It’s been a very long, very hard winter, but spring has finally come. Monday was the last day of March and it dawned clear and warm. It was sunny and spring-like and it was opening day of baseball season for the home-town Detroit Tigers. Everyone was wearing their Tigers hats and shirts and jackets. There was a holiday atmosphere around town.
I had some coffee, did some writing, and made small-talk with the locals at Starbucks. Holly was flying in from Oregon. I picked her up from the airport and we went to brunch and caught up. It was a relaxed day off for me. In the back of my mind I remembered what a mess our yard was from a winter of wet wind-fall leaves. I thought I should spend some time raking the yard on my day off since it was such a nice day, but I pressed that unpleasant thought to the back of my mind.
I had said nothing about my thoughts to Lois, but when I turned the corner and pulled up in front of Granville Cottage there were half dozen yard-waste bags lined up at the curb and not a single leaf in the yard. While I was running my errands, drinking coffee, and eating brunch, Lois and Hope had raked the front yard, bagged the leaves, and started to work on the back yard. I helped a bit on the back but they did the bulk of the work.
We have been married almost 35 years. While I was pushing the leaf-raking out of my mind Lois was raking the leaves and stuffing them into bags. When I met Lois I was taken with her beauty and her quiet ways. As a young man I did not have the maturity or experience to see what a loyal, hard-worker she would be or how valuable that would be to me and to the eight children we would have together.
Proverbs 31 extols the various values of the virtuous wife. The passage says; “Her children rise up and call her blessed; Her husband also and he praises her..” That is what I’m doing now.
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
April 2, 2014
