Well, friends, the world sure got a little crazier since I was here last week. I mean, can you believe it? The new Pope is an American, and from the South Side of Chicago, no less! Pope Leo XIV may have spent a third of his life serving the people of Peru, and another third of his life deep in the quiet recesses of the Vatican, but c’mon: the White Sox haven’t looked this good since Shoeless Joe Jackson was in the lineup!
Meanwhile, over at the White House, Santa Clause apparently no longer resides at the North Pole but instead in Doha, Qatar, and he just delivered an early Christmas gift to the President: a brand, spanking new Air Force One that comes with absolutely no strings attached, even to the reindeer who’ll be pulling it on countless trips to Mr. Trump’s personal golf properties or down to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend! Thank you, Sheik Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and a very merry Christmas to you, too!
Closer to home, our very own little property here on the Eastern Shore continued to observe its own special Mother’s Day tradition. We call Mother’s Day “Mulching Day” and we celebrate it by loading eleven inordinately heavy bags of black mulch into the back of the car, then unloading and opening the same into several iterations of a broken plastic wheelbarrow so that my wife—mother of two, grandmother of eight—can spread it all around the back and front yards under my patient and loving supervision. We also planted four new boxwoods in front of the porch, a new row of white begonias in front of them, and all kinds of bright new flowers in the big stone planters by the front steps. The lawn got mowed (I did that!), and another large bag of weeds went out to the curb, ready for pickup. My back is tired and my fingernails are dirty. Believe me: it’s not easy being a supervisor!
But then, of course, we had to clean up. We put away all the tools (which really means we had to reorganize the shed again), swept another dune of pollen off the porch, and recoiled at least a mile-and-a-half of garden hose because, as I’m sure you know, no project is really ever done until there’s no evidence there was a project in the first place. We aim for the appearance of effortless upkeep, a skill many dream of, but only a lucky few ever master.
But I have to say: I love seeing our house emerge from its annual winter doldrums and step sprightly into spring. Apparently, passersby do, too. My wife is far too modest to boast about all her hard work, but I enjoy basking in the glow of all the compliments we get from the folk who stop to admire her handiwork. I just flick a little water on my face to make it look like I’m sweaty and humbly accept the kudos they toss over the fence. “Yes; it really does look nice, doesn’t it? Thank you!”
And meanwhile, this crazy world continues to spin. This just in: remember those 145% tariffs the President imposed on China? Well, they just got slashed to 30% because “neither side wanted a decoupling.” Even Shoeless Joe wouldn’t take that bet!
So stay tuned: it really is a crazy world out there! I wonder what’s next…
I’ll be right back.
Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores.
