Between the tag end of April and the start of June we celebrate five family birthdays. It makes for a lot of cake! In the middle of each May the “dwarf” lilac bush we planted about 15 years ago opens in full bloom. The scent fills the air, greeting anyone who comes to the door or settles in a chair or the porch swing for a visit.

I wish we had a “smell app” for WordPress so I could share the delight with you. By the time the last festivities have passed, the lilac will have dropped its flowers and sit, a quiet green shrub, next to the porch. It will, like us, return to its ordinary appearance, but not before it has showered us all with a floral “Happy Birthday.”

My husband is a true gardener. I have managed now and then to keep a house plant alive, but not much more. Charlie loves planting, weeding, watering, pruning and harvesting(blueberries, raspberries, tomatoes.) This masterpiece of our back yard is all his doing. In June he will plant the annual seeds I have ordered(zinnia, four o clocks, cosmos) in the dirt patch on the front left of this photo.

We had to take down the playhouse at the back of the yard after it succumbed to twenty winters, leaving a bare patch in back. So this past week we went to a nursery and I pointed to two lilacs, one azalea and one hydrangea plants which he has planted along the back fence. I know what plants and flowers I like but have minimal interest in maintaining them. Thank heavens for my husband.

Spring comes in New England later than it did in our Pacific Northwest home. Just when I think nothing will flower and the trees will remain bare forever, May comes along and proves me wrong once again. And it manages to show up in true splendor making the wait worthwhile.

May my friends in the Southern hemisphere enjoy our spring as your autumn unfolds.

I recently saw an ad for a film remake of Tom Jones. It sent me back to the Easter holiday of 1966 when I was a freshman in college. My roommate Zoe and I drove her little Deux Chevaux from Massachusetts to Virginia to stay with her family. I had never seen such a tiny car and felt huge inside it.

One night before we headed back to the dorm we went to the drive-in movie theater to see Albert Finney in Tom Jones. Although it was a couple of years old, neither of us had seen it. In those days sex, even implied sex, was not a feature in most movies for general audiences. We were both bowled over by the scenes of lust and longing and our imaginations ran rampant. It was an experience as startling for me as my response to the screen violence, seen for the first time, in Bonnie and Clyde the next year. These were definitely not our parents’ movies!

Now that I have clearly remembered that long ago movie, I will pass on any remake. But thanks for the chance to remember that evening to whoever decided they needed to redo Tom Jones.

I am not going to let our new dog get on the couch.

I generally avoid seeing film adaptations of books I have read. Too often I have a clear image in my mind of the characters and location and am either annoyed or disappointed as the fiction moves to the screen. But I made an exception recently when I went to see a visual recreation of Claire Keegan’s gem of a novel Foster. The 88 page work, originally published in 2010 was reissued in 2022 when I encountered it for the first time.

The film, The Quiet Girl, shown in the United States in 2023, had been nominated for an Oscar in the foreign language category because of its Irish dialogue. Fortunately for me, the film had English subtitles. I knew it was an interpretation of Foster and I hoped it did the novel justice.

At its center the novel conveys all that isn’t said but just absorbed by a little girl. Sent away for the summer to a house of distant relatives, she remains silent most of the time. Gradually, however, she comes to understand that all families are not like hers. This brief respite utterly, but oh so gently and sweetly, changes the child. The film manages to illustrate rather than explicate the novel. Scene after scene reveals the child, the farm, the house and the people she encounters. As viewers we slow down, taking in the scenes at the child’s pace.

For me this movie showed me it was possible to make a novel and a film equivalent while not identical. I encourage anyone to both read and view these two exquisite works of art.

I first encountered the write Clint Smith in his nonfiction How the Word is Passed. I reviewed that in a post I wrote in August 2021 https://elizabethslaughter.com/2021/08/04/american-ahistorical-insights/ Above Ground(2023) while not his first collection of poems, was the first I have read.

Many mothers have written honestly about childbirth and child rearing. Smith was the first poet I have read that relates his experience as a father in the same time of life. Some poems are poignant as he writes of the dangers of raising kids in a violent culture. Some are funny.

My favorite poem speaks of the praise he gets from strangers when he is out in public doing routine errands with his toddler and infant. He accurately notes that his wife gets no such kudos for the same things. He made me realize that I am still pleasantly surprised when I see young fathers carrying their babies in front packs, playing with their older children in the park, picking them up from school and listening to them as they walk by on the sidewalk together. Fathers were nearly completely uninvolved when I was growing up. I can’t think of one who would have taken a toddler to the grocery store! I am probably one of the women who comments to Smith!

The poems are straightforward and unintimidating for anyone wary of reading “modern poetry.” Refreshingly Smith doesn’t try to flaunt his poetic skill, but rather puts down experience as poems, ones that are a true pleasure to read.

Certain singer/songwriters have accompanied from my high school years. One such, the Canadian Gordon Lightfoot, died this week. The photo above captures how his image remained in my mind’s eye. I was quite startled, looking for a picture for this post, to see how he looked recently. Of course in my mind’s eye I am still sixteen, not 75!

I have always preferred music with minimal acoustic accompaniment so that I am able to hear and absorb the words. Not great for partying, of course, but excellent for such bygone times as listening in my dorm room in a funk over a boy. Gordon sang of love gained and love lost, so he was an apt companion no matter the state of my college love life.

We bought a new car just before my eyes went wonky, so I am just getting to drive it and explore its features. This morning, as I drove to see a friend, I was able to ask the car to play Gordon Lightfoot songs. The thirty minute ride allowed me to soak in his voice and lyrics, feeling grateful that he had devoted his life to song.

Thanks Gordon.

After several long months of very poor vision, I have completed the treatment of my second eye and am able once again to read and write easily. My vision had been affected by the post cataract complication much more than I had realized. It had come on just in the last year, but slowly enough that it hadn’t become a real impediment until January.

I kept thinking of posts I want to write, but knew I had to be patient until both eyes were fully restored. Now they are.

Back at it tomorrow!

I am still unable to consistently use the computer until my eyes are repaired from the condition I wrote about. I will have the second repair on May 24 and hope to return to posting after that. Right now one eye can see and one can’t so it is extremely tiring to try to read and write.

In the meantime you can enjoy our three month old puppy Zoe just back from her first “salon” visit. She loved it!

Two years ago I had cataract surgery in both eyes which produced a marked improvement in my vision, particularly driving at night. I had not seen so well in many years since cataracts develop slowly over time until they are “ripe” enough to replace with intraocular lenses. While I still needed glasses they gave me 20/20 vision. I thought done was done.

Over the last two months I began to notice difficulty driving at dusk, more glare from ongoing cars and struggles with very small print. All these problems had been solved by the surgery. So yesterday I went back to my eye doctor to find out what was going on with my eyes. I wasn’t sure what was causing this marked decrease in vision and had some anxiety about the visit.

After a thorough exam she told me I had developed posterior capsular opacification, basically a return of cloudiness caused this time not by the cataract but by the space behind the new lenses. It sounded much worse than it apparently is. Around 25% of cataract surgery patients have this occur, often after two years. I go on April 7 for an in office procedure with a laser beam to open vision in the first eye. Then I will return for the second.

I had never heard of this complication and wanted to alert any of you who note a decrease in vision after cataract surgery to head straight back to your ophthalmologist for an exam. My routine one was a month off and I am grateful I moved it up to yesterday.

“Here’s looking at you kid!”