“There are good days and there are bad days, and this is one of them.” -Lawrence Welk

I don’t know too much about Lawrence Welk, but the background soundtrack to a lot of my childhood was his show. We spent many happy Saturday evenings in my grandparents’ living room with delightful conversation and nerd-out music playing, sometimes from an organ, accordion and harmonica and sometimes from the TV set.  In fact, when I daydream about time travel the first place I’d go would be that living room in the late 1970s.

As I’m writing Troy is undergoing a major dental procedure that will set us back more dollars than I care to admit.  But it will also keep him alive by preventing an infection spreading to his brain, and I like him a lot more than money.  Right now there’s a break from the rain, we have new baby cardinals in a nest outside, and it’s nearly summer.

And Maya Angelou passed away this morning,  just a month and a half after she wrote this letter postponing her longed for appearance at our library …

Dear Fayetteville Public Library, Arkansas Family and Friends,

I am profoundly saddened that I am unable to be with you on Friday, April 11, 2014. I long to come to the state of Arkansas, in general, and I long to be in Fayetteville, in particular. I learned in Arkansas at a very young age from my grandmother who taught me, ‘when you learn, teach and when you get, give’.

In Arkansas I also learned not to complain. I was taught that there are people all over the world who have less than I have and who would give anything for a portion of my possessions. They went to sleep last night as I went to sleep and they never awakened. Their beds have become their cooling boards and their blankets have become their winding sheets and they would give anything and everything for what I was complaining about.

In Arkansas, I learned to trust love, not the romance of it, but the heart of it. In Arkansas I learned to have respect for friendship, to honor it, to trust it and to build it.

An unexpected ailment put me into the hospital. I will be getting better and the time will come when I can receive another invitation from my state and you will recognize me for I shall be the tall Black lady smiling.

I ask you to please keep me in your thoughts, in your conversation and in your prayers.

Love,

I am,

Maya Angelou

It’s a good day and it’s a bad day.

Time has passed.  I’ve finished my transcription for the day and my shoulders are a little achy.  Now as I write, Troy is sitting near me watching “Spiderman” while his mouth recovers from the procedure that went better than expected.  He plans to put his extracted tooth under his pillow tonight just in case the tooth fairy is real.  I’m off to pick Huck up from school.  He has asked me to stop laughing at him when he does something I perceive as cute because he’s worried it’s going to “slip out” and embarrass him in front of people.  I told him it’s my parental right to find delight in the things he says and does; he told me I better stop telling stories about him.  I wonder what the background soundtrack to his childhood will be? Where will his time travel machine bring him to?  Maybe right here, right now.

It’s about to start raining again.  It’s a good day and it’s a bad day.  But mostly good.

“I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.” – Maya Angelou