Faith

I had been sick, but today I was much better. I craved the outdoors after being inside so much. Raking the leaves around my back porch, I made a large pile of them. With almost no wind blowing, I decided to burn them, now. I always seemed to have a few boxes or letters, that needed to be burned along with the leaves. So, I soon had a fire going. It was a bit chilly and the fire felt good.

When WWII began in 1941, Daddy moved us to Orange, Texas to his new job at the shipyard. That trip of 100 miles was one we kids never forgot. We crawled into the bed of an old truck just big enough for us and our few sticks of furniture. The heads of five grinning Fincher kids popping up and down was probably a sight to see---even in 1941. The thing I most remember about Orange in 1942 was the rain. The ditches stayed full of rain water and all the neighborhood kids swam in them. We later moved back to Center into a house owned by Buford Russell on The Arcadia Road. The Sandy Creek Iron Bridge was a short walk from us and we lugged home many stringers of “poly-wog” catfish fishing off it.

We had dinner with friends last night.There is nothing unusual about that, except these were all people I did not know; people my husband, Peter, had met while taking his daily hike in Mexico. This was not the first gathering of Peter’s friends we’ve had.

I sank into my recliner, my coffee and toast already in place. My reading for this morning, in the Old Testament was in Job. Ugh, not my favorite book. All the accusing and fault finding, from so called friends, I can live without. Could I just skip the pity party and go on to the happy ending? No? Must be something here, that I need to read, I guess.

I recall that my mother, Alice, would complain about her nerves. After a long day of work in her beauty shop she would often go to her medicine cabinet, pull out a blue bottle, and take a spoon full of liquid. She said that it calmed her nerves. At times, when she felt she was going to have trouble sleeping, she would do the same thing.

”I awoke this morning with my Mother’s last words flowing through my mind. In the months that her health began to fail, she made several visits with her children and eventually moved to my sister Pat's home in Henderson, Texas.

No, it isn’t Christmas yet, but many of us are already planning for it. Family and friends, giving and receiving.