Days pass

This week, one of my children's teachers died.  I saw a colleague who lost his son, and learned of another colleague's desire to beat death of its next victim.  So why are we here?

Watching and waiting

It’s coming….  The meteorologist says it is.  The thick blue scarf-like front to the west resembles an impermeable wall on the digital image.  The sky is black with streetlights vainly trying to pierce the darkness, but it’s not here. 

Will it snow? 

January has been balmy this year with days that beg the young child to dig and the gardener to plant.  Dogs frolic about like it is spring while cats mark their territory. 

It is not winter.  My face is not windburned.  There isn’t a puddle next to the door left by wet boots.  There isn’t a blanket of white or a pile of gray, dingy snow at the end of the road.

Is it part of a 100-year pattern or is it proof of global climate change?   Should it be embraced and appreciated or seen as the end of an era and mourned? 

I wait and watch.  I wonder and wander, my tired thoughts begging for solace.

What are your New Year’s resolutions?

I’m resolving to take a class this winter, take better care of myself, be discovered by a publisher, write poetry (and words for songs), climb things that afford good views (like hills or bluffs), do something with paint and/or mixed media, spend time with family and friends, help others, start a prayer circle, give away stuff that others need more than I do, walk and ride bicycles more places than last year, laugh more, sleep more, and find joy without glittering snowflakes to tame the biting winds of winter.  I’ve got more things to add to the list, but that will be for New Year’s resolutions installment #2 in a few months.  

Today made me miss the mild 40 degree F temperatures we’d been experiencing as the wind froze my naked face this evening.  Even running man looked a bit stiffer than usual.  Running man is a trim, older gent wearing a glow-in-the-dark vest who can be seen briskly jogging through the neighborhood about the same time every night.  He doesn’t say “hi” or wave to anyone, he just keeps running in his own space and time.   I wonder what he resolved to do in 2012.  How about you?

A visit to the farm

A glassy green thread of water flows through shades of brown, bronze, and gold below the bridge.  Figures of oak trees pierce endless sky over the prairie beside the railroad tracks.  The days are too short, the temperatures no longer balmy.  Winter lurks in the darkness that surrounds me as I drive home.

Will I see a deer like I did the other day near the hospital?  Lee thought it was fake, but I knew better, with rutting season in full swing.  This whitetail, at least an 8- point buck, was going to leap across the road at some point, just (fortunately) not as I was passing. 

Tonight there were no deer visible to my eyes, but they were there – in the fields, hills, and prairies I passed shrouded in darkness that seemed to swallow everything in its path.

About 6 pm, I got home from an afternoon of making soap – measuring and melting fat, watching a volatile chemical (lye) make distilled water come to a rolling bowl in a plastic container, then watching my friend thoroughly mix everything together and bake this soupy jade-colored concoction.  I got to help put it in molds although I didn’t stick around long enough for the soap to become solid.  It was interesting, but a bit scary working with lye.  It made me wonder what was in my scented gel soaps at home..

Dinner, death, and darkness

The wind bit at my ears as I rode my bicycle today.  It is one day past the middle of November and it seems as if our part of the world is tilting further and further away from the sun.  Darkness intrudes in the late afternoon hastening children to come in from their backyards and find something to do indoors.  The food is a comforting spinach quiche wrapped in a doughy blanket of hot brown crust.  Lee and Ez don’t like it but Scott does.  For a thin man, he is voracious and eats every meal like it is his last. 

For one of our friends, it was her last meal yesterday.  She didn’t drop dead, but slowly departed a painful earthly existence taking one last breath in the presence of her husband and children. 

It wasn’t fair for her to suffer, but it wasn’t fair for her to die.

All is dark and silent as blackness shrouds the Midwest with dots of light from distant stars.  Smokey, a gray tabby cat with black stripes, purrs on my lap.

No more waiting

Let me preface this by saying, I did not write this today.  It was sitting on the laptop waiting to be sent out.  Waiting... waiting.. alright I was thinking about it, but it was still waiting.. so I'm finally sharing it.

No more waiting..

I wish you were here to see the trees adorned in bronze with intermittent hues of scarlet, a blue sky painted overhead with clouds from heaven touching their limbs.  It is fall in the rolling hills of St. Charles, Illinois, a place that makes me less homesick for the foothills of Appalachia found in southern Ohio where I was raised. 

I took some photos of Pleasant Valley Conservation Area in Woodstock (attached) to give you a glimpse of the beauty here.   Autumn is not just a season for the eyes, but an invitation for all of the senses to feel warm sunlight punctuated by sharp winds, smell scents of wet leaves mingled with fungus, and taste apples so fresh that they have little of any resemblance to their store bought counterparts.

The value of today

It’s another beautiful early fall blue-sky day.  A pile of work awaits my attention even though the dishes have been washed and everyone has left for their respective jobs.  

The goldenrod beckons my hand to pick a bunch for the table as the phone rings..

I’m on the other line. 

It’s Mom.  

She has called to tell me that her friend’s husband just died.  He wasn’t well, but that doesn’t matter for now he is treading a path where he shall never be seen again by his loving wife or family in some heavenly place  (if such a place exists).  We’re taught that it does, but where’s the proof? 

What if we’re living in heaven today?  What if we are supposed to behold the grandeur of creation in a ladybug walking on a squash vine, a duck swimming gracefully atop the water of a mirror-like pond, or a warming beam of sunlight?

What if everyone we met were someone special – someone to be valued and cherished the way a great Maker might see him or her, someone who recognized the greatness they were meant to reflect in their being every moment in time?