Etsy

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Promises and Memories

Here we are again on the cusp of another autumn hanging onto the last threads of summertime. As I do with the changing of every season, I find myself drifting back to years gone by and how with each changing of the season I have changed and grown and acquired some wisdom; think a bit differently if you will. I think I soften and become melancholy with the passing of the time. This year a bit more perhaps because of losing Gregg’s dad in October of last year. Nothing seemed to fit together right this summer, of course it didn’t …. Something or in this case someone was missing…each holiday since the passing was the first since….you know what I mean when you have lost someone. You find yourself saying, this is the first Halloween, the first Christmas, the first birthday, the first Easter…and on and on. Seems if you can get past all the firsts then you …who am I kidding …nothing will ever be the same …even if it does get easier.




I am also in the process of teaching my 4th graders about writing a personal narrative…have been flooding them with books written about memories and sharing my own. They get it but it is just hard to pull out the details and descriptions from them…we continue to work….During this study I came across an unexpected editorial in one of my cooking magazines of all places and it talked about promises to keep. Promises to keep old ways from one generation to another, promises to share how a person’s word should mean something, how it feels to know all that can be done between sunrise and sunset. He went on to say he wanted to grow up to know what it is like to pull on his boots and trod through manure, enjoy a sunrise cup of coffee in the barn….to make the most of what lies between the bookends of a summer day or even life (I really like that part).



So I guess I am learning along with my students to cherish those memories, and loved one …hold on to them and use them to make promises to myself, my family, and those memories and maybe to those we have lost who can hear those promises on the winds of time.