Today I am following the advice of Mary Poppins......."Well begun is half done." I have thought about this blog so many times....what I would name it, what I would write about, pictures I would post but the truth is.... I was SCARED. My first blog was easy. I was traveling with my husband to China to adopt our daughter and it was an easy way to keep in touch with family and friends. I knew I had a captive audience and a great story to tell and of course photos that many were dying to see of this precious little girl who had been on our hearts and minds for three full years. This time it is just a regular Tuesday night and I am writing at my dining room table with cords surrounding me on both sides and random pets and children tripping over them because my laptop is refusing to cooperate with the wireless router. I have no idea what I will write about or who might read it. I must confess it seems almost stupid.....just write about me and my life and take pictures for who??? Who will read it, who will care? Then I remind myself of all of the blogs that I follow that inspire me, uplift me and that remind me that there is such power in sharing our stories. I tell myself that this is the modern day version of my Great-Grandfather's daily diaries. Simple, yet so comforting. He would jot things down like: "It was Nancy's (my mother) birthday today. She turned 7. I gave her a dollar. Rode to town with the neighbor. Collected eggs. Picked a bushel of tomatoes. Corn on the cob for dinner." This tiny little bit of a man, Mr. Orrin Dickenson, a man I only know through stories that my family tells and these writings that go back nearly 80 years. Yet I read these words and I feel connected. I feel comforted. I picture my mom as a seven year old girl and how much a dollar must have meant to her in August of 1950. I can see the tomatoes bursting out of the bushel basket sitting on my grandmother's front walk. I can see her in the window preparing dinner for her husband, four children and her father. I see the laundry drying on the line. I am certain that my great-grandfather never could have imagined this thing called a blog or that is his great-grand daughter would read his simple words and enjoy it so much. I don't know why he did it. Maybe he wanted to remind himself of how he spent his days, maybe he was a writer in disguise, maybe these little journals made him feel like his life mattered. It's hard to say but I do know why I write. I write because I have to. When I don't write my brain feels too full like an overcrowded elevator. I write to make room, only to find out that the elevator is full again. I write to feel grounded, connected, reminded. I have loved the written word forever. I was an only child for a long time living in an old farmhouse in a small town with one neighbor girl to play with. Books were my friends. They were always there waiting for me and I would read on a blanket in the summer sun, wrapped in a quilt on the porch swing on a fall afternoon or curled up on my orange bean bag by the woodstove. Going to the library was heaven for me and even better was the book mobile. Ahhh.... I can see it now. Every summer the book mobile would make its rounds through our area, stopping in a different town each day for a couple of weeks. It was basically a mobile library and I LOVED it. It was an old van filled with book shelves in the back and I can remember the smell of it to this day. I don't think there was anything that made me happier than the book mobile. My mother would wait patiently but I was never ready to go. So many books, so little time. I could sit there for hours. Simple. Powerful. Stories. And so it began, my love affair with books that continues to this day. This naturally flowed to a love of writing and today I dare say to anyone reading this new blog...."I am a writer." It would be my great pleasure to have you join me as I share my thoughts on just about anything: blueberry picking, marriage, which paint samples I am currently dreaming about, books I am reading, spiritual matters, making soup, raising kids, traveling and just trying to be as humble and as grateful as I can each day. Let's begin!
