Beauty draws the eye and the spirit towards itself, whether it’s a flower, a mountain stream, the smile of a baby or the joy of watching an outfielder catch a fly ball in mid air or a gymnast sticking her dismount – we are all drawn to beauty. It even occurs to me that beauty is the ultimate draw of life – we all love the feel of seeing beauty. It’s both visual and visceral. This is why writers who use metaphor, simile and vivid details to describe things move us more than those who simply tell us something is beautiful. I could say that I had a beautiful childhood growing up in the country in Georgia back in the 1950’s but that’s pretty bland statement and doesn’t really do much to convey the real joy I felt.
When I tell people we lived in a weather beaten old house which some said used to be a sharecroppers cabin in the backwoods of Georgia, most people don’t conger up a beautiful setting, but I do. I was surrounded by beauty everywhere I looked. From Mama’s back door flower porch with it’s pots and pots of variegated cuttings of coleus, white petaled black eyed daisies and the velvet reds and purples of the petunias she planted out in the yard each year. I also found beauty on the side of the black top road I had to walk everyday to school. In spring it was the fragrance and beauty of honeysuckle and the charm of Queen Anne’s lace lining the side of the road. In winter, I saw beauty when I looked out at what the ice storm had brought and marveled at the way the trees looked like they were growing long sparkly ice crystals. Then in the fall I loved to collect the red, yellow and bright Orange leaves to make my own brand of "flower" arrangements with them. I even loved the kudzu, that tenacious, snake like vine that climbed and wrapped itself around anything and everything that stood still long enough - I thought it was lovely as well.
But it wasn't just nature that brought beauty to my eyes - I longed for what we called back then, a hundred yard slip - a fantastic garment made of yards and yards of frothy net, well, one hundred yards, if you believe the advertising, and I sure did. I wanted one of them so badly that I could taste it. I wanted to wear it under my favorite blue dress so I would look like a ballerina. Then one day Mama came home from work and pulled this cotton candy pink confection out of a brown shopping bag and gave it to me, just because, she said. I loved that thing and wore it to school ever day until it wilted and we had to wash it. Then I used a used a sugar, starch and water concoction to pump it back up to its full wonder and wore it till I outgrew it. It was a bit scratchy on my skinny little legs but it made my dress stick out about five inches from the waist and when I whirled around and around in it, showing it off to my girlfriends, I thought I was some kind of princess. I also found beauty in the little red silk neckerchief of my Mama's that I begged her to let me wear around my neck, turned to the side in a sassy way, for my 5th grade school pictures. Talk about beauty, I felt like some kind of movie star in that thing.
I remember catching June bugs and tying a string around their legs and flying them around the yard on a warm summer night. I also remember catching fireflies and putting them in mason jars and setting them all along the front porch as luminaries – a word I didn’t know then. But I knew it would make that drab old porch glow and bring a smile to Daddy’s face when I went in and told him to come out and see what I'd done. I remember the red clay yard and how we would build ourselves what we called rivers and lakes with the rushing water after one of the gully washers - as Uncle John called a summer thunder storm – came and made a lake out of our yard. In Georgia, like everywhere else on earth rain is very beautiful – it washes away the dirt, dust and grime that sits on everything after a long hot spell. In the back woods of Georgia, the rain often came in buckets and torrents and could turn our yard into a swamp. We would then build bridges, create tunnels and let the water flow like a river into a big lake in the middle of the yard. We’d then build ourselves these little boats and barges out of tree bark and shavings from the woodpile and have races down to that big lake. The next day the sun would come out and by suppertime, the yard would look like an archaeological dig – another word I didn’t know then – and Mama would tell us to get out there and clean up the mess we’d made. But before we did we'd have ourselves a good old time lobbing dirt clods at each other and getting ourselves completely filthy. When Mama would look out the window and see us she would yell. “Y’all better get in here and get cleaned up for supper – you look like a bunch wild Indians about to go on the warpath.”
To Mama we looked like savages with all that red dust clinging to our faces and arms. We needed a bath, she would say, so she could figure out who was Jimmy and who was Lorraine or who was Ronnie and who was Sherry – we were the main players in the Dirt Clod Derby – the other two – there were seven of us then - later another baby would come along – were too young for the the rough and tumble of our yard play.
