Monday, September 25, 2017

An Ode to the Season

I’m very much in the mood for autumn, but the weather isn’t cooperating. Gonna be almost 90 around here today. Good grief, it’s the end of September. Still, Old Man Winter is grinning broadly as he peeks around the corner while gazing at the blueprints for our first blizzard. So here’s a poem I wrote several years ago that speaks to that future date – looming large.





Autumn at the Gate

She came upon the garden late,
and lingered there beside the gate,
as fallen leaves went whirling round
with rustling crunch upon the ground.

The rising moon, the hissing breeze
had found the bare bones of the trees
and pressed upon her heart, at last,
that winter now would come on fast.

Mid wistful thoughts of summer days,
the lovely, golden autumn haze
seemed as a lover’s kiss, and then,
she left the gate for home again.


Have a hopeful week!




Image: Our tree by the barn

Monday, September 18, 2017

Where We Keep Things

A few weeks ago, after a soccer game, we issued an impromptu invitation to some friends to stop back at our house for pizza. Husband had been given a whole one after an event he’d helped with that morning. It was a cheese pizza and not his favorite thing so I understood why he said, “Want to come back and have supper with us?” This surprised me greatly and I immediately wondered if I’d scrubbed the toilet earlier. Ugh.

So we get home and I go to turn on the oven but first I have to take out the frying pans. “I hate for a big space like this to go to waste,” I said. “We keep our bread in the microwave, too.” These two comments were said by way of explanation. I don’t know why I do that. Explain how we live. And then I thought of all the places we humans keep stuff.

Like my friend, Marie. “Oh, it’s in Mary’s closet,” she said, speaking of some random object. “That’s where we keep all the stuff we don’t have any other place for.”

Whoa. She’d just tapped into something universal. We all need places for our random stuff. Right? There are little spaces – like my shopping bud Karen’s purse – her home away from home. Everything you could ever want on a shopping trip is in that cross body bag. And it’s tiny! Four by six inches or something. No quarter inch goes unused. Tissues, aspirin, Band-Aids, safety pins, 30% off coupons and on and on. I highly suspect she's got a whole coat in there, too. Amazing.

Then there are bigger places like my closet. It’s my very own, no husbands allowed. All my old handbags, shoes, totes, a box of decaying birthday cards, the architectural plans for a house we’ll never build, large plastic bags from shopping trips that will be just what I need some day, oh – and clothes. Lots of them. My mother-in-law’s mink stole that’s at least 75 years old. In perfect condition. No one will ever wear it. But it’s in the closet where I keep stuff.

John’s Red Barn. The biggest place of all. I don’t go in there. It’s the man’s keeping place. You would die of boredom if I completed the list. An old Mustang carcass – the car not the horse. Ancient tools, washed out tuna cans filled with screws, spider webs, woodchuck hideout. Ratty oil rags, cardboard boxes, scary things in the old goat stall that have been there for over 35 years. His place for his stuff and I’ve come to terms with it. Really. No – my eye is NOT twitching.

In my head I’ve designed the best keeping place ever, though. At the top of the mattress there will be a compartment, zippered, and just big enough to hide six gold bars. They’ll be right under your head while you sleep and the robbers will have to get past you and your pet python to get to them. If you only have a couple of bars, that’s okay. You can make some fake ones with cardboard and glitter to fill up the space. By the time the robbers figure out which is which you and the python with be on them.

So – where do you keep things? I want to know your weirdest places. And I won’t tell anyone, even the python. She and I will be too busy enjoying our profits from skyrocketing mattress sales to bother with you. I’m just curious, that’s all.

PS: What do you think we should charge for the mattress and would it be a good marketing ploy to include a couple of fake gold bars?  


Image: Free Digital Images 

Monday, September 11, 2017

Havens

Yesterday, in a sermon, I heard of a young man who sought companionship and a sense of place among his peers in a youth group. He had all the classic symptoms of a child growing up in a broken home. Drugs caused his mother’s death and his father had been one of her “clients”. The boy is now battling his own addictions and in the hospital wondering “if anyone loves him” according to pastor’s story. That boy needs a haven.

