2000-03-31 - 12:30:50

March 31, 2000

THE WONDERING JEW

Snowed yesterday, snowing today, tomorrow - - - - who knows ? The weather here does pretty much what it wants to. Just a tiny wiggle in the jet stream and its Mylanta time for the weather man. We really need the moisture, even here in town and the farm lands even more.

Looking out at a pretty snow scene takes me back into memories of warm, snug winter evenings at home, after playing out in the pretty white stuff during the day. My digits not frigid any more and my Dad, with me on one side and Mom on the other, reading poems from Longfellow. He was not an educated man, eighth grade at the most, if that. But he was a reader with the appreciation of language, rhythm, expression and the urge to give of himself by reading to us.

I know I am wrong, but it seems as if he read all of Longfellow to us. Some of his favorites he would read frequently, bringing the same magic words to us again and again.

One of his favorites was, "The Tale Of The Spanish Jew," I think it was, about "The Legend Of Rabbi Ben Levi." Other ones were, "The Song Of Hiawatha," "Evangeline." I could leaf through that book and pick out more, but what sticks in my memory is Dad's marvelous voice which could express any emotion, any feeling written in the book. He would put on different voices for characters in the poems, by golly, he could and did bring those people and events into life before our eyes.

Although my Mother was the teacher of gentility, concern and love, Dad was the illustrator of real life. I think it was he who first read the poems to me from Robert Louis Stevenson's, "A Child's Garden Of Verses."

I also remember taking that book in my grubby (were they ever anything else ?) little hands and running to Mother and pleading, "Read me Mommie, read me."It is only recently, since I began this diary that I began to realize how much of my life has been centered around the communication of humans and the use of facial expression and all the meanings that could be depicted by the voice.

Some days my life seems to take on the rhythm of a pleasant poem of tranquil progression of one good thing after another. Some days resemble "The Wreck Of he Hesperus."

The ticking of life's clock along with the periodic rewindings by acts of other's love has a metered timing, and if the escapement breaks life goes scampering in a nightmare of confusion.

I started this diary as a voyage of self discovery and a means to sort myself out. At this stage of the game, without chest puffery, I am not displeased with the man in my mirror.

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