Bittersweet Farm

I went to my barber today, Harvey. Why do I alway wait to long to go to the barber. A fresh hair-cut is such a simple pleasure. We got to talking about walking. I told him I have been walking every day. He said, “O, I walk every morning about 5:30.”

“Where do you live?”

He said, “I live out on Ackerson Lake.”

“Do you carry a flashlight?”

“No. There are street lights so I can see.”

“But how do people see you?” I asked.

He said, “I was walking one morning and a guy pulled over in a pick-up truck and he said, ‘Hey. I see you out here walking every morning. It’s hard to see you in the dark. I’m worried for you. I have a gift. I figured you were about my size. See if this fits.’ He handed me a nice jacket with bright reflective tape sewn on it. I wear that every morning, now.”

“That might have saved your life,” I said and smiled at the human warmth of the gesture. The guy could have cussed him out for doing something dangerous. He could have drove close to give him a scare. Instead he reached into the toolbox of his humanity and pulled out a nice reflective jacket.

If you are not walking you might give it some thought. If you are walking in the dark you might invest in a flashlight and a reflective vest or jacket.

My daughter sent me a light band for my head that makes me look like an electronic angel.

Don’t be a couch potato and don’t be a crabby-britches. Be active, be safe, and be generous and may the wind be at your back.

Bittersweet Farm
March 20, 2023

Bittersweet Bits:

March Wind.

A strong March wind is howling in the trees this afternoon. A large branch blew out of the Maple in the teardrop. It landed squarely on the blue yard ornament ball in the circle beneath and blew it to shards. Lois will be sad. It was a vintage piece.

Country Life. The other evening we were watching a spooky crime drama when Lois screamed. A bat was flitting around the living room. I don’t know if it mattered but I turned off the lights and headed the frightened creature back out into the night unharmed. Country life. I would rather shoo an occasional bat out of the house than have to endure my neighbor playing rap music for two hours while washing his car in the driveway ten feet from ours in suburbia.

A Sweetly Recurring Memory

Lois and I live together alone again now since late summer of 2020 for the first time in over 40 years. I wondered what it would be like but we just picked up were left off when the children started to grace our lives. We enjoy the same love-for-life and childlike companionship we did then. We managed to avoid growing out of love with life and simple things and I’m glad.

The first summer after we were married we moved from Cedarville, Ohio to the quaint parsonage of a little country church on a back road near in Mercer County, Ohio between Celina and the Indiana line. Kyle was born while we were there.

The other day for some reason a warm memory sprang into my mind from that season of our lives. It was the memory of a drive from our home there to visit Lois’s family in Ypsilanti. It was a summer night. We packed and readied the car and at the close of the evening service we changed and left for Michigan. It was summer and still a couple hours to sunset. We would make most of the trip before the light faded.

I coxed Lois to scoot over to the middle of the bench seat in our Plymouth Duster and put my arm around her. We talked. She was in a happy mood. The nearly three hours passed quickly as we drove along side-by-side in on that summer evening making our way to where loved ones would be waiting for us.

There was nothing remarkable about the trip that night. (A few months later on the same trip we would blow our engine just across the state line into Michigan and Bob Thees, one of the deacons of the church, would drive up and cheerfully rescue us). But this trip was quiet and uneventful. That mellow memory stays with me now after decades have passed and eight children have come and gone.

I was a young man then. I could have worried but that was not my way. I lived in the moment. I trusted the Lord. The girl I loved was close against me in the car on a golden evening. She was quiet and happy and her hair smelled sweet and our journey had just begun.

Bittersweet Farm
March 17, 2023