SUNSHINE SPARKS MEMORIES

When I sit in my task chair at my desk in the early spring mornings as the sun starts it’s rise, it likes to send it’s glorious greeting directly into my eyes. I have a few choices: I can continue to sit in one position and allow the sun to permeate my vision obscuring the keys as I type at the keyboard and find out later what I really wrote or I can get up and close the blinds shutting out the sunshine-activation portion of my personality of the morning. Never having taken office classes, I pretty much need to see to type although I have been amazed at what occurs if I simply try to resist thinking and just let my fingers do the typing. It’s seemingly no worse than all the wrong hits my Parkinsonian misses have helped me manage lately anyway and if I sit long enough, the sun moves and I don’t have to. Added to that is the benefit I glean from the sunshine Vitamin D that manages to sneak though the layers of protective glass and soak into the skin of my face, so I can see (pun intended) I am in a win-win situation.
As I sit in the sunshine this morning I looked up to see the beautiful beams shining through a long-ago gift of glass, a stained glass piece made especially for me by dear friends in a shop named Crafts Elan where I worked in Caribou, Maine in the mid-1970s.
John and I had been on a trip to Texas and while there, he picked a Firewheel (common name Blanket Flower) I admired and gave it to me. I pressed it between layers of tissue and saved it in a book but always wanted it made into a stained glass hanging. When I asked the people where I worked, several took part in creating a lovely piece of art for me. Mary worked with dried flowers to create a design with the Firewheel at the center and Kolin arranged, designed, and soldered the stained glass piece. The owners of the shop allowed the work done by their artists done on shop time later presenting it with huge smiles as a loving gift to me.
Since that presentation day, the gift has been in many windows in many places: Caribou, Maine, Tucson, Arizona, Nashua, New Hampshire, Gifford, Illinois, and Huber Heights, Ohio. However, on its original trek little did we know that the handsome Firewheel flower that started out in Texas and traveled such a long way to go to Northern Maine would eventually find it’s retirement home in a sunny window back in West Texas.

LIMERICK ENTRY

The first line of the limerick was offered at:
http://www.madkane.com/humor_blog/category/limerick-haiku-seeds/
when I was looking for writing prompts. I had no intention of poetry prompts such as these but when I went to the site and found this first line today, it struck a chord, perhaps because I had been for a haircut at 9 a.m. but more likely because I like the humor limericks are capable of producing. I came up with the following but I know my brain will not turn off with just this one so I am glad to know MADKANE plans to set more prompts out for future reference. I also appreciated the encouragements she added to the limericks folks had written.

A woman whose hair was quite gray
Decided to keep it that way
Some said she should change it,
Should style, rearrange it,
But the follicles are still gray today.
(c) Marilyn Sue (Libby) Moore 3-26-2010

PERFECTION PLEAS

I fixed pancakes for breakfast this morning and as he took his first bite, my husband said, “perfection!” That started a whole line of perfection thoughts expressed that neither of us expected.
First, I thanked him and then I went on to explain how perfection is a goal I am always trying to attain, but he already knew that. As I continued to share my thinking, thoughts tumbled one on top of another quite quickly.
I explained how as a child I always felt so inadequate in my artistic abilities when creating with crayon on fresh pages of a new coloring book. It was obvious from the first marks of my crayon (even brand new pointy ones) that my work came nowhere near the perfection shown on the cover. While knowing my picture with crayons would not look exactly like the cover picture made with paint, my goal was still perfection. Looking back, I wonder if seeing that perfection set me up to fail.
In conclusion of my discourse, I said, “When Beth (our eldest) was in kindergarten, no wonder (name omitted- the mother of one of her classmates who had grown up in Germany during WW2) said children should be made to draw the pictures they color.”
Whether trying to draw my own pictures to color would have been more discouraging than coloring those in the already-drawn books or not is something I’ll never know. What I do know is I never reached perfection in the art of coloring exactly like the picture on the front cover. Worse still, the thought of my being able to draw anywhere near a representation of anything other than a simple kitty with long whiskers or a bunny with a powder-puff tail would require quite an imagination. Hey! Easter’s around the corner! Anyone want me to draw a bunny?

