Local Wonders by Ted Kooser Susan’s Thursday morning note May 16, 2013 followed by note from March 2007. Elderly friend dying who loved us as a child. Passage of time.
Good morning! Calm. Quiet. The perfect few moments before life enters the day. How I love this daily gift from the angel of dawn. Stillness. Reflection. Perfect filler with a little coffee added in. Yesterday someone I loved dearly died from illness. I wrote about how I loved her in 2007 on one of my notes when I was writing out of Ted Kooser’s newly published book, Local Wonders about someone that knew him as a child dying. I’d like to reprint this for you since it’s in my mind. I hope you will have this in your mind today – the thoughts of who knew you as a child…his writing was on the last person that knew him as a child dying. I like thinking about things like this…life. So incredibly short. The little gifts like this woman’s love to me. What makes us feel we really had moments we lived. When we loved deeply.
My Thursday Note from March 22, 2007. Ted Kooser’s Local Wonders: Good morning! I haven’t been able to brew my coffee because Camden snuck out of his room an hour ago & if I grind my beans it will wake him up. This is a test of whether I can form coherent sentences without the effects of caffeine in my system! This week I have been rereading a book that I cannot imagine anyone not enjoying entitled Local Wonders by Ted Kooser. The book was published by the University of NE Press and received a Pulitzer prize; full of little essays of anything that crosses his mind. One entry that made an impression on me and came to me this week reads: Helen Molleston has died at 92. There was a letter in my box this morning. She was the last living friend and neighbor of my parents. In one of her journals, May Sarton says something to the effect that one of the saddest days of her life was when she realized that there was no one still living who remembered what she had been like as a child. On my desk among all the other odds and ends I’ve collected is a wooden potato masher that she gave me twenty years ago… How much I will miss this woman, the last to die of my parents’ generation and therefore the one who, without ever knowing it, has carried the burden of being my last living link to their time. I have been sitting in a hospital room this week with a woman that knew me as a child. That loved me as a child. This woman lit up when she saw me, for she truly knew me. She was the woman who had me over for tea in high school, who wrote to me in college, who in my baby album is the first picture besides relatives to be holding Camden in a rocking chair. This is the woman who saw Camden the day he took his first steps in her kitchen. The woman who held Camden bawling in the backseat to the hospital when he burned the entire back off of his legs with a curling iron. This is the woman who loved her Susan – I do not have a memory of my life without her. As she lay in her hospital bed this week, all I could think about was the incredible, unexplainable treasure smiling at me in that little 10×10 white room. The incredible treasure. A woman that knew me as a child. That still sees me, not as a 40-year old woman, but as a child. Who when I’m in her presence I haven’t grown up, I am still little Susan – not the Susan with all of the complexities of growing up. I remembered the essay from Ted Kooser’s book and was so glad to find it a few days ago for all of you. I find the concept of having those around me that knew me as a child fascinating. I wonder why that fascinates me? Who is still alive in your world that you may rarely see, but who when they see you, they see you as a child? We must find these treasures and write these treasures and let these treasures know the impact they have on our lives. Time flies…years glide by…are we taking time to be with those who see us as a child? We will not have these treasures much longer. I ordered several copies of these essays, written outside Lincoln near Branched Oak Lake. Reflections on life in Nebraska. If you need a book that is not hard to read, but full of thoughts to contemplate, then I highly recommend this book to you. Don’t forget to listen to the birds today. Don’t forget to give yourself a few minutes of silence. Enjoy your day…enjoy your spring – may this new season be good to you. We so appreciate you & your support – you know that, but let me reiterate the truth once again! Susan
Since this note of 2007 she has now held and loved a new little one of mine. Just last week grinned at him and pushed him on her little walker for his ride to supper with her. One week. So much to say goodbye to. Life just continues to go past. Time. The winds that don’t stop. I wonder who I will have in the next few decades of my life that will leave deep impressions on me? I love how life gives the gift of loving so deeply that it hurts. Again, the realization that life is short. What can we do to make the moments mean something? What will we choose to spend our moments and thoughts on? Our choice. To drop to our knees the short distance (even if mentally)? To look up to the hills with gratitude for the gift of another day? Little gifts. Children have the opportunity to see God differently than we do, for they take the time to notice the little details. The beautiful details of life. Thank you for letting me come into your Thursday again. Tonight we have the opportunity to again think over our day and write in stone our epitaph for the moments we will never have back today. Will we have any worthy of inscription? Did we notice the birds singing to us? Did we notice the eyes of who we love? Did we stop for ourselves and just have some silence? Today. Our beautiful gift. Susan
Latin for this week: femina pulchra - beautiful woman tempus – time caelum – heaven
Excerpt from March 22, 2007 Newsletter
Local Wonders by Ted Kooser
Good morning! I haven’t been able to brew my coffee because Camden snuck out of his room an hour ago & if I grind my beans it will wake him up. This is a test of whether I can form coherent sentences without the effects of caffeine in my system! This week I have been rereading a book that I cannot imagine anyone not enjoying entitled Local Wonders by Ted Kooser. The book was published by the University of NE Press and received a Pulitzer prize; full of little essays of anything that crosses his mind. One entry that made an impression on me and came to me this week reads:
Helen Molleston has died at 92. There was a letter in my box this morning. She was the last living friend and neighbor of my parents. In one of her journals, May Sarton says something to the effect that one of the saddest days of her life was when she realized that there was no one still living who remembered what she had been like as a child. On my desk among all the other odds and ends I’ve collected is a wooden potato masher that she gave me twenty years ago… How much I will miss this woman, the last to die of my parents’ generation and therefore the one who, without ever knowing it, has carried the burden of being my last living link to their time.
I have been sitting in a hospital room this week with a woman that knew me as a child. That loved me as a child. This woman lit up when she saw me, for she truly knew me. She was the woman who had me over for tea in high school, who wrote to me in college, who in my baby album is the first picture besides relatives to be holding Camden in a rocking chair. This is the woman who saw Camden the day he took his first steps in her kitchen. The woman who held Camden bawling in the backseat to the hospital when he burned the entire back off of his legs with a curling iron. This is the woman who loved her Susan – I do not have a memory of my life without her. As she lay in her hospital bed this week, all I could think about was the incredible, unexplainable treasure smiling at me in that little 10×10 white room. The incredible treasure. A woman that knew me as a child. That still sees me, not as a 40-year old woman, but as a child. Who when I’m in her presence I haven’t grown up, I am still little Susan – not the Susan with all of the complexities of growing up. I remembered the essay from Ted Kooser’s book and was so glad to find it a few days ago for all of you.
I find the concept of having those around me that knew me as a child fascinating. I wonder why that fascinates me? Who is still alive in your world that you may rarely see, but who when they see you, they see you as a child? We must find these treasures and write these treasures and let these treasures know the impact they have on our lives. Time flies…years glide by…are we taking time to be with those who see us as a child? We will not have these treasures much longer.
I ordered several copies of these essays, written outside Lincoln near Branched Oak Lake. Reflections on life in Nebraska. If you need a book that is not hard to read, but full of thoughts to contemplate, then I highly recommend this book to you. Don’t forget to listen to the birds today. Don’t forget to give yourself a few minutes of silence. Enjoy your day…enjoy your spring – may this new season be good to you. We so appreciate you & your support – you know that, but let me reiterate the truth once again! Susan
Work Cited: Kooser, Ted. Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps. Lincoln. University of NE Press. 2004.