wednesdays with Agnes, Thursdays with the Boys

Wednesday nights I spend with a new friend, Agnes, a beautiful 90 year old blind woman who has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. All the time I spend with her she is lucid and amazing. I am learning to see as a blind woman does, through sound and touch, long descriptive glances, smells, cadances of footfalls, and tall steps (the only way to walk along broken concrete). Its one of my highlights in the week. Agnes always asks me to bring something to read. She loves Poe, poetry and short stories. But mostly poetry. Especially if it rhymes. Well, and Poe. I have read The Raven several times. She loves it. So do I. She loves ghost stories, and literature. and music. I forgot how much she loves music. We spent an entire evening in front of the stereo, the volume cranked loud enough to feel the base in our chests, listening to Mozart and Beethoven and Bach and Barbara Streisand.
She loves to walk around her neighborhood at night when the crickets come out. "Listen to them getting all warmed up" she says. "Ooh, do you hear that one, that sweet little tweet tweet. What do you suppose it is saying." I try to be clever and offer up potential pick up lines one cricket is muttering to another. She laughs politely. We've gone to Lake Johnson twice to walk mostly around. I always stop at interesting plants, hold out her hand and pull a branch down for her to feel the leaves, bark, or berries. "Golly! Tell me what it looks like." I try my best at describing color and texture height, breadth. "I just love this." She says. And I admit Lake Johnson is so much prettier with my sweet blind friend with me. She found the beauty I couldn't see until I had to tell her about it. "When I ask to go to one of my favorite places, know that this is one of them." She tells me. My heart swells up a little.

And if Wednesday is, introspective, simple, slow, sweet, female... Thursday is the opposite.

Male, loud, fast, robust. And in its contrast it is delightful and amazingly fun. Chris and I and his roomie, Joanna, host a dinner weekly at his place for some of our friends. We eat more than we should, talk a lot of smack, and then we try to beat T and Chris at Corn hole. We only occasionally do the impossible. The rest of the time they dominate the game. (Chris and T really should be split up). Thursday we had Meatloaf, homemade mashed potatoes, snap green beans, and fresh cookies out of the oven. This week it is Chili, cornbread and an undecided dessert. And cornhole. always cornhole. Its amazing how natural friendships develop over food and games. And I haven't watched thursday night television since. (well, any TV for that matter... I dont have cable or a converter box... and I even though our neighbor offered to splice us into his cable, my roomie and I declined. We are excited to be free from the TV.) I just wish I threw a better cornhole game.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.

Take kindly to the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann c.1920