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Windows Without Curtains

Windows Without Curtains

Today has begun.  It’s still dark outside; the first light of sunrise will come when it’s ready.  My mug of sipping-hot coffee in hand, I am curled up in my comfy chair where I can keep an eye on the south bank of windows. As with the rest of the house, there are no curtains or blinds to hinder my view. There’s nothing to see yet, unless you count the reflection. Everything in the living room and kitchen, including me sitting in my chair, seem to be hovering just outside the windows. The reflections will slowly fade as first light begins to illuminate what my windows will reveal, a reward for my patience. Even now, dark forms have evolved into fir trees with snow-laden branches. The whirls of snow validate the weather forecast for today. The snow has begun to accumulate.   As I grow older, I am increasingly aware that…

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Roads in my Roses

Roads in my Roses

Roads in my Roses There are roads in my roses That only I can see, When Spring time digging Reveals them to me.   Rusty now against my heart, The car had traveled through the years. Remembering, I see again, This car, new.   And through my smiling tears, I see it launched By then-small hands Busy under a bowed little head,   On roads that reached forever, But never left my flowerbed.

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Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

“Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go....” It took all of the verses of the song, sung several times through, to get us to Grandma and Grandpa’s house on Thanksgiving Day. Since my family often sang during car trips when I was young, I measured distance by the number of songs it took, not the number of miles. You are My Sunshine, The Bull Frog Song, Froggy Went A Courtin’ were regulars, as was 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall for longer trips. During the holidays, we included our seasonal favorites. “Hurrah for the fun; is the pudding done, Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!” Since timing was everything, we tried to finish the song as we pulled up to the gate. As we stepped onto the front porch, the sounds of laughter and wafts of roasting turkey and cornbread stuffing greeted us. Opening the…

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Summer Jobs Provide Lessons for Life

Summer Jobs Provide Lessons for Life

The mass on my desk was beginning to pulsate, taking on a life of its own. Hundreds of tiny legs began to emerge, disentangling, disengaging, apparently seeking a way out. At least five grasshoppers had already hopped off my desk and were making a clean getaway across the office floor. Several groggy beetles were zigzagging in random patterns across the surface of my desk; one was obligingly headed toward the sorting trays to my right. A few mayflies were literally trying to rise above it all.“Dang! The lab didn’t use enough carbon ‘tet’ again this morning,” I muttered to the slowly shrinking mass in front of me. My job had just become messier and more physical than usual. Bugs are much easier to count and sort when they are dead. I was glad that I had worn an older dress to work, but slacks would have been even better for…

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A Clock Needs a Voice and a Heartbeat

A Clock Needs a Voice and a Heartbeat

I am not a clock-watcher by nature, but I do like a house that “tick-tocks” and “bongs,” that has a heartbeat. I feel at home where household activities and conversations are punctuated with deep clangs, melodic chimes, and “cuckoos.” I rarely wear a watch, but when I do, I prefer one with a face and hands and a heart that ticks.As a child, staying overnight with friends and relatives, I realized that every home throbbed with some version of these audible announcements of the passage of time. These metronomes of our lives provided a certain rhythm to each home. Grandfather clocks often presided over household events with a slow steady beat; for homes short of space and money, mantel clocks or bedside clocks tick-tocked reassuringly through the days and nights.I especially loved to visit my aunt and uncle who had a cuckoo clock sitting on a small table next to…

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Dreams of a Four-Year-Old Forest Ranger

Dreams of a Four-Year-Old Forest Ranger

Not that it’s easy now, but being a forest ranger was hard work in the 1940’s.  Being four years old is always hard work.  Combining the two experiences was especially challenging—at least that was the way I saw it.My uncle was a forest ranger during the summers of the mid- to late-1940’s. My aunt was the “chief cook and bottle washer” for the dozen or so rangers stationed at the Big Smokey ranger camp/station in Idaho.Located north of Fairfield and upriver from Featherville, the camp was close to neither.  In fact, as with many ranger stations in those days, it was not easy to get to.  Always winding, the miles of narrow dusty gravel roads included steep mountain passes.  Each turn had its own surprises. Dodging wildlife or boulders, punctured tires from dead porcupines, vapor lock, steaming radiators, the infamous “red-ants-at-the-side-of-the-road” dance and getting carsick were considered normal, if not…

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A Cheep and Invaluable Experience

“Well, it’s just not easy to have a relationship with a chicken”, my friend concluded as we sat around the table comparing chicken stories. (Yes, we really were.) “I guess I will have to disagree,” I said, images surfacing from my own childhood. “I had a wonderful relationship with a little red rooster. His name was Red, of course. I was about six years old….” I had almost forgotten. The mailman had delivered the cardboard box while I was staying the weekend with my grandparents. And what a box it was! The whole box was bursting with ear-shattering shrill “cheeps”, and it was full of small holes through which tiny beaks frantically poked. Grandma’s batch of spring chicks had arrived! She carefully set the noisy box in the middle of the living room floor where I eagerly helped her open it. “Handle them gently now,” Grandma cautioned me as I…

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School’s Out!

“When I think about it, oh, I am really sad—for about 30 seconds,” a teacher recently confessed to me.  We were talking about the impending end of the school year. Actually, that pretty well sums up how most of the students feel about it too; at least, that’s how I remember it. From the elementary grades through high school, the end of the school year was always the same. I was sad about saying goodbye to my favorite school activities, like art, reading, music, recess, and the noon hour.  I would miss seeing my friends every day, and most years, I would even miss my teachers. But any feelings of sadness were quickly replaced with a welling up of anticipatory joy for being set FREE!  I could imagine what prisoners and indentured servants might feel when told that their shackles would be unlocked and their prison doors would be opened…

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Clamor of Spring

They are out there, alright, calling to me more urgently every day. “It’s too early,” I tell them. “Go back to sleep for a little while longer; you know that the danger of frost and late snow will come again.” But neither the garden nor the flower beds are listening to me. The clamor of spring has begun. Our soft-spoken pussy willow was the first to get our attention. It bloomed well before Easter, having its say early. It is a hardy soul and seemed to relish the snap of cold winds from the north. In fact, I thought it wore its cap of spring snow rather well. The parsley and spearmint were next to herald spring’s arrival. We tucked freshly picked sprigs around the deviled eggs on Easter. Though it still seemed too early, we welcomed the whispered hints of more to come. However, the stubborn apricot tree that…

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Dandelions: Blessing or Curse

It’s happening again; it’s the same every spring and summer. I am confronted with the Great Dandelion Dilemma. I am reluctant to chase them from my lawn, these tiny replicas of the sun, small cushions of yellow and gold rising from the green. What if they are really a blessing instead of a curse, a feast instead of pestilence, like manna from heaven, an abundant harvest for which we have not sown? Each time I pick up my paring knife to dig them up, my intent is diverted by memories of past “dandelion days” of summer. Sometimes, on hot and lazy summer afternoons, my friends and I would spread an old blanket on the grass under a shade tree. Next, we carefully searched the fringe areas of the lawn, garden, and nearby ditch banks for our elusive treasures--dandelions with long stems! Giggling and gushing over each new find, we eventually…

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