Jay D Weaver's Thought for the Week

A Comfortable Refuge

I'm sitting here at home in my office on a Saturday afternoon with a case of writer's block. This place is a real mess. I probably ought to get rid of a lot of it. Piles of papers, a package to be returned, and stacks of books and notebooks are everywhere. But as I lean back on my new executive chair that I bought a few weeks ago, and glance about, I see a number of things which are important to me. Let me tell you about a few of them.

This and That

There's a cross-stitch picture that my daughter Ellen made for me many years ago. It pictures a couple of fishermen with the caption: "A fisherman is a jerk at one end of the line waiting for a jerk at the other." This reminds me of what an old fishing buddy named Roy used to tell me when the fish weren't biting. He would usually say, "They don't call it catching, they call it fishing."

There is the bowling trophy on my computer desk. It's the only sports trophy I ever won. It was a team trophy for second place in the faculty bowling league. Fortunately, it was a handicap league. I was a really terrible bowler.

Over on the wall, there is a cartoon of a mean-looking little fellow who says: "God put me on earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind I will never die."

Below it is a cartoon of a guy sitting at a computer. The message on the screen is "Sit up straight". The guy behind him says, "It must be your mother board."

I see an oil painting made by my dear old Aunt Mabel, who at age ninety-three, remembers nothing for more than 5 minutes. It is a painting of the pair of swans that have graced the pond in front of Wickersham Hall where I taught for 28 years at Millersville University. I often look at it and recall memory after memory of my days in the classroom. Perhaps she used up all her memory in providing memories for me.

On top of my filing cabinet, I see a chess board that my sister Betsy made for me. Somehow I lost my enthusiasm for chess many years ago. I didn't lose my love for my sister. The older I get the more my brothers and sisters mean to me.

Hanging on the side of the filing cabinet are some pictures my grandson Joshua and I made when he was about four or five years old, using a computer program that made faces. Of course, he's the light of my life.

There are a number of photographs of my extended family hanging on the walls. After all is said and done, it is families that really count. They are what we rely on when the world seems to have gone crazy.

Come to think of it, this is not a bad place to spend many hours, even though my wife thinks it's a real mess most of the time. Oops, there she is at the door. Mary's probably the best thing in here. I think I'll keep her.

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