Why I write:

I tell them they’ll want to be good right off, and they may not be, but they might be good someday if they just keep the faith and keep practicing. And they may even go from wanting to have written something to just wanting to be writing, wanting to be working on something, like they’d want to be playing the piano or tennis, because writing brings with it so much joy, so much challenge. It is work and play together. When they are working on their books or stories, their heads will spin with ideas and invention. They’ll see the world through new eyes. Everything they see and hear and learn will become grist for the mill. At cocktail parties or in line at the post office, they will be gleaming small moments and overhead expressions: they’ll sneak away to scribble these things down. They will have days at the desk of frantic boredom, of angry hopelessness, of wanting to quit forever, and there will be days when it feels like they have caught and are riding a wave.
- Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Indian Summer

I haven’t felt well lately and today, with the sun shining and the temperature balmy for November, my mom has given me the nudge outside. I’m sitting in the sun on a blanket with my knitting in my lap, soaking in natural vitamin D.

My needles click and the yarn is soft on my fingers. I have my cell phone stuck in my pocket, in case of any texts from some favorite people. It rarely leaves my side these days; I never thought I’d get into texting, but that quickly changed when I discovered how fun it is to receive texts from my man.

I’m rambling, I know.

So, I sit and knit in the sun, and as my needles click and I loop yarn, I find my mind going over prayers. Snatches of Hebrew and English mingled together, and then I fall into praying for the people I love.

Sun.

Knitting.

Prayer.

One of best parts of my day.

scribbles

poetry: airport

blended in with the hum
created by many voices
I see her and two children
alone

tired, fresh from a flight
the baby yawns in her arms
and the toddler scowls
waiting

her eyes are weary, but then!
she smiles at the sudden sound
a new voice behind her
him

love, hope, excitement collide
four people in one corner
and hub-bub dims to background noise
together

Happiness

is…

a four year old dancing in too-long pajamas and singing “Anything’s possible” at the top of her lungs…

Stone Walls

As I’m driving past, speed devilness in spite of, I can see snow still remains in the woods. There are patches here and there, startling whiteness against a carpet of brown leaves. It’s mostly in the hollows where the sun rarely goes.

The winding stone walls that have been there for nearly two hundred years are surrounded by trees where they once marked the edges of pastures and fields, the borderlines of a farm’s property.

During the winter, those walls disappear under a covering of snow, and I almost forget them. But with spring – with spring and in spite of the untouched hollows – they return and I wonder about the people who built them.

 There is an old legend about the Roxbury ‘pudding-stone,’ immortalized perhaps in Oliver Wendell Holmes’ poem, “The Dorchester Giant.” Although I have lived in the New England area all my life, I had never heard of this myth or legend until I read Melissa Wiley’s Charlotte books. A fabulous interesting story…

As the poem goes…

What are those lone ones doing now,
The wife and the children sad?
Oh, they are in a terrible rout,
Screaming, and throwing their pudding about,
Acting as they were mad.

They flung it over to Roxbury hills,
They flung it over the plain,
And all over Milton and Dorchester too
Great lumps of pudding the giants threw;
They tumbled as thick as rain.

. . . . .

Giant and mammoth have passed away,
For ages have floated by;
The suet is hard as a marrow-bone,
And every plum is turned to a stone,
But there the puddings lie.

The stone walls in my area may not be made of puddingstone, but when I see them I think of giants – and enormous bowls of pudding.

Freight Train

I can hear the trains rumbling through town, the wheels shrieking against the tracks as the cars slowly make their way past the old depot. Some of the cars are old, blue paint peeling and rust showing through. Others are newer, but marred by graffiti. “TOM” reads one and obscenities spoil another.

Not a beautiful sight.

It’s not a shiny, gorgous train like the ones you read about in stories or see in classic movies. You know, the ones where the gentleman and lady eat in the dining car and make eyes at each other quietly and inconspicuously over eggs.

But there is a kind of music to the clatter of the cars and the squeaks of the wheels. It is familiar, part of the soundtrack of this town, a track mingled with church bells and a quiet thrum of tires on the pavement. Children playing backyards and in the street, birds chirping from the telephone wires and trees.

And a rumble of the freight train as it comes into town.