Wednesday, October 04, 2006

A Better Day

Today is the feast day of St Francis of Assisi. He lived in the 12th century. Of all the Christian holy men who have lived through the ages, he is my favorite. His followers, the Franciscans, are still living his spirit in the world today. Several of my friends are members of the Franciscan order.

It is autumn but the temperature today is expected to be 87 degrees! I am very disappointed that we haven’t had cool, autumn weather during this week of vacation.

Soon I will leave to go visit my friend who is a silversmith. After that I will go get Chloe. I am very excited about seeing her.

When my wife and I got to Chloe’s daycare, the lady in the office checked us out to make sure we were really the grandparents. For once in my life I was happy to be checked out. We had arrived at the daycare during the afternoon nap period. When we got to Chloe’s room, she was asleep on her little cot, beautiful as ever. We leaned over her and gently spoke her name. She opened her eyes and was immediately excited. She raised her arms and called our names. Even though she has adapted well to daycare, she was very happy to see us. As soon as we got out of the daycare she began talking and rarely stopped the rest of the afternoon. She has really taken a quantum leap forward in her ability to talk. She can repeat anything you say and her vocabulary is extensive. If you say it once, she will remember it.

I had a great visit with my old friend, Joe, who now works as an artist and silversmith. We talked about our past lives as monks and some of our mutual friends in that life. Eventually we also talked about possible designs for a ring. I need to do some further research to determine a possible symbol that could be part of the ring.

I feel a little “lighter” today. Certainly Chloe’s visit was a bright spot. I hope that the mood I have experienced so far this week is not a sign of impending illness. Quite out of the blue my son wrote up this morning feeling bad. A trip to the doctor diagnosed him with strep throat. It would be my luck to get sick just as it’s time to go back to work.

I am scheduled to go to the monastery on Sunday for one of my regular monthly gatherings. I emailed my friend, Fr Dennis, to let him know I would be heading his way and stopping at his house for coffee. He informed me of an interfaith prayer service to be held at the monastery on Sunday afternoon. It will include Buddhists and Hindus among others. I have made plans to attend. It sounds like a great way to end my week of vacation.

I have a headache. Is it my blood sugar? I guess I shouldn’t have ordered the orange swirl milkshake earlier today when I was at McDonald’s with Chloe. She barely ate her Happy Meal. She was too distracted with the Little Mermaid figurine that came with it.

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