Mother's Day

The Little Red Table: Mother’s Day Tribute

As a young mother during the depths of the depression, Mom never wasted a thing. She scrubbed floors to buy onions for sandwiches, which of course produced breast milk I couldn’t digest (she later told me). She got us through those lean times with grit, determination and creative rejuvenation of ostensibly worthless rejects. Those harsh years and their lessons stuck, and over the length of my childhood I recognized her—though I didn’t know the term—as a congenital recycler. Americans of today, to be as patriotic as consumers are taught to be, use things for a while, even so-called “durable goods,” and then throw them away. It doesn’t matter if it is bought for cash or on credit; when we tire of something it goes out the door, either into a huge trash truck or a yard sale for ten cents or less on the dollar.

At our house, from kindergarten through high school, I saw old sofas and chairs recovered, woodwork, walls and cabinets repainted, rooms repapered and leftovers turned into stew.

In 1972 the old farm I bought in rural Maine came with a leaky barn full of discarded items which had never found their way into the normal stream of castoffs. Every few weeks for the first several years, I loaded the pickup and a converted boat trailer (overloaded would be more accurate) with a huge mound of stuff I couldn’t always identify and hauled it to the cone burner out on the Mapleton Road.

The most recent collection was ready to cart away when my retired parents Buicked into the farmyard one year for the opening of strawberry summer. Mom spotted a scarred brindle table with a leg chewed half off by a transient porcupine and disrespectfully covered with bird stains and grime. The unfortunate thing rested forlornly atop that ugly heap of barn junk--rusty iron, broken jars, oil cans and torn gum rubbers. It had lain there for a very long time before Nature and I finally consigned it to oblivion. With its uneven legs pointing skyward, it looked like a prehistoric beetle which had just lost a serious skirmish with the Orkin Man.

Mom lost no time in speaking up for the homely relic so I was forced to wrestle it from the pile and add an extension to the damaged leg. She hosed down the restored incarnation and gave it two coats of Farmall red.

Mom leaned over that table for a host of sunny seasons in the shade of the woodshed doorway while July strawberry patrons passed her crisp fives and tens. She tucked them with maternal care into the table’s lone drawer and was hardly aware of the vision she made as she bantered with customers pleased with the crop. Her smoky brown eyes and magnificent smile were more than enough to persuade me that the table was her. She had given it fresh life and pressed it into obedient service, just as she had countless things over her long life. When the picking was over for the summer, she and Dad eased their car down my long driveway and onto the Egypt Road. I was never happy to wave goodbye and often during their long absences found myself drawn out to that formerly busy spot in the yard to drink in her lingering spirit. The little red table always seemed to radiate a special northern New England warmth, even many years after the strawberries and Mom were only a wonderful memory.

The woodshed in winter was stark still and cold, but the table suggested as I began to feel old that since she longed for spring I should do so as well. And two welding gas tanks stood as close as they could--solemn, silent sentries who knew her true worth, but wouldn’t tell.

Easter

In the Garden

One Thursday Jesus spent in prayer
and sweating blood, it’s said.
He asked if He might be excused
from what lay just ahead.

We used that day more pleasantly
and made our plans to go somewhere
to celebrate—and did!
We see life rather differently
than He who gave us His.

(Painting is my version of a recognized work.)

Taking Off

Taking off is a book about awareness, anticipation, judgment and clarity. It's therefore also about growth, taking risks, sizing up challenges and moving ahead with what sometimes seems impossible. This makes the story at least a brush with love. Maybe not as close a brush as some would like, but I know my limitations.

We make mistakes in life, sometimes big ones. We also occasionally manage to dodge the worst consequences of some of them and find ourselves whispering a private prayer to our invisible copilot. Once in a while those people whose lives we touch aren't quite as fortunate and we do our best not to put them in harm's way again. We don't always succeed, but we keep trying.

Invitation

Would you like me to write you a limerick about one of your friends or relatives? Something to include in a gift card? All I need for raw material are some bits and pieces of facts about the victim which describe him/her, or some information about a circumstance/predicament, recent experience or an interesting thing which brings the person to mind. Grammar, spelling and syntax don't matter. Humorous verses are the most fun, so long as they don't villify....

These are free of course, but I make no promises about keeping up with demand (if there is any). Send your scraps of material to me at my email address: grogers@jdweb.cc and I'll respond to yours for the sake of privacy.

Is Frosty saying hello or goodbye?

Scroll

down

to

see.

Keep going.

Winter

Even Mother Nature Can't Please Everyone

A scant five months ago our final rose
was plucked, another month for husking corn,
and when the first tomato comes, who knows?
The sparrows work their little hearts to death
attempting to find nourishment enough.
Homeowners shovel, watch their frozen breath,
decrying buried cars, then note how tough
it is to navigate on greasy roads--
and glare at those with show-off four wheel drive.
Shed roofs can barely stand their heavy loads.
Some snowblowers are only half alive.

But youngsters five to twelve or maybe more
love forts and secret caves and snowball fights.
They eye their winter sliding things, deplore
those scattered days when spring-like grassy sites
emerge to spoil their fun--and pray for news
of coming storms to close their school up tight,
thus forcing out those blasted homework blues
and giving them a reason for delight.