Have you ever sat outside on a perfect afternoon and listened to wind chimes?
I was reminded of this today when Gweth showed us a set of glass wind chimes that she got at this glassmaking conference in Chicago last weekend.
My parents have never owned wind chimes. Really, as a family, we never spent a lot of time just sitting outside. Either Mike and I would be outside playing, or my mom would be gardening, or my dad would be mowing the lawn--but we never really were the sit-outside-and-savor-the-day kind of people.
But my grandparents (the Ohio side) had wind chimes, and they also had this really great tradition of taking a tea-time break at 4:00 p.m. each day. This usually involved us kids going into the garage and choosing a pop, then going to join the family out on their back patio to savor our drinks, the afternoon, and the music of the chimes dancing in the wind.
And I don't know how formative this was in my life. Yet when I heard the wind chimes, that's where I went today. To a beautiful, happy patio in Ohio.
Things are never as simple as an adult, I think. Though my grandparents at least gave us the impression that they could be.
4 comments:
This is a good post. It's funny, but now that I'm older, and discovering that my parents were right about more things than I thought they were, I'm realizing that it is the memories that just happened as part of the course of life that I cherish more than the memories I tried to create for myself.
My grandparents kept a garden, and they would take me with them when they went to work in it. Sometimes I didn't want to go, but I was too young to be able to do my own thing, so I had to go. Now that I'm an adult, it is one of my favorite childhood memories.
No, things aren't as simple as an adult. But our memories sustain us through the difficult parts of adulthood. I think J.M. Barrie said it best, "God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December." Our memories are there to remind us that there are peaceful times in life if we will just take the time to slow down and appreciate each moment.
One of my early childhood memories is of wind chimes--the little tinkly kind. They were hanging on the porch of a house down the block from where we lived till I was 7. Hearing such bells still evokes a little of the carefree feeling of childhood summers.
Do you ever hear the wind chimes on the neighbor's house while you lie in bed at night?
Sometimes I think we don't really appreciate the simplicity of breathing until we're old enough to live more complex lives. After my drive on Sunday, I took some time to sit on my porch in the twilight, just looking and listening and feeling the world around me. I wasn't even thinking, particularly, but just Being. There's something special about that.
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