To My Mother
by Wendell Berry

I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.
 

"To My Mother" by Wendell Berry, from New Collected Poems. © Counterpoint, 2012. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Today is the Christian holiday of Easter Sunday, the celebration of Jesus' resurrection from the dead three days after his crucifixion. Easter is a moveable feast; in other words, it's one of the few floating holidays in the calendar year, because it's based on the cycles of the moon. Jesus was said to have risen from the dead on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring. For that reason, Easter can fall as early as March 22nd and as late as April 25th. Easter also marks the end of the 40-day period of Lent and the beginning of Eastertide; the week before Easter is known as Holy Week and includes the religious holidays Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

The word "Easter" and most of the secular celebrations of the holiday come from pagan traditions. Anglo Saxons worshipped Eostre, the goddess of springtime and the return of the sun after the long winter. According to legend, Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became our Easter Bunny. Eggs were a symbol of fertility in part because they used to be so scarce during the winter. There are records of people giving each other decorated eggs at Easter as far back as the 11th century. 

It was on this day in 1633 that Galileo Galilei was put on trial by the Inquisition, for supporting the theory that the Earth revolves around the sun. In late April 1633, Galileo agreed to plead guilty and was sentenced to an unlimited period of house arrest in his home in Florence. He gradually went blind and died in 1641. It wasn’t until 1992 that the Catholic Church formally admitted that Galileo’s views on the solar system are correct.

Flaubert’s first novel, Madame Bovary (books by this author), was published on this day in 1857, about a woman who has multiple affairs to stave off the boredom of her empty existence. The novel caught the attention of the authorities, and Flaubert was charged with corrupting public morals. He was acquitted, and the publicity from the trial made the book a best-seller.

 It was on this day in 1945 that Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in office. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage at his resort in Warm Springs, Georgia. That evening, Harry S. Truman took the oath of office. Eleanor Roosevelt called Truman to the White House with the news of her husband’s death. He asked her, “Is there anything I can do for you?” And she replied, “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.”

It’s the birthday of children’s book author Beverly Cleary (books by this author), born in McMinnville, Oregon (1916), and raised on a farm in nearby Yamhill. She became a children’s librarian in a small town in Washington state, and over the years, she noticed that many of the children complained that they couldn’t find books about children like themselves. It took her awhile to get started, but Cleary eventually decided to write the kind of books those kids were looking for, books about ordinary children living ordinary everyday lives, whose parents struggle to pay the bills and hang onto their jobs. Her first book was Henry Huggins (1950), and it was a huge success. One of the minor characters in that book was a girl named Ramona Quimby, the kind of girl who wipes paint on the neighbor’s cat, draws pictures in library books, and locks her friend’s dog in the bathroom, without ever realizing that she’s bothering anybody. She went on to become the main character of Cleary’s most popular series of books, including Ramona the Pest (1968), Ramona the Brave (1975), and Ramona Forever (1984).

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.^®

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