Pausing to ask….
how is everyone? I am thinking of you all, this week before Christmas, and wondering how you are feeling in the midst of your preparations?
“People look East, the time is near,
of the crowning of the year.
Make your home fair, as you are able.
Trim the hearth and set the table.
People look East, and sing today:
Love, the Guest, is on the way.”-Eleanor Farjeon, 1928
of the crowning of the year.
Make your home fair, as you are able.
Trim the hearth and set the table.
People look East, and sing today:
Love, the Guest, is on the way.”-Eleanor Farjeon, 1928
There is so much I have thought to share here….the leaves I watched falling like yellow coins from the sky before I went into my last big show one morning…the charming way my magazines looked as I stacked them in the brown silkiness of the old suitcase my mother-in-law gave me and tied them with the dark red ribbons which are a part of that dear old suitcase….but my camera and I are not getting along well lately and I take so many fuzzy pictures that I begin to be discouraged! Tho’ I did snap this one as I was packing away my booth at the end of the show…
What a sweet show it was! So many dear people and conversations and good wishes. And riding that goodness, I filled the many, many orders I was glad to receive before I closed my shop for a wee while.
Monday afternoon I sent the last of the orders away at our little post office and began to plan how to clean and adorn our home for the hopeful days ahead. I had nearly two good days of scrubbing and vacuuming and re-arranging under my belt when I cut my finger open this evening, scraping old candlewax out of candlestick. What a shock that was! I hadn’t done such a thing for more than twenty years (the day I met my husband, actually) and didn’t know quite what to do at first. But fairly quickly, after staunching the flow, I thought to call our local doctor’s office and they were-thankfully-still there. A flying visit to the doctor and now I am ensconced on the sofa, by the fire, with three stitches in my finger, taking a little breather.
A pause.
And a very good thing it is, too. For I was lining up far too many things in my mind that “needed doing” before our Solstice gathering, before my son and his sweetheart arrive tonight, before “Love, the Guest” arrives in a week.
Instead, I am sitting by the fire, ignoring all the little piles that still need my attention and the drying racks nearby with the clean rag rugs I intended to put back on the stairs this evening and am reading a bit more in one of my favorite books that I stopped by the library to fetch home the other day. I am enjoying lines like “she drank some tea, scalding and comforting” and “she sat facing him in a little wide-lapped Victorian chair”.
And I shall go on reading when I finish this post and then wake up tomorrow morning and see how much I can get done without straining these stitches. And I will be glad for the reminder that “the guest”-our friends and family, those small and lovely moments, the spirit of these days-will not expect a perfectly tidy and decorated house. Perhaps it is enough to turn toward it in all in the ways in which we are able, and wait to receive.
Oh! And be careful…..
