Love looks here.
From deep within the kitchen, grandmother steps away from the hearthfire and looks out...at daughter-mother, at grandson-son, at doggie-friend, and son-husband-father. Love tumbles along these connect-the-dot heart paths. For the moment, the love is smooth and soft, bathed in summer sun, warming the floorboards that squeak with comforting familiarity. The pie is baking, the meringue just catching its toasted caramel color. Lilacs tumble in the breeze and diffuse the memories of childhoods 1, 30, and 50 years old, but no one notices that...except to find their smiles feeling just a bit deeper than they were a moment before.
Doggie-friend barks once, head and eyes tilting back for a moment’s confirmation, then barks two more times quickly in succession. Can we play now? Stick, grass, around the maple one and a half times. The field. Yes. We run like the wind, because storybooks and poems are very often true.
Mother-daughter opens the screen door, and inhales. She smiles at her mother’s back, arms moving forwards and returning, forwards and returning, as she kneads the white bread of her every day. Eyes fill with tears, because these things are so often overlooked in favor of the loan, the sore hip, the clothes to be mended, the husband distant in some concern. The tears bring rains of joy as she reaches her towel-draped hands into the oven to take out their most favored ritual of communion.
Come together. “Don’t throw anyone out of your heart.” For within that place, even the greatest trials can be held and cared for, even the greatest pains can be softened and heard. Love lets grow here.
Sweet steam from the pie trails about in the kitchen and weaves its way through warp and woof of its screens. Porch reveling in the flowers of all its perfumes. A momentary silence for us to pause and look around.
Doggie-friend bounds back upon the porch, little two feet follow, father smiles and opens the door, letting in these boundless-for-now energies, flowered memories, and the wafts of warmed lemon that had drifted outward, but decided they’d like to rejoin the family inside.
Around the hearthfire.
From deep within the kitchen, grandmother steps away from the hearthfire and looks out...at daughter-mother, at grandson-son, at doggie-friend, and son-husband-father. Love tumbles along these connect-the-dot heart paths. For the moment, the love is smooth and soft, bathed in summer sun, warming the floorboards that squeak with comforting familiarity. The pie is baking, the meringue just catching its toasted caramel color. Lilacs tumble in the breeze and diffuse the memories of childhoods 1, 30, and 50 years old, but no one notices that...except to find their smiles feeling just a bit deeper than they were a moment before.
Doggie-friend barks once, head and eyes tilting back for a moment’s confirmation, then barks two more times quickly in succession. Can we play now? Stick, grass, around the maple one and a half times. The field. Yes. We run like the wind, because storybooks and poems are very often true.
Mother-daughter opens the screen door, and inhales. She smiles at her mother’s back, arms moving forwards and returning, forwards and returning, as she kneads the white bread of her every day. Eyes fill with tears, because these things are so often overlooked in favor of the loan, the sore hip, the clothes to be mended, the husband distant in some concern. The tears bring rains of joy as she reaches her towel-draped hands into the oven to take out their most favored ritual of communion.
Come together. “Don’t throw anyone out of your heart.” For within that place, even the greatest trials can be held and cared for, even the greatest pains can be softened and heard. Love lets grow here.
Sweet steam from the pie trails about in the kitchen and weaves its way through warp and woof of its screens. Porch reveling in the flowers of all its perfumes. A momentary silence for us to pause and look around.
Doggie-friend bounds back upon the porch, little two feet follow, father smiles and opens the door, letting in these boundless-for-now energies, flowered memories, and the wafts of warmed lemon that had drifted outward, but decided they’d like to rejoin the family inside.
Around the hearthfire.
Lovingkindness.
May it also be with you.
May it also be with you.
