Glad to Be Here

Yesterday I returned some books to our newly opened library branch which is on the campus of the University of Houston at Sugar Land.  Since it is now the nearest public library to my home, I will be going there often.  It is a lovely, contemporary building with comfortable reading areas, access to the enitre county library catalog, as well as state of the art technology like self checkout.  I parked on the edge of the parking lot, which was adjacent to this field of wildflowers which stretches toward the horizon lined with bare trees which are on the banks of the Brazos River. 

I thought about how great it is to live where country road meets the freeway system.  Granted, I am not always exactly grateful for the freeway.  But it does give me access to this university,  art and theater,  good medical care, great places to buy healthy food, and more importantly my family, my church and my friends.  Most of the time I do have to drive at least a short distance on the freeway to go to those places.  But I am still on the edge of meadows and rivers.  I hear birdsong everyday. Most days I am just on the other side of a fence from cattle and horses.  I am a short drive away from picking strawberries this Spring, I have been seeing Red Buds on the roadside for weeks, and in my own garden I have "country" every day.  In our season of life, this is a good blend for me.  As I stood looking toward the river and photographed what many in our area call weeds, I am thankful for place. I am thankful for home.  I just wanted you to know.

I Love You

It is a quiet Saturday morning.   I have had my coffee, settled with my morning readings and quiet time and prayers, and added my daily five things to my gratitude journal.  Frequently, one or all three of these little girls appear in that journal - their laughter, their singing, their joy and generosity.  I don't have to write Skye or Maddie or Jordann for them to be on my mind and in my heart because they are always there.  But there is something about writing the thought down that pins it down in a collection of beautiful memories. I love them deeply, and I know they love me.  They also love each other. Maddie and Jordann live 5 hours away, and here are leaving to go home with their parents. What an expression of "parting is such sweet sorrow!" 

 I have a dozen items on the to do list, getting ready for another surgery for Joe next week, but starting them can wait.  I am going to make a couple of phone calls!

Come Into My Christmas House

As this year comes to an end, I am thinking of joys we have shared in our journey as a family, just as the blog subtitle suggests. This year has included many changes as Joe had surgery after surgery and has bravely met challenges of severe pain and limited mobility.  Our outings have been mostly to medical appointments, and gatherings have been different. The joys of this journey are nonetheless vividly apparent.  The love and caring concern of our sons, daughters in law, and granddaughters is lavish and intense.  They have helped with household chores from changing lightbulbs to moving furniture.  Meals have been joint ventures.  Phone calls "just checking on us" are frequent.  Little hands have helped set the table and take trays to Papa. Michala gave Joe his medicine.  Teion worked on the broken dishwasher.   Skye read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever to Maddie and Jordann.  Kristen played dominoes with Maddie.  Jeremy played the Indonesian shell game with Lauren.  Ben gave Jordann rides on his shoulders. Sean started a fire outside to roast marshmallows.  It is not that these things never happened before, it is that they are intensified now, and deeply appreciated.  We decorated together, cooked together, prayed together, and even if our meals were not always around Grandma Terrell's table, they were family celebrations and joyful occasions.  So, come into my Christmas House, and share the joy of our journey as a family. Winter is upon us, but Spring is on the way.  I am grateful.    "With" is a powerful and joyful thing.

Thanksgiving

I am thankful. The most important things are not things...God's great faithfulness and provision, His gifts to me of Joe, our beloved sons, and, now, their dear wives and children. My granddaughters are a joy.  It feels like an unbroken circle when I consider how my own grandmother and I enjoyed each other, picking blackberries, giving the ferns a drink with a watering can, making teacakes.

 Among my reminders of her is a yellowed sheet of tablet paper on which she wrote the following poem.  No credit is given, and although I was unaware that she liked to write, several things tend to make me think she wrote the poem herself. She was a woman of deep faith and a reader, especially of her Bible.  There is an occasional misspelled word and strike through which would be unlikely if she copied it.  The phrase "sweet simple things" is used by  Laura Ingalls Wilder, who was Grandma's contemporary.  Whether she herself authored the poem, the fact that I have it written by her sweet wrinkled hand that served and loved her family so well makes it precious to me. Where possible, I have left the spellings and irregularities.