Eventually it would be time to take that bath. But, we didn’t have running water so Daddy would draw some water from the well and he would take it into the kitchen where Mama would heat up a bunch of it on the stove and then they would set up two wash tubs – those big silver galvanize ones people in the country used to do the laundry back then. One would be filled with warm soapy water and the other would be the rinse water and would be cool and refreshing to our hot little bodies. Of course this led to lots of splashing and giggling and whispering about seeing each other’s willies and wallies – that’s what we’d decided to name our private parts and it stuck. After that Mama would wrap us up in these big towels and we would get in our jimmies and eat a little supper – we were pretty bushed by then. Either she or Daddy would then tell us a bedtime story and it was tell us a story, not read us one – we were too poor for books - plus with all those kids, no book would have lasted long in our house without one of the younger kids coloring all the pages and then ripping all the pages out just for fun. But both Mama and Daddy were great story tellers. Their stories were often about living on a farm or going to the Grand Ole Oprey or camping out in the big woods back in South Carolina where Mama was from. Or the stories might be tales of warning about some bad girl or boy they knew from a long time ago who got into big trouble. Sometimes it was about some kid who did nothing but good things and sounded like a saint to us, but we knew better, kids being kids - we just laughed off these warnings.
Life was good, life was beautiful - back then, as now. For me the the beauty way is the only way to really enjoy life and get its full meaning and purpose. Now this is not to say that there are not some tough times, of course there are – we had some bad times back there in that sharecropper’s cabin, but I choose to let those memories go. If I focus on the bad then that ruins my present and puts a pall over my past. So I choose to look for the good and I implore you to do the same. If you look for and surrounds yourself with beauty then the hard times are a lot easier to take and deal with AND they end up having more meaning. Because even the tough times have a kind of beauty in them or beauty can come from them in certain ways and in certain situations. Now I don’t mean pure evil or devastation or pointless pain and sorrow – I am not saying that we should try and find beauty in something like the Holocaust or the devastation of hurricane Katrina or what happened at Columbine High School – a place not fifteen miles from where I live - but to deny beauty in the futile hope that focusing on tragedy and pain will somehow change these things or somehow eliminate them or to become a victim of life, I don’t think that is how things work.
So today, I’m asking you to think about the beauty in your life and to look at the pain you have suffered, or are suffering at this very moment, as having some beauty to it. I remember when my father-in-law Art died, and I wrote to his wife (his second wife, my husband’s mother had died earlier) all the wonderful and delightful things I remembered about him that made him special and how if I thought about those things, I did not feel sad, I felt glad for having known him. She wrote back to me and said that of all the sympathy cards she had receive mine was the only one that made her feel good and that she had framed it and put it on her mantle to remind her of the joy, the beauty, Art had brought to her life.
As you look around you at your life, at the people in it, the place you live, the times you live in and so on, what do you see that fills you with joy? What makes you smile? What do you feel privileged to have in your life? What beautiful lessons have you learned and now use to make you a better person? If you have pain in your life be it physical or emotional, what message is it sending you about your life? Is there something you need to wake up and see? How can you use your pain to make your life more beautiful? How can you make someone else’s life more beautiful? Giving and sharing what you have to give and share is in itself a beautiful thing – so go out today and give someone something or share the load or lend a hand – beauty comes in all kinds of ways and actions.
Today and everyday, I wish you beauty…Blessings, Lorraine
I remember catching June bugs and tying a string around their legs and flying them around the yard on a warm summer night. I also remember catching fireflies and putting them in mason jars and setting them all along the front porch as luminaries – a word I didn’t know then. But I knew it would make that drab old porch glow and bring a smile to Daddy’s face when I went in and told him to come out and see what I'd done. I remember the red clay yard and how we would build ourselves what we called rivers and lakes with the rushing water after one of the gully washers - as Uncle John called a summer thunder storm – came and made a lake out of our yard. In Georgia, like everywhere else on earth rain is very beautiful – it washes away the dirt, dust and grime that sits on everything after a long hot spell. In the back woods of Georgia, the rain often came in buckets and torrents and could turn our yard into a swamp. We would then build bridges, create tunnels and let the water flow like a river into a big lake in the middle of the yard. We’d then build ourselves these little boats and barges out of tree bark and shavings from the woodpile and have races down to that big lake. The next day the sun would come out and by suppertime, the yard would look like an archaeological dig – another word I didn’t know then – and Mama would tell us to get out there and clean up the mess we’d made. But before we did we'd have ourselves a good old time lobbing dirt clods at each other and getting ourselves completely filthy. When Mama would look out the window and see us she would yell. “Y’all better get in here and get cleaned up for supper – you look like a bunch wild Indians about to go on the warpath.”
