Jewels

Sometimes Life hands me jewels, you know, incidents which shine so brightly I just cannot forget them. I ruminate and then re-tell them so that others may learn from them too. We've just come through a Life Event in our family. A friend, my granddaughter's other grandmother recently passed away.

My granddaughter, Orlaith, is five. Five year olds live in Magic. Everything that happens in life has the potential to be understood in a manner vastly different than the linear world of adults. Her grandmother's passing was just such an event.

Orlaith called me from the car on her mom's cell phone the evening of the family viewing and said, "Críonna, my Granma died."

"I know, SweetiePie, that's why you spent the night on Friday, remember? So that Mommy and Daddy could help Granma with her dying," I replied.

"I know, but Críonna?" she continued, "They put my Granma in a jewelry box."

Tears welled in my eyes at the beauty of that explanation. I humbly offered the mundane, "O Little Bit, they call that jewelry box a coffin."

"Yeah," Orlaith continued, "but Críonna, they cut her legs off. They cut Granma in half!"

The shock of that statement was profound! Five year olds are left to interpret what we've not thought to explain.

"Oh Orlaith, there are two lids to the coffin," I frantically tried to explain. "You must tell Mommy to lift the other top tomorrow and show you that Granma was not cut in half; you will see that her legs are under the closed lid."

With her beautiful ability to move from importance to nonchalance, Orlaith said, "Well, OK Críonna, I just am going home now to see my cats."

Firsts

At my point in life it seems funny to speak of 'Firsts'. But today is the first time that I've posted to my blog. Not only were there no blogs in my earlier life--there was no Internet, there were no computers. There were however, diaries. I'm not quite clear--are blogs the same as diaries?

I'm sitting here smiling because I'm asking a question of.....whom? I guess whoever reads this. OK, so in that way, blogs are unlike diaries. Diaries are for the writer alone (and their younger siblings who may steal them to read.)

Something that amazes me more than blogging is this: while I am typing on this blog, I have a headset on and I am listening to my daughter who is speaking to me from her car on her cell phone! Communication was different during my earlier life. Phones were often attached to the wall and had a cord which limited travelling while talking. Not only that, we had party lines--4-party lines. Don't confuse this with "PAR-TAAAY".

Party lines were telephone lines connecting two or four users. So any time I'd pick up the phone there might be (usually was) someone already on the line who would say disgruntedly, "In Use, please!" If I were very adept at it, I could hang up quickly and very carefully slip the receiver back up and listen to their conversation--not that I ever did, however.

Saturday will be another First for me. On that day my beautiful daughter, Melanie, will celebrate her birthday and we are going to a luncheon at a local coffee shop to enjoy a Poetry Reading. The "First" involves the moment when the organizers provide some Open Mic time. Both my daughter and myself will be reading--my First public reading.

Tune in later to find out how it went!