                                          Thanksgiving, as recorded by Mary Clyde Terrell

For simple things I thank thee most of all;
Such things as daily bread and homely talks;
A small green dooryard and a popular tall,
The Joy of lending aid to one who asks;
For wholesome love of kindly common friends
Who stay my faith in all humanity;
For Home lights beconing when days work ends -
For the ones who wait to welcome me.
for simple childlike faith that yet believes -
Our God is real, and heaven waits us still
And that in spike of darkness that deceives
men still may find a Saviour if they will
The majesty of Storm clouds lighting rent;
The surging seas and star bejeweled Sky
Have always stired men's hearts to wonderment,
They stir me - yet a simple Soul am I.
And while thy wondrous works since ancient days
Thrill me profoundly Lord; my heart still sings
a song of gratitude and humble pride -
more than all else - for life's sweet Simple Things.

Well Dressed Gardeners

The cousins stayed still only long enough for last week's post photos, then they were off to continue helping me get the garden in shape.  Here, they are planting flowering kale and cabbage.  Everytime I water the plants, I close my eyes and thank God for my granddaughters.  I love gardening, and they do too.

Headed for Fall, Remembering Summer

At the beginning of the summer, when the herb and vegetable garden was producing plenty to pick every day, Maddie and Skye loved helping with the harvest.  One day they asked if they could have a farm stand in the front yard.  They had the sign all ready to go:  Tomatoes were 50 cents each, bunches of Basil were advertised at 10 cents, and mint for 2 cents per handful.  Peppers were 30 cents, and underneath the large "OPEN and SALE!"   lettering was the enticing "1 Free Water with each purchase!"

A couple of neighbors helpfully shopped from their market, and they happily counted their proceeds as they chattered about how much more fun that was than a lemonade stand.

Now, at summer's end, I think about our long hot Texas summer with record breaking drought and am thankful we had those weeks of bounty before the garden said "no more."  I pick up the sun hats they wore that afternoon, and move the little round table to a spot until they are ready to use it for another project.  And as grandmothers do, I carefully put the sign in a good place for keeping. 

Squash Baby

Sometimes a vegetable hides under its foliage until it is beyond edible.  Jordann found this yellow squash  and obviously loves it, warts and all!  Seeing her cradle it reminds me of a zucchini I displayed in the same fashion a few years ago.  I come from a long line of farmers. When I was Jordann's age, we often used surplus cucumbers and squash from the garden to make a menagerie of animals with toothpick legs and button eyes.  I still create with these fresh treats, but now it is in the kitchen. Today's produce prices at the supermarket are making me expand my list of vegetables to grow in the coming season.  Tomatoes are in and finally beginning to grow as temperatures come down from triple digits.  Soon we will plant collards, swiss chard, and bok choy which winter well here. When possible I find heirloom seeds and plants to use.  I am thankful for my garden, and I delight in seeing my children and grandchildren becoming gardeners, too.

A Celebration

I am celebrating a 5th anniversary!  Not a wedding anniverary (that will be number 48 this year).  This is a celebration of sight. Five years ago I had two cornea transplants that changed my vision and my life forever.  In late 2005, I was diagnosed with a degenerative corneal disease, Fuch's Corneal Dystrophy. Changes came quickly.  Within a few months, my vision became so poor that I was advised to have transplant surgery on both eyes.  In May 2006, I received the gift of a donor cornea for my left eye.  Two months later, the procedure was repeated for my right eye.  I recovered quickly from both surgeries, and receive follow up exams and testing every 6 months.

 Yesterday was one of those medical appointments. Afterward,  I drove myself to another appointment, read a book while I was waiting there, joined the heavy freeway traffic on my way home, and picked up my mail to read when I got there.  I saw a hummingbird at the feeder by my kitchen window while I was preparing our dinner.  I finished blogging for my other two blogs http://www.stonesandfeathers.wordpress.com/ and  http://www.kitchenkeepers.blogspot.com/.  I read the thermometer when I took my husband's temperature.  Every single one of the things I just wrote about was possible because of two donor families who said yes to organ donation.  Because of 2 complete strangers and their families, the skill of a dedicated doctor, and Grace, I can see.
Yes, I am celebrating!  I am thankful.

These words are dedicated to awareness of organ donation and to vision research.

