The Month After the Month Before
- In early January, my insurance specialist came to the house and spent a long time walking across the crunchy earth--just to hear it snap, crackle and pop, he weakly confided in me. Later, bone-cold and damp, we huddled in the kitchen before the old wood stove, sipping hot spiced tea and nibbling on my dwindling black fruit cake. Actually, I did not know why he had come as I had not summond him, nor was I due for a review. I waited. As he prepared to leave, he said, "By the way, Leigh, could you give my wife the recipe for your black fruit cake?" Ah, I thought. The truth at last.
"Thanks a bunch for this, Leigh. Best fruit cake I ever tasted. Happy New Year, and THANKS, again!
February continued blustery, bleak and stark. There is something about bare tree branches that sparks a ghostly response in me. As I sat at the kitchen table looking out the window, I wanted to DO something to those branches. Even the birds seemed to feel this need as they perched on every available wooden arm. Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower, even in a flowerless month. So, I made little wild birdseed poseys and tied them to the branches. It seemed that every bird hopped on my window sill entertaining me with dances of thankfulness.
"I am not sure when I first began to suspect that someone was trying to kill me..." No, not me! That is a line from one of the four novels I read in March. Victoria Holt. A great author who wrote a magnificent series: Bride of Pendorric, The Shadow of the Lynx, King of the Castle and Mistress of Mellyn. Before I knew it, the frigid, windy month had passed. Holt seems to have a knack for using lines that can be applied to ones own life, like this one from The Bride of Pendorric: I often marvelled after I went to Pendorric that one's existence could change so swiftly... Applied, it reads: I often marvelled after I went to Old House that my existence could change so swiftly...Life at Old House has been an education. It teaches. It tests. It grades. It evaluates. I offer thanksgiving for those lessons taught--for what I have learned about life and for the fact that life does goes on in spite of difficulties, roadblocks, difficult relationships, illness and failed goals.
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