After 5 Girls...

...Sister Abigail had a man-child! Honeybuckle is a boy!

Baby Ezekiel and his mama:

Going solo:

I went to visit them both in the hospital yesterday, and he is soft and sweet-smelling and utterly delectable. You should be jealous.

Rambling Man [Or Girl. Or Dog...Or Just Girl and Dog Without the Man]

Easter break afforded me at least one good, long ramble. Sleep is sneaking up on me, but I want to write one more post before I head off to bed. Because my brain is only semi-conscious, this post will be heavy on pictures and light on words.

The dilapidated Johnson barn and barbed wire.

Watching.

Moss is one of my favorite things. I wish I could have a whole bed made out of it. Or I suppose I could just sleep on a rotting log like this one...

Blossoms.

I followed the gulley slicing through our woods until I reached Nanticoke Creek and could follow it upstream. The hoarfrost was still on the lamb's ears and the shadows on the water.

My faithful Huckleberry was a constantly-moving companion. His nose didn't stop twitching the whole time, poor hound. He doesn't go on rambles enough now that I'm in Bainbridge instead of Nanticoke.

It's a dog's life.

This is an awful picture, but this section of creek was stunning. The water was pure magic.

Up and Out.

And Up some more.

Foxes [and other mystery creatures] have holes...

...and birds of the air have nests...

And Debbies? Well, they have Nanticokes. 

Easter (And Fashionably Late, Too)

When we were young, Easter was a conglomeration of family and feasting and Easter basket-hiding and egg-coloring and candy-consuming and remembering--although probably not enough of the last. These past few years have become tinged with less sugar (well, okay...you've got me there...still a lot of sugar...) and a more healthy dose of remembering. Now that I have entered the realm of Adulthood, Easter has become a time for homey joys and quiet thoughts that are often pondered but not shared.

We do, however, still enjoy an Easter feast. This feast has become more sumptuous now that my sister Abigail has a still-new nest of her own, made lovely by her instinctive artistic tastes and clever fingers. This is where a [sadly-small this year] Johnson gathering congregated to celebrate the Christ with good conversation and joyful children and pleasantly full bellies.

The hustle and bustle of a before-Easter-feast kitchen, all hands big and little pitching in.

Our hostess, the beautiful [and very pregnant] Abigail. Baby Honeybuckle has not yet joined us in the Out Here but is sure to come soon, God willing.

Abigail's handiwork. Isn't it lovely? Seeing the picture after the fact makes me want to melt right into the photograph. Funny how making a room into a piece of art can do that.

Centerpiece. We had finished eating by this time and were contentedly lounging on couches and in chairs, talking and reading stories to Abby's gaggle of little girls.

And so another Easter has come and gone. The years go by quickly, and I'm only twenty-two. I wonder how quickly they'll pass a few decades from now...

Little Boxes, Little Boxes

How in the name of Pete can people say it's a small world?

(Granted, I've been caught saying that myself on more than one occasion...)

As I pass house after house, green ones and pink ones and blue ones and yellow ones--with the occasional brick ones and stone ones with ivy climbing up their walls--I sometimes become overwhelmed thinking about the lives that have been lived inside each of them. How homes have been made, and how they have been un-made. 

Perhaps it's the fact that I just started living on my own in August and have my very own space that I've tried to cozy up. It's tiny, but it's lived-in and has started, I think, to borrow my personality. Pictures of faces I love on the fridge, brightly-colored art from the little ones in my life on the walls (as well as from the big ones), plants peeping out the windows, a jar full of marbles on top of a shelf chock full of books, a crazy quilt on the bed... it's become an extension of who I am, in a sense. I've become comfortable here. 

When I think about this, even my street can become a Big World and ample space for imaginings. It makes me want to see inside each house frame, pick it apart. Get to know the people inside. 

Globalization, my foot. Technology has its place, and fingers on keyboards and voices on radio waves and faces on televisions may argue in a thousand ways for a world in which isolation is impossible. 

But I want to know who lives in the house next door.

And Then the Sky Cracks

Woman in the kitchen,
sweeping dust over
and over
and through the open
door
until it scatters
in a puff of breeze.

Child on the roadside,
kicking stones on
and on
and through the colored
crowd
until they hit
ankles tense and taut.

Man on the hilltop,
staring down
and down
and through the parched
earth
until it yawns
and swallows him whole.

And then the sky cracks,
tears,

And dust
and stones
and eyes
meet, mingle

As light slices
like a blade,
boggles, blinds

leaving only mouths

and words.

"Kyrie eleison"
become a cry

And "Hosanna"
become its echo.