Tag Archives: letter C

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Daily Evil: Cranky

I am a Creaky Cranky Crone with Crepitus this morning. I volunteered at the Swinging on the Sound dance weekend. I was not going to dance, because of my right shoulder. But, well, my feet were fine, so I did the basic. Then in the last class, there were more “follows” than “leads”. I thought, well, my left arm works. I jumped in, explaining that I couldn’t use the right arm. Switching from “follow” to “lead”, I have to reverse the foot work. The instructor did not know about my arm and scolded the class for some people not dancing in the closed position. That was me. Oh, well.

So I am not VERY cranky. I am really delighted that I got to dance and practiced the basic step for collegiate shag.

The woman in the picture is not a Creaky Cranky Crone. It is my grandmother Katherine White Burling, drawn from a photograph by my mother Helen Burling Ottaway. This is an 18 by 24 drawn with I think conte crayon. Apologies for the reflection, I am photographing through glass.

And here is a photograph from one of the collegiate shag classes, on Saturday. People of all genders danced both lead and follow. One person did the contest as an amateur follower and an advanced lead. Good for them!

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Croon

Blogging from A to Z, my theme is happy things.

Three happy things with C:

My daughter was home from college this weekend. Something came up about dealing with feeling tired or stressed. “I get cuddles when I feel that way, ” she says. I looked at her. “I’m not sure my office manager would go for that,” I say. “Oh,” says my daughter, “True. That might be sexual harassment.” “It would be a bit weird on a job description, wouldn’t it?” “Yes.”

At any rate, cuddles, appropriate cuddles, are certainly a happy thing for both me and my daughter. She is in college and has a great group of housemates and friends.

Second happy C word: cry.

How can crying be happy? The capacity to cry, I am grateful for that. I am grateful that I can feel love, feel vulnerable, feel loss, feel. How can we love without mourning and how can we mourn without crying? And tears release our grief. The worst grief for me is when I need to cry and feel locked, that I can’t cry, that it hurts so much the tears won’t come. I cry over patients, even expected deaths at 104. And I am glad that I am able to cry.

Third C word: croon.

I am not thinking of the “crooners”. I am thinking about lullabies and the poem Moon Song, by Mildred Plew Meigs:

Zoon, zoon, cuddle and croon–
Over the crinkling sea,
The moon man flings him a silvered net
Fashioned of moonbeams three.

The rest is here: http://wenaus.com/poetry/moonsong.html.

I am thinking of mothers and fathers crooning to babies as they slide into sleep….

The photograph is at 9000 feet up on Mauna Kea last week, the moon as night is falling.

C