Things I Love

Being at Home

Church where I grew up

Peonies

Cat feet--Teasel's stripey stockings

Autumn in New England

I had the bright idea that I could draft several postings and "publish" them while on the road with husband. Our leave taking was a day earlier than planned, so these are some photos very hastily loaded while he was having the car serviced.

The idea of "favorite things" is hardly original, but the practice of observing and holding a close connection with things which delight me has been a sustaining practice for most of my life. I have likely been blessed [or cursed] with the kind of mind and memory which stores up a variety of images, words, tunes and impressions. That gift was nurtured by a number of people in my childhood. My grandfather, who knew the ways of weather and seasons; who set up an old table on the front porch where I could lay out my little finds from meadow and woods, there to marvel over birds' nests or bits of moss and such until they crumbled away. My father, who always knew where to find the first pussywillows of spring, who would phone me when I was grown to ask if I had heard the first hesitant croaks of the "peepers" as they emerged on an April evening. From my mother came the love of words, a turn of phrase, the beauty of melody.

My list of treasures is long---the warmth of a mug of tea between chilly fingers, the grain of old wood, the way a beam of sunlight falls across the floor in a particular room, the sound of a cat purring--so many others.

Life's troubles and sorrows are none the less for this habit of delighting in little oddities, but they have become a bulwark and a consolation amid so many variables which are beyond my control or understanding.