The Imaginary Front Porch

The prospect of joining people around the world for an hour in darkness on March 29th was something I looked forward to all day long.  After consideration of candlelight or using a portable lantern during that time I made the decision simply to enjoy the dark and let it be filled with music.  Sibelius symphonies were my choice.

CD on…lights out…all settled into a comfortable chair with a view out my study window… no obligations.  I am very good at relaxing and doing nothing, though I discovered long ago that my mind rarely understands the “doing nothing” part.  I am certain that my teachers and parents would have loved clarity about that many years ago but I have come to enjoy that aspect of myself.

I completely relaxed into the music, listening closely to the individual instruments, the tapestry of sounds, the lulls and the swells and the measures that sweep me away with their beauty.  For a very few minutes it was just the music and me.  And then it was the music and me and noticing how many lights were off in the condos I can see from that window. I began imagining all of the residents who live there.  Who are they?  Did they know about Earth Hour or were they away from home? That made me get up and walk around the house to see if other neighboring lights were out.  I was like a little Earth Hour spy. 

All the while I was spying I was watching the incredible evening weather…trees in the wind…all different shapes, heights, leaves out, no leaves yet…but all swaying to the music of Sibelius.  It was as if they could hear it and feel the rhythm.  I watched and listened and was amazed at how indoors and outdoors came together in a dance.  And then the lightning and the thunder added their contributions and I realized that I was in the middle of the symphony of nature and the symphony of instruments, giving me a dazzling show that was free, one which I would have entirely missed had the lights been on.

And while all of that was going on I was thinking about John and Abigail Adams…the little orange 1950’s book I can still see, a story about Abigail’s life that I remember relishing… and the David McCullough rendering of John Adams’ life that I so enjoyed reading.  What would the two of them and everyone in that time of history think about a day having to be purposely designated to show the need for saving electricity? How did we get from candles and kerosene lamps to this? 

Thinking about that little orange book made me start perusing the bookshelves in the dark, unable to see titles but mulling the many categories, which led me to thinking about all of the bookstores I have been in around the country and the gift of books in my life

And this is long enough…but at some point when I knew the hour was getting close to ending I realized that the hour of darkness was the most wonderful gift to someone for whom focus is a challenge.  There were no parameters…there was nothing I was meant to be attending to at that moment and daydreams stealing the time instead…I wasn’t having to steer myself back to a task…I was free, free, free to think about all that I wanted to think about and let my mind go where it wanted…and it led me during that hour to all kinds of fabulous places. 

At 9 PM, with a tinge of regret, I turned the lights back on.

The minds of children who struggle with focus are often like this. The more I understand, the more I wonder how to make the world of education one that honors them more fully. 

It was much earlier than usual on a recent Saturday morning that I was eating breakfast..darkness and quiet still surrounding the neighborhood. Enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee, I picked up my sister’s most recent letter. Yes, most weeks, she and I pen multiple page letters to each other. I do love email but I treasure the art of handwritten correspondence…an art that is disappearing.

The story: a woman at their church had kindly baked an apple pie for my mother and sister, having heard that my mother always loved to bake pies. My mom, until the last couple of years, was a master pie maker…apple pie being the most common, but blueberry, mince, rhubarb, pumpkin…ah, I can taste them now…and always the left-over crust crisply baked with cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on it. Her crusts were so delicate, rolled out to just the right thinness. Our family came to believe that thin crusts are the ultimate pie crust (isn’t it true how strongly our opinions develop as a result of family experiences!).

The gift pie had a thick, crumbly crust, apples hidden somewhere in all of the delicious, buttery, calorie filled homemade “favorite” crust of another person’s style. It did not taste right to my mother; it was not a thin crust and it wasn’t her own.

Thus, the comment by her that had me laughing so hard on that dark, still morning, but also my love for her rising as the sun in my soul: “I need to look in an etiquette book to see how to send a thank you note for a pie that is not edible.” I can just see the sparkle in her eye, but more touchingly, I know that saying thank you is something she never misses doing and she wants to do it well and right. At 99, it is still a habit and it is the proper thing to do, even though it sometimes takes two or three days to compose the note. I am sure in the finished thank you that “not edible” was left out!

What struck me in those early morning moments was the contrast between her habits of thoughtfulness, graciousness, consideration for others, and always saying thank you, which have been modeled for me all my life, with the number of books and articles written in very recent years about “civility” and our need to find our way back to it. How have we gotten to a place where we need to encourage random acts of kindness, or post road signs that say, “Beware of aggressive drivers,” and all of the other symptoms of a culture that has become lax in the habits of regard and consideration?

Two things: I am so taken each morning as I greet students at Trinity carpool with how most say thank you to those who open their car doors, say thank you to their parents for driving them to school, and the many who climb out of the car saying, “I love you” to a parent, often in response to the parent’s same words. May we do all that we can to preserve those habits that make such a positive difference.

Secondly, how do we continue to inoculate our children against the habits that sometimes seem to swirl around us of neglected thanks, not reaching out to help another, lack of consideration, and forgetting the basic qualities of civility of which we all want to be the recipients?

We’ll never do it perfectly; however, I know that in those early morning moments I was reminded that I can follow more intentionally in the footsteps of my mother and father and do it better…such as finding the right and gracious thank you wording even when some things in life are “inedible.”