Ecstasy

Just as I sampled
a hand-crafted
deep chocolate
truffle,
its dusky smoothness
swirling
over my
tongue,
Beethoven's 6th
struck up
its pastoral frolic
and my smile went
head to toe.

Mind Over Matter

My library book club keeps expanding. One of our more recent additions is a 93-yr-old reader who walks, speaks, hears with a bit of difficulty but reads and perceives with perfect acuity. She came to the group for a few times before her daughter wrote to me and said that the group has changed her life. It's the first thing of interest to her since her husband died several years ago. My group of 11 years opened the circle of chairs and hearts for this veteran of life and its quite impossible to say whose life is richer for the overlay.

Please, God, at 93, let me be Mary.

Mabel, Mabel set the table

There is something so sweet about the slap of rope against the pavement in springtime.

A Japanese family moved into the house across the street - actually the father is Japanese and the mother, American and the girls, beautiful. They attend a local Japanese immersion program at one of the public schools. They are learning how to jump rope.

For days I watched the haphazard swinging and ill-timed jumping. But now we're down to a science. Father and youngest daughter "turn" the rope while the oldest daughter jumps. And jumps. And jumps. And my 69-yr-old mind pages backward to the muddy spring schoolyeard at school where, when the bell rang, we exploded outside and took our places with the thick stinging rope, Double Dutch or singles. And the sing-songed the ditties that accompanied them:

"Mabel, Mabel, set the table
Don't forget the salt and pepper "(furious fast jumping)

"Cinderella dressed in yellow
Went downtown to meet her fella
She sang, she sang, she sang so sweet
And along came _____ and kissed her on the cheek,
How many kisses did she get?",,,,,,

And so on.

Now, my entire body rather shrinks from the imagined assault - wouldn't something shake loose??

Sunday Morning Abultions

sunshine pulled back the covers,
shoved me out the door,
and around the lake.

Carolina wrens chatted
Daffodils up and at em'
Yesterday's sleet hanging
by a glistening thread.

Gray-haired lady walking Scotties
whispered as I passed,
"oh, the sun!"

The universe said yes.

Prism

For a recent family gathering I created a quiz about our childhood household, including identification of hymns  from isolated phrases. They were puzzled by four words "in this glad hour" but when I sang the four accompanying notes, immediately from our group of nine came the harmonious tenor, bass, soprano, alto voices singing the entire hymn, "Come Thou Almighty King" - from memory, finding the words and melody like stepping over stones in a clear running brook, picking our way through the years.

 Beautiful.

Check the Box

Lately I have been immersing myself in British Masterpiece Theatre WWII series like Foyle's War and Island at War. I am mesmerized.

While too young to have absorbed any personal involvement I find it incomprehensible how this one man's racial venom could have been allowed to morph into cataclysmic world-wide tragedy.

I think today we have checks and balances.

But how deep is the moat?

Ham Off the Hook

My childhood attic was a place of mystery. Dark shadows under the eaves potentially hid mice. I dreaded hearing that quick scurry. But it also held trunks of treasures - Mother's wedding dress, books of jig-saw puzzles, Christmas decorations, pennants from trips, a rocker with a broken cane seat, rolls of old wallpaper, an old heavy tin camping set where all the utensils fit together in a snug lidded pot, and many other unexplored cartons.

But hanging from an east rafter was always a ham from the fall butchering, covered with fat and salt. From time to time, some adult person would go up and cut off a piece for our dinner. As I recall, Mother cooked it for hours with green beans and served it with mashed potates, a sweet/sour tomato cucumber salad and a sweet, creamy rice pudding that she simmered in her double boiler.

Heaven.

The anemic slice of ham slathered in plastic bearing the banner "Boars Head's Best" that I bought at Harris-Teeter yesterday should blush with shame.