spoonful o' sugar

If ever I'm down with a case of the mulligrubs,  one of the best spirit-perking remedies is spending some time with my family. Are we crazy? Yes. Funny?

Well, we all seem to think so.  

We have the enjoyably interesting ability to entertain each other for quite a while. I don't know how many times (in the year and years past) I'll have walked into a room to find the rest of the crew in there laughing and watching each other. Soon, I'd find myself being drawn into the scene too - not necessarily doing anything, just watching.

There's something about that tie, 

 that connection that beats any game, past time, hobby, sport, book, food, drink, or what -have-you. Thank God for these people. These wonderfully eccentric, fun, happy, endearing folks I can call family.

glad things

Oh the world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we ought all to be happy as kings."




" Grandfather Abrum. He was a good old boy. Always had plenty of spunk and stories to tell, and usually a gift or two that he'd give us. As all us chillin' would gather round, he'd pull from his beard some sort of treasure which we always found intriguing. Rabbit's tail, a chestnut, a coke cap that said "FREE COKE" on the inside. Then he'd take each one of us and bounce us on his knee, saying we were arabs in the deserts of Egypt riding camels. Ah, those were the good days to be sure."
Abe, if you were my grandfather, that's the sort of story I'd write about you.


This is probably my favorite picture of them all.





Sometimes I forget, I think.
I forget the little things that make up my life and pass over them as silly or trifling when it's those things that are the very gladnesses of life that make the swirly sunshiny happiness all that it is.

merry days

Christmas is merry. Merry, merry merry. In fact, about any holiday or any ole day is merry when you throw together a handful of family members and good friends.

From this kettle of goodness tends to emerge a great deal of laughter, music and good times. Truly, I can't think of anything I love more than being with my family. With the bustle and crowd of a loud, happy everyone about me, I sometimes like to step back from the doorway and just look. It's one of the most beautiful sights to me. I feel as if I were in a painting almost - a near perfect painting, only everything is so very alive and I am more than a spectator from the outside of the frame, but living in it.

I suppose I'll never understand God's kindness to me. Will any of us??? That's one of the things that will never leave me in heaven, I think, the awe of His beautiful, illogical love to me. I believe I'll ever wonder at it.

A group watches "Scrooge" in the school room, GrandPatty reads a book in our smallest chair in the living room and Uncle rocks back and forth reading history in one hand and singing with little Imani Hope in the other. Papa works late tonight, sweet Daddy. And Mama helps bring another little life into the world and I think to myself, how splendid it is to be a part of such a family.

Merry Merry Christmas!!!

baby cakes

there's something simply delicious about a baby. so many looks and faces and little sounds. they don't realize how adorably cuddly they are. this little lady is a sweet, happy thing and we've had many chats over tea, the cat and whether she should study abroad and raise sheep in Ireland or be an advocate against pacifiers.

on a leaf of white

october song

James Whitcomb Riley would have liked this place, I think. He might even have written a poem for it, only instead of "Out to Old Aunt Mary's" he would have had to have used something like "out to old Aunt Sav-Lov's".




It was such a rich old place, all the pecan trees shading the drive and a well and barn in the back. We rummaged through letters and made stories and the ghost of that house told us to stop being so nosy, but Sav-Lov told the ghost "Graham, be quiet." and laughed, but I had chill bumps.



One day, I'll probably drive out to Old Aunt Sav-Lov's and find her milking her cow, or hanging laundry on the line, with her bonnet tied nicely around her face, and her apron worn and torn. But that will be perfectly understandable, for this woman will have had 12 or 14 by that time.
It'll be good, though, to be there under the pecan trees.