Snow and Light

There are so many ways to enjoy snow and Rochester winters offer many of them. One of my personal favorites is to walk during a heavy snow just before or after daylight, dawn and dusk, when there is just enough light to see the distant features blurred by the snowfall. This week I experienced one of those morning walks. The house lights were on in most of the houses and the high schoolers were already unloading from their buses, but rush hour was not yet in motion and there was a quietness as the snow blanketed the roads and trees and ground as well as my coat and hood in whiteness. When I experience such things nowadays, my mind takes me back to one particular experience I had in the early 1960's, maybe 1964? I was walking home alone just as it was turning dark near where the path to the baseball field and sand hill veered off the recently extended Wilelen Road. There was a very heavy snow, so heavy that when you looked ahead all you saw was whiteness except for some lights in the houses. It was so quiet, so peaceful. It touched me for some reason in a very deep way. The snow was so heavy you could hardly make out the woods behind the houses or the field which was empty then but is now a fully developed neighborhood. It gave me a good feeling of individual existence like one might have on a mountain top. A happy memory of the beauty the winter offers and why it feels so good to be back where snowy winters are part of life.

Record Cold September 25, 1963

     I read yesterday that the record low temperature in Rochester for 25 September was 30 degrees in 1963. It made me think about afternoons after school on those (evidently chilly in Chili) autumn days. We were always out and about either at someone's house, maybe playing basketball, or just walking around in small groups with nowhere to go. This activity usually lasted from after school until dinner time which by October meant until it was getting dark. Memorably, for a boy in the SPX class of '64,  Fall 1963 was the first time that girls might have been included in our activities so there was a whole new (awkward) dimension beyond home court basketball games. It might even include "walking with a girl" (if the crowd dispersed in a certain way so only you two were left) and such walks might have produced first glimpses of a whole new world that was on the horizon. Although it is easy to recall some of the happy days of those times, I sure don't remember the record cold days.

Prime Rib

     You know you're back in Rochester when you go out to a family restaurant and you can order prime rib with a baked potato. It feels good to be back.

Past and Present

    Things we remember, positive or negative, don't exist anymore, and that's neither good nor bad.

  In  "Cold Mountain" Ruby reestablishes a relationship with her father who treated her terribly when she was little. They end up happy in the present rather than living by old resentments. She is able to forgive if not forget the past...to let it go... to let the present be instead of the no longer existent past.

 Sometimes we treat something that happened in the past as part of the present, when actually what happened, for better or worse, is no more. Be it a happy or sad event, a relationship that thrilled us or killed us, these things happened, they shaped us, and we went on. We don't have to forget them, they do exist as part of the past, we just need to give them their proper place. We are shaped by these things, these people, but we are also shaped by each choice we make today. Maybe the key to balance is to find the proper weight to assign to things past and present. When something in the present is part of a continuum it might merit significant weight. On the other hand, a singular past event might merit less.

 Maybe due to our moods or circumstances, we might sometimes give past events an overdue weight in the present, allowing them to dominate our present, when in reality, each day is new and we can, if we choose, relegate to yesterday what belongs to yesterday, both the best and the worst of times gone by. I don't mean to demean or trivialize the past, I just mean to say that given the very real finiteness of any lifetime, and the very real power that exists within all of us to continue to shape our own life, it seems only natural to not limit ourselves from experiencing freely the moments we have.

  And so it is with Chili in the mid 20th century. That Chili doesn't exist anymore. We who lived there then share many memories of those days, some good ones and some not so good. For me it is helpful to think about those days and how they helped shape us, along with our choices and and all the experiences we have had since then.

Laughter and Tears

     In a dream, Natasia Gracias kissed me on a river bank. She wore a black dress speckled with white polka dots or daisies or umbrellas... white against black. There was a reception in the background and she was one of three cousins attending. Her real first name was impossible to remember. There were laughter and tears.

Breaking Up

"Breaking up is hard to do". Neil Sedaka
"Breaking up is never easy I know". ABBA

     I was thinking about breakups. I've had a few going back to Chili days. I guess most people suffer them (or cause them) maybe multiple times and, yeah, usually they are hard on one or both parties in some way. But I have come to look at them differently lately. The thing is, when there is a breakup there is a choice by someone to go in another direction, for whatever reason. Isn't knowing the truth something we should be thankful for?  Who wants to pine for a relationship the other has discarded? So why hurt?
     Hurting over another's choice seems wasteful. We should feel grateful to know the truth and get on with living this new truth. Now there might be sadness in the breakup but isn't that better than living in a false relationship?  
     And breakups don't just happen between couples, they can happen between friends too. Again, they happen when something is not right enough for someone. In either case, one might be grateful they are still not in the middle of an unbalanced partnership.

     But what about relationships that don't break up? Again, there are several kinds. Some stay active forever. Some are less active due to circumstances but they stay alive nonetheless - there but for the circumstances of life.
      It seems a lot healthier to focus on the relationships that are alive. Instead of pining or being pined for, everyone is better off admitting that we are not good fits with everyone and to appreciate the relationships that we have that live on, be they daily or rarely active.
 
       As for all the grief and moping we ever might have caused or carried, here's to letting it go in gratitude that we either freed or were freed from a debilitating imbalance. (And that's not to say there might be good memories about the times when things were still in balance.)

When Did SPX School Open?

     It is always a treat to visit Rochester. This year I had a little excursion to Chili. I saw the burned out St. Pius X Church...a sad sight. One thing I noticed might come as a surprise to newcomers to SPX. There used to be a path that led from the school to Ranchmar. The kids who lived in Ranchmar used it to go home for lunch (while others had to eat at school) and everyone used it as the way to go to Ranchmar to play. Well, the path is gone! Beside the church there is now a parking lot and a field of grass that ends in a forest wall of trees. You would never know of the baseball fields that existed nor the short cut to Ranchmar. I guess we should all take pictures of everything because everything eventually will change.
     As for the school itself, I checked to see that the cornerstone was laid in 1959. Now September 1959 was the year the class of '64 would have entered 4th grade. Going into this trip I was almost sure we had come to the new school (from St Feehan's) at the start of 3rd grade because I have no memory of 3rd Grade at St Feehan's. However, two reliable members of the class of '66 assured me they went to the first grade at St Feehan's. Easy going guy that I am I might have taken their word for it except that while visiting a reliable source in Chili, this source being one of the founding members of St Pius X, she showed me a newspaper clipping from August 2, 1957 showing the removal of the stained glass windows of St Feehan's and saying that the new school would be open to one class in the fall of that year and would be open to five classes the following year! If that were true, we would have started at the new school in September 1958! With this hard evidence I had to believe my memory had been correct......but it was two against one and the '66ers were much more sure of their memories of being at St Feehan's in 1958-59 that I was in my lack of memory of  being there.
       So the mystery persists. Did one class open the school in 1957? When did all the classes move in? Comments are welcome and I guess history will have to abide by the majority vote (unless of course someone offers even better proof than I thought I had on the matter! -- a class picture perhaps?!).