Fairy Dust

Larry and I frequently take turns standing in front of our bedroom window, looking out onto the tranquil scene below and the vast sky above.  One recent evening, when I would have openly admitted that I was growing tired of yet more cold and snow, I stood motionless for several minutes watching the light snow blow around the security lights on the back of our home.  The light caught each of the dry and delicate snowflakes, giving them the look of what I can only imagine resembles fairy dust. For those few moments, I forgot that it was dreadfully cold out and that the snow was piling up in the driveway.  For just those moments, I was transcended to a magical place where dry snow crystals are the stuff of fairies and enchantment, and all was right with my world.

Wash Over Me

It had been a long week with many meetings and obligations.  I was ready that Friday night for a relaxing evening with friends, good music and not a lot of thinking.  It was the perfect evening to hear The Madison Bach Musicians, a group founded in 2004 that presents the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as the works of other composers from the Baroque, Renaissance and Classical periods.  As we settled comfortably into our seats, I could feel my entire being relax, my breathing deepen.  The concert featured a vocal quartet, cello, violins, viola and one of my favorite instruments, the harpsichord.  From the time I was a child watching Lurch play the harpsichord on the old TV sitcom, "The Addams Family," I have loved the harpsichord. On Friday evening, from sonata to sonata, I let the music wash over me, filling me with such a sense of beauty and peace that I can barely recall when I last felt such total and utter contentment.  At the end of the concert, the group's founder and harpsichordist, Trevor Stephenson, invited the audience onto the stage to get a closer look and listen to the harpsichord that he had transported from Madison to the Baraboo stage.  And such an amazing instrument it was.  Mr. Stephenson was bombarded with questions and musical requests from the audience members crowding in around him, to which he gracefully responded.  Even after the experience was over, the benefits lingered. I slept well that evening after the blessing of a perfect way to end a busy week: sitting still for two hours, soaking in the delicate and intricate beauty of music, letting it wash over me again and again.

Elmwood 68231

I heard a couple of people answer their cell phones recently by simply saying, "Yeah?"  That got me to thinking about my maternal grandmother who always answered the telephone with a cheery "Woods' residence." That was back in the day when people didn't carry phones on their person, answering in the grocery aisle, the bathroom stall or across the restaurant table from you in the middle of a meal.  A telephone was a stationary device that required a certain decorum when answering it. There was usually only one telephone in the house.  If you were a teenager and wanted to talk with a friend, the length of your phone call was monitored because there was just the one phone, just the one line going into the house.  That was also in an era when party lines still existed but were quickly going away. As a child, I lived in the country in a home that was part of a party line.  In other words, several households shared the same line, each with its own telephone number, but still shared so that you could carefully pick up the phone and listen in on others' conversations, if you so desired.  That might have been the beginning of viral communication, now that I think about it. Our telephone number was a word followed by numerals: Elmwood 68231, which was abbreviated to EL68231.  It was later changed to 356-8231, with the letters being replaced by their associated numerals.  When the party line went away, our home number was changed to 356-3877, a number my mother had until the last year of her life. So, when I hear people answering their cell phones today in such casual ways and in such strange places, I can't help but think of Grandma Carrie, answering their telephone with grace and decorum, in a lovely voice that invited the very best of conversation.

Time for Spring Cleaning

It may sound kind of silly, but January and February are traditionally my months for spring cleaning.  I started this ritual a few years ago during a blizzard.  With nothing to do, I set to cleaning out cupboards, vacuuming behind the refrigerator, culling the closets of clothes and other belongings no longer worn or used, cleaning the insides of windows and basically getting our home gussied up for another year.  When April and May arrived, I was grateful to have done the big jobs while it was still sub-zero with feet of snow on the ground, for in the spring, I had only one thought in mind and it wasn't about cleaning.  When Daylight Savings Time rolls around again and the sun feels warmer and the sky looks bluer, I want to go outside and stay out there until the first frost.  So, in keeping with tradition, I enlisted the help of my husband Larry to clean the kitchen one recent Saturday.  Everything was wiped clean, even the tops of cupboards and light fixtures.  We, then, moved to the ceiling fan blades and the bathrooms where everything was dumped out of drawers, cleaned out and returned to their proper places.  It felt good to get such tiresome jobs done.  There's still more to do, but we have February for that. When spring really does arrive, I'll be able to march right outside, guilt free, and take in the season with joy, leaving my clean house behind.

Dashing Through the Snow

Yesterday afternoon was so lovely that while talking with a friend on the phone, I leaned against the windowsill, feeling the sun's warmth waft through the pane.  As Sara and I talked, I noticed in our backyard that there was evidence of little animals that have scurried lately around and on top of the snow.  Just then, one, then two, then tree, then four and finally five squirrels went dashing through the snow from the protection of a large evergreen tree to a nearby stand of arbor vitae.  They chased each other over and over, creating figure eights in the snow.  It was such a delightful display of jubilant playtime that I could barely keep from laughing while I was on the phone.   The squirrels' antics brought an entirely new interpretation for me of "dashing through the snow."

Heartfelt Memories

I don't make it a practice to revisit previous posts to this blog, but here is one from February 2012 that continues to hold meaning for me:  I wasn't really in the mood to do any shopping that day but something drew me to our local St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store on a recent Saturday morning.  I browsed all of the aisles and finally decided before exiting the store to look at a shoebox of Valentines.  I hadn't been thinking about buying any Valentines there but, still, I was drawn to the box.  It was strange.  I didn't just go through them once.  I felt compelled to look through them a second time.  It was during that second time that I discovered two identical Valentine postcards featuring two identical handwritten greetings -- in my late mom's handwriting.  I could barely contain myself.  I miss my mom so much and it was as if she was reaching out to me through those Valentines.  I bought both of the postcards, saving one for myself and sending the other to my aunt and uncle, my mom's sister and brother-in-law.  The postcards feature a delicate pastel design of a heart-shaped floral wreath.  Mom wrote her message to coincide with the card's design:  "Warm thoughts and wishes are flowers of the heart.  May you have a lovely Valentine's Day!"  I'm not sure if Mom recycled the cards back to the thrift store or if I was the one responsible for having done so when Larry and I cleaned out her apartment 1 1/2 years ago.  All I know is that their discovery on that recent Saturday morning was such an unexpected and precious find.  Truly, flowers of the heart from my wonderful, unforgettable mom.

Valentine Tree

It's February, time to put up the Valentine tree.  When I was a child, my mother made a Valentine tree out of an old lilac branch, painted white with her nurses' shoe polish, and decorated with construction paper hearts. I have a little white branch tucked into a flower pot in my home office that seems to change appearance with the season and my whims.  In celebration of my mom and those fun Valentine's Days gone by, I've made a Valentine tree out of my little white branch.  It's such a simple thing, but each time I look at it, it makes me smile.  I can see Mom carefully painting the lilac branch and cutting out the red construction paper hearts  to hang from the tree. I can see the finished product displayed on one of the antique chests in our living room.   It's been nearly 50 years since Mom made Valentine trees for our home, but each time I look at the one in my home office, I am a little girl all over again.