Author: Neal Saye

Posted in Holidays and Seasonal Changes

Nothing Gold

Posted on by Neal Saye

I know that the poet is right, but just for today, January 1st, I’m going to hold onto gold as if it lasts forever.

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Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

— Robert Frost

Fort Mountain State Park, Chatsworth, Georgia
Posted in Holidays and Seasonal Changes

The Year

Posted on by Neal Saye

I love this short but oh-so-truthful jewel of a poem, The Year, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, written back in 1910. For we experience, year after new year, all that she writes about, all the realities of life.

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What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of the year.

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The weight of our 2021 year—the good (we did have some, right?) and the bad (no need for the same question) and the we’re-not-sure-which-it-was—now nears its tipping-over point into 2022’s own “rhymes” of a “thousand times.”

May we all “rise up laughing with the light” tomorrow and tomorrow.

Posted in Five Friday Happy Bringers

Five Friday Happy Bringers 12/31/21

Posted on by Neal Saye

Seriously? 2021 is on its last breath?! Quickly then, here are Five Final Friday 2021 Happies.

1. Robert taking FOREVER to “set the stage” before taking pics of my second (what was I thinking?) fruitcake of the season.

2. Daughter Amy winning South Magazine’s Greatest Nurse Award 2021.

South Magazine — Winter Issue 2021-2022 — Just out!
Not that I’m proud or anything.

3. The sky.

“I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now, from up and down and still somehow, it’s cloud illusions I recall, I really don’t know clouds at all.” But I do love them.

4. The lunch I “created” yesterday (from use-‘em-before-they-spoil leftovers) for Robert and me.

My vision had us sitting across from each other, looking lovingly into each other’s eyes, then casting our gaze downward to the edible art inhabiting the space between us.

Oops, now you know how many supplements/vitamins I take.

Smiling, we would have no need for dishes, for cutlery. And why would we?! We had our hands, our fingers, our hearts, our culinary freedom. As if we were dining in an authentic Indian restaurant, we would both be silently agreeing with award winning chef Srijith Gopinathan of San Francisco’s Campton Place: “There’s a reason people use their hands to eat. It’s because food is very, very personal.” I could see and hear Robert whispering (no longer in an Indian restaurant), “Bon appétit, mon amour,” as he fed me a finger of (two-day old, slightly brown but still delicious) genuine Mexican guacamole … from Whole Foods.

Doesn’t this look, not just pretty, but personal to you? And yes, I know the ham salad from Monday looks a little runny, but still.

Well, here’s basically the pre-lunch convo between Robert and me when he saw the table.

Him: “Wow.”

Me: (Not responding, except in silent joy, awaiting his next compliment.)

Him: “Uh, aren’t you going to put that ham salad in plates?”

Me: Sounding upbeat, perky, as if I were offering him an invitation to the Waldorf Astoria for their Waldorf Salad: “Ha, ha. No, silly! It’s a communal lunch, but just you and me, reaching and using our fingers.”

Him: “Oh, okay,” staring at a couple of mayonnaise-y green peas sliding off the “sorta charcuterie board.”

But believe it or not, after that slippery start, we had a great and fun, if not 100% fresh, lunch. And I relented with two (small) salad plates.

5. Getting through (sometimes sailing along beautifully, sometimes barely moving) yet another perfectly imperfect year.

Have a meaningful final day of 2021.

See you next year!