Historical Setting, 629 C.E. Creek House in the Vosges Mts.
It isn’t hard to change the topic from death to life for these grandchildren, especially when they take notice of Inky, the kitten. The vase was broken because Inky searched the shelf of precious things for something that was moving, something that had a glimmer of playfulness, and there it was — a feather that was ruffled at its edges so that it would move with the slightest breeze. That was how the clay vase was shattered.
Now both of our wooden pails here at the creek cottage are being used for settling out the new clay, and it will take days to make a ball of perfect clay. So, the children go up to the farm to borrow another pail from the goat shed. It comes stained with use as a milking pail, and the kitten is bedazzled. What could be nicer that a warm wood pail that reeks of goat’s milk just right for curling up in?
Ana shoos the kitten from the pail, and scrubs it with well water. The water whitens with the milk curdles as the pail becomes clean. The nearly milk poured into a tea dish is lapped up by the kitten as a delicious nourishment. Let this place become known now as home. Everything is lovely and good. Life is always on this good side of whatever stinks.
It is a completely joyful peace I see here, for Ana watching Haberd’s three chasing after a tiny little furball, which is also chasing after a feather on a string all the while she holds the fourth grandbaby in her arms. All this while the two adult daughters worry over the quality of gift for their older mother who should probably wish for quiet – call it tranquility or maybe stagnation? No. That isn’t Ana’s wish now. The visits from family, the kitten, the feather, this is the precious now of life that Ana cherishes.
The very still and quiet shelf of precious things that have been salvaged over the years to speak of what once was and now is lost, seems to be the wishes of youngers, only imagining the still-life of elders.
Remembrances, just because older people have so many of them, seem all there would be for one who has many years of life to ponder. But stagnation is to lose sight of now. It is a purposeless stillness.
When the child returns to the edge of the creek, will the floating fish be there in that stillness?
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 