Loose Leaf Notes

The birds are in the background now and the butterflies are busy.  The green-breasted hummingbird comes to breakfast on the porch and tries to work up the courage to land on the purple petunias.  This is the first year in a few that we have corn and summer phlox.  I had to kill a raccoon to save the corn and repeatedly spray the phlox with smelly deer repellent before it bloomed.

One of the highlights of summer this year was reading Hans Christian Anderson Fairy Tales to my grandsons.  They finally don’t need books with pictures.  Reading in such Old World language felt like reading Shakespeare to them. We were all enthralled in the story.

My voice choked up when the nightingale came back to sing for the emperor who had death literally sitting on his chest, and when the Ugly Duckling’s own mother said to him, “I wish to goodness you were miles away.”

One way I know my grandsons are healthy and intact is that my eldest admitted he cried during the movie It’s a Dog’s Life.  “Your great grandpa Redman always cried during sad movies, I told him.   “I didn’t cry but I felt sad,” said his younger brother.

There are no grades in school for that kind of thing, emotional intelligence.  You don’t learn it in school and you can’t fake it. It comes from being loved and connected to life.

Now the end of summer is closing in and I’m thinking that it’s like a firefly in a jar. It soon stops being so actively bright, and you eventually have to let it go. Same with children.

___________Our World Tuesday