Delights: June 19 to June 25

June 19: Jeremiah and I can often be heard muttering to ourselves to “do the right thing, not the expedient thing”: hang up that jacket, replace that empty box of tissues, chat with a neighbor instead of rushing to the car.

Today, the easy (and fun) thing would have been to attend our town’s exhilarating Juneteenth celebrations. The right thing, however, was making a very long day trip to New Jersey to celebrate the life of my eldest cousin’s husband of 50 years.

I’m listening to Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, so I knew I’d productively fill each 4 hour leg. I left the house at 5:45 am, so I knew I’d avoid traffic. Many of my cousins would attend the funeral, so I knew I’d enjoy conversations with people I hadn’t seen in several years. I knew I’d be fed, and I knew that the new Princeton University Art Museum was just an hour away and would make a good stop on my drive home.

So, I did expect the right thing to also be the fun thing. But I didn’t expect the joys: the shared memories of growing up together; the shock of seeing my Dad, dead 20 years, in the person of my cousin Gary, whom everyone agreed “looks just like Uncle Sam”; the stories — many I hadn’t heard before — about my Dad and his siblings; my cousins’ laughter as I told my own. (Nearly all of my cousins are older than I am, so apparently I’m still maneuvering to impress them…)

Maybe I’ll motor back up to New Jersey this summer if someone organizes a reunion. The Princeton University Art Museum amply justifies a return visit, as do my family members, whom I had left forty years ago. What’s eight hours of highway driving in a single day when the hugs are so warm and the memories so vivid?

June 20: Yes, I’ll fill an emergency vacancy as a docent at the Cherry Hill Farmhouse, a historic house museum in Falls Church. And yes, I’ll gladly stand down if the need evaporates. The need persisted, so I showed up this morning, digging deep for a smile. 

Thanks to a temporary exhibition planted in several rooms of the house, my colleague and I had almost nothing to do but smile: no tours, no explanations, not even introductory remarks. Can I go home, please? 

Um, no, but you can plant yourself in your favorite room — where the 19^th century kitchen gadgets reside in touchable places and where imagine runs wild. I took up residence in this small corner and welcomed families with very small children taking refuge from the excellent, but word-heavy, exhibition panels nearby.

How would I entertain them, and myself? By playing make-believe. I spilled a basket of plastic cherries on the floor and, at appropriate intervals, handed the pre-K kiddos the tools they’d need to pretend harvesting and pitting the fruit, rolling the dough, grating the sugar (from a dense cone), and placing their pastry into our oven. (They actually could do this last part, using a faux apple pie and our unheated coal-burning stove.) 

Then they took turns carrying a wooden bucket to the hallway to “collect” water for washing up, used our 19^th century steel wool to pretend-wash our tools, and transferred the pie from the oven to our very real pie safe, with its perforated tin ventilation panels and discolored feet (from 19^th century saucers of water designed to thwart 19^th century ants).

The children seemed to enjoy themselves, and I was happily diverted as well. The real heroes, though, were the successive waves of parents, who had thought they would just “pop in” to this old house for a few moments and instead put up with 15 minutes of cherry-pie make believe. At least the sugar was make believe too.

June 22: For the cover of her new novel Whistler, Ann Patchett commissioned a painting of a horse. But, she clarified to an interviewer, the book is not about horses (she said it’s about love and kindness). “I want to manage expectations.”

I get it. To advertise my cemetery tours, I used photos of old graves and waved my hands about history. To my dismay, however, several of my guests yesterday brushed past the real life stuff and demanded “the stories” about ghosts and gangsters. 

Huh? I talked about the death of Edgar Allan Poe! I pointed to the grave of a woman who, as a teenager, had spied for the Confederate Army! I invited my guests to read aloud a poem by Walt Whitman inspired by a Union soldier buried right there! (And yeah, I did talk — too much? — about Falls Church’s founding fathers and colonial era Methodist history.)

But ghosts and gangsters? Nope. 

Those guests were vocally disappointed, and I was sad.

My task this morning is managing expectations, just like Ann Patchett. I will send a new email to the 100+ people attending my future tours and I will be crystal clear: we will dabble in history, not ghosts. In the nicest way possible, I’ll also give people full permission to bow out. (I have 30+ people on my waiting list.)

In her interview, Patchett said that horse books can be polarizing. I’m learning that cemetery tours can be polarizing too.

June 22: I have rediscovered the joys of a playdate. My friend Maria phoned me a few days ago with an irresistible proposal: wanna come over to my house and play with me? She then rattled her sack of mahjong tiles (figuratively speaking), and I was sold.

We played a version of mahjong suited to two people. It still breaks my brain, but in a different way. I love it because it’s fast, it promotes experimentation, and with only two people you can get lots of jokers.

I also like this version because I like Maria. She fills me with tea and cake, shows me her thrifting treasures, and exhibits loving patience with my beginner pokey-ness.

This week is reminding me that I loved being a kid!

June 24: A blogger friend and very talented photographer Nes Felicio shared splendid photos of a blue jay this morning, along with a bit of physics: blue jay feathers don’t actually have any blue pigment. 

Rather, in Nes’ words (quoting an expert), “‘each feather contains microscopic grooves and ridges spaced precisely to reflect blue wavelengths.’ It’s a trick called ‘structural coloration.’ Because it relies on physics rather than chemistry, the result is vibrant and resistant to fading.”

This got me thinking about how others perceive us. In the case of a blue jay or a peacock or a kingfisher, “structural coloration” transforms bland into splendor. In our case, though, I wonder if our own acquired grooves and ridges (or wounds or scars or adaptations) foster a trick of the light that masks our essence, that drapes us for public view in a garment that isn’t actually authentic to us. 

I need to reflect on this metaphor a bit more. Join me, if you wish, but definitely look at Nes’ wonderful photos.

June 25: I’ve just discovered that an Important Museum Professional is attending the three-day church camp I’m leading next week in Bethany Beach. That information (“why do I know this name???”) certainly clarified my thinking about my still-inchoate program. (In this case, “clarified” means “induced panic.”)

Well, it’s church camp. I’ll guess I’ll lean heavily on grace.

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