musings

Trevor, Thinking …

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

We did a bit of running around this morning. Trevvy does some of his best thinking in the minivan, so when he saw the first group of motorcycles on the road, he said, “Dad, I want you to get a motorcycle!”

“Really?” I said, thinking Talk to your mother.

“I want you to get a reawwy, reawwy long motorcycle, so everybody in the whole world can ride on it!”

He didn’t say much else until the ride home. Then he said, “Dad, I know how to spell DVD. It spells D-V-D.”

“That’s so easy,” said Emma.

“Yah,” said Trevvy, “because there’s two Ds and a V, like this: D-V-D.”

Exactly.

No Change to Spare …

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

This presidential election is said to be about change. Some say nothing ever changes in politics. I tend to be more optimistic than that – but then, these gems:

“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”

“Do not hold the delusion that your advancement is accomplished by crushing others.”

“When you have no basis for argument, abuse the plaintiff.”

“The more laws, the less justice.”

And finally:

“A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?”

All of these nuggests are credited to Marcus Tullius Cicero, who lived from 106 to 43 B.C.

It could be a long millennium …

A Hare’s Hare

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

Blogger’s Note: Grandma Pam has all of my old newspaper columns in a single three-ring binder at the Venjohn house (courtesy of my mom; I was never so organized), and this one was on top. It originally ran in the April 7, 1998, edition of The Pioneer daily newspaper in Big Rapids, Michigan. You’ll see I remembered my correspondence with the Easter Rabbit differently then, but the sentiment was the same.

For me, the anticipation the night before Easter was second only to Christmas Eve.

It wasn’t the candy and presents that did it (well, not only the candy and presents). Halloween was better for candy, and that kind of dressing up was more fun; birthdays were better for presents – I never got a bike or a rifle for Easter.

It was the magic of the evening, I think – a night when a rabbit might hop through your door on his big hind paws, nose twitching, ears forward for the sound of wee ones stirring in the night. Despite father’s joking, no bullet could touch this rabbit – the bark of a nearby dog earns little more than the flick of one long, white ear. He is The Rabbit – no bunny, he – the grandfather of a million magic rabbits; a hare’s hare in his Easter best, with a top-hat all his own, bearing gifts of chocolate rabbits, jelly beans and candy eggs.

Is he white? Certainly, though perhaps not always. Some call him by the surname “Cottontail,” which suggests he once was brown; “Snowshoe,” on the other hand, might suggest a change from brown to white.

He is white – this much must be true, at his age. He is extremely old for a rabbit – it’s been 15 years and more since I asked him his age in a letter Easter’s Eve, and even then he replied, in long quill strokes like my father’s, that he was “as old as his teeth were long.” I have long been a lover of animal lore, and I knew even then his teeth kept growing – his age could be infinite.

Long in tooth, long in ear, long in whisker – the signs of a wise, old rabbit.

I know he’s real – I’ve seen his tracks in the snow, which, unlike the tracks of other hopping night visitors, led right up to our back door, mere inches away from our sleeping boxer, Bonz, who no doubt lay dreaming of Easter eggs (her favorite seasonal treat – she would carry them around in her mouth all morning, with only the tiniest flash of color showing beneath her graying jowls, until finally she dropped and cracked it – then it was eaten, shells and all).

My sister, in more recent years, has said that she created the rabbit tracks outside our door in an effort to further the illusion that there was, in fact, an Easter Rabbit.

She expects me to believe that, with size 10 feet. Who’s deluded here?

On such an enchanted evening as the night before Easter, it was not always easy to sleep, and sometimes hard to remember the morning as a holy day.

Faith was one thing – this, my friends, was the Easter Rabbit.

The Easter tradition is more than just eggs and rabbits, of course – I’ve only recently come to see how much more. There was another, it is said, whom death could not touch, who came to us in the face of danger bearing gifts to all believers.

The wise old Rabbit knows him, perhaps; perhaps the Rabbit is but a small part of the magic of Easter – a servant who gives children a reason to jump out of bed at least one Sunday a year.

If you can believe in one and rise early on Sunday, perhaps you can believe in the other.

Easter Stream of Consciousness

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

When I was little, I liked to write letters to the Easter Bunny. I knew he was real, because we often had snow on Easter morning in those days, and invariably there were tracks – like two exclamation points side-by-side – leading directly to our back door and away again.

So I wrote to him, and he replied – in long, looping letters, like a man’s script crossed with rabbit ears. His answers were like riddles: I asked how old he was, and he replied, “I’m as long in the tooth as I am in the ear.” That sort of thing.

* * * * *

Last night, three-year-old Trevor would periodically stop what he was doing and walk to the door or window. He was looking to see if the Easter Bunny was “peeking with his creepy eyes.” He said this matter-of-factly – he was not afraid; he spoke instead as one who has looked into the hare’s black eyes and seen only wildness.

* * * * *

Jodi took her daycare boys and our two oldest to Living Stations of the Cross the other day. Earlier in the day, she asked them why we celebrate Easter. One of them said, “So we can get Chuck E. Cheese dollars in our baskets from the Easter Bunny.” Others corrected him, sharing the story of Christ’s death and resurrection, and explaining the Easter is even more important than Christmas!

But Trevor may have summed it up the best. “Trevor,” asked Jodi, “do you know why we celebrate Easter?”

“To make God happy!” he said.

* * * * *

At Jodi’s parents’ parish, Our Lady of the Black Hills, there is a young woman who is studying to become a nun. She was singing in the choir during Good Friday services – devout in that quiet and unassuming way Jodi exhibits. Then she stepped forward and sang alone, accompanied only by the pianist, and God’s glory was revealed.

* * * * *

“Roll Away the Stone” had particular resonance today. The darkness of the verses illuminated by the triumphant chorus – you can almost imagine the light of morning breaking into the tomb as the seal is broken …

* * * * *

Wishing you peace and joy this Easter, friends!

Could Be A Song, If I Were Musical …

/ J. Thorp / 10 Comments

Blogger’s Note: Been thinking about this one for awhile now. Feels like a good first draft. Jinglebob oughta like it; maybe Doug’ll set it to music …

The Pressure Of No Pressure
She thinks I do no wrong – each night
I let her know just how I’m right
She lets me lie to her despite
She thinks I hung the moon

She’s heard the good stuff and the best
I never bother with the rest
What she sees I haven’t guessed
She thinks I hung the moon

And every little slight is dissolved
In her arms each night
And I find warmth and grace and light there
But no pressure

All that she wants me to be
Is here beside her and happy –
And I’d give her the earth, the sea,
The starry skies and yes the moon

And every little slight is dissolved
In her arms each night
And I find warmth and grace and light there
But no pressure

There’s no place to hang a moon here
Cracking paint and peeling paper
And there’s no place to write a song here
But I’ll try
And there’s no place to stash the stars here
Come high tide we’ll flood the neighbors
And I can’t give her this whole world now
But I’ll try

She’s all I know but I don’t say
It wouldn’t matter anyway
She knows I know what’s what – and hey
She thinks I hung the moon

And every little slight is dissolved
In her arms each night
And I find warmth and grace and light there
But no pressure

And every single sin
Proclaims what kind of shape I’m in
And Lord knows how a man can grin
With all this pressure

J. Thorp
25 Feb 2008