STILL SINGING IN THE BUCKET

DUM VIVO CANO

In 2011  I went to my first Mowry family reunion held in Woonsocket. My family has close ties to Woonsocket..  I have  often gone to Oak Hill cemetery when I was  a child, brought there by my father's sister, my Aunt Grace Jenckes. She was extremely faithful in  decorating and caring for the graves of her family.  My father's mother was Ida Mowry and her grave is in a small cemetery in Cumberland on  Dexter Street.  It was my Aunt Grace, who died in  2000 at the age of 90, and her Aunt Almira Barlow  who did the research on all the Union soldiers buried there and convinced the town of Cumberland that they should at least mow the grass and  keep the grave sites accessible to those of us who still want to honor our dead.
  
Aunt Grace and Auntie Barlow won a large victory, and I was impressed by their determination and  insistence on doing the right thing.  Grace Jenckes  was a person of high standards, and much as I try to imitate her, I always feel that she was always light years ahead of me in so many ways.  

I only wish that I had known about them and gone to Mowry reunions with my Aunt Grace, but I did get to go with another dear and faithful family member, my cousin Louise,  her grandfather was the brother of my grandmother Ida.

One of the great things that I learned at the reunion is that the Mowry family motto is the Latin tag  DUM VIVO, CANO which is translated--"While I live, I sing." 

This  motto moved me because it speaks to my desire to express myself more fully and more creatively before I die. An  Irish friend once said to me "You must fiddle the tune that is in you."  And  that is  another way of saying that we all have something to say.
Don't let anyone shut  you down or shame you. We have the right even the duty to ourselves to give expression to the unique message that only we with our unique DNA  have brought to the earth. Creativity is one of the reasons for our very existence. 

I find this  insistence that we are all creative to be very comforting and stirring. I have often spent much energy and intelligence and creativity interpreting the  writings of others--that's what it means to  be a person who professes literature. But  I always  felt  a longing to express myself more directly.  I guess that is the  reason for this blog also   Finally, as of 30 November 2012--I was no longer teaching. It took me that long from 1966 to 2012 to reach the state of being fully retired, I was pressured by  the facts of my own declining health; and the need to provide care for my Aunt Anna.  That reality of care giving  made me  finally understand  how limited and unpredictable our life on earth is.

I would like to spend some time before I die discerning and expressing as fully and clearly as I  can  the unique  message that the Creator placed in me.

  Just as he placed a message in each of you, dear reader. That is what is new about each of us and what we are here  to discover and share. 

 Let's get on with the show--while we live we can sing.