FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: SWEEPING UP THE SUNSHINE (PART 62)

Editor's note:

Today marks the final chapter of Jean Bell Mosley's autobiography, "For Most of the Century." The Southeast Missourian has brought readers the entire book in serialized form over the last 62 weeks.

It also marks the end -- for now -- of a weekly column by Jean Bell Mosley. Since mid-century, this prolific writer has brought joy along the way to newspaper readers from the pages of the Southeast Missourian and Bulletin-Journal. She has also written hundreds of short stories for national magazines and authored five books.

At age 84, Jean Bell Mosley certainly deserves a rest from weekly deadlines. But she will be sorely missed for helping us all to rejoice in the joys and pleasures of simple, every day life.

Thank you, Jean Bell Mosley, and God bless.

"You missed a spot here, Jean," Mama said one day as I was vacuuming the carpet. I was across the room from where she sat, working on a patchwork quilt. Looking back I saw the little spot she was referring to and thought it was just a little yellow scrap of fabric or ravelings she must have dropped.

I went back to sweep it up, looking at Mama's handiwork instead of at the floor where I was moving the cleaner back and forth, then moved on, assuming I had swept up the scrap.

"It's still there," Mama said. I could see that it was, so I went back, ran the sweeper first one way, then other. "Oh, Mama, that's sunshine." She laughed, having already attempted to pick it up herself and then deciding to tease me.

The sunshine had struck a little brass squirrel I had on a window shelf, and through some quirk of adjustment in the window shade, the little "scrap" of reflected sunshine from the squirrel had come in and lay there on the green carpet as if it had a purpose. Perhaps it did. If nothing more than to provide a laugh at trying to sweep it up. And, more seriously, to think that you can