Archive for June, 2007

Where the Wild Things Are

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007

The Dame’s Rocket is finished blooming in the fields, and now the wild roses and lilies are beginning to show forth along the bike path. A ride along said path today brought evidence that their glory will go from infancy to the prime of life in a matter of days. I can’t remember which wildflowers replace the ones currently in bloom, but even when I do know the variety, I am delighted almost as much as when I first discovered the resplendence of the wilds of Ohio. And equally delightful, red berries cling to the bike path’s wild black raspberry vines and will doubtless be ready for picking in a couple of weeks. I hope the old guy with the huge waders (to remain untouched by the thorns and poison ivy) comes with his pail again this year – another delightful scene.

Sometimes when the weather is breezy, warm and not humid (as it has been for many days now), and I’ve picked my fill of strawberries in the backyard I can believe that there is no better place on earth than my patch of Ohio. Ahhh. Contentment

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The Chaos of Womanhood

Saturday, June 9th, 2007

Currently, I’m reading a book called Gift From the Sea, written in the 50’s by author, Anne Morrow Lindburgh. Many of her thoughts about life and being a woman are surprisingly relevant. Here is a quote that resonated with me:

With a new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has to do primarily with distractions. The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pull — woman’s normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life. The problem is not merely one of Woman and Career, Woman and the Home, Woman and Independence. It is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center; how to remain strong, no matter what shocks come in at the periphery and tend to crack the hub of the wheel.

This reminds me that life has been complicated and messy for women far longer than twenty years ago, when I became one myself.

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