I wandered....

   On the hillside behind our house there are daffodils planted in masses in a length of over two hundred feet.  I can’t see them from the house, so I have take a short stroll if I want to enjoy them, and so far I haven’t taken the time to do much daffodil gazing.  But this morning I spent a few minutes there just as the sun was coming up.  The brightest yellow ones have finished blooming and mostly the small white Jonquils are left “dancing in the breeze”. 

  When I see all these daffodils in multitudes a poem comes to mind.  I have a thing for poetry.  I think it came from my mamma reading the Childcraft Book of Poetry to us when I was young.  I’ve always loved classic poetry - pictures made with words set to a cadence with rhyme.  It seems miraculous to me that a person can create things like this. 

  I find old books of poetry to be irresistible.  When I was in my teens I started collecting old volumes and spent hours reading.  If I went on a trip there was usually a poem book tucked in my suitcase somewhere, and when I would go for weeks at a time to Bible schools, I had a whole stack to take along. 

  Now there’s not so much time for poetry reading.  But there are bits and pieces tucked away in my mind that come back at random times.  Like when I see the daffodils…

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

by William Wordsworth  1804

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed--and gazed--but little thought

 What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

Let all that I am praise the LORD; may I never forget the good things he does for me.

Psalm 103:2 NLTI Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

Memories

  I’m starting.  I can hardly bring myself to do it.  All these photos.  All these memories.  And I am so inadequate to do it - compiling old photos and memories into scrapbook pages.  I didn’t even know my Grandfather very well. Mostly he was out at the barn with the menfolk when I was around.  He sat on his “deacon’s bench” at the head of the dining room table every Easter and Christmas and his voice was quiet and calm as he said grace.  That’s how I remember him.  Quiet and calm.  Even as my Grandmother, Aunt, and I sat once in a Cracker Barrel restaurant in the midst of a ridiculous laughing fit he didn’t crack a smile.  But I imagine his eyes were twinkling even though I couldn’t see for sure in the dim light.  Every now and then he’d make a quiet comment that would only add fuel to our fire so I know he was enjoying himself. 

  I (me, little old me) have the old suitcase with the travel sticker from Denver Colorado and the United Airlines Tag still dangling from the handle.  That was my Grandfather’s.  It was found out in a shed on his farm last year with a collection of his personal things 15 years after he passed.  It has hundreds of old pictures from his travels and life in his single years.  My Grandfather was a bachelor until the age of 40.

Some of the random things in the suitcase.

I just love this picture!  It just makes me smile.  My Grandfather was a farmboy.  Isn't he a good looking young fellow?!  I wish I could have known him back then!

These are photos my Grandfather took while in Europe right after WWII.  Gutted buildings, demoished planes and old bombs. He served with the CPS (Civilian Public Service).

This CPS Reserve Corps that my Granfather Hiram served in, helped deliver cattle and horses to war-torn countries. During 1946, three hundred and sixty-six CPS men served on ships that sailed from Newport News or Norfolk, Virginia to Europe.  My Grandfather also served doing various other things in Ohio, Pensylvania, Maine and Colorado .

I spent a morning last summer with my great aunt Nancy, my grandfather's youngest sister, to get her insights on some of these old snapshots.  It was such fun to hear her stories and see her memories come alive when she'd see a photo.  I took notes on what she described.   We both found it humorous how many pictures there were of young ladies!

Aunt Nancy said the family would often gather at the homeplace for Sunday Dinner.  This is one of those occaisions.

A group of friends and brothers. My Grandfather is the one with his hat cocked back on the far right.

   Somehow a year ago as the family sorted through some of these old things I ended up with this suitcase, his old camera, different odds and ends of papers, a coin purse and lots and lots of wonderful old photos.  Most of them are small with the fancy ragged edge that was popular at the time.  I was afraid to even hope that I might have even some of these photos.  But as people at the family gathering were looking through them, they seemed to want me to take them.  So I am the one who came home with them and I’m honored to be the one to keep these treasures alive.  These memories that my Grandfather rarely spoke of.

  But as I sat in the front seat of the maroon GMC pickup that day with my daddy in the driver’s seat and the suitcase of memories in the back, I fought back tears. Emotions.  Something inside me was rising up and fighting.  Why? How?  Why must it be that these memories which once were important to my Grandfather are fading out of the picture? Why does no one hold on to them and keep them alive?  But he’s just one in a vast number. One.  One measly little human being.  In five of these years that are shown in the pictures, estimates say 50 million to 70 million human beings lost their lives in a war that affected the globe.  And I’m battling tears for the sake of the memories of one?  It’s not my personal sadness of his absence that makes the tears come.  It’s that he as a person is being lost in time.  Because he matters.  Because every soul ever formed matters.  Life is sacred.  Each life is sacred.  And it seems like no one cares.  There is nothing we can do against the roll of time and loss and indifference. 

  That is why I want to do these pages.  Why it even matters.  He’s only one person in the multitudes. But he is one!  If I can preserve some of what mattered to him, then I can make my own personal statement for myself and say, “His memories matter because he matters”, “because EVERY LIFE EVER LIVED matters.”  And even if I can do nothing about the lives of the masses, there are some things I CAN do in my allotted time on this earth.  There are certain people that I can touch, that I can make a difference to.  I can do my part at this time, in this place.  I am part of history.  I may not make a difference in the grand scheme of things, but to a few I can be the difference. This is how I want to live my life.

"And on some have compassion, making a difference."
Jude 1:22

Double the Sweetness!

 I had the privilege of photographing these beautiful twin babies last month.  I could hardly get enough of their sweetness! 

The soft stroke of spring

Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.

 Psalm 36:5

SNOW

I was planning to post something about spring this week…. but….. yesterday it snowed.  The weather keeps doing flip flops.  One day I’m wearing flip-flops and a couple of days later here’s the snow!  And in a few more days, Mr. Weatherman says we’re looking for 70 degrees again.  But that’s okay with me.  I like both possibilities fine. 

When my girls bring me certain books at bedtime I groan inside.  Then there are other books that never get old.  Some of those are the poetry books for young children.  I thought of the little poem by Marie Louise Allen when I saw our own popcorn-ball boxwood bushes yesterday.

FIRST SNOW
Snow makes whiteness where it falls.
The bushes look like popcorn-balls.
The places where I always play,
Look like somewhere else today.

Thaw

by Eunice Tietjens

The snow is soft,
and how it squashes!
"Galumph, galumph!"
go my galoshes.

Talking in Their Sleep by Edith M. Thomas

"You think I am dead,"
The apple tree said,
"Because I have never a leaf to show-
Because I stoop,
And my branches droop,
And the dull gray mosses over me grow!

But I'm still alive in trunk and shoot;
The buds of next May
I fold away-
But I pity the withered grass at my root."

"You think I am dead,"
The quick grass said,
"Because I have parted with stem and blade!
But under the ground,
I am safe and sound
With the snow's thick blanket over me laid.

I'm all alive, and ready to shoot,
Should the spring of the year
Come dancing here-
But I pity the flower without branch or root."

"You think I am dead,"
A soft voice said,
"Because not a branch or root I own.
I never have died,

but close I hide
In a plumy seed that the wind has sown.

Patient I wait through the long winter hours;
You will see me again-
I shall laugh at you then,
Out of the eyes of a hundred flowers.

“You will show me the path of life: in your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand there are pleasures forevermore.” Psalms 16:11