Christ is Risen

He is risen indeed.

Last night we went to hear The Crucifixion by John Stainer, an odd composition with very little melody and a lot of recitative. Three times during the hour- long performance the congregation arose to sing along, but the tune was unfamiliar and my own singing voice is so off-key that I felt self-conscious. I think others must have too because although I could see people’s mouths moving, I couldn’t hear much volume beyond the choir’s. There were two soloists with wonderful voices, a tenor and a bass. My singing with them was like my trying to play with the Boston Celtics.

We didn’t go to the sunrise service this morning although this year because Easter is so early along with the earlier time change, we would really have seen the sun rise at 7. It was too cold and windy for Bill’s lungs. We didn’t go to Easter Sunday service either. Two years ago I had to sit in the balcony in back of a mother who was letting her two boys (about eight and ten) cross from the central balcony to the left one, hanging by their hands in midair. They did go downstairs for the children’s story and Sunday school, but by that time my imagination was in full agonized throttle.

This morning I remembered one Easter outfit I had when I was fifteen. I remember it as if it were on another person, from the outside, not from the inside looking out. Perhaps there is a photo of me somewhere. I had a navy blue short coat and a yellow hat with a matching leather purse. Twenty years later after we had taken a walk, my sister-in-law’s shoes were wet. My dad went into the barn and came out with the yellow purse and tin shears and cut her new insoles. I exclaimed about how long he had kept the purse, and he said, “I knew it would come in handy some day.”

Good Friday

We went to the Good Friday service this morning. I had been asked to be one of the scripture readers of the 15th chapter of Mark, the account of the crucifixion. The service was short—just a half hour. At the end I realized that all the participants were women: the student intern who planned and conducted the service, the four scripture readers, the two soloists. The last two verses read were 40 and 41, “There were also women looking on afar off: among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less, and of Joses, and Salome; (Who also when he was in Galilee followed him, and ministered unto him;) and many other women which came up with him unto Jerusalem.”

It was about thirty years ago that a minister pointed out to me that only Jesus’ women followers had been at the scene. There are many historical reasons for women having been shut out of the hierarchy of the church, but it still seems incomprehensible to me that that exclusion lasted so long and lingers on in the Roman Catholic Church. I have thought about this a lot, not denigrating men because I have been blessed in having been surrounded by wonderful men, father, uncles, husband, two sons. I have never been subjected to my being thought of as inferior because I am a woman. But why have so many other women?

Once More, Without Music

This has been a dreadful winter with very cold temperatures relieved only when it snows. After Bill’s hospital bout and recovery from pneumonia, cold air bothers him a lot. His COPD and his missing lung lobe probably don’t help. At the moment there is freezing rain which is supposed to change to rain when the temperature goes above zero (above 32 F). We were planning to go to the grocery store but can’t decide if we should chance it. The chief meteorologist of Canada predicts that we will have a colder and wetter than normal spring. I say to myself, Don’t complain. You could be living in Darfur. You could be suffering from some incurable painful disease. You could be out of food altogether. Etc.

I somehow have got a little ahead in my column writing, the tax stuff is with the accountant, the planned grocery foray is on hold, and I want to resume my blog. For one thing, I miss the others on my blogroll.

Courage

I think I have figured out why I ignore this blog. I have only so much courage to publish and that must be spent on my column. I am loath to send any of the 8 or so novels I have written since the last one was published in 1994. I would never have published at all if the publishers hadn’t asked me for manuscripts. This sounds ridiculous, I know, because writers generally have such trouble getting a manuscript published. This didn’t have anything to do with the quality of my writing – it had to do with weird circumstances. I have been writing a column a week for nearly a year and yet every time I file the current one, I have a sick feeling at the pit of my stomach. I seem to have bequeathed this strange trait to my children. Why do I write then, you might ask. I write because it is what makes me happy. But why accept such assignments as my column? I do it because I can’t bear to be a coward. What do I fear? I fear offending someone. I have only written one negative review in my life and that caused me much anguish. I don’t agree to write reviews unless I first look at the book and see that I can say some positive things about it. The one negative review came about because I hadn’t seen the book first, just been told about it. I fear saying something dumb. And yet the few bad reviews my novels have received haven’t really bothered me much.

Memoir

I’m reading Patricia Hampl’s I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory; so far a wonderfully thought-provoking book. She tells the story of a childhood memory and then goes back for a second draft, dissects it, finding lies in the first draft. It is her theory that the first draft is valuable for what the heart reveals, unfettered by the will; the second draft, when you go back and analyze the details of the first draft, creates symbols out of these details. “For meaning is not ‘attached’ to the detail by the memoirist; meaning is revealed.” I have never analyzed the details of the first draft of a memory. This makes me want to go back to some of the earlier paragraphs of this blog and try to winkle out some meaning from the details.

Hampl’s prose style is so good that it almost, but doesn’t quite, call attention to itself. The first two pages are brilliant.

Noticing

Things I have noticed this morning: Bill and I never eat all the crusts of our toast. Why is that I wondered, and finally decided that the reason must be that it is difficult to put butter or jelly on the crusts. I noticed that our mutual handyman is at my neighbor’s. Joe has worked for Jack for 37 years, but for us for only a year. He has become absolutely essential to us. He also works for the family across the street. Whenever I see his van in the neighborhood, I feel secure. One of the three tomatoes left on the vine is ready to pick. Last May our son brought us a tomato plant in a bucket, and when the first frost was forecast, we brought it in. The tomatoes continued to ripen. We haven’t had a garden for many years although we do have our rhubarb patch and a plum tree. The squirrels get the plums before they are ripe enough to pick.

Getting Ahead

I appear to be on a roll as far as writing is concerned. I have one column finished for tomorrow’s deadline, one nearly finished for next Monday’s deadline, and one half-finished for the 19th. I have one other idea that is getting formed, and one that is formed only in as much as I have thought about it in the past. For the last few weeks I have been racing against the deadline, with nothing in view, and that is quite unsettling, so I determined to get ahead.

My son sent me an article about self-handicapping. I think I am the grand champion at self-handicapping. I get things written when someone asks me to write and gives me a deadline. My five novels have been published under those circumstances. Now I have eight novels in a semi-finished state, no one goading me to finish them and send them out to a publisher, and I procrastinate. Why is this? Fear of rejection? No, I don’t think it is that. Fear of bad reviews if they get published? No I don’t think it is that. Sloth? No, because I am quite diligent about most things. Perhaps it is because I have no reader, no one to bounce the thing off. I read bits and pieces to the two writers’ groups I belong to, but they can’t really criticize the thing as a whole, just individual details.