The Fine Art of Staying Positive. An Essay for Easter.

When are you grown up? I used to think the measure was based on an absolute age. The laws say we can drink at 18 or 21. We can drive at 16. There is an age we are allowed to marry and join the army.

Usually the legal age to do something is in inverse proportion to the maturity needed to do it successfully or safely. Then again its biologically possible to give birth to children you can’t legally transport to the pediatrician – but that’s not really my point.

Another often used measure are major life events. You are grown up when you get your first full time job, when you get married, when you have children.

Maybe you are grown up when you become responsible. When you have an insurance policy, savings and regular checkups. By some of these measures I’m not very grown up but I digress.

Lately I’ve begun to think that we are really truly grown up when we understand for the first time that not all people are good, that try as we might we cant get everyone to like us, that some people really do mean us ill and that evil exists in the world.

I don’t mean television or fiction. I mean the first time you really truly understand that maybe not everyone has a nugget of reason that can eventually be reached. Maybe this is the first time you realize that no matter how well meaning you are and how much good you try to do there are people who think that your good is their bad, You are judged for it. There is nothing you can do.

This is the grown up version of finding out there is no Easter Bunny.

In the end I’ve decided that you are really truly grown up when you reach that point and say: “There is hope anyway.”

After all, it’s Easter. There may be no Easter Bunny but we can still move that stone away from the door.

How the Flu Hid the Mouse in the Wall

For over two weeks now I have had the flu. It started like most flu does with fever, chills and a sore throat. It then followed sort of a migratory pattern, which left me feeling recovered for part of a day while it shifted from one temporary place of residence to the next. The new spot would make me feel even worse than before. Sort of a cruel tease of a flu. I’d like to say I’m feeling better but I don’t fully have my sense of taste or smell and that tends to make me feel oddly disconnected from things.
I have, however, gotten enough of my sense of smell back to remind me that just prior to the flu we had a nasty horrible smell coming from the wall heater in the kitchen. I had been burning candles regularly to mask it and had wondered whether it might be possible to take the heater apart.

I’ve been watching old episodes of Bones so I think I might be hardened to whatever I might find in there. . . Then again I might not be quite hardened enough. Needless to say the mouse is still in the wall.

So all of this is a very long way of saying that there might actually be at least one good thing about the flu. I was completely unaware of the smell for at least two weeks. But let me be clear. So far I’ve only found one good thing.