It's a laughing, smiling, happy sort of morning on my little patch of perfection - the "Great American Desert" is receiving enough rain to sustain life for at least another week - 60+ years ago I remember my paternal grandmother working in the kitchen baking bread for the weekend and preparing breakfast - she sang hymns as she worked - a scent of frying bacon would waft through the air long before the sun appeared over the horizon - her single slice toaster could be heard ticking away on the table(the toaster still works) - and the eggshell coffee would be boiling on the stove -this time of year was almost as magical as Christmas - her garden was in full production and on Saturday afternoons she would can vegetables - pantry in the root cellar was always stocked with enough provisions to last two winters - her peach pie and the baskets of peaches being prepared were a wonder - yup, I always ate too many - and the garden also produced raspberries and strawberries enough to fill the small wooden baskets that were always kept clean and ready - wooden bushel baskets and wooden peach crates were reused all the years that I could remember and I guess they had to be in really sad shape to ever do anything other than get stacked for the next season - life was so simple - it was good. Grandmother was born in 1889 in a sod home built on the prairie of South Dakota. That was the same year that this portion of the Great American Desert became a state. this morning's rain would have delighted her. I can almost hear the rain barrel overflowing at the back of the wash shed. That was where she would wash her hair. When questioned on the history she had witnessed her response to, "What is the greatest advancement mankind has made in your lifetime?" Some of us thought she might mention television or radio. The telephone had to rank up there at the top(she loved to talk on the phone)and the advent of automobiles and airplanes, not to mention man walking on the moon. Nope, none of those made it to the top of her personal list. Without skipping a beat she replied, "Indoor plumbing!" Her laughter was a wonder and her eyes would sparkle with it. She was in love so deeply with her husband Bill(they wed when she was 15)that she ever looked for another after his passing. She was quite happy as a widow. I think that we were all much happier people in those days. Nothing can ever compare to the life we thought normal. I give thanks this day for that home - and the love that filled my tummy, nose, ears, mouth, and heart - Thank You Lord for my ancestors - In Christ's Love, Preacher.

>my mind began to turn over pages of the past for me this evening. Some of them flew by so quickly that there was barely time to see what year they may have covered. It seems that I've been drawn backwards to a time I once lived and now I'm living again. I enjoy the reminders of how things once were and how they seem to be again. In my heart of hearts I know it can't last much longer because some sort of spiritual rhythm is at work within me and I'm not supposed to be in the same place for too long. Growing up I was not ever in what some would refer to as a home. There were places that felt like home for a little while but they did not last. Oddly enough I didn't even come 'home' from the hospital with my mother. I was kept there for ten-twelve days after being born because of difficulties in survival. Obviously I did survive but there are so many questions concerning what it was I survived that is wrapped in the cloak of untruths shared with family members(most of them dead now)and the outright lies that were perpetrated by those closest to me. When I finally came 'home' from the hospital I was placed with an aunt. My mother's sister who was a school teacher with a 10 year old daughter. I know now from memories that I was with them for at least two years. I was walking about and trying to run when I was moved from the aunt's home to the home of my father and mother. Following that I was placed in the care of one grandmother or the other until I began school. Weird stuff went on during those years. The stuff that nightmares are made from including a one legged life size doll nearly three feet in height that lived in the closet of the room in which I was placed in my parent's house.