To Mama we looked like savages with all that red dust clinging to our faces and arms. We needed a bath, she would say, so she could figure out who was Jimmy and who was Lorraine or who was Ronnie and who was Sherry – we were the main players in the Dirt Clod Derby – the other two – there were seven of us then - later another baby would come along – were too young for the the rough and tumble of our yard play.
Eventually it would be time to take that bath. But, we didn’t have running water so Daddy would draw some water from the well and he would take it into the kitchen where Mama would heat up a bunch of it on the stove and then they would set up two wash tubs – those big silver galvanize ones people in the country used to do the laundry back then. One would be filled with warm soapy water and the other would be the rinse water and would be cool and refreshing to our hot little bodies. Of course this led to lots of splashing and giggling and whispering about seeing each other’s willies and wallies – that’s what we’d decided to name our private parts and it stuck. After that Mama would wrap us up in these big towels and we would get in our jimmies and eat a little supper – we were pretty bushed by then. Either she or Daddy would then tell us a bedtime story and it was tell us a story, not read us one – we were too poor for books - plus with all those kids, no book would have lasted long in our house without one of the younger kids coloring all the pages and then ripping all the pages out just for fun. But both Mama and Daddy were great story tellers. Their stories were often about living on a farm or going to the Grand Ole Oprey or camping out in the big woods back in South Carolina where Mama was from. Or the stories might be tales of warning about some bad girl or boy they knew from a long time ago who got into big trouble. Sometimes it was about some kid who did nothing but good things and sounded like a saint to us, but we knew better, kids being kids - we just laughed off these warnings.
Life was good, life was beautiful - back then, as now. For me the the beauty way is the only way to really enjoy life and get its full meaning and purpose. Now this is not to say that there are not some tough times, of course there are – we had some bad times back there in that sharecropper’s cabin, but I choose to let those memories go. If I focus on the bad then that ruins my present and puts a pall over my past. So I choose to look for the good and I implore you to do the same. If you look for and surrounds yourself with beauty then the hard times are a lot easier to take and deal with AND they end up having more meaning. Because even the tough times have a kind of beauty in them or beauty can come from them in certain ways and in certain situations. Now I don’t mean pure evil or devastation or pointless pain and sorrow – I am not saying that we should try and find beauty in something like the Holocaust or the devastation of hurricane Katrina or what happened at Columbine High School – a place not fifteen miles from where I live - but to deny beauty in the futile hope that focusing on tragedy and pain will somehow change these things or somehow eliminate them or to become a victim of life, I don’t think that is how things work.
So today, I’m asking you to think about the beauty in your life and to look at the pain you have suffered, or are suffering at this very moment, as having some beauty to it. I remember when my father-in-law Art died, and I wrote to his wife (his second wife, my husband’s mother had died earlier) all the wonderful and delightful things I remembered about him that made him special and how if I thought about those things, I did not feel sad, I felt glad for having known him. She wrote back to me and said that of all the sympathy cards she had receive mine was the only one that made her feel good and that she had framed it and put it on her mantle to remind her of the joy, the beauty, Art had brought to her life.
As you look around you at your life, at the people in it, the place you live, the times you live in and so on, what do you see that fills you with joy? What makes you smile? What do you feel privileged to have in your life? What beautiful lessons have you learned and now use to make you a better person? If you have pain in your life be it physical or emotional, what message is it sending you about your life? Is there something you need to wake up and see? How can you use your pain to make your life more beautiful? How can you make someone else’s life more beautiful? Giving and sharing what you have to give and share is in itself a beautiful thing – so go out today and give someone something or share the load or lend a hand – beauty comes in all kinds of ways and actions.
Today and everyday, I wish you beauty…Blessings, Lorraine
