Small Stones ~ Day 2

Category: Creativity

Jan 11

Small Stones ~ Day 2

Cinnamon candy:

Round, flat, as bright a red as maraschino cherries. Wrapped in crinkly clear cellophane.

Carefully unwind the twisty ends. Find the thin edge of the overlap and pull the paper away.

Drop the smooth disk onto my tongue, right in the center. Close my lips over it, locking in the sweetness that floods my mouth making it fill with saliva.

The moisture starts the melting process and releases the heat of the cinnamon.

As the candy dissolves the heat of the cinnamon mixes pleasantly with the sweetness.

The disk gradually becomes smaller until it is wafer thin and I bite into it. Just a couple of crunches and it is only a sweet, spicy memory.

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Posted in Creativity, Meditations

Jan 10

Hands Some of the folks in my writing group over at Wordsmith Studio have found an interesting January writing challenge. As with most things, I’m a little late to the game, but I’ve decided to try it anyway.

The general idea is to focus sharply on something each day. See, hear, feel, smell, taste, just be immersed. Then write it down. Not a long post or a story. Just a description.

So today, I offer tiny hands. So small and fragile, yet strong. Dimpled knuckles, chubby fingers. Just learning to be useful.

They aren’t always reliable yet and sometimes they grasp unintentionally or open too soon, but they are constantly practicing. Reaching, grabbing, pulling, squeezing. Soft, pink, sweet.

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Posted in Creativity, Inspiration, Meditations

Dec 27

You’d Better Be Good

elfphoto I guess I’ve been living in some kind of “three monkeys” world, but I had never heard of the “Elf on the Shelf” until this year. After reading the post by Kasie Whitener over at Life on Clemson Road about the “Elfing,” I did a little research and found out parents have been using these innocent little creatures to torture their children for several generations.

According to Wikipedia, the first version was told in the 1960s by Flora Johnson to her own children. It became a family tradition. When her grandson called in 1983 to tell her about the Elf who had showed up in his home, she decided to write her story down and publish it for other children to enjoy. For the next fifteen years, she made over 10,000 Elves and sold them with a children’s story book called “Book One: Christopher Pop-In-Kins Pops In” that her husband, Al, hand published. Her version of the toy and book has won numerous awards and can still be purchased today either online or at select toy stores listed on the company website.

The version reviewed by Kasie was written in 2005 by Carol Aebersold and her daughter Chanda Bell with illustrations by Coë Steinwart. Their version is slicker, more modern and (dare I say, commercialized?) also available at various locations.

However, while the original story was mostly fun, with the little elf coming to spend December playing with the children and only returning to the North Pole on Christmas Eve, the newer one makes the Elf a spy for “that jolly old Elf.” Watching to see if the child is “naughty or nice” and reporting back to Santa every night. ( Read more )

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Posted in Inspiration, Meditations, Memoirs, Religion

Oct 12

Life’s Joys

I hear so many people wish to recover their youth. Other than a longing for a slimmer, stronger body, there is nothing in my past that I would be interested in reliving. I don’t want to go back and change it. That might cancel out many of my joys. Although, for most of my years, I was stressed out and struggling to make ends meet there were more joys than sorrows.

I still don’t have much money, but it doesn’t bother me as much without children begging for things I can’t afford to give them, like anything beyond the bare necessities. The sentence I remember most clearly hearing from my two younger daughters was, “Cover your ears, she’s trying to tell us we’re poor again.” Even though my reasons for leaving their father were good ones and I never considered going back, I felt guilty about the lower standard of living they had to adjust to, just when they were becoming teenagers with all the associated craving for the “latest thing.” There were years when even providing three meals a day was a challenge. But, those years helped shape them as well as me into the people we are today. Changing them would change us.

We survived and all five of my children are strong, independent, and self-supporting. Their children are just entering adulthood and seem to be learning how to be the same. Three of them have gifted me with great-grandchildren. I was closely involved in the raising of about half my grandchildren and am currently serving as caregiver to one of the greats while his mother works and goes to school. Grandchildren can be much better than children. There is usually less responsibility and expense, but just as much love and joy and “keeping up with” that young one helps you stay young as well. ( Read more )

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Posted in Inspiration, Memoirs

Sep 14

Hanging On

Relationships are complicated and they never really end. Even when you have no contact for years, the memory of that previous life still links you together. Yesterday, I found out that my second ex-husband is dying. I haven’t talked to him in more than 15 years. The only time I’ve seen him since then was at our oldest daughter’s wedding. He & his latest wife stayed on one side of the reception hall and I on the other.

If this gives you the idea that our breakup was nasty with bitterness all around, you’d be wrong. We fought the same battles over and over, until I finally decided there would be no meeting of the minds and I couldn’t live with the probable end result of that. So, I took our two daughters and left. We continued to communicate for a while. He tried to reconcile and I cooperated at first, until it became obvious that we were still covering the same ground with the same result. Eventually, I moved away. At the time, there was little in the way of employment opportunities here and I had two daughters to support. I know that I destroyed his world. That knowledge makes me sorrowful. I know how devastated I would have been if the positions had been reversed. Still, given the same circumstances, I’d have to do the same thing again.

If you think we still live in different states, that’s also wrong. We live 30 minutes away from each other. When I first returned home because my mother had been put in a rest home due to Alzhiemer’s, I was willing to build a relationship that would allow him to see our grandchildren when they came to visit me. He rejected the offer. He had remarried by then and seemed to think I was trying to damage his new relationship. Again, I was sorrowful, this meant he would only get to spend part of one day with them, when their mother came to get them. If he had been willing to accept my involvement, he could have had them all to himself for several days during the weeks they spent with me every summer. ( Read more )

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Posted in Meditations, Memoirs

Category: Creativity