A Song for Common Things
A Song for Common Things
I do enjoy reading about foreign locales or far-distant times. Someday I’d like to wear a silken sari scented with patchouli. I’d like to walk down fresh, budding English lanes or hear the song of a whippoorwill at dusk. Perhaps one day I’ll visit Monet’s house and gardens at Giverny or see an original Vermeer. Meanwhile I am just here, enjoying the home-sweet things of life.
Common Things
Paul Laurence Dunbar
I like to hear of wealth and gold,
And El Dorados in their glory;
I like for silks and satins bold
To sweep and rustle through a story.
The nightingale is sweet of song;
The rare exotic smells divinely;
And knightly men who stride along,
The role heroic carry finely.
But then, upon the other hand,
Our minds have got a way of running
To things that aren't quite so grand,
Which, maybe, we are best in shunning.
For some of us still like to see
The poor man in his dwelling narrow,
The hollyhock, the bumblebee,
The meadow lark, and chirping sparrow.
We like the man who soars and sings
With high and lofty inspiration;
But he who sings of common things
Shall always share our admiration.
I take pleasure in the leisure of journaling, preserving family events and personal thoughts and daydreams in my own handwriting. I enjoy using my gilt-edged journal and my beautiful bookmark.
Sleepy afternoons are a perfect time to take out the button jar from my hope chest. It is a delight to run one’s fingers through their various textures. Some of the buttons we remember from favorite dresses or fancy coats. The little boys enjoy piling the buttons according to color, material, or shape. It isn’t a school lesson, but a natural impulse. The buttons beg to be examined and sorted.
Littlest Brother made me laugh. “I know I can’t keep it,” he said with a sly sidewise glance, “But this button is really cool.” He held up a pewter button engraved with the figure of a bison. “Isn’t it?” I replied. “I have two of those.” Often the boys like to make piles of their favorites—usually the shiny ‘gold’ and ‘silver’ ones—and make a game of trading buttons.
The perfect marriage is a cup of tea (preferably a delicate white tea) and a thick book of poetry (preferably The Best Loved Poems of the American People). Here is one of Mama’s lovely antique tea cups and “Home” by Edgar Albert Guest.
“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” C. S. Lewis.
I adore fresh flowers, but there is something particularly charming about a rose past its prime with its velvety-soft, rumply petals.
I am seldom too busy to pass a bouquet of flowers without pausing to sniff! Mama’s birthday last week brought lots of flowers into the house, so I was very busy burying my nose in colorful blooms...
I enjoy feeling the softness of yarn as I crochet... and daydreaming about the babies that will one day be snuggled in these blankets. This creamy-white color is one I love.
“Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that—one stitch at a time taken patiently.” Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Reading aloud Winnie-the-Pooh in A. A. Milne’s original language—with Ernest Shepherd’s watercolors—is such fun.
“‘That buzzing noise means something. If there’s a buzzing noise, somebody’s making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you’re a bee. And the only reason I know of for being a bee is making honey. And the only reason for making honey is so that I can eat it.’ So he began to climb the tree.”
“Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.” A. A. Milne.
Wooden spools of bright thread, sweet little calicos, and lengths and lengths of delicate lace... mostly for daydreaming over, but also to sew with.
I enjoy experiments in the culinary department—and the delicious results. Savor the colors, the textures, the smells, the tastes...
We like experiments, but we always come back to snickerdoodles for our occasional lemonade parties!
Remembering soft, roly-poly little kittens with blue eyes...
“It’s much more fun to dress up dolls when they’re alive.” Hourglass Fashions.
One of my favorite things is to gather around the piano as a family in the evening. We sing hymns after hymn, and though seldom melodious, we are very grateful and joyful. Papa always reminds us that the Bible doesn’t ask us to make a pretty sound necessarily, but a joyful noise. We do that rather well!
The little boys love to use our old “Curious George” watercolors after school. They usually don’t paint an actual picture, but just enjoy painting bold strokes of jeweled colors.
“Not color-blind, but color-mad!
I cannot get my fill.
When I was young I fell in love
With a rainbow on the hill!”
“Color Mad,” Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.
Thanks to modern technology, I can study accurate and detailed prints of Vermeer’s paintings without paying a small fortune to visit a European museum! (I still want to see an original, though!)
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may no obliterate the sense of the beautiful implanted in the human soul.” Johann Wolfgang Goeth.
What daily treasures are you enjoying?
Photographs: Various. © Handmaidens of the Shepherd, March 2009.
Friday, March 6, 2009