I Wonder as I Wander: Another Rambling Post

 

I have snippets of things I want to write about that never seem to make it into a post.  They don't 'fit' but nevertheless, I'd kept them thinking they might fit somewhere.  

So here is a post of Random thoughts, likely not entirely connected to the rest of the body...sort of like a normal conversation, at least in my house, since we tend to wander around.  Enjoy!

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I was tidying the bathroom the other day and noted that John had left his crumpled and obviously empty toothpaste tube on the counter.  This is his way of letting me know that he is out and needs more.  I am not upset over this method of letting me know that one item is gone, and another is needed for several reasons.  

Number 1: I am the organizer and storer of such things and he has no clue where those things are.  Never mind that he might know if he chose to.  He is content that I do know and will provide.   

Number 2: It is an accepted method of letting me know that if we don't have more, more should be purchased asap.  

So, I reached into the basket under the counter to get a fresh tube and set it out for him in the exact same spot and tossed the old tube.  I also noted that we were down to one more tube.  Time to buy more.

We have a similar system for most things.  I fussed long enough and hard enough years ago about people using the last box or item in storage without telling me we were out that even now, if my grown children go into my pantry to get something they will say, "This is the last one..." and they no longer live at home.  John is good for this as well.  

I try to keep an idea of what my running inventory is in all areas but now and then, I might slip up.  It's good to have others who will let me know when we're down to one or none.

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In the same vein: why is it that when one something runs out another one does also?  Is there an unwritten law somewhere that if you run out of toothpaste the shampoo bottle will also be empty and the mouthwash is suddenly so empty there's barely enough to swish? Or that three lights must blow out at once when you've no fresh bulbs in the house?  Is it an unwritten rule of household that you must run out of aluminum foil, toilet paper and paper towels all at once?

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On this same subject:  anyone else find their family is not so much prone to leave an empty container in the pantry as much as they are one that has one cracker, or a handful of chips, or a last lollipop?  I'll raise my hand here for my husband especially is bad about this.  He tends to feel selfish if he eats all or the last of anything, so he leaves it, in case I might have wanted it.  

I, on the other hand, am obviously a selfish pig, because if there are three crackers left in a packet, then I'll eat all three, or I'll polish off the last lollipop or the last handful of chips and then toss the packaging.  I figure if anyone wanted them, they'd be gone long before I reached into the cabinet to find them.

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And finally, my husband might well be prone to kindly leave me the last of any item, but he's learned over the years to never toss a container of anything until I officially pronounce it as empty.  Though he himself will not scrape a peanut butter jar clean (or mayonnaise) nor swish a bit of water in the mustard/ketchup or Bbq sauce bottle, nor even crumple the last five chips into crumbs to top a casserole, he knows that my frugal self will do all those things and fuss if they are simply tossed into the trash with any product at all remaining.  My children, grown though they are, will kindly do the same if they are here.

While they none of them will willingly do completely empty things themselves, and will even blatantly call me cheap over such, they respect my right to utilize the last drops and dregs of all that I have purchased.  They do, however, feel compelled to tell me they won't waste their time doing so!  

I hope that isn't a case of hoping to make my heart burn with shame.  I've never gone at them too hard over how they throw their money around unless they were expecting me to bail them out, something which has seldom happened.  

But I do love it when my husband asks, "Is that empty enough for you, or do you need to clean it out?"  Lol.  

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 As I stood in the kitchen this evening, about to plate up our supper, I looked out the window and felt, not for the first time this week, a wave of sadness coming over me.  The obvious signs of a season's progress: the different slant of the sun, the color upon the trees, the evening chill in the air.  All lovely.  All pleasant. All deeply saddening to me.

This evening after supper, I came to the living room and opened the curtains.  The sun was setting.  I like to see the sky in the evening.  But tonight, I felt a pang as I looked out.  There are bare limbs silhouetted against the sky.  The leaves have partly fallen.  I can plainly see branches where two weeks ago I saw only leaves waving in the last light of the sun.

Slow down.  Slow down, season.  You're going too fast!  Don't you know that once this month is gone, I will have to say goodbye?  

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And another evening at the kitchen window.  I'd noticed on the way home that afternoon that the fields and trees are turning golden and brown.  

This particular evening as I stood there looking out, a deer walked across the lawn at dusk.  She very nearly blended into the landscape.  Her coat is brown and dark and sort of golden as well.  She was camouflaged as it were, in her natural coat.  Had she not moved, I'd likely never have noticed her at all.

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I am resistant to modern day fiction.  I've read a great many books over the years, and I lean hard upon my older friends: Elizabeth Goudge and Louisa May Alcott.  Emilie Loring and Miss Read.  D. E. Stevenson and Grace Livingston Hill.  If you are at all familiar with these authors, then you know that each is different from the other in so many ways.

 I need the shaking up that modern day reads might give me now and then.  And I feel I am a bit too much with the past and not enough in the present.  BUT I am picky.  I don't like blatant sex.  Or violence.  Or horror.  I don't mind fantasy but I'm not keen on science fiction.  I don't need girlish romance. I like coming of age stories.