It’s only one letter away from Heaven – leave out the “e”. I’m not talking about safe spaces filled with teddy bears and shared outrage at the unfairness of the world or the wrong headedness of someone else’s stance. No, I’m talking about something more lasting.

We all exude in our personalities characteristics that make us a haven for those who know us and/or love us. It’s a smile, an arm around the shoulder and warm bread from the oven. You know people like that. It makes your heart happy when you’re in their presence. How do we get to be like that? I’ve thought of a few ways.  

Be choosy. About your words. I was recently called a bigot by someone I love very much. She’s young and just beginning her journey into the marketplace of ideas. I cannot even remember what we were discussing, but I knew my response to that charge would affect her. I simply sighed. No counter blows, no huffing and puffing and no yelling. I was tempted to tell her what the word she flung so easily at me meant. In my very old dictionary the first definition is, from the French, “mustachioed man”. Which I am not. But I hope the haven of my sigh will allow her to know that a few quickly flung words will be excused by the love we have for each other.

Pick a room. When I was a teenager that room was Mom’s bedroom. I’d come home from school and find her reading, pillows propped behind her, coffee cup on the side table. She always seemed happy to see me. I’d plop down and ask what she was reading. She’d tell me and explain the plot. I’d tell her about some good or bad thing that had happened that day or ask what was for supper. A brief, peaceful interlude that signaled all was well as evening approached.

My children and grandchildren love the haven of my kitchen. Hot coffee or a Capri Sun and something to go with it. Zucchini bread, chocolate chip cookies or a necessary conversation. Temporary respite. That room can be anywhere – even leaning on a counter at work comforting a co-worker. Two chairs next to each other at a dinner party. Anywhere. The more of a haven you are the more the comfort of your presence will be sought.

That boy who needs a haven? He might be next to you in line at the grocery store. Smile at him. That lonely old woman in the bed next to your sister’s at the hospital – ask if she’d like you to read to her. The grandchild who’s wailing over a lost love? Let them cry. Make them laugh. Excuse the foul language – just this once.

Be a haven. Be love. Bear the burden. It’s the Lord’s work and the world needs more of it. God bless you.


Image: Free Digital Photos

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

The Lovely Interlude of September

Somehow, when September comes, it seems as though another season is upon us. But not yet. Leaves are still green, flowers still bloom and tomatoes are plentiful on garden vines.  Oh, there may be a stray breeze or two that hints at the cold to come, but for a few weeks it’s still summer.

Over the weekend I cleaned up the county fair. Not the one with the Ferris wheel and pink and blue cotton candy found over in the next town. No, I’m referring to the one the  granddaughters and I made in the living room last week. What fun we had thinking up exciting things to do!

Sierra made a bowling game. We cut up a wrapping paper tube into sections which she colored and set on a piece of stiff foam for the "alley". We found a Wiffle ball to roll against them. Melodi made a pitch and toss out of a sizable piece of cardboard. We cut a big hole out of the middle and she used a black marker to make sure everyone knew it would cost two bucks to toss three tennis balls into it. We draped a sheet over the closet door for a photo booth and made fresh popcorn to sell from red and white striped cartons. All the stuffed animals in the house were used for prizes. It was quite the project. Their dad came later and was the major attendee. He made a big deal out of each game. Bless him.

School starts today and nerves are tight. Lunches and water bottles are stuffed into backpacks. Buses zip by on all the side roads. Classrooms full of crayons, colored paper and A B C’s strung in colorful array around blackboards bring back school days memories to we who have been there and done that. Books are piled on shelves waiting to be cracked open and teachers take attendance. Every kid has chosen clothing, sandwich and attitude carefully. It will take a week or so for the nerves to calm.

I’m reluctant to put summer away. But that breeze, the one bringing winter, blows. It makes me turn my head skyward knowing the leaves only have a tenuous hold on the branches that soon will release them. The oranges, reds and golds will begin to dance around my feet and it won’t be long before pumpkins will grin from fences and porches around town. Halloween cards are already in the stores. Turkeys, warm sweaters and snowmen are peeking at us, too. Time won’t stop marching.  

But it’s still summer. I think I’ll take a short trip back to June and work my way forward through all the wondrous memories I’ve collected since then. That’s what memories and the lovely interlude of September are for. Don’t you think?


Image: Free Digital Photos