Sitting on the Front Porch

It seems that every minute of the day fills me with an anxious feeling that I should be working on a project, or two, or three. Sometimes I feel like I’m juggling burning batons of responsibility and if I don’t keep tossing my hair is going to catch on fire.

This weekend was different. After all, it was a holiday weekend, and one of those rare opportunities when my entire family was under my roof. I figured emails, book orders, volunteer work, and that nagging little voice in my head that keeps saying, “you’re getting farther behind,” could just take a rest.

After breakfast of biscuits and gravy, we had an impromptu Easter egg hunt for the two youngest grandkids. Since they were dressed in their Easter outfits and ready for church, we hid the plastic eggs in the living room.

During services this morning, the pastor asked the questions, “How many doors have you gone through this morning?” I’ll have to admit, I’ve often thought of the symbolism of doors. Jim always likened death to closing one door and opening another. But physical doors—had I ever thought about that? How many doors do I go through in the course of a day?

This house that Jim and I built has a lot of doors. I pass through them time after time. It seems that as I get older, I’m passing through them even more often when I realize I’ve forgotten something in another room. In addition, this morning, I was almost to my car when I remembered my camera. I into the house, picked up the camera and passed through the same door to go outside.  

This afternoon, I spent about an hour working on an upcoming presentation. With the sun shining brightly outside, I turned off the netbook and made a pitcher of tea. I poured a glass and walked through the door to join my son, Eric, and daughter-in-law, Shawna, on the front porch.

“This is a perfect day,” I said. The thermometer showed nearly seventy degrees, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. We walked out into the yard to enjoy the warmth of the sunlight. Birds chirped, squirrels barked, and a crow cawed loudly before he flew across the yard in a straight line toward the woods. The phrase ran through my head, “as the crow flies.” We talk about that when we are trying to describe not how we would make the journey, but the distance without those normal boundaries. I noted that the crow actually flew in a straight line.

We meandered out onto the gravel road and started walking.

“You used to walk the dogs to the corner nearly every day,” Eric said.

“Yes, I did,” I said thinking about Bubba the huge, furry mixed-breed dog and Sherry the German shepherd. Both dogs died years ago. Bubba died from old age and Sherry died from grief a few months later.

After our walk, we sat on the front porch visiting and enjoying the peace and quiet.

Sunday was so unlike Easters of the past. When Jim’s parents were living, their house and yard overflowed with family. The little kids would be kept inside while the older kids and adults hid hundreds of eggs—plastic eggs, hard-boiled eggs, peeps, chocolate foil wrapped eggs. The kids would  rush outdoors with the biggest basket they could carry to gather Easter Goodies.

This Easter, we watched Katrina the cat chase a lizard. We sat and visited like the old days except that the ding of cell phones interrupted the conversations as friends near and far checked in via text messaging, email, and Facebook.

After a few relaxing hours spent on the front porch, I carried the holiday feeling throughout the evening. I didn’t turn on the netbook and answer the annoying email I ignored yesterday. I didn’t work on the spreadsheet, place any orders, worry about my committee lists or corporate sponsors, or my taxes for that matter.

A holiday should allow time to sit and contemplate the significance of how many doors I pass through in the course of a day. And on Easter Sunday, I enjoyed the gift of a perfect day when I indulged in the simple pleasure of sitting on the front porch with family.

Copyright April 2012 by L.S. Fisher

http://earlyonset.blogspot.com

A New Day—A Fresh Start

The only good thing I can say about a long, hard winter is it makes me really appreciate spring. A spring day gives me renewed hope and vigor. I now feel capable of tackling those obstinate problems that seemed insurmountable when the wind chill was below zero.

It is refreshing to open the patio doors and have a spring breeze flush out the stale breath of winter. The sound of twittering birds and barking squirrels are infinitely more welcome than the sound of sleet against my bedroom window.

To me a spring day is like the joy of Easter after the gloom of Good Friday. It is the rebirth of my spiritual wellbeing. How could I be depressed or sad when redbuds, dogwood, and lilies provide color against a backdrop of shades of green—grass, leaves, bushes, and evergreens?

Words cannot express the glory of the sun’s golden rays. No one even complains much when driving into the blinding morning or evening sun.

I feel like a flower, turning my face toward the sun, and showing bright spring colors. I am tired of dull and drab. The winter blahs already seem like a memory, and I walk with a spring in my step.

