Dear Carpenter,

Have you ever wondered what happened to your old tool box? Probably, you left it in the detached garage beside the first house you rented forty-five years ago.I wish I could ask if you made the box yourself and if it was always painted sage green.

You might be irked to know that I bought the odd antique at a garage sale for two dollars. The straight rod that formed the handle and fit in the holes at each end was broken and held in place with masking tape. I tried to fix it, but gave up and removed the handle altogether.

The lids were still hinged in place, so I folded them open before I filled the base with broken pottery pieces and covered those with potting soil. I filled it with purple petunias which have bloomed happily where once screw drivers, hammers, a hand drill, chisels, sand paper, and nails mingled.

I know you haven't forgotten this tool box. Surely, you set it aside with a bit of nostalgia when you purchased your first metal one to replace it. Maybe, you thought your grandchildren would like to see it someday. So you set it on the garage shelf where it collected up rolls of fishing line, random extra tools, and a 3-in-1 oil can. A mud dauber built a stucco apartment on the underside of the lid and it was forgotten.

Years later, someone cleaned junk from the garage and took it with a load of salvageables to the sale, where I saw it and invested two bucks in my love of the mysterious. Every antique has a story and a mystery. I can resist neither. So, I thank you for the fun and though you may be miffed at my turning your manly toolbox into a flower planter, you have to admit, it does a beautiful service.

Still Friends?
Elece

 

Dear Ronee,

Thank you for being such a close-as-family friend.  I know that at any time I could knock at your door and you wouldn't mind answering. I might be wrong, but with you I feel secure that you aren't pretending to be nice; you are nice for real. Last week, I felt lonely and sad, so I headed for your house. I knew you would be glad to welcome me in for a hug, a talk, a cup of comforting hot tea, and a cry if need be. Usually, we just have a nice visit, like a visit with one of my own sisters. 

We talk about our children, our schoolwork, our housework, our hobbies, and our social activities. We get all the latest news and views from each other. If I visit you in a dreary mood or in a cheerful mood, I find your ear ready to listen, your heart ready to understand, and your hand willing to do anything you can to help.

It does my heart good to see your children playing happily. Sarah let me take her picture on the swing she and her sisters had made. Joe gave me one of his sweet, no strings attached little boy hugs, which I needed. I love your children.

Every woman needs a friend like you to walk beside and to talk to. Alas, not all women have one. There are too few true friends on the earth to go around.

Love you, 

Elece

Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family. Anthony Brandy

Dear Mama,

Mother's Day is coming up and I was thinking about you even more than usual. When spring arrives and the flowers bloom, I recall Dad bringing you a huge bouquet of salmon pink gladiolas he had stopped and chosen from a local gardener. You put them in your tall gray pottery vase and set it in the sunlight in front of the picture window. It was spectacular!

When we lived in Michigan, you planted snapdragons and pansies in the flowerbeds along either side of the driveway. You have always been a flower lover. I know you would be thrilled to see the roses, irises, lilies and azaleas that I have blooming around my house now.

I have an old straw hat hanging on the wall that reminds me of you. I know you love straw hats, gardens, and the country life. You were an Oklahoma girl, growing up after the dust bowl years, the third eldest of a group of eight siblings. You loved farm life, riding horses, swimming in the creek, and walking in the fields. You loved your Uncle Stoney and Aunt Blanche from Tecumseh.

Be sure of the fact that I will be thinking of you next Sunday as we celebrate Mother's Day.

Love you,

Elece

Dear Wild Prairie,

How I love to see God work in you. I love to watch Him change and renew you.

On an April morning, I walk between two rusty gate posts into the past. The house once built here by homesteaders is gone. Steps, which a child once sat on to pout lay discarded on their side in the grass. Someday, they will break down and disappear. 

The grass, once kept neat and trim, is waist high. The briars have begun there repossessing of the land. Weeds, wild berry bushes, and milkweed mix with a few enduring domestic plants over the burial ground of the past. 

Small trees have taken root where they will grow unnoticed under the old trees that once held children's rope swings and  provided shady play space for little girls creating mud pies; shade trees that helped keep the house cool and made a porch into a leafy retreat for family to gather and rest in after a hard day's work. These big trees will be toppled by wind and time and the small trees will have their day.

 

  

Yucca plants, blue iris, daffodils and daylilies still herald spring here and speak of summer and whisper of the past. Rocks circle a dry pool where little children once clamored, capturing lizards, and frogs on happy carefree afternoons.

