Laundry Day Thoughts
Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes
a lot more than his soul.
~ Joseph Brodsky
More Laundry
THE WORST DAY OF THE YEAR
I wish I had a birthday
On any day but mine.
To celebrate on any other day
Would sure enough be fine.
Oh, to have it in December,
Maybe on the first,
Would be better than the day I have
Which surely is the worst.
Or maybe in November
With the veterans or Thanksgiving.
I could even handle October,
With Columbus (were he living).
September would be fine with me,
All that work and labor,
To share a celebration with
All my friends and neighbors.
August would be even better
Or maybe a July 4th celebration
As the country throws me a birthday party
All across the nation.
In June with all the debutantes
Or May with all the grads;
Even April would be better than what I’ve got,
Which is why I’m oh so sad.
In March upon the Ides
Or February with its stinging chill;
But not even that can substitute
For my birthday’s bitter pill.
No, my birthday’s January 2nd
And I feel it drawing near;
Right around the corner,
On the worst day of the year!
by Mac MacKechnie (2003)
So right away you're thinking that she is feeling way too sorry for herself. Well, that's not true at all. It takes real "social security" to whine about a birthday on such a lousy day of the year as January 2nd. Mac wrote the poem and on my next birthday, Mike had it set to music and had a CD cut
of it made by a local Austin wanna-be-musician.
June 15th has always been my dream birthday. So perhaps I'll just change it beginning in 2006. But, of course, I still want the S.S. checks to begin now!
Prologue: When we moved to Austin, laundry took much longer to dry in our all-electric home in Hill Country. That's when I decided
to use the time to stay in touch with the friends we had left behind.
The Laundry Day thoughts exercised my long-unused writing muscles.
Our five-year-old granddaughter and our wonderful son and lovely daughter-in-law are the reason we moved to Austin.
The
archives on
the following pages are the original 2001 e-notes.
The following is an attempt to resurrect the Laundry Day thoughts.
Archives 2001
