radio days

"Henreeeeeeeeeeee! ! Henry Aldrich!"
"Coming, Mother!"

And with those words ringing through my ears, I am back home in the front room in Hinkletown! I looked up the date of the show's radio premiere and it was 1949! Though I was just small and I couldn't tell you a single plot of the show, I do remember vividly all the laughs and warm feelings it produced in my family. And how quaint to think of a family gathered in one room to listen to a show! The concept of family gatherings in one room is rare enough today, but just to listen and let minds fill in the details and keep eyes and fingers idle is beyond foreign these days!

Yes, we say, life was simpler then. But, seriously, didn't our minds have to work harder to create and flesh out the scenes we were hearing? Sometimes I think those days are looked down upon when actually they were in many ways far more inventive and creative because we had to fill in so many blanks on our own. And in that family gathering, most certainly every person had a different image in his head about what actually was happening. Whereas, with TV and DVDs everyone is being spoon-fed the images with little room for invention or interpretation.

Of course I wouldn't want to go back entirely to the world of radio, but I must say I am turning to it more and more as the multi-media technological bombardment can be quite exhausting!

little shop of kindness

There is a wonderful classic movie called "Little Shop Around the Corner" starring Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan. Many remakes of it have been attempted and I wish everyone would just be content to let this little gem sparkle on its own down through the decades. Stewart and Sullivan are obviously the bones of the movie, but an absolutely stellar cast fills in the spaces. The setting is Christmas in Budapest in the 1940's. At the end, the elderly shop-owner whose marriage has just crumbled is alone on Christmas Eve and describes a dinner of roast goose to a hungry young apprentice while the snow is falling all around. The simple anticipated bond of a shared dinner on a lonely night shines anew each time I watch it.

In this season of sickening buying, returning, exchanging, re-gifting, and general discontent about what was given, what was spent, what was flaunted, I wander back to the streets of Budapest and find that a simple act of kindness makes my season bright indeed.

Kleiny's hill

"Can we go sledding?"

Wow, I still feel the excitement of that question 60 + years later! For us, it definitely meant parental permission because we had to tug said sleds along a two-lane highway - now that I think of it, a trek made all the more dangerous because of icy, snowy roads - to Kleiny's hill down near the creek. 

It wasn't a particularly long hill, more short and steep, made especially treacherous if you began just a bit higher so that you hit a bump between two trees. The little kids, i.e. me, were supposed to begin below the bump and avoid the tree syndrome, but we all know the reality of that! I truly don't remember any major accidents but real scares once or twice.

The thing is, we were padded to the hilt! Puffy snow-pants with suspenders, jackets, caps, mittens (can you still taste the wadded snow that had to be eaten off them!?!), scarves wound around rosy cheeks that immediately became wet with cold breaths and boots that buckled or pulled on. Mere movement was a chore! - injury not much of a reality!

But still, flying downhill through the gray, snowy afternoons, flakes biting into your cheeks, half of your clothing soggy, on that sled, either on your tummy, guiding with your hands or sitting and guiding with your feet.....power, speed, freedom, ecstasy!

Now, every single aspect of it would give me pause.

But I am not old!

Apples of gold

In my annual Christmas gathering with my book club I asked them the question that was posed by an author recently - "What book changed your life or at least had great influence on your life enough to go back and re-read frequently?"

For a reader that's a toughie! But it was fascinating to hear the choices. Some chose books from their childhoods, other's young adult and still others present-day. And amazingly, for the childhood picks, over and over they said Nancy Drew! How many children first caught the reading passion through Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys! That first magic carpet ride that lifted you above the treetops into a world of mystery and intrigue, giving you a friend beyond your daily life. That bond is repeated over and over by the best selling authors of today. They introduce you to a likable protagonist and you feel like you are shaking hands with an old friend each time you open a book in the series.

I pondered my response to the question and last week suddenly settled on the King James Bible. I must hasten to say in this context, not because of the religious part, but because the magnificent literature, the cadence of the archaic language, the exquisite imagery and yes, the stories, the stories, the stories. I feel as though all these things are layered and layered within me because of my early childhood exposure. Joyce Maynard once said that her parents raised her without any religious tenets and at first she was grateful and now resentful because her ignorance of the Bible is such a handicap in literature and art. Biblical references are everywhere!

And I feel as a writer I have benefited from that early Biblical steeping - as my mother used to love to quote from Proverbs, " A word fitly spoke is like apples of gold in pictures of silver." 

Words to savor.

cometh the clipper

"The north wind doth blow and we shall have snow
And what will poor robin do then, poor thing?
He'll sit in the barn and keep himself warm
And hide his head under his wing, poor thing!"

How often these learned childhood verses line my thoughts and/or speech! I think I remember the nursery rhymes in particular, but also all the songs and poems we learned at school or as I have so often said, at Mother's elbow as she was working away in the kitchen. I think I will start keeping track of the frequency! 

But looking out on the grey skies whipping the few remaining leaves from the bare trees, I feel as though I need a warm wing for tucking under as well!

one day wonder

Much as I love the concept of snowstorms moving in and completely cloaking the world with stillness for a brief day, perhaps I love even more the brilliant sunshine the next day unraveling all the chaos! How nice to see dry roads and see that last patch of ice sliding away and our steps unchallenged. That's here in Virginia, but I remember the early days of both upstate New York and Newfoundland, when that first snowfall came to town, life had an icy edge underfoot until Spring! At this stage in my life I love puddles in winter!

Praise

John Updike was once asked "Why are we here?" And he answered, "We are here to give praise."

I love that answer. Praise. It's always a smiling word.

Praise to a child for a task well-done. Praise to a spouse for a thoughtful gesture. Praise to a neighbor for a blooming garden. Praise to a colleague for the deft handling of a situation. Praise to yourself. 

We crave it. It melts like butter in your soul, warmly enriching the day.

We hear so often, praise to God. 

Yes, but praise to all creatures here below as well.

Praise. Talk about the perfect present under the tree.

in the morning light

Stillness.

We crave it. Especially now.

Despite efforts to minimize, minimize, minimize over the holidays, it just seems gatherings, meeting with friends, little token gifts, food to prepare for this event or that - not big parties! - mount up and the season gathers manic moss.

I'm not hoisting the white flag. But that morning walk with the rising sun has more and more nerves to un-jangle and smooth into stillness.