Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Memories


 The deep feelings of the heart are often difficult to wrap with words or tap out with keys. I have been mentally attempting to do that for days now. I keep coming up with images rather than words, memories I cannot make visible.


On Sunday evenings we sit and watch the PBS series "Call the Midwife." I am captivated. The beautifully crafted stories, the very real characters, and the time and place. Mostly, I think, it is the time and place. When the credits roll, I sit wrapped in a fog of emotion not wanting to break the spell.

 The 1950's was the decade of my childhood. I grew up surrounded by a large extended family. Life was simple.


 I watch the nurses and nuns on the television program, sitting on the tattered old sofas in the living room - the ones with the crocheted pillows tossed in the corners, just like the ones my Mom made. Sometimes there is conversation. Often they sit quietly, each absorbed in her task - knitting, writing, reading. There is such a sense of peace.


I think of my days, filled to the brim with "busy." I add up the hours spent in front of a screen of one sort or another. I long for those quiet times of simply being.  


It is impossible to wrap a memory in words, but I feel it.  I feel the the" Holy Silence," the gentle flow of conversation, the laughter around the kitchen table, the shared times of creating something beautiful. I remember, too, the sorrows, the times of drawing close together, of sitting silently to mourn with another. 

They weren't perfect times - of course they weren't. But there was a "something," and I am on the hunt for it. 

Blessings,
Linda