A gracious plenty

I heard a person repeat a phrase of his mother's - "a gracious plenty".

If you were reared in the South, the saying is probably old hat.

As a northerner, I had never heard it.

But it fell immediately upon fallow soil within me.

I looked it up and I think it most often meant to visitors - stay for a meal- we can easily share.

I think I have often heard - "Stay, there's plenty of food."

But what a difference to the ear and heart is "gracious plenty."

Not only do we have enough food and space, they are laced with grace.

Though our country is riddled with disease, dissention and random slaughter, it is soothing to imagine with a little more conscious effort to share our gracious plenty we might feed our mutually starving souls.

March 20

 First day of spring.

Did four little words ever bear such excitement? I know we are always glad, but this year the possibilities seem majestic.

Might we really be on the brink of new life after a year of tiptoeing around death?

I know we are far from free of the pandemic, but even the door to hope being ajar is almost overwhelming.

I don't know what the weeks will bring but for now I take enormous joy in ...

-the titmouse singing for a mate all day long

-white, yellow, purple, lavender, blue crocus shining up between the dead leaves

-forsythia beginning to golden

-flickers drumming on our chimney

-daylight lingering

-bluebirds cleaning house

-daffodils shooting up overnight and dancing in the sunlight

All these, I embrace with gratitude and hope with their coming, freer footsteps will follow.

Ah, Spring!

proverb

" two's company, three's a crowd"

It's an old saying that is often applied to courting, is it?

I have always pondered it.

And much as I don't mean to be anti-social, I think it's really true! When interaction consists of two people, usually they can discuss ideas, work out things - happily, sadly, quietly, boisterously.

But add a third person and everything changes.

Suddenly, way more than before, people begin to weigh their responses now that two people are listening. They become self-conscious - either in an introverted or extroverted way.

There is a margin of safety, comfort, sure-footedness if it's just a face-to-face conversation. But add another face and the dynamics change. Significantly.

I think the author of the proverb was wise in the concept and wiser still in the choice of "crowd" rather than "group." Crowd suggests potential trouble, excess, lack of control.

Amazing the gulf between two and three.

Clear the board!

 Clap the erasers.

I wonder if that sentence were posed to children these days, asking for an explanation, would they have any idea?

Blackboards are still sometimes spotted in restaurants or bars featuring the daily special, but it's a rare occurrence.

Schools haven't used blackboards for years.

As for clapping the erasers....

It was one of my favorite chores at school. We would gather up all the erasers, gray-black felt ones covered with white chalk dust, and take them out behind the red brick schoolhouse and, well, clap them! Clouds of dust arose, and we rubbed them up and down against each other to clear them. The urge hit all of us to clap them against the red building, but we only did that once!

The simple economy of it all. The teacher wrote on the board; we copied her words in our notebooks. And don't you think there's a chance we learned more from the effort of seeing and copying - eye/brain/hand - than merely glancing at a handout?

 End of lesson, erase.

 End of week, clap the erasers.

My elementary education in a nutshell!

leaving the nest

Yesterday, I stumbled on to a childhood friend's FB feed and discovered that he is an avid follower of our former president, an anti-vaccination supporter and an LGBT opponent - a three-fer!

I mused upon this for the rest of the day. From time to time, unbidden came the thought that a childhood playmate now in his 70's holds these beliefs. And then I got to wondering where the crossroads in our lives had come.

I have to think that education is a big turning point.

That is not to say that my friend could have a PhD and still believe the things he does today. But I do believe that when life pushes you out of the nest you discover there's a whole world beyond woven sticks and grasses. In the process of flapping those wings in order to avoid crashing into the ground you develop a whole new set of evaluative muscles! 

Though life isn't free of disaster outside the nest, I'm really grateful for that first nudge into teetering flight.

 Three years into retirement, I suddenly received a note from a member of my library book club that I led for 18 years. She thanked me for guiding her reading back to the classics which she had read early in her life - as seemingly we all do - and retained very little having no life experiences to hang the literary value upon. She laughingly said the group's experience has made her impatient with lesser writing!

It was good to hear.

Retirement is like a still, reflecting pool of your own thoughts. While working, one gets constant feedback - good and bad - that help shape your thoughts. Apart from the bustle, sometimes it's hard to remember the relevance of your life's work.

I love life's little rainbows.

And now have a few notes to write of my own.

let the breezes blow

I have an old childhood bench by my bedroom window. This March dip into Springtime allowed me to have an open window for much of the week.

Heaven.

There simply is nothing to compare to that first soft Spring breeze drifting through the winter-bound window!

The air is diffused with pastel light and there are no words for the warm, coolness of it.

On this day I give thanks for the inventor of windows - that open.

And winter hearts that do as well.