"Come let's enjoy our winecup today"

"O Day after day we can't help growing older.

Year after year spring can't help seeming younger.

Come let's enjoy our winecup today,

Nor pity the flowers fallen."

-   Wang Wei, On Parting with Spring

Oh, how true that "day after day we can't help growing older" - and feeling older!  I worked late every day this week, arriving home after most people have settled in front of their TVs or are busy putting the children to bed.  But the evenings were cool, and my husband was waiting on the deck for me.  We delayed dinner late enough to relax and unwind, and then continued enjoying the fresh air by eating our dinner on the deck.
When I was growing up, without air-conditioning, we ate all of our summer meals on the screened porch.  We knew summer had arrived when we were allowed to drink iced tea, go barefoot, and eat on the porch.
Since moving to this house with it's large back deck and relatively private backyard, we've spent as much time as possible enjoying the outdoors.  What a great way to "enjoy our winecup today"!

Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit.  A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world.  ~Ada Louise Huxtable

Pure light and motion

"In Italian Renaissance painting, angels' wings were usually painted in minute detail, often outlining the markings on individual feathers on each wing. (Fra Angelico.) Gilt was also used when it could be afforded, making the wings appear to be even more inlaid and inwrought than the angels' garments. The desired result: to have the wings (especially in Annunciation paintings) give the effect of pure light and motion - but seen in intimate detail, as if with the eye of eternity able to stop time. Yet those angels seem heavily in harness compared with a Ruby-Throat in flight."  Peter Schmidt

What is it about hummingbirds that attracts us so?  Every time a hummingbird comes to my feeder, I stop what I'm doing to watch, and most people I know are the same way.
I was fortunate enough to snap a few pictures of some hummingbirds at the feeder Saturday morning - the thrill I felt was way out of proportion to the size of the bird!

For more information on hummingbirds, visit hummingbirds.net.

A way of holding on

Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.  ~From the television show The Wonder Years

A year ago I was sitting on the porch of this house, nearing the middle of a wonderful family vacation. My father had been diagnosed with inoperable cancer just months before, but had responded well to treatment and was feeling well enough to enjoy walks on the beach, a dinner date with his beautiful wife at his favorite little restaurant, and a game of bocce ball.

This beach was one of my father's favorite places and for many years he spent a week or more there every Spring or Fall.  We felt blessed to find this house that seemed nearly perfect for our gathering.  Family members came and went throughout the week, staggering and overlapping their visits.  Some stayed at a motel just a short distance away.  The group around the dinner table varied from evening to evening, but every seat was always filled.  At the beginning of the week we shivered under blankets on the porch, but at the end we were sunning on the beach.  We talked, read, played games, laughed, and took hundreds of pictures.  We built sand castles, fished, collected shells, and shopped.  We watched the sun set.  We thought about how much we loved each other.  We made memories.
See the slideshow at the top of the blog sidebar for more pictures.

To live in hearts we leave behind

Is not to die.

~Thomas Campbell, Hallowed Ground

"Music that gentlier on the spirit lies"

Music is the medicine of the breaking heart.  ~Leigh Hunt

When I'm melancholy or sad, I look for music to soothe me - not necessarily to cheer me, but to keep me company, to express my feelings for me.   I discovered Eva Cassidy and her music just a few months ago and have listened to it often since.  

Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,

Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.

~Alfred Lord Tennyson

"The most faithful of animals"

The dog is the most faithful of animals and would be much esteemed were it not so common. Our Lord God has made his greatest gift the commonest.

Martin Luther

Last week was National Pet Week, a time to celebrate "the human-animal bond".  I didn't know about it until the time was past, and so we didn't celebrate with our sweet dog Bear (She was named Sugar Bear for her sweet nature by her rescuers, For the Love of Dogs founders Max & Della.)  But every day in this house is one to celebrate the human-animal bond - or at least the bond we have with Bear.  We did the opposite of what most families do - we waited until the children had left home before we adopted a dog.  When the children were growing up we couldn't afford to properly care for both children and  pets.  We weren't comfortable doing as our parents had done - letting the dogs mostly fend for themselves.  

In "Love Has a Price Tag", Elisabeth Elliot writes about her dog, McDuff, who had been sick with cancer: 

"He expected no special treatment. He did not pity himself. He took for granted that he would be able to go on about his accustomed terrier business and when he found that it was somehow not working well, he made his own adjustments as unobtrusively as he could. It was still the supreme object of his life to see that I was happy. I think he lay under the bush in the rain not in order to wallow in solitary self-pity, but in order that I might not see him in trouble. He liked to please me. He delighted to do my will."