A tired housewife laid her baby to sleep in a shaded spot and sat on a slat-backed chair enjoying the quiet time shelling peas for supper. Her husband has taken a trip to town to sell produce from the back of his old truck. Her older daughter is out back pulling weeds in the garden. Maybe a son is busy chopping wood for the winter ahead.

She's enjoying the iris, takes in a whiff of its fragrance, almost overshadowed by the honesysuckle trundling along the fence. She plans to divide the iris and plant more on each side of the new gate her husband put in this year. The gate that the prairie has bent, that rain now has rusted, that is missing from the iron posts that sit like an a book cover encasing missing pages.

That was long ago. You and God have ongoing plans for this spot on the prariie. Every year the past is further erased, and someday the farm that once sat on your welcome mat will be completely forgotten; not one person living will know it was there.

In the meantime, I will walk here and ponder the past, the courage in the face of hardships that our ancestors possessed, and the love of beauty in a human heart that planted iris.

Love You, Elece

Dear Rachel,

I wanted to write and thank you for the beautiful basket of Bougainvillea that you brought me on Easter Sunday. I hung it on a branch on the sycamore tree beside my birdfeeders and it is gorgeous. Its pale green and pink petals fluttering in the spring wind remind me of ruffles on a little girl's Easter dress.

Didn't it seem to you that spring green burst out of nowhere? It seemed sudden and I have been enjoying the sunny skies and warm breezes. The oak trees have unfurled their leaves like green pennants and catkins shower pollen on the newly mown grass. The pecan trees and the sycamores are just "breaking bud" as Dad would say.

The tulips have nodded in the wind until their petals dropped, and the redbud tree out front has begun to shed pink, the color of frosting on a strawberry cake, in a circle beneath its branches.The purple iris are blooming, and today a first yellow rose bud popped open on the bush outside the picture window. The azaleas are opening and they will soon be a splash as bright red as a cut ripe watermelon beside the white of the house.

The best thing about the flowers you sent me is the fact that you bought them for yourself and then loved them so that you decided to part with them. You were thrilled with the blooms, yet knowing I would love them you gave them to me. I know it was a gift from your heart.

The flowers have given me joy, just like having you for a daughter does.

Love You,

Mama

What the heart gives away is never gone...It is kept in the heart of others.

Robin St. Johns

AHHHHHHH

Dear Jesus,

What a beautiful day Easter has always been to me because of you! Dad used to take us to the early sunrise service and then to a lodge in the woods where they served pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast. We sang and prayed and ate at long rustic tables festooned with bouquets of buttery daffodils as the sun slanted through the windows on us.

I remember sunrise service at our home in Texas at the Jesus House. Mama served up platters of pancakes and filled pitchers with fresh icy cold milk. We had bouquets of daffodils there too. Someone played a guitar and we sang about how we cherish the cross because it was there you died because you loved us so and wanted to bring us the hope of overcoming death.

On the lawn at Grandma June's house in Louisiana, we watched the sun leap into the morning sky and we sang with the brothers and sisters there, "He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today! He walks with me and talks with me along life's narrow way!"

Oh, do you remember how Jiggs and the men's quartet sang for us on Easter Sunday? They started out slow and low and dreadfully woeful.

"Low in the grave He lay, Jesus, my saviour;

Waiting the coming day, Jesus, my Lord!"

(Then with such pomp and power they sang:)

"UP FROM THE GRAVE HE AROSE,

With a mighty triumph o'r His foes!

He arose the victor from the dark domain,

And He lives forever with His saints to reign!

He arose! He arose!

Hallelujah! Christ arose!"

"Death could not keep its prey, Jesus, my saviour;

He rolled the stone away, Jesus, my Lord!

"UP FROM THE GRAVE HE AROSE,

With a mighty triumph o'r His foes!

He arose the victor from the dark domain;

And He lives forever with His saints to reign!

He arose! He arose!

Hallelujah! Christ arose!"

I can still hear them. Their deep and marvelous voices thundering in the old stone dome of the First Baptist Church in Manistee, Michigan. It was greater than any theater surround sound system on earth! I am sure that of all the praises you have heard, you must remember those.The sound went right through a person's soul and overpowered him. It made me laugh and cry at the same time!

This morning the sun rose bright and warm on my bedroom window and I watched these tulips open to the light. I thought about you and how good you are to us. I thought what a wonderful day it was when my spirit and heart opened to your light and I knew you were alive!

Thank you, Lord, for coming. Thank you for dying and for living again, for making all things beautiful in your time. And thank you for tulips waving like flags to the spring sky and oh, yes, thank you for songs to sing.

Love you, Elece