I haven’t been this sick since I was in knee-pants.
It’s horrible. Everything hurts. No Daddy to scoop me up from bed and sing Sweet Violets. My wife is very worried. I miss my mother coming up the stairs to serve me ginger ale.
What can I do now, but ask for prayers?
And plenty of ’em.
This is another hymn my mother and my grandma would sing as they went about their housework. I’m glad they did! It’s the kind of memory that stays with you and is always at hand when you need it.
Sung here by Alan Jackson: Sweet Hour of Prayer.
Don’t let the picture fool you–this moth was HUGE!
My father liked to take his children with him when he had an errand. Our company was his pleasure.
Oh, how those memories touch me to the heart! Here’s just one of them.
Daddy parked on Main Street and went into Perry’s Store to buy something, while I waited in the car because he was only going to be a minute.
While I waited, the world’s biggest moth, I mean as big as your two hands put together, landed on the hood, right in front of me. Before I could collect my wits, it flew away; probably the car was too hot.
I can’t remember how I told my father what I’d seen. I think I might’ve been speechless.
After Sunday school, after Sunday dinner, the various households of our family would visit with each other. That would be five families who lived close enough together to make regular visits easy.
This essay was going to be a Memory Lane for the Sunday color comics. The families got different Sunday papers, so my childhood appetite for comics had much to feed on.
Mandrake the Magician. Flash Gordon. Prince Valiant. (Yeah, I liked the series best.) And my favorite, Kevin the Bold. Anybody out there remember him? Globe-trotting Irish adventurer in the days of Henry VIII. When Kevin wound up in Japan, that blew me away. He also made it to the Roanoke Colony and the Philippines.
*Sigh* Where is everybody? Either died or moved far, far away. No more Sunday get-togethers: nobody left to get together with. Kevin the Bold himself never made it past 1968.
We keep on trucking, fueled only by God’s promises. And by sweet memories.
Permit me this small self-indulgence.
A reproduction of this painting–Swan Lake, by Konrad Muller-Kurzwelly, a 19th century German landscape artist–used to hang in my family’s living room for as long as I can remember. And I loved it! I loved to look at it and imagine myself going into the painting, I guess to feed the swans. It always gave me a deep sense of peace.
I’m posting it here in case I should never find it again.