Spring Dreams - Autumn Faith

About the time the Dogwoods and Azaleas and Wisteria were in full bloom and the spring sun was fully into yummy, mellow mode, and people were tempted to say, "It doesn't get any better than this"; it did. Having been on the tenuous precipice of the the "unwell" since Christmas, I had become remotely resigned to giving up the building of my little studio any time soon. Then the music began.

To the random tap-tap-tap rhythm of hammers, the staccato injections of "how-tos" and "dos" and "don't dos", rose the melody of children's laughter, to a crescendo of giggles that would wain only to rise again and again. Then a litany of doctor's visits began and summer came and summer went and I have no idea how it passed so quickly. The almost month long visit of my daughter's family flew by as if passing in only days.

The planning of a 50 year high school reunion that began in January as a committee of two, took a heart wrenching turn when my dear friend of 57 years died suddenly on a golf course a month ago. No time for grieving, I had just become a committee of one. And, at the changing of the seasons, to complicate things even more, I found myself five hours away from home, wandering aimlessly through the diagnostic routine of the Mayo Clinic with nothing but the needs of the reunion on my mind.

I've been home a few days now. With the reunion plans fairly well in hand, I have finally experienced a sense of competition, a genuine belief that it will actually come to pass. So, this morning, for the first time in weeks, I granted myself permission to retreat with my morning coffee to my chair on the front porch, a most favorite spot in my world. For a moment, the low, early sun captured my attention with it's long, lazy shadows and fresh, yellow light. Then my eyes fell on the lonely, little studio, unfinished and abandoned, the siding stained by the needed gift of rain, the primed and pretty floor littered with curling and colorless leaves. My heart sank and a sense of melancholy threatened. But, from somewhere, the distant sounds of children's voices laying lightly on the heavy morning air, reminded me of the joys of the spring building project, the happy faces, the satisfaction. If there is built nothing more than that, the tiny studio will have been a blessing.

The 50 year class reunion is just a week away. My work is all but done and I look forward to posting highlights of this labor of memorial to my good friend who will never be truly gone.

And September will end and November will begin with return trips to Mayo - Jacksonville.

It is a curious thing to me that the book written by Lady Lucia Edmondson, the mother of the woman for whom I was named, is titled "Scrambled Impressions at Mayo Clinic". Though my copy, passed to me by my mother, was lost decades ago, I was stunned to find one online. It is signed exactly as our copy was. Wouldn't it be serendipitous if the self same book had come full circle?

At any rate, my posting will be sporatic for a while. I intend to work on my own "Memories at Mayo" and will share them with you. In order to keep this disjointed, little journey of mine accessible to you, I'm going to label this post and subsequent, related ones - "Faith and Flutterbys". And for those of you who were not raised in my household, a flutterby is another way of saying butterfly. What a neat message of hope that seems to me to be, that my studio project is not abandoned; it is simply in a cocoon stage and will emrege, in it's time as the lovely little retreat I intended it to be.