Lord, when you send the rain
Think about it, please, a little?
Do not get carried away
by the sound of falling water,
the marvellous light
on the falling water.
I am beneath that water.
It falls with great force
and the light
Blinds
me to the light.
—James Baldwin, “Untitled”
The magnolia blooms for a short time only. True beauty doesn’t often last. It comes and it goes.
The rain kept coming, across parts of Ontario and Quebec, for most of the week.
Raining cats and dogs: Lumos and Dobby are mine.
I’m thankful for delicate things in nature.
We found this cracked robin’s egg on the driveway and I thought it a sweet discovery. My mom improves on the nature and this sign of spring.
I wondered then, where the inhabitant of the egg went. How did the egg land and not crack into even more pieces? I wondered things.
I’m thankful for leftover wine.
My sister had a wedding shower for a friend and there were leftovers. She was kind to share them with me.
I’m thankful for a writing group built around a hand sculpted wand.
One of our members of “The Elsewhere Region” brought in a birthday gift she’d received. It’s like the Harry Potter wand I bought, even the box, but made specifically for her, with love from a friend who knows her well.
The stories we all came up with were interesting. Mine was about a teacher of the blind who started a braille club in her class and her wand accidentally fell out of her desk drawer. She almost had to reveal to all her students that she was magic, until her visually impaired student saved her.
The others used their very interesting imaginations and came up with wild tales of magic and I was once more blown away by their storytelling abilities.
I am thankful I could help spread hash tags about the disabilities many of us were, in some cases, born with.
The hash tag “I Am A Preexisting Condition” is making the rounds on Twitter since the shocking revelation that the GOP and the House voted in their horrid healthcare plan, which is making many people I know with chronic illnesses and conditions afraid for what will happen.
I felt helpless and wanted to do something. I couldn’t think of what that could be. It’s just so outlandish.
I am thankful for my nephew’s creativity, imagination, and the ideas that are all his own.
He drew an X on a piece of paper and tacked it up on the door. We saw it there when we arrived the other day and I was smiling when I heard what it’s for.
He put it up to keep the spiders out.
NO SPIDERS
I am thankful I could give my niece her bottle and put her to sleep.
My nephew was staying with his grandparents overnight and he was a bit sad as bedtime approached. My mom comforted him and I fed Mya her bottle. That girl loves to eat.
Then she fell asleep over my shoulder.
I’m thankful for echoes of a memory with a lullaby.
My mom started to sing an old lullaby that her mother, my grandmother, used to sing. This seemed to bring back memories for me, something so vague, about my grandma singing to me.
“Go to bed my little darling. Close your big blue eyes. Soon you’ll hear the sandman calling, far beyond the skies.”
It’s funny that you can sense a memory from the past, so long gone, and even start to wonder if it really happened. I remember being sung to like that, but I don’t know when or how old I might have been. I seem to remember being held, but can any of us remember back that far into our pasts?
Well, I held Mya and the entire time I tapped that song out on her back, gently, over and over again, trying to sharpen my own memories. It didn’t work, but the song is a beautiful one.
I am thankful that France did not make the same mistake the US made.
France is a totally different country than the US of course and I knew they would make the right choice with Emmanuel Macron.
Just a few weeks ago, Canada gave a giant sigh of relief, when our own (he was being called Canada’s Donald Trump) and he was running for the Conservative Party of Canada, dropped out.
Kevin O’Leary is a businessman, like 45, known for his role in Shark Tank, but he didn’t feel quite as outrageous. Maybe that was just my wishful thinking there, but he decided on his own that he couldn’t stay in the race.
I don’t know what will happen with the EU and I hope no more terrorist attacks occur in France or anywhere else, but I am sure we aren’t done with all that, sadly.
I am thankful for the sun to make its reappearance.
Even I grew weary of all that dreary weather, day after day after day. The sun does shine again, but unfortunately, some are dealing with major damage to their homes and their lives. Rain has power to mess with us. The sun revives.
And this last photo isn’t the most pleasant sight. I begin with a beautiful flowering bush and I cap off this TToT with the scene we came across in my back yard.
I have squirrels living in the top of my garage and this one came to a sad end, landing in a tree and hanging there until we noticed it. Poor thing.
Loss and endings. I just hope those affected by the flooding, in Quebec mostly, can salvage something of their homes.
Her Headache 
“Echoes of a memory” often do come through to me by the vehicle of music. What a beautiful memory for you.
Sometimes a simple sign drawn by a child or an adult for a child is enough to make the fears go away.
Wow! That poor squirrel. He looks immense!
It is difficult to feel so unable to know what to do to change decisions made by those in power. There seems to be such a lack of empathy and understanding. Have they not known anyone who needs these services or given thought to those who will? It is so hard to imagine.
I love how your mother improved upon the already beautiful spring bloom by placing the broken egg shell there.
I hope you have a wonderful week, Keri!