Blog : Beautiful-Things
Play
| February 16, 2014 There is perhaps no better way to celebrate resurrection than to spend time with children. Today my younger nephews and I pulled their Easter kites up and down the horse pasture, and I spent the evening hours chasing the older ones around their grandparents’ yard.
Seder
| February 15, 2014 Tonight our Jewish friends shared the Passover Seder with us--explained the ancient symbols, sang the Hebrew songs, recited the old, old prayers. We dipped our greens in salt water, our pinkies in red wine. We spread bitter herbs on unleavened bread. I learned the Hebrew word dayenu, which means it would have been sufficient...
Bicycle
| February 14, 2014 After work I fetched my bicycle from the shop where they had tuned it up--wrapped my Ram’s Horn handlebars with fresh tape, tightened the brakes, flossed the cassette until it sparkled.
Writing
| February 13, 2014 I was dense today, rushed. I kept losing important things--the keys, the phone, my daughter’s pacifier. I forgot to keep an eye out for something beautiful. But I do have this quiet moment--
Dishes
| February 12, 2014 When I was twelve years old and so afraid of dying, I wrote in my journal that maybe by the time I grew old I would be ready. Perhaps after ninety years, after approximately 32,400 breakfasts and lunches and dinners and nighttimes, I would be weary of life.
Green
| February 11, 2014 Today, weary of traffic, I took the back roads home. Now is the season of every green imaginable...
Home
| February 10, 2014 This afternoon, before the youths from our church arrived at our house, I was distracted by the scarred baseboards and stained carpets and how much the kitchen walls needed washing. But then...
Papers
| February 9, 2014 My husband took the babe away early this morning so that I could spend the entirety of today marking the first drafts of my students’ research papers. I have tried so hard to find beauty in my work...
Cardinal
| February 8, 2014 Had it not been for the vainglorious crimson cardinal strutting up and down the branches of our lilac tree, I might not have noticed...
Cold
| February 7, 2014 My little love is still sick--her nose a broken egg, her coughs like tiny barks. She has been sick for a couple of days, but today...
Snake
| February 6, 2014 This afternoon a friend brought over, among other things, a garter snake she had rescued from her cat. There was also the armful of forsythia branches she left on my porch, the violets she picked for my daughter, but the snake...
Benediction
| February 5, 2014 Today, a work day, I made it through one class and graded half a stack of essays before the daycare called to tell me my daughter had spiked another fever. I have missed too much work already; I am haggard, forgetful, behind. But leaving campus I noticed...
Dust
| February 4, 2014 I was struck today by a couple of things--the perfume of hyacinths, a woman with white hair that hung down to the backs of her knees--but I have finally settled on dust.
Hymn
| February 3, 2014 This morning at church I plunked out the four parts of an old hymn while above my chords the congregation’s voices took flight. And I thought of geese...
Morning
| February 2, 2014 When my infant daughter wakes at two in the morning and her father cannot coax her back to sleep, she and I curl up on the mattress in the guest room below the big window...
Beet
| February 1, 2014 I sliced a beet in half and discovered that it has rings. Rings like you would find on a tree stump to mark its age--one ring, one year. But beets are young, have only known one spring, one summer, one early fall, perhaps also one winter passed inside in a dark, dry box. So what could each ring represent?
