Pears

I love October.  I love the freshly harvested pears and apples.  I love the colors on the trees and the smell of the first rains.   I love watching kids climb off school buses with their band instruments bumping off their knees.    I like talking to kids about what they are learning and what their teacher is like.

My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Chapman,  was an amazing person.    My first grade teacher, who shall remain nameless,  not so much.

In typical early elementary school fashion, Mrs. Chapman had a thing for apples.   She told us that she was a distant relative of Johnny Appleseed and taught us the song.   She decorated with apples and we had apples as snacks. One very impressive day in October, she taught us how to make shrunken apples into little faces you could decorate as various Halloween characters.  Looking back, this is a little creepy, but at the time we thought she was perfect.

My first grade teacher didn’t like me.   Really.  This might have something to do with the fact that I was a slob.   She’d routinely dump my entire desk out on the floor and I’d have to stay in at recess to clean it back up.    This didn’t actually cure me as my desk today probably could use a little dumping out.    She also had little faces representing each of her students up along the top of the blackboard.   If you were good, they smiled.  If you were bad, they frowned.  Mine frowned the whole year.

Now this whole story makes me grin.   I’d like to go back to that little frustrated first grader and tell her its okay if not everyone smiles at you all the time and that a clean desk is not the indicator of a successful life.    I’d tell her to try harder to keep it clean so as not to aggravate her teacher but not to take it too personally either.      I’d like to tell her that someday she’ll watch first graders and she’ll really understand how it feels to be six.

A friend of mine made a perfect fall dinner the other day.   Ginger Curry soup, Pepper Salmon, Fresh Green Beans and for dessert – poached pears.    The pears made me feel six. Ah – October.   Gotta love it.

Rain, Rain

The fall is here.  Yippee!  I love pulling out sweaters and coats and cozy socks.  I love hot baths and warm fires.  I love soup.  I had tomato soup today for lunch and for dinner too.   I like back to school shopping, changing leaves, football season and rain. Actually, I love the rain.  I like how it sounds and how it smells.   I like how everything shimmers right after it rains.   Allergies are better, gravel driveways are less dusty, the whole world looks brighter.   I spent a while today with a loved one who shall remain nameless searching the parking lot for a lost car.  It was raining.  We were all wet.   I didn’t mind a bit.

When I was a child I loved jumping in rain puddles.  My mother told my daughter this recently.  I think it may have been to get back at me for all the shoes I wrecked as a kid jumping in rain puddles.   My daughter however is not really a jump in the rain puddle kind of girl.  She’s more the “laugh at the mommy who jumped in rain puddles” kind of girl.   Now when it rains, she points and says “there is a big puddle mom, don’t you want to jump in it?”    I do actually but that takes a certain level of commitment.  Is the moment’s joy worth the soggy pants and squishy socks?

I have a new book.  It’s called Taste and See by John Piper.  It includes 140 meditations which are to help with “Savoring the Supremacy of God in All of Life”.   If you need something to read that gives you a short thought that will remind you to be grateful then get a copy of this book.   You can borrow mine in about 136 days.  Mark your calendar.  Today’s thought was all about rain.  Job 5 : 8-10 talks about the amazing and unsearchable wonders of God and includes rain an example of a miracle.   I grinned when I read it.  Not only does rain provide a great way to irrigate crops but I think God knew that we couldn’t have sunshine every day.  Rain provides a way to cool down and rest.   It’s a lot like grace.

Todd Agnew’s song Grace Like Rain sums it up nicely.

Hallelujah, grace like rain falls down on me
Hallelujah, all my stains are washed away, washed away