I spent part of the Memorial Day weekend enjoying a good long walk on the Rockingham Recreational Trail, one of the many rail trails gracing New Hampshire. How good it felt to shake off the recent rains!
I saw plenty of cyclists. I’ll bet they were moving too fast to see what was in bloom along the way. I’d never before seen so many ladyslipper flowers in a single outing. They were a deeper pink than the ones I’ve seen earlier in the season – dark enough to show the flower’s delicate veining that’s not discernible in paler blossoms.
Ladyslippers are ephemeral, like nearly every other spring flower. They’ll be gone in a couple of weeks, re-emerging next year or the year after. But what treasures they are, while they last! There’s no point in trying to cut or transplant them. They simply don’t survive such things. I have to take them on their own terms, right where they are.
What would you do if you got one of your senses back?
I had cataract surgery recently. As surgical procedures go, it’s quite common and quick. The result astounded me. I don’t know why people who’ve had the surgery aren’t out stopping traffic to tell people about it.
Glasses, headed for retirement. Ellen Kolb photo.
I’d worn glasses since I was 8, thanks to myopia that grew severe as I became an adult. My vision was correctible with thick lenses, but without glasses I could see very little. Then came the cataracts, and what little night vision I had disappeared. Finally, my eye doc said I qualified for the surgery.
(I should re-phrase that: my condition was such that my health insurance would pay for the surgery. That’s what “qualifying” means these days.)
My eyes post-op are “settling down,” in the surgeon’s words, but already I’m amazed at what I can see now. I’d been told that the newly-implanted lenses would sharply reduce my need for glasses, but nobody told me that everything would look bigger. That’s what happens when an artificial lens is in the eye instead of half an inch away.
I looked out my front window a few days ago, and marveled at the details of birds, tree bark, and even the neighbors’ car. (Nice paint job.) While singing at Easter Mass, I could see the people in the rear pews and read the music in front of me. At the same time, I realized that such delights probably weren’t what the surgery was for.
My good vision, gone since I was a child, has been restored by the grace of God guiding the skill of a physician. He didn’t restore it so I could stare at the tree bark. At least, I don’t think so.
So what am I to do with this gift? How can I possibly express enough gratitude for my vision?
I don’t have an answer. I’ll be working it out over time. My hikes, for one thing: I’ll literally never see my trails in the same way again. I’ll need to convey that joy somehow.
Have you ever experienced a physical restoration like this? What was it like for you?
A few evenings ago, I picked up a well-worn notebook from my desk and began to copy a short passage from the work of fiction I was reading. I wrote to the bottom of the page in the notebook, turned the page, and found I’d reached the end of the volume.
photo: pixabay.com
It had taken 20 years, but I had finished my first commonplace book.
Commonplacing: when I started doing it, I didn’t even know it had a name. I was simply scribbling down tidbits that left an impression on me, gathered from the various things I read. There were gems and oddities and words of startling relevance, sometimes in unlikely places. I found material in news reports, classic literature, and the nonfiction that dominates my reading list. There was no plan or structure. I simply had to write things down.
Why? Some words resonated within me. Others entertained or warned or comforted me. I wanted to remember the words and the writers who wove them into larger works.
Physically, my commonplace book is a mess, or it has character, depending on how you look at it. That’s what comes of years of different inks, varying penmanship (I sometimes scrawl when I’m in a hurry to get something down), and things crossed out or underlined. Some of the pages look jumpy and unsettled. Any resemblance to my own character is coincidental.
I copied liberally from books by and about my sisters and brothers in the Catholic faith. Dorothy Day is in that commonplace volume, and so is Flannery O’Connor, along with Popes, saints, and strivers. Deep spirituality marks some entries, but I especially like the ones with down-home practicality. St. Francis Xavier: “The best way to acquire true dignity is to wash one’s own clothes and boil one’s own pot.”
Working as a pro-life advocate in a political environment, I read a biography of Chief Justice John Marshall, and came upon this from a letter he wrote in 1801 to his friend Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. It’s an evergreen reminder that political chaos didn’t start with our last election. “There is so much in the political world to wound honest men who have honorable feelings that I am disgusted with it & begin to see things, and indeed human nature, through a much more gloomy medium than I once thought possible.”
From John Adams to his soulmate Abigail came another political sentiment that I could understand. “I am weary of the game. Yet I don’t know how I could live without it.”
I have written extensively about my favorite places to hike in my state. In all those thousands of words, I’ve never managed to convey the depth of my love for this land as succinctly as did Stacey Cole, a columnist for my local paper. “New Hampshire has been good to me and good for me. Here it has been that I have feasted on the marrow of life.”
There’s much more in my old commonplace book, and I can revisit it at my leisure. It’s time to start a fresh volume. It’s a small blue bound notebook, a gift from a friend. It might be the only commonplace book I’ll need from now on; after all, the last one made it through two decades. At the moment, this new blank book is pretty and tidy – too tidy. I’m eager to put it to work.
Ellen Kolb 