Stumbling Over and Over

Many people have gathered that I’ve been away from my computer and from recreational writing for the longest interval ever (since a daughter set me up with this fortuitously idiot-proof blog).

I’ll begin at the end.

I moved.

My brother and I did a final walk-through of the darkened, empty house where my husband Jim and I reared four Lake Woebegonian children.  (That verb’s for you, dear Aunt Judy.)

We moved into this sturdy home–Jim’s dream house, with its own pond, into which one of our toddlers plunked a plump hand during his first visit and lifted out a perch, which he promptly returned to its own home–on a humid October Saturday, when gold leaves clumped underfoot and New Hampshire mosquitoes still flourished.

There were five of us then.

Jim and I brought our three pre-schoolers to this house.  The new part of the house was added in 1805.  There was no dissuading Jim once he saw the home and the land, which burst with fruit trees and berries, neon lime-yellow quince the size of footballs, asparagus stalks with the circumference of silver dollars, and sparkling water graced with at least two magnificent swans.

As Uncle Randy would say at Jim’s service, “The Glennon family was home” once Jim saw this house.

We added sunny baby Suzannah the following winter, and became a family of six.

There are five of us again now. Continue reading “Stumbling Over and Over”

Paint My Spirit Gold

Raise my hands, paint my spirit gold . . . .

The group Mumford & Sons has released a wonderful album Jim did not have a chance to hear.  I cannot stop playing a particular song–“I Will Wait for You“–during my lengthy interstate morning commute, which begins in darkness and turns to daylight by mid-drive.

Mumford & Sons sings of raising hands as a joyful entreaty, a gesture of faith and grace, perhaps offering oneself over to a greater world and power as a kind of salvation.  It seems very unlike the needy raised hands which beseech:

. . . . If you are lying
Flat on your back with arms outstretched behind you,
You say you require
Emergency treatment; if you are standing erect and holding
Arms horizontal, you mean you are not ready;
If you hold them over
Your head, you want to be picked up. . . .

Continue reading “Paint My Spirit Gold”

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