Of the modern-day authors, I have read and enjoyed: Billie Letts' Where the Heart Is; Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees; Jan Karon's Mitford series; books by Lisa See, Emilie Richards.  Those novels capture and hold me.  Just for a sampling of modern-day novels I enjoy.

But mostly, I live with the older authors I've mentioned, and I read them again and again.

I am resistant to modern day literature because so many authors highly touted by bestselling lists or talk show hosts, leave me cold.  I've tried reading them and I'm not keen on most of them.  That said, I really enjoyed a few.

So, who are your most favorite modern-day authors?  What books lifted your soul, held you tight in its grasp and made you sigh with sadness when it was over?  I'm open to recommendations.  I need to get out of my reading rut.  

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I was watching a Jessica O'Donohue vlog this evening.  She and her parents went to an apple farm to get apples.  As she panned out to show the barn filled with apples, I had a sensory memory so strong that it almost overwhelmed me.  It was the memory of the scent of apples.

When I was a child, we often went to the mountains in the autumn and my parents always bought apples.  The aroma of an old farmstand full of fresh new season apples is an experience everyone should have.  My folks bought bags and bags of apples.  Not plastic bags as we have now, but the old-fashioned brown paper bags which added their own aroma.  If you know, you know.  The car smelled so good all the way home.  We snacked on apples all through the vacation and had more to take home.

Once we returned home, Mama made applesauce, and put apples in the freezer to make pies.  

That is what drives me each autumn to drive out of my usual shopping areas and look for old apple varieties like Macoun.   I'd give much for genuine Winesaps which are a cider apple and have a rich, tart but sweet taste.  My mouth waters just remembering how good those apples were!

But most of all, I long to go stand in an old farm store packed with apples and just stand and draw in long breaths of the aroma.

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Place names fascinate me.  I know that many towns/counties/parishes/boroughs are named for famous men who were pivotal in the history of our country or area.  Generals and statesmen, men who are called heroes.  

Some are named for physical features that existed when the homesteader arrived.  It was a descriptive way for directing travelers, "Go by the Round Rock."   

Some are named for daughters or sons of families that settled or were particularly prolific in that area. 

But other places are obviously named for other places/towns and such that existed in other countries.

For instance, in my state we have Rome, Culloden, Cuthbert, Montezuma, Buena Vista, Macon, Damascus, Cairo (admittedly pronounced Kay-Row) and Vienna (also mispronounced as VI-annah).  This always intrigues me.  How did we come to have towns with those names so far from where they originated?

Culloden for instance, was named after a man from Scotland whose last name and home were Culloden.  Did he come to name this place because there was a similarity in landscapes?  Or was it merely because it was his last name and therefore, he tagged it as a lasting legacy to himself?  Was he so homesick for his native Scotland, so lost in the wilderness in which he found himself that he wanted to build a reminder of home?  Was it merely that he thought himself equal to build a utopian version of his childhood home?

I prefer to think it's a form of homesickness, or perhaps even of similar landscapes that reminded him strongly of his childhood, a longing to return to the halcyon days of a happy time in his life, before he'd faced the hardship of traveling thousands of miles via ship and then literally hacking his way to the place he came to at last.

What occurred to create the name of the town called Damascus?  Was it a spiritual awakening that shook the former founder as he was locating his homestead?  I can't pass the directional sign that points toward Damascus without thinking of Paul's road to Damascus experience.

Did the person who originally settled Cairo in Georgia dream of visiting Cairo?  Visit Cairo prior to his coming to the Americas?  Who knows?

Naturally I want to look up the history of all these towns and some day will, but in the meantime, it's a pleasant and intriguing puzzle to contemplate.

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Along the same lines, I love driving through the countryside, etc.  And travel videos.   I shall defend my stance of certain landscapes reminding me of that in another area, state or country by saying that frequently I'll be watching something and say to John, "Now that reminds me of the place along Highway XXX, you know where the trees come together overhead and there's a big curve in the road..." and he'll nod and agree.  

Which made me wonder the other day if I had ever had the chance to travel as I so longed to do from my childhood onward, would I have experienced those same feelings in gazing at a real landscape?  A sort of deja vu of place?  Would I have done as my father did, in crossing the Virginia state line for the first time, turned to look at whomever I was traveling with and said in disgust, "Well this looks just like Georgia!  I'm going to turn around and go back into the mountains!"   

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And still along the same lines, going back to the halcyon days of childhood, or first love or whenever you found yourself tied to a place heart and soul...

My 'place' is here on this land.  It was safety and security, freedom and unconditional love.  But even before I was aware that it was all those things, something in my spirit lifted high each time we topped the hill above the river valley, and I looked out across the miles of woods and mist and the winding highway and knew that off to the right over yonder near the horizon lay Granny's home.  

In fact, my earliest memories of this place center more around the first view than they do the acknowledgement of feeling loved, treasured, a joy.  That all of those things were found here upon this land are simply as reasonable as finding gold at the end of the rainbow, in my opinion.  It was expected somehow that happiness lay in this place and so it did and so it continues to do so for me.

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And there I shall end my current set of ramblings.