Keeping It Simple
The following was written for a Sunday Scribbling prompt of “simple.”
At the end of the day it’s the simple pleasures I remember; peeling and eating a juicy sweet orange, watching yellow finches at the birdfeeder, walking to the mailbox with our dog Jasmine, making a joke that my husband laughs at, a hug, a smile, a cup of tea.
Last night I walked barefoot in the grass and stared at the moon. The sweet smell of valerian flowers wafted in the air while I jumped on the trampoline as if I was a girl. This morning my husband and I saved a black snake that was tangled up in the blueberry netting in our garden. I held the netting while he used scissors to painstakingly cut about a dozen places where the snake was wrapped tight. The task wasn’t necessarily simple or pleasurable, but watching the snake slither away at the end of it was.
Even the lowly act of weeding my garden is something I enjoy (but I wish I could say the same about cleaning my kitchen). As I stoop and bend over with the sun on my back, pulling up one weed at a time, I find myself smiling and thinking of all the people in the world who have done, and are doing the same. It’s a simple and solitary chore done without tools, artificial chemicals, noise, or monetary pay.
I’d like to quote a section of “The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You,” a book I read nearly twenty years ago, but my copy is with my son in Asheville. Today I played Scrabble (another simple pleasure) with an older friend who lives alone. She remembered the book but didn’t have a copy either.
The book tells the story of a criminal who, after being injured in a car accident, finds himself being nursed back to health by a primitive tribe of people. Following his recovery, there’s a scene in which he’s preparing a seasonal vegetable garden with a member of the tribe. It’s this scene I remember as being formative in shaping the way I think about our modern world.
They are plowing a field with a stick. The criminal complains about how slow and backwards it is to use a stick. He describes a powerful tractor and all it can do, expecting the tribal man to be impressed, but he isn’t. The tribe member points out all the labor and resources that go into making a tractor, from mining the metal and the petroleum to run it, to how many steps and people are involved in building it. What about the plant where it’s built? What’s the electricity bill like? Is the plant polluting our air and streams? Did the tractor builder have to hire someone to take care of his kids while he worked? 
By the time one tractor is built the field will have been plowed, the seeds planted, the harvest gathered, and a blessing will have been said at the table before eating.
At the end of every day I like to review what I’m grateful for. It’s almost always the simplest of things; soaking up the sun, feeling the breeze, noticing sky’s shade of blue, seeing my first spring butterfly, remembering a kiss, or the voices of children.
As with the end of a day, I suspect that at the end of life it will be the simple pleasures that I look back on with fondness and consider to be the making of a good life.
May 26th, 2007 12:12 pm
Well, you’re probably right, but I’d much rather clean a kitchen than weed a garden or get within 50 feet of a snake! But that’s just me.
Michele sent me. Have a great day!
May 26th, 2007 12:18 pm
I only weed for about 10 minutes a day and let the mulch do the rest. At a certain point in the summer I lose complete control. I just don’t find myself smiling while I clean my kitchen.
May 26th, 2007 2:12 pm
Poor snake! I am so glad you freed him!
A very nice post- full of good and simple things…
May 26th, 2007 2:33 pm
The story about the criminal and the tribe member is very good, and we can all learn lessons from it!
May 26th, 2007 4:22 pm
Lovely post – you’re right, simple pleasures are the best (although I wouldn’t call dealing with a snake one of them). 🙂
May 26th, 2007 4:47 pm
Reading the part about the tribal people gave my mind a flashback to “The Gods Must Be Crazy” for some reason! That movie where a coke bottle comes seemingly from the sky and the tribesman sees it as a great sign from the gods. It’s a crazy movie and sometimes my mind goes in crazy directions! What can I say.
May 26th, 2007 5:45 pm
Great story about the tractor. Quite profound.
May 26th, 2007 6:19 pm
Indeed a sweet reminder, and I suspect that you are quite right. I enjoyed seeing the first spring butterfly land in my garden last week – and reading your post and the story. P.S. is that the snake that you freed? It looks as if it’s in a happy free shape…
May 26th, 2007 6:26 pm
Yes, that’s the very snake! We feared at one point that it was dead, but it had enough life left to hiss at us to get out of its way once it was loose. Joe had to grab hold of it to cut the netting that was thin, tangled and wrapped tight all around it.
May 26th, 2007 6:28 pm
Beautiful words, Colleen. And so very true. I remember as a child, the saying “The best things in life are free” and truly never understood the full meaning of that until about age 40. Living here on the island…I know it to be VERY true.
May 26th, 2007 7:40 pm
Love the snake!~
May 26th, 2007 11:37 pm
I liked what you said about weeding, and being united with people all over the world who are performing the same nurturing task. Life is good.
May 27th, 2007 12:56 am
Love the flower and the snake. Your post too makes us pause and think.
May 27th, 2007 2:48 am
Simple pleasures indeed are the sweetest. How lucky we are to realize that.
Though that snake would have been on my mind a long time afterwards! They scare me.
May 27th, 2007 4:27 am
Oh I so agree, Colleen…The seemingly simple pleasures are really what move me and deeply interest me these days…The Birds mating, The Bees drinking in and pollinating, A Hummingbird bathing and cleaning…Nature, in all it’s glory!
I LOVED LOVED LOVED That Book! I gave it as a gift to many different people….I thought it had so very many wonderful things about it and I haven’t thought of it in years! Thanks for reminding me, Colleen….And I’m so glad you know that book, too!
May 27th, 2007 8:34 am
I’m simply swamped in weeds and starting to feel overwhelmed…it’s a jungle out there!
I agree though, it is a simple connection, and a good one.
May 27th, 2007 8:35 am
Next day: I had a dream last night that my dog got caught in netting and died. It guess I should say “a nightmare.”
May 27th, 2007 12:25 pm
That really was a nightmare! What a horrible dream, Colleen. Wishing you sweet dreams tonight.
May 27th, 2007 1:16 pm
Thanks so much for your visit to my blog and I can sure see how what you have written about here is a perfect way to center yourself and keep things in perspective, and not let anxiety overtake and overwhelm you. Yours is a lovely reflection upon the day. My way of taking into account things I am grateful for is to post a daily “Three Beautiful Things” on my blog.
May 27th, 2007 1:29 pm
you know I just had a run in wih a snake a couple of days ago though I think mine was a tad scarier
May 27th, 2007 2:10 pm
Hi Col,
Nope, Toby doesn’t jump. You’d like him. He does bark alot though.
May 27th, 2007 11:30 pm
I’d never heard of the book, but it does seem so relevant nowadays. And I love your simple act of kindness to another creature. (Even if, sorry, it’s an icky, icky snake. Phew! That’s out of my system!)
May 29th, 2007 7:19 am
Keeping it simple – a good creed to live by. Reminds me of the book ‘Simple Abundance’ by Sarah Ban Breathnach. And what a perfect place to live simply – rural Virginia!
May 29th, 2007 8:20 am
I and most of my girlfriends read Simple Abundance when it came out and loved it.