Black swan song

Yesterday was my big sister Kay's birthday and also the birthday of her youngest child, a daughter, our beloved niece Joanna, who turned eighteen.

Joanna was born on her mother's thirty-ninth birthday.

They live in Greenville, as does Kay's and my mother, so naturally I drove up there, bearing gifts and anticipating a good lunch at Mom's table.

She did not disappoint!

The menu: cool crunchy garden salad and tender pork loin and steaming baked potatoes and fresh green beans and comforting corn pudding and soothing sweet tea.

For dessert there was scratch-made cream cheese pound cake topped with strawberry coulis, Blue Bell vanilla ice cream, and hot coffee.

Don't be jeal!

Having recently seen and been impressed and inspired by the excellent documentary Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould, I bought my sister and her daughter (who is an accomplished pianist and who, like the late Gould, was born in Canada) a joint present for their joint birthdays: the compact disc recording A State of Wonder: The Complete Goldberg Variations (1955 & 1981).

Bach! I am jeal! Something tells me I'll be asking for a copy of that CD for my own birthday.

When the flurry of feasting and gift-giving had subsided, Kay and Joanna were away to a piano lesson.

Before I was obliged to head for home, Mother and Henry and I drove a mile to the campus of Furman University for a semi-impromptu late-day photo shoot.

But not before my son called to ask me if I'd heard about the tragedy in Connecticut.

As I am sure you did, I thought of little else for the rest of the day besides the dying agonies of defenseless schoolchildren at the hands of a psychotic murderer.

I thought about their mommies and daddies and grandparents and sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles and cousins and friends and neighbors and teachers, and I grieved some and I prayed some and I wondered how much more of this kind of thing we can take.

"Get my swan costume ready." ~Pavlova

It makes me so mad when politicians (and others) talk about "gun control" being the answer to the problem. No it isn't. Anywhere in the world where gun laws are loosest, there is the least crime.

For obvious reasons. Criminals who hide behind guns are the biggest cowards of all.

But the liberal media won't tell you that and evil Mr. Crocodile Tears sitting in the Oval Office of our White House plotting to separate us from our Second Amendment (and other) rights won't tell you that either.

At any rate, while I was arranging Mom and Henry near the edge of the man-made lake on the campus of Furman University, who should glide up to join us but the black swan.

I know he cannot be the same black swan I've been seeing at Furman University for nearly twenty-five years, but he looks the same, as they tend to do.

He's black. And he has round red eyes to match his beak that's red like the tip of a matchstick.

"But calm, white calm, was born into a swan." ~Coatsworth

Just like the iconic and proverbial white swan, he swishes blackly and noiselessly around, occasionally arching his neck to skim the water's surface with his flame of a beak, and frequently going all the way under, coming back up to fling sparkling droplets around his slender throat.

Then, clunky webbed feet spread wde, he circles and swims and paddles and points and next thing you know, he's heading off toward a myriad of other less splendid feathered lake-floaters that you know he'll never quite join.

Mom and Henry were still posing but my attention was all on the swan, which is why I inadvertently cut off the top of Henry's head.

All of swandom was blissfully oblivious to the massacre in Connecticut on my sister's fifty-seventh birthday. It made me wish that just for a moment I could be a swan and if I could, I'd certainly be a black one.

Black is beautiful. Black is dramatic and graceful and classic and timeless.

Black is infinite and bottomless, like the wasted innocence of those little slain children and like the incomprehensible pain of those who loved them.

"A rare bird on earth, and very like a black swan." ~Juvenal 

Black is remorseless like the empty babbling of those who deny the sovereignty of God and the deity of His Son, Jesus, especially at Christmastime.

What comforts me is no matter how many times men turn from the truth, and for a time seem to succeed in evading it, in the end we will none of us escape it.

Eventually we all hear the music and know the words by heart. Unfortunately for some, the song is not always a happy one.

I imagine you are grieving just like me, both for this and for other burdens, deep and personal, of recent vintage and of achingly long duration.

In spite -- or maybe because -- of all this, I wish you an even merrier Christmas and an even happier New Year.

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This saying good-by on the edge of the dark

And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark

Reminds me of all that can happen to harm

An orchard away at the end of the farm

All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.

I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,

I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse

By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse.

(If certain it wouldn't be idle to call

I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall

And warn them away with a stick for a gun.)

I don't want it stirred by the heat of the sun.

(We made it secure against being, I hope,

By setting it out on a northerly slope.)

No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm;

But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm.

"How often already you've had to be told,

Keep cold, young orchard. Good-by and keep cold.

Dread fifty above more than fifty below."

I have to be gone for a season or so.

My business awhile is with different trees,

Less carefully nurtured, less fruitful than these,

And such as is done to their wood with an ax --

Maples and birches and tamaracks.

I wish I could promise to lie in the night

And think of an orchard's arboreal plight

When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)

Its heart sinks lower under the sod.

But something has to be left to God.

~Robert Frost~

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Comments

[irene]

It is horrible how one persons' actions can devastate so many. I can't imagine the grief. Love your black swan.

[Donna M.]

Such grace and beauty of the black swan! I'm deeply saddened by yesterday's tragedy and even more so by the countless folks who aren't even pausing in their onward push of their own political agenda. Yesterday, you spent time with loved ones and enjoyed nature. And those precious moments are the ones that sustain us.

[Mari]

First I have to say that you have such a beautiful family, and it starts with your Mother!
Second, that tragedy in Connecticut is too sad to take in. I had Alaina yesterday, and I held her on my lap as she slept, and I watched the news reports and cried. And mixed with the sorrow is the anger that this happened, along with the anger at those who would take it and use it to further their agenda, which includes taking away guns. I'm sure if someone had told that young man that guns were illegal, he certainly would have listened. Just ridiculous!

[glenda]

Happy December 14th birthday to your sister Kay and her beautiful daughter Joanna. How special that Joanna was born on her mother's birthday. I just have to comment on the menu at Mom's house, 'cause you know I love to talk food. What do you mean don't be jeal! I am JEAL!!! The photo shoot with your absolutely beautiful Mom and equally handsome Henry is so nice to see. I wish my Mom could have found a Henry!! I know that you know what I mean. The tragedy in Connecticut, I'm sure, touched all of our souls. I have shed so many tears, along with my friends and sisters over these innocents that were taken. But remember J., God was right there with them, they were not facing that without Him there! How special that the black swan joined in the photo shoot. He was meant to be there you know! Love the picture of Mom and Henry at the end of the post, and the wonderful poem by Robert Frost. Special post by my Special Friend!..................G.

[Donna (Texas)]

Beautifully said Jenny....what a terrible saddness for all.
Your photos are Wonderful! And your Mom is Gorgeous Girl!!!
hughugs

[Sue the Hobbit]

Your portraits just get better and better, if that is at all possible.
And did you know that Switzerland has one of the highest (maybe The Highest) rates of gun ownership in the world, and also the lowest crime rates. Mexico, on the other hand, has extremely tight gun ownership laws and we all know how it is don't there, don't we?
We had a terrible three days in our town this week. Tuesday, a shooting at Clackamas Town Center, two dead. Thursday, our local pet shop burned and most of the animals died. That left me heartsick, but then Friday's shooting made it all seem rather insignificant. Hopefully, we can learn something and become kinder and gentler, but I no longer feel much optimism.