Eye-smiling

"Smiling Eyes" by Inima Mea

My dad had the most twinkly eyes of anyone I've ever known. It was something I grew used to.

When I was about 20 or so, I first heard the song "When Irish Eyes are Smiling." That was it! Pop smiled with his eyes. And his mother's maiden name was McGrath, so he had a drop or two of Irish blood. He had thick wavy auburn hair (some folks called him "Red"), and his eyes were big and brown. He seldom smiled with his mouth - we kids used to giggle whenever we saw Pop's teeth.

One time he spoke to me about the eye-smiling phenomenon. He complained about people who snap pictures of others and command, "Say cheese!" He harrumphed and said simply, "I smile with my eyes."

If you smile with your eyes, you know it. You channel some power into your eyes. People who know how to do this have a special way with a camera - and with other people. They can light up at will. Their light comes right out of their soul and emanates from their eyes as if from two beacons.

In the past, when I smiled close-mouthed, my daughter would scold me and tell me to smile BIG. Since I had surgery in May on cancer on my upper lip, I can't smile big like I used to. The surgery removed some of the lip-top wrinkles (hooray!), but really tightened my whole mouth. I have only now, a month later, begun to be able to use tooth floss. I never realized how much flossing stretches one's lips.

Anyway, when I smile now, I think of Pop. Eye-smiling may have to do for me, at least for a while. I guess that's not so bad.

Oven Summer

All this past non-winter, we knew we were in for it. Seventy degrees in March felt great, but was a bad omen.

And now we have it: the oven summer.

Some things arrived about the right time this spring: redwing blackbirds, robins, Baltimore orioles, sandhill cranes, barn swallows. But others came freakishly early, like monster-sized cow parsnip, June bugs and lightning bugs in May, and day lilies blooming in June. I even heard a cricket in mid-June; cricket calls are a normal end-of-summer sound for my Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin.

Wierdest phenomenon so far: an abundance of red box elder bugs. They swarm around my front and rear doors. They are creepy. I hope they don't get in. The red bugs remind me of alien pod people - I feel like a victim in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

The priest in the church in Markesan, Wisconsin, called for a day of prayer and fasting for RAIN today. A very Biblical concept, and understandable: Markesan is a farming community built around a cannery. It's no big deal that folks in the city and suburbs haven't mowed their crunchy brown grass in three weeks, but for the farmers, rain means survival.

I wonder if all of this means that autumn will come early. I'm not sure what to hope for. I keep trying to be optimistic....

Why Mad Men makes me mad

 

It seems that everyone loves “Mad Men.” I have only seen two episodes of the show, but I can tell you that I don’t love it.

Here’s one of the reasons: the creator of this series is very proud of his period accuracy, but doesn't try hard enough. I was a teenager during the 60s, so I enjoy seeing many of the vintage-looking props, costumes and sets. However, I spotted two glaring anachronisms in just one of the two shows I viewed:

Buck jumpin' and havin' fun in the Treme!

 

More than a year ago, my sister-in-law Nan gave me a tip. She said, "Rent 'Treme.' It's a cable series about New Orleans after Katrina."

I finally borrowed the first season of the HBO series through an inter-library loan. We had it for one week. That meant Mike & I had 10 hours to watch in 7 days.

The Cicatrice - or, Skin Cancer & Me

One day in high school French class, I learned the word “cicatrice.” It’s pronounced SEE-cuh-TREECE and it means scar. I became smitten with that word and decided it had the perfect sound for the title of a novel.

The story smashed me in the brain box, as inspiration often did when I was fifteen. I’d write a book called “La Cicatrice,” about a beautiful young woman who grows tired of people focusing on her physical beauty. She hates that no one cares about who she really is, deep inside. One day, frustrated after another person says “My, how beautiful you are,” the young woman figures out a way to stop the world's obsession with her superficial self. She takes a sharp knife (or maybe it’s a razor – I never decided) and makes a cut across her cheek. Her hope is that if she has a big scar, people will stop focusing on her face. They'll look into her eyes and seek the soul inside.

That’s as far as I got with plot planning, and I never did write the story. I’m glad I learned the word “cicatrice,” though; it’s come in handy since I’ve become a crossword puzzle lover. Nothing is wasted, I guess.

My rather, um, overwrought cicatrice plot came back to me last month when I learned that I have squamous cell cancer on my upper lip.

The Triduum – 2012

Holy Thursday

I saw the sad thing when Mike and I were on the return leg of our customary morning walk along the Bugline trail, an old railroad right-of-way. It was only April 5 but it looked like May 5: the forest floor was carpeted with trout lilies nodding their white heads. Purple hepatica and yellow marsh marigolds were up.

I never get sick

I never get sick.

Okay, that’s a lie. I almost never get sick.

When I do get sick, it’s a doozie…