I can even forgive spring its sorrows and the sad days of remembrance. Jim died on a warm April day five years ago. For a time, I thought that would make me dread April and the memories of that moment when dementia took Jim away. In reality, death gave him back to me. In the midst of losing Jim to dementia, I learned to accept the changes in him and to love him for the person he had become. It was too painful to remember him as he was before dementia.

After Jim died, I could embrace the memories of the man he was before the disease stole him away. In April 2005, the youthful Jim, the fun-loving man, the person who cherished me and became my best friend was reborn in my memories.

Life goes on and although my babies are grown to men, my four grandchildren bring joy into my life with the dependability of flowers breaking through the soil to brighten the days of spring.

Last weekend, my six-year-old granddaughter handed me a sheet of paper and asked me to sign up for art classes.

“I can’t sign up for art classes,” I said, “because I can’t draw.”

“Grandma Linda, you don’t have to draw, I just need you to sign up.”

“Okay, then . . . if I don’t have to draw, I’ll sign up.”

In a few minutes she handed me a marker and a sketch pad. “Draw a picture of a flower,” she said.

“Oh, I can draw a flower,” I said, and quickly drew a circle surrounded with loops, a stem, and threw in a few blades of grass at the bottom.

Ever the encourager, she said, “That’s a good picture, Grandma Linda. It looks real!”

“Smell it,” I said. “I bet it smells like a flower.”

She held the sketch pad up to her nose and took a whiff. “It smells just like paper!” she declared. Let’s face it, there is no substitute for the real thing.

No matter how dead plants and trees may look during the frigid days of winter, they flourish anew with the passage of time. A spring day is a new day, a new chapter in life, a time for a fresh start, and a resurgence of hope.

copyright (c) April 2010 L. S. Fisher
http://earlyonset.blogspot.com
Vist my baby boomer blog at http://boomerobics.blogspot.com

Teddy Bear Smiles and Not So Sweet Dreams

Like many other children, my granddaughter has a favorite stuffed animal she wants to hug while she sleeps. Her bedtime companion is Finney, a Build-a-Bear puppy born in Branson. From the time she warmed his “heart” in her hands, Finney has been her nighttime companion.

Last weekend at bedtime, her question was “Where’s Finney?”

Her mom, Stacey, told her, “He’s in the car with Daddy.”

“But Daddy is at the races!” my granddaughter said. “Finney is alone in the car. I feel so bad!” She buried her face in my lap.

We spent several minutes reassuring her that Finney would be OK. My granddaughter insisted, “He’s afraid of the dark!”

Stacey handed her a big Teddy bear. “You can sleep with this bear until Daddy gets home.”

“Why don’t you hug him?” I asked her. “He hardly ever gets hugs.” The snuggly brown bear had a big sewn-on smile and an orange ribbon around his neck.

My granddaughter hugged him tight. When she held him out to look at him, she said, “Oh, Grandma Linda, his smile is bigger now. Look! He’s so happy!”

I finished a few things before going into my bedroom. She was fast asleep on my bed with the bear hugged to her heart.

With such a pleasant evening, I expected a good night’s sleep. Instead, that was the first night of a week-long series of bad dreams. Night after night, I dreamed about packing for a trip. Nothing seemed to go right in the dreams: the van showed up to take me to the airport before I had my suitcases packed, I couldn’t find my passport, my purse was missing. The scenarios changed but the disturbing dreams continued all week.

Last night, I slept restfully without any bad dreams. I awakened to discover my arms wrapped around the Teddy bear—his nose to my nose. Daylight flowed through the windows, and I could easily see his smiling face.

Not quite ready to wake up, I closed my eyes for a few seconds and thought about the weekend ahead. Easter weekend will be a celebration of Easter egg hunts and services at the Mathewson Center. But the best part of the weekend is my sons and their families plan to join me for Easter services. With our hectic lives, it seems we are seldom together.

With my eyes still closed, I thought about other Easters—the time Jim and his brother-in-law, Dennis, caught a stringer of fish; hiding Easter eggs too well and helping the kids find them; huge family meals at my mother-in-law’s house, dressing the kids up in their Easter outfits, and a rush of other memories about Easters past.

I opened my eyes and smiled at the Teddy bear I still held in my arms. He smiled back, of course, with his sewn-on happy face. Maybe my granddaughter was right—his smile seemed a bit bigger than it had been. Well, at the thought of the weekend ahead, I know mine certainly was.