I can't truthfully say that Bear delights to do my will - but she does delight in keeping me company and she seems to know instinctively when I am sad and need her comforting presence. When we first brought her home she was afraid to go up the stairs to our bedroom, but now she spends each night by the bed. She loves to go for walks and to sleep on the deck when the weather is cool. She chases squirrels and rabbits and barks at doorbells, fireworks, and strangers at the door. She doesn't chew up valuables and she lets the grandchildren crawl all over her. She likes to "herd" us where she wants us to go. She knocks our hands away from the computer mouse when she wants attention. She loves us unconditionally. What a blessing!

"The one you keep looking for"

In an article for Slate Magazine this week, Meghan O'Rourke remembers her mother, who died less than two years ago.  I understand and relate to the feelings and experiences she shares - my mother died when she was just 44 and I was 18.  My mother would have understood and related, too - she lost her mother when she was just 13 years old.

As much as the talking, the model-providing, the advice, it's that we miss: the blanketing warmth. One of the women Edelman interviewed for her book said, movingly, about being motherless: "You have to learn how to be a mother for yourself. You have to become that person who says, 'Don't worry, you're doing fine. You're doing the best you can.' Sure, you'll call friends who say that to you. … But hearing it from that person who taped up all your scraped knees … that's the one you keep looking for."  Meghan O'Rourke

I've had a hole in my heart and a hole in my life since losing my mother - a condition movingly described in a 1994 column by Anna Quindlen entitled "The least explored passage:  loss that lasts forever."     

Sometimes I imagine in colorful detail what it might have been like if my mother had known and played with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren,  if she had been with us for the weddings and the birthdays and the family vacations.  But mostly I just remember her - that she loved a party.  That she loved having a houseful of people and was at ease cooking and entertaining them.  That she loved the water and the sand - the lake and the beach.  That the conversation around the dinner table was always lively and often thought-provoking.  That she encouraged me and occasionally bribed me to try things and overcome my shyness.  That everyone loved her.  That she loved us.

I try to fill that hole in my heart up with good memories.  I am thankful to have been blessed with many.

"You Can Close Your Eyes"

Yesterday I clicked that I "like" James Taylor on facebook.  (I've actually liked James Taylor's and Carole King's music since 1970. )  Today I (and everyone who "likes" James Taylor) found a gift on facebook - a link to listen to all of the music on the Carole King/James Taylor recording "Live at the Troubadour" that was released today.  Listening to Track 15, "You Can Close Your Eyes" is a soothing way to end the day.
Click here to listen.  Or watch the trailer below.

"Honey for a Child's Heart". . .and for mine

When my children and my sister's children were small, she gave me a copy of "Honey for a Child's Heart" by Gladys Hunt.  The back cover of the book states "A good book is a gateway into a wider world of wonder, beauty, delight, and adventure."  The book guides parents in including reading in family life and in encouraging children to read.  And there's a book list, too, with suggestions for all ages.  We read many of the books on that list as a family.  Some we read aloud, others the children read on their own.  One of the joys of all the reading was that I was introduced to these books, too.  I loved "The Secret Garden", "The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe", and "A Certain Small Shepherd" as much as my children did.  I have always been a voracious reader, and my mother was a believer in the public library, where we spent a lot of time.  But for some reason, I had not been introduced to many of these books.
Now, as a grandmother, I love reading to my grandchildren.  I look forward to the time when they are old enough to enjoy what my daughter called "chapter books" - when they beg for "one more chapter" before the lights are out.
But I discovered all those years ago that those books are not just for children.   I'm currently reading "Prince Caspian" by C.S. Lewis, which I started just after finishing "The Magician's Nephew" (no, I'm not reading them in order!).  I read Madeleine L'Engle's  "A Wrinkle in Time" not long ago, and am thinking of re-reading the Austin Family books.  Or maybe I'll go back to some other classics - the books I read as a preteen or teenager, such as "Little Women" and "Jane Eyre".  Whenever the new books in the book store or on the library shelve are unappealing, I know it's time to read something that will nourish my soul.

  My dad reading to three of his grandchildren in the early 1980s.