Sunday Selfie - a day late

Today, I picked up my mother (93) and my Aunt  Mary (96) from their volunteer work counting the Sunday collection at their church. I drove around the block to my aunt's house.

"Don't get out!" Aunt Mary insisted. "Your mother can help me to the door."

I listen to my elders. I stayed in the car. I watched as my mother supported her big sister, step by step, up the walk. Two old women, gray and slow, side by side, walked together, as I imagine they have walked their entire lives.

I feel privileged to have seen the abiding sisterly love between them. It's unspoken.

Then, having delivered her sister safely to her home, my mother made her way, more quickly and surely back to the car. I drove her to her home where we wrestled empty recycling bins back into their places in the carport.

It is Fall.  We notice the empty places in our garden. We anticipate shorter days, colder nights and darkness. We look forward to loss and if we can stretch our imagination, to the growth that covers the bare spaces.

 Still, today is a good day because, for now, I still can watch these two sisters walk together.

For all my brothers and sisters!

This video is brought to you by Owl Kids Publishers to promote their new book Little Brothers & Little Sisters by Monica Arnaldo.  Enjoy!

Lovely November Day

We all have those chores - you know the ones.  These are jobs we put off for so many reasons. It will take too long and I don't want to start until I can finish.  It's raining (for outside chores).  It's too nice out (for indoor chores).  It's too messy and then I'll have to put everything away.  No one can see it anyway.  But those chores sit in the backseat of our brains and kick the front seat, over and over and over.

The chore I have been avoiding is emptying the compost barrel.  I have one of those old compost barrels that you turn upside down on an axle to mix the compost.  This year it reached critical mass.  It was sooo heavy I had trouble turning it.  Most years, I go in with my trusty trowel or spade and scoop about half of my "veggie poo" into buckets and carry that stuff to my garden bed.  This year, I decided I had to empty the whole thing and rinse the barrel out.

But it was so hard, my head whined.  It took so long to just scoop out a few buckets.  So, I shoved it into the backseat and did other things.

In the backseat, the chore kicked and kicked and I had to find a way to quiet it down.  I came up with a plan.  Instead of scooping the compost out, I'd dump it on a tarp.  Hope!  And then it rained, and rained again.

TODAY, I substituted a sheet of cardboard for the tarp and I emptied that enormous barrel in 15 MINUTES!!!  I kid you not.  And God bless my youngest brother, he came over to talk and dug all that stuff into the garden beds.  What a blessing.

As he dug - and we talked - I sat in the sun and made a sage wreath - my very first - from wreath forms made of my blackberry canes and my home grown sage and rosemary.  I must find a hook so I can hang it in my kitchen to dry.  Then I will use it over the winter.  And my youngest sister called from far away!  What could be better?

Just a lovely, lovely November day.

Little Women and me

One summer, I read Little Women 20 times.  Summers were longer back then and responsibilities, fewer.

THIS summer, I read Little Women and Me by Lauren Baratz-Logsted. Once.

Fourteen-year-old Emily March has to write an essay naming three things about a book she really enjoyed and one thing that she would change.  She picks Little Women.

She is sucked into the book and becomes the FIFTH March sister, the one in the middle.  And there she stays throughout the entire book of Little Women.

Emily learns a lot about herself, relationships and family while stuck in Marchville. 

Baratz-Logsted uses a couple of clever devices to get Emily from one end of Little Women to the other.  For one thing, if it didn't happen in the book, it doesn't happen to Emily.  So, Emily is forever trying to remember what did happen in the book to understand who new characters are or what she is supposed to know.  Emily remembers the big events and tries hard to prevent catastrophes.  But Baratz-Logsted finds ways for things to occur the way they did in the book - or close to it - no matter what Emily does.

Fans of the original Little Women will enjoy Little Women and Me.  The ending will cause some discussions.  And anyone who is a middle sister, or who has sisters, or wishes they had sisters will relate to Emily and her March sisters - both the 19th century and the 21st century clans.


The Jack Gantos giveaway has a few more days.  It ends on August 31st at 11 :59 pm.  Leave a comment to enter.