Shining Spirit

Several days ago I posted this photo on the internet with the caption: “Wonder where I can find a huge rubber band?”  I thought it was rather clever.

When one of my children saw the posting, he transformed the image into something quite different.  “It’s a furcula,” he declared, “the fusion of two clavicles found between the neck and breast of a bird.”  Well, what he actually said was “Hey, Dad, that looks like a wishbone.”  And that sent me off into childhood memories, one of which was the ritual act done at the dinner table every Sunday, the pulling of the chicken wishbone.   Chicken every Sunday?  Yes, in my home you knew what you were getting each Sunday.  Sit down and enjoy it.

In case you were deprived of important rituals in your home, like the chicken wishbone pull, let me educate you.  First, whoever got the piece of meat that contained the wishbone was considered lucky.  All the kids asked for it.  Most of the adults secretly hoped for it.  Then, when the meat was devoured and the bone exposed, the lucky holder could pick one other person who would grasp one side of the “U” shaped bone and on a signal from my grandmother, the pull was on.  The bone would flex and finally snap into two pieces, and whoever held the longest (or was it shortest) piece was declared the winner and would get a round of family applause.  Of course the winner would make a secret wish which was guaranteed to come true…sometime…somewhere.   The chicken wishbone ritual!  A little furcula fun!

All of that sets me to thinking about wishes and hopes, and reflecting on what I might wish for today if I were picked for the pull.  How about you?

It’s too late to wish for more hair or fewer wrinkles.  That train has left the station.  But I do wish people would be a little kinder, maybe gentler, with each other, especially in this depressing season called “political campaign” time.  I’d like to consider voting for something or someone, not against everything and everyone smeared with mud.  Have we lost track of what this process is all about?

Another wish I would send across the dining room table is that my great-grand children might have enough earth left to prosper in their time.  We’re not doing a very good job of stewarding the earth for them.  I worry about how little we regard the only home we have.  I haven’t heard of any substitute earth…this is it.  I know we are smart enough; I just wish we had the moral courage to look beyond ourselves and consider the essential value of the nest we are fouling.

I also wish someone would invent chocolate doughnuts without calories, smoke alarms that are guaranteed not to go off at 2 a.m. when the battery decides to die.  I wish for TV journalists who don’t begin each sentence with “So” or “Now”, larger print on medicine bottle prescription labels (ah, the “small print” conspiracy!), physicians who don’t begin each sentence with “Well, Roger, at your age…”  Shall I go on?

Pass me that furcula, please.