SIGNS OF SPRING

Yesterday looking out the window at the front of the house as I sat at my desk in the office, I watched some birds come and go. Obviously some of the birds were simply passing through because the lovely little red-headed finches are not sights I generally see filling the tree out front. As I looked outside it seemed they decorated the previously bare tree like Christmas balls, adding touches of rosy-tan color here and there against the blue background of sky. Few of the usual birds were evident yesterday so where had those grackles and tiny brown sparrows gone? To my delight, some members of the bird families who visit more frequently, did arrive yesterday. Each time a mockingbird comes, I quietly beg, "Please build a nest in my tree," but so far my plea has fallen on deaf ears. Maybe I should hang a "Mockingbird Nest Space For Rent" sign on the tree. The visiting mockers always show keen interest in our shrubbery, the crape myrtle bushes, hop along the low window sill and look inside, and they try out the tree branches. Yesterday there was a more serious renter appearance to the mockingbird who was in our tree and either she returned several times, sent her husband to look, or perhaps both. Hope holds high that soon mockingbird songs will permeate the air around the front of our house. Therefore I went to bed with visions of the need to order a sign that says, "Caution: Mockingbirds Nesting"
"Why the need for a sign?" you ask?
I went to bed not only with visions of mockingbird songs coming from the nest in the front yard tree but the possibility of a protective mama and daddy mockingbird also coming from that front yard tree to bombard some unsuspecting visitor coming up our front walk that is lined up not very far from the tree.
Okay, I was having a sleepless night by this time. Thoughts were bombarding my mind more than any mockingbird ever thought of using in attacking a predator at its nest: Do we see if we know anyone who would like to or who can make a nice sign and should it be one to hang securely from a low branch of the tree or pound into the ground? Pounding the sign set on a stake into the ground certainly seems more appealing to me but then another vision (they come rapidly with sleeplessness) of the point of that stake being pounded into the ground and instead of it's going directly into the ground, it's pointedly landing dead-center and bursting one of the lawncare sprinkler system water pipes. A gushing spray of water is not the kind of bird bath that would seem welcoming to our new friends in their nest in the nearby tree, so you see, I have to settle the details regarding all these signs of spring before the mockingbirds move in.

A WARM WELCOME TO SPRING'S ARRIVAL

Here in West Texas, we thought we had Spring this past Sunday. As we looked against the brilliant blue of the cloudless sky, we could see the spring green budding of the trees. Red bud and Bradford pear trees were bringing forth blossoms along with shrubs bursting with new buds bragging this year’s growth. A neighbor family was out for a stroll in the street with their infant in the carriage, their little dog on a leash, their young son on his bicycle. All around it was a pleasant day to rejoice in being able to be out and about. However, with the arrival of Monday and Tuesday, cold, dreary gray rain fell from the skies and drenching everything it landed upon. Not only that but it seems all the dampness of previous days combined with the latest abundance of moisture raised up mold spores from deep down because I have been battling the worst case of sinus difficulties I have had in literally years. I thought I started to develop a sinus cold, but this is no cold and by yesterday my taste was gone along with the back-up supply of how many boxes of Kleenex was it we had??? I wonder: if our doctors stop taking Medicare patients, do you suppose a plumber could help stop this persistent drip-drip-drip? Ah, well, this too shall pass...or else I will. My husband filled in the 2010 Census form and I put it in the outgoing mailbox for yesterday's pick up there at the corner. Hubby pointedly said something about it being correct provided neither of us passed prior to April 1st...his comment meaning that I had better get well! I’m glad he loves me.
Yesterday and today have been sunny Spring-like days but get this: the weather forecast for sometime this weekend is for a possible (likely?) freeze! Originally being from Maine, I thought the saying, “If you don’t like New England weather, wait a minute,” originated there; after experiencing the swift changes and hearing similar quotes about West Texas, I am beginning to wonder. I just hope there are no tiny featherless baby birds already in their nests or, if there are, that the mamas and daddies keep them tucked well under their wings. In the meantime, we'll enjoy the warmth and glories of the lovely rays of sunshine. I hope you have the opportunity to go and do likewise. And maybe once my senses have returned I can stop and smell the roses. Ach-choo!