Last night Joe and I were invited by our youngest son, Ben, to share a meal with him and his wife Kristen in their new home. Ben promised to make us one of Kristen's favorite dishes, Leek and Two Cheese Quiche. We brought some homemade gazpacho and an arugula salad. The table was set beautifully, with wedding goblets and a huge bunch of basil from their garden. Just as I was thinking how special they had made our evening, one more realization gave me a smile as well as a tear.


As I picked up my spoon, I recognized a piece of vintage silverplate. Not a fancy pattern, but simple, beautiful, and achingly familiar. We didn't have a lot of fancy kitchenware when I was growing up – no matching pots and pans, no crystal, mostly mismatched plates and bowls and glasses,stainless flatware, miscellaneous plastic and wood handled spoons and serving items. The knives and forks and spoons we used for every day meals were in a shallow drawer on one side of the short kitchen counter. But the spoon I held in my hand was kept with a matched set. This was my mother's silverplate, the pieces she kept in a box she had painted light green to match her kitchen at one point. She had a set of butter yellow china that she kept on a high cabinet shelf. The silverware box sat by itself at the end of the counter. This flatware she pulled out for use for special or holiday meals, or when we had company.

When my mother sold her small house to move into a still smaller apartment, she gave many things to my sister and me, and to her grandchildren, who call her Nana.

She gave Ben the green box. In the years to come he kept the box and its contents on his own kitchen counter. He made Sunday after-church dinners and a Mothers' Day lunch to which Nana was invited.  She noticed his use of her silverware, and bragged on his cooking.  Now, he and Kristen have given the delicately traced knives and forks and spoons a place of honor in a drawer of their beautiful china cabinet. I felt Nana nodding and saw her smile last night as we began to fork bites of Ben's delicious pastry. I know she approved. Her spirit and her spoons continue to bless the gathering of family.

A Week with Maddie

My granddaughter, Madelyn, has been here for over a week.  She loves to cook as much as I do, so we have baked cupcakes, made Amish Friendship Bread, mixed up egg salad for a picnic, used the vegetable spiraler on zucchini and cucumbers, and enjoyed making Papa's dinner.  That doesn't mean she didn't have time to catch tadpoles, pick dozens of bouquets, raid the dressup basket for fashion shows with her cousin Skye, cut herbs, and harvest every tomato, okra, and cucumber that wasn't hiding under a leaf.  This list hardly begins to tell all the fun we had.  One morning when she woke up and ran in to give me a hug, she asked what I was writing.  I showed her the little journal and told her every morning I write down 5 things I am thankful for.  She wanted me to read her what I had been writing all week. Every day had her name written...Maddies' songs, Maddie's smile, snuggling with Maddie, reading with Maddie, Maddie's prayers.  She took the pen and asked if she could write something in the Gratitude Book and asked me for a little help with spelling.  When she gave it back to me, I read  I  AM  THANKFUL  FOR  GRANMARY. I don't know if she will always remember this week, but I know that I will.  Thank you God for Maddie!

Packing the Christmas Dress

When my mother was growing up, they never put up the Christmas tree until Christmas eve.  All the festivities and celebrating came after Christmas.  They  celebrated the 12 days of Christmas beginning with Christmas day.  Now that we decorate our and trees much earlier (ours is usually done on Thanksgiving weekend) we have longer to enjoy our house with its Christmas dress on, but I still don’t like to take anything down until Epiphany.  As I pack away ornaments and manger scenes, I remember that I am not putting away the Christ-light.  Nearly 30 years ago I wrote about “undecorating”. 

The mantle seems lonely without the little manger scene.

The house looks plain, bereft of red and green.

The tree is down, the front door bare.

No wreath or garland festooned there.

Our mailbox no longer yields its daily harvest of cards.

The lights and Santas are gone from all the yards.

We packed away the manger scene,

But not the shine of the star!

For His new birth within us, no time or season can mar.

Because He was born, we have Christmas.

Because He died we have life.

Because He lives we have new years

No matter what serves us with strife.

We thank Him for peace and for promise.

We thank Him for love and for sight.

We thank Him for meaning and purpose.

We live to show darkness the Light.

Definitely older, hopefully wiser...I sing along to Andrea Bocelli's Christmas album, allow a few tears to fill my eyes, and am aware that the gifts of Christmas continue.