Nothing Gold Can Stay

Good Monday morning.

Spring Break has come & gone. Well, Spring Break has come & gone for the children, that is. I have my very own Spring Break week after next. I will of course be partying hard.

If you were otherwise occupied last week, here are links of interest: 

- - - > This takes you to last week's blog. The blog is a summation of the stress I felt the week prior, stress caused primarily by the bench trial that ate up most of Trey's week as well as some vomiting children at the kids' school, & the triumphant story of how I channeled my stress & wrote something The Federalist published last week. You can read that - - - > here. Like the Phoenix I rise from the ashes, by which I mean I spent two days in my pajamas following the kids around the house with trash bags praying they wouldn't vomit, & to try & recapture some of my dignity & a sense of normalcy I wrote a few hundred coherent words that create the illusion that I am a normal adult who thinks deeply about pressing political matters & doesn't spend 75% of her life in her pajamas/stretchy car-pick-up pants. 

The other big news last Monday was that the cleaning lady was scheduled to make one of her twice-monthly visits, & so the children & I had to vacate our house. Maybe one day I'll write more about how the cleaning lady makes me feel like a complete failure on several fronts, but I'll save that for another day. We piled in the car, picked up Chick-fil-A for breakfast in Ruston, & headed to my parents' house. Wild start to Spring Break, I know.

While the kids were happily frolicking in my parents' home I ventured over to the workout room my parents have access to, & I mounted an elliptical machine. I had forgotten how much I love the elliptical machine. I am not being sarcastic. I would weigh like fifty pounds if I had regular access to an elliptical. Don't tell Trey, but in addition to a new house & another dog, I want an elliptical machine. As luck would have it, our ten-year anniversary is coming up later this year. How will he choose? 

The older I get, the less inclined I am to go outside & exercise. The weather pretty much has to be perfect. My joints sometimes protest after I've spent too much time exercising on concrete, & so between my desire to be indoors most of the time plus my desire to preserve my hips & my knees, I think I have a pretty solid case for an elliptical. No, I don't know where we'd put it, but you know what? No one ever comes to our house, so who cares if there's an unsightly elliptical machine sitting in the middle of the living room? I just don't know that I care anymore. Having kids who bury their dirty clothes in the bed rather than dropping them in the conveniently placed hamper will change you in ways you'd have once never imagined. The house is never going to be as clean & organized as I'd like, & I am learning to live with that . . . so I may as well have a large, ugly piece of workout equipment in the house in exchange for super-toned legs.

Days 2 & 3 of Spring Break passed in relative quiet. Reagan had soccer practice Tuesday, & we did make it to Bible class Wednesday evening. Other than those two outings, it is safe to assume we were in lounge wear nibbling on breakfast-themed food. We ate a lot of oatmeal until the white milk ran out, & then we shifted to cinnamon toast with sliced bananas on the side.

A few weeks ago we received this fancy invitation in the mail.

In preparation for the big event I headed to Dillard's to find a dress. I did find a dress; it was regularly over one hundred dollars, & I got it on sale for $40. 

Upon scrolling through my phone I realize there are no photos of me in the dress at last Thursday's big event, but guess what? I took a lovely selfie in the dressing room mirror so I could text my mom to ask her thoughts on the dress, & so here is the dress.

Try to imagine me smiling & wearing black heels instead of those gray socks. 

Last Thursday was the day my dad's law firm officially recognized his forty years with the firm. It was a day of a lot of feelings (& not only because I bought my dress at a drastically reduced price). All day long Robert Frost's poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" was in my head. 

It is one of the most wonderful, perfect poems ever written.

Nature's first green is gold, 

Her hardest hue to hold. 

Her early leaf's a flower, 

But only so an hour. 

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief, 

So dawn goes down to day, 

Nothing gold can stay. 

Imagine my delight & further emotionally heightened state when Trey & I arrived a little early & I strolled the room taking in the decor. There was, as you'll notice, a lot of gold. 

Naturally I took a picture of my food before I devoured it. 

I mostly sat & ate & watched my dad, but I did take a few candid shots during dinner. 

There's this line in Jane Austen's Emma that I must now borrow. Mr. Knightley, addressing Emma, says, "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more." 

Nothing I say now would be adequate to express how I feel about my dad. It was wonderful to sit & listen to his coworkers, some of whom he's worked with since before I was born, talk about him, what he means to them, what memories they have of him, what he has meant & does mean to his law firm. There was a lot of laughter. 

It was impossible to sit & eat, surrounded by photos of my dad through the years, & not sniffle a little & do some self-reflecting. After all, if he's been practicing law for forty years, that means I am no longer the little girl pictured in a handful of the photos on display Thursday night. I have one more birthday before I hit the big four-oh. I know, right? It's crazy. 

I'd venture to guess most people, if they were ensconced in the safety of a therapist's office, would have at least a few complaints to lodge about their dad. There is a crisis of fatherlessness in this nation, & being in schools in various capacities (yes, including a private school) over the years means I've witnessed perpetual reminders of the numerous negative consequences of a father who is emotionally or physically absent. I can honestly say I would have nothing to say to a therapist about my dad. I am not perfect, but I cannot blame even one of my imperfections on my dad (or my mom). 

I had plans to get up Friday morning & check off a few items on my to-do list. There was some laundry to do (I did not do it). I needed to change the air filter (I didn't do that either, though I did change it out on Saturday). I did not do much of anything. I was, in retrospect, emotionally exhausted. Yes, that is a thing. 

At some point Friday I did put fresh water in these flowers (pictured below) I took home Thursday night as a parting gift. Look at them. Nothing gold can stay. Poets so often turn to nature because nature is a beacon constantly begging us to take notice, to see the beauty & to appreciate it in the moment. 

A friend of mine has a daughter who is now in college. During her daughter's senior year of high school my friend had a goal of keeping fresh flowers in her daughter's room all the time. I honestly have never been a flower person, & that's kind of sad now that I think about it. I don't lose my head over flowers (getting them or not getting them) in large part because my first thought is of the inevitable mess when they wither & begin shedding their parts all over my countertops. Isn't that terrible? It's a testament to my forward-thinking nature, to the planner in me whose head is always three days ahead of today. 

It is fine to be a planner. You have to be a planner if you have little kids, & this is multiplied by a thousand if one of those kids is diabetic. You can't afford to not plan ahead. Still, the fact that fresh flowers are a universal symbol of love & life & vitality speaks to the importance of today, of this moment when the buds have yet to fully open, when the leaves are a vibrant green, when the scent is intoxicating. Yes, the flowers will eventually die, but you know what? So too will we all. Nothing gold can stay. If nature teaches us anything it teaches us that what is alive is transitory, constantly aging & changing, sometimes subtly, sometimes drastically, but it is important to notice & appreciate every moment of the journey. I am convinced God gave us flowers & dogs as wonderful, perpetual,  golden, seemingly rapidly aging reminders that we too are here but for a moment, that our life is a vapor. We are God's flowers, y'all. 

I think my friend attempted to keep fresh flowers in her daughter's room throughout the entirety of her senior year to continually remind her daughter to appreciate now, today, to resist the tendency  prevalent among high school seniors to wish away their last year of high school so they can race out their parents' front door. Perhaps for the rest of her life when my friend's daughter smells fresh flowers she will recall her last year of high school & her wonderful, loving mama. 

I am happy to report that as of the time of this posting the flowers continue to bloom. They will make me smile in the week ahead as we tackle the week-after-Spring-Break blues. It'll be a four-day school week for the kids as we're headed to Jackson to visit the endocrinologist this week. Friday evening, the Lord willing, I will meet with the book club ladies to discuss The Paris Seamstress. I may share more about this book with you next week after it has been thoroughly discussed with the ladies. I highly recommend this book. I have just completed my reread of the novel, & I liked it so much the second time I bumped it up from four stars to five on Goodreads. I intended to skim it, & I ended up basically reading every word again. Click here for the Amazon link.

I guess there is one thing that is (metaphorically) gold that does stay, & that of course is a book you can return to over & over again. Books are inanimate, but yet they speak, & they continue to speak long after their authors have been silenced. Anyway, that's a whole new thought train I won't be boarding today. 

Nature's first green is gold, 

Her hardest hue to hold. 

Her early leaf's a flower, 

But only so an hour. 

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief, 

So dawn goes down to day, 

Nothing gold can stay. 

Buy yourself or someone you love fresh flowers this week. Hug your dad if you can. Be a father today. Be a good father today. May you love & lead in such a way that your kids would sit mute on the therapist's couch, bereft of even one complaint about their dad.

Many thanks to Robert Frost for his brief but impactful poem from which I've obviously lifted the title of today's blog. I hope the week ahead is a great one for you, reader. I shall return, the Lord willing, with a full report of our endocrinologist visit as well as a rundown of book club shenanigans.

AZ