Old Postcard Wednesday is taking a holiday break this week. I am picking up on the vibes that you are okay with that.
I'm sensing that you wish you had ten heartwarming Christmas stories in front of you. YOUR WISH is my command.
You don't have to be a mind-reader to get it that this is going to be quite a winter. These are not designer wear by any means but what we need this year are serious long johns for cold weather.
Do you have reindeer on your mind? I thought so. I found an innovative-sounding company called Reindeer. I sense that most of you will not require the "cross-functional abilities" of the "Nimble Bunch" at Reindeer, but a few of you just might.
Looking at #3 in the advertisement above, I am going to meditate on what's really valuable to me. I am sensing that sounds like something many of you are doing also. Here is a overarching cheat-sheet from Answers.com to ponder:
To relate a traditional proverb: Ui mai koe ki ahau he aha te mea nui o te ao, Māku e kī atu he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. This is Maori for "Ask me what is the greatest thing in the world, I will reply: it is people, it is people, it is people."
Other answers:
The worlds most valuable item is its ecology. Without humans the world would get along just fine, without the world (or its ecology) humans would not do to well.
All esoterics aside; the worlds most expensive, single item, is the International Space Station (a single item); cost $100 billion.
According to Socrates, the most valuable thing in the world is wisdom, because without wisdom, one cannot know the true value of anything else.
The worlds most expensive substance is antimatter.
Pure water . . . the plants need it, the animals need the plants, meat eaters need plants, we need the animals and the plants and the water...
Knowledge.
Time. You need time to get knowledge and everything else that exists.
Happiness and Contentment with life.
Now, I am strongly perceiving that you will enjoy the following video as much as I did. My good friend, Phivos, author of Travelling blog, sent it to me. Many thanks, Phivos!
And to all of you: I am so thankful for all my blogging friends who have added much joy, insight, peace, beauty, creativity, challenge, and love to this year for me.
How social media, web, and mobile tell the story of the Nativity.
"That's beautiful, Honey Girl. Did you write that song?" Harper's mother tilted her head back on her pillow in reverie at hearing yet another new tune filling the room. For months now she assumed that her daughter wrote each piece of music that Harper put on the table player for her, because for that same amount of time she had believed that she had raised a composer instead of a middle school music teacher.
"Listen to this!" she would beckon to nurses in the hallway. "My daughter wrote this!" Once or twice lately she had not recognized Harper, yet with just as much delight with the music she would offer, "I was in college with the man who wrote this song," or "Who made up those words?.....I think it was Mrs. Kennedy," and "Someone I loved long ago wrote this music just for me."
"No, Mum, not me. Try to remember now; this is one of your favorite songs. It was ..."
Harper's words were cut off mid-sentence by her mother's all-knowing nod and pleased smile, as she assured, "I know it! It is one of my favorite songs of yours!"
"No. Mum. I did not write this one," said Harper, buffering the news that she had never in her life written a piece of music or any lyrics, for that matter. The last time she had bluntly said that she did not write music, only taught kids to play it, her mother had been inconsolable for the hours remaining in that week's visit. Harper had driven the 50 miles home from the care center with tears streaking her face with absolutely no music playing in the car.
"Ah, I love it," whispered her mother. "Love it, love it, love it." There. There it was again, that look on her mother's face that Harper was seeing more of each week. It miraculously wiped away age while it wiped away all expression, pale skin and gray hair morphing into pillow case and leaving only two small glazed blue eyes as proof her mother was there underneath those covers.
"You always did, Mum. After the good times ended you called it your anthem."
Feeling as if she were alone in the room, Harper began telling of how her love of music came from her childhood that was filled with her parents' music. They sang and danced -- there were always friends around in those days -- in the house in winter and out on the huge deck under the ginkgo trees in summertime. The Stones, Janis Joplin, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Country Joe McDonald and the Fish, Jethro Tull, It's A Beautiful Day, Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane, and -- above all others -- The Beatles, created the background music of her early life. Harper took center stage sometimes as the crowd urged her on to "Dance like there's no tomorrow!" but more often she watched her young parents and their friends from the sidelines. She appreciated them in all their beauty and color and scent of patchouli and thought they were perfect and that none of them would ever forget those days.
"I forgot!" her mother cried out, interrupting Harper's recounting of the past. The song, set on repeat, began playing again, and her mother quieted as she sat up rigid in her bed. "If you didn't write the song then who did?" she whimpered with tears glistening in her blue eyes.
Harper left the plant she had been unconsciously pruning with her fingernails as she talked and moved a tray off of her mother's bed to get close, really close, to the innocent one sitting there. With the cold frame of the bed supporting her back Harper wrapped her arms around her mother to console her. The woman who once taught her generations of songs nestled against Harper's chest, fingering the soft folds of her cashmere sweater.
Looking up into Harper's face she whispered a confession: "I lost the song, Mommy."
"Shhh. No worry now." Harper rocked her mother's frail body in time with the song's ending chorus. "Do not worry. Just let it go. Let It Be."
MLydiaM ~ December 2010
The top image is this week's photo writing prompt at Magpie Tales.
