What's New?

I am not a person who likes to chat. In fact, as a teenager I once went two weeks without speaking to anyone. I wasn't really setting out to Not Speak, it just kind of happened and I was left wondering if anyone had even noticed since I myself did not think to tally the days until after quite some time had passed. So it is especially strange to me that I should feel sad that all the social media that we are involved in has robbed us of the social convention of Chit Chat. When I run into a friend at the store we  do not get caught up - I already know of the progress of her husband's cancer treatment, her children's accomplishments even where she had dinner last night, there seems no point in even saying hello. My mother wants to share news of the grandchildren, but we've all seen the pictures and read the posts days ago. I'm shocked to find that I miss this social currency, this sharing of news that I never valued before. I am returned to my mute teenage self.

Inertia

I live in an old house and in the yard is an overgrown Mock Orange bush. When we first moved here many many years ago we considered pulling it up. We never did and it has become one of my favorite things in the world. When it is having a good spring it is covered in little white blossoms and the whole yard smells of its sweetly citrus fragrance. It hums with the activity of hundreds of bees for about a week and then inevitably the petals fade and fall and the show is over until next year. I think of my younger self standing in front of that shrub pondering it's fate and am grateful for the inertia that kept it from destruction. I have been lucky that way - many things have worked out in ways that I could not have possibly foreseen. Yet, I am considered a failure. Once at a doctors office they were taking my history "Job?" No "Children?" No "Spouse?" Yes. At which point the nurse laughed and said "Well at least you've got that!!" Imagine if I had flunked that measurement of worth also. Failure does not by itself bring unhappiness, it is very liberating and I do feel myself free of so many of the constraints that seems to rob others of being able to enjoy the small pleasures of this life. I sit in the warm spring sun and and revel in the transitory beauty of the mock orange and fear the question, "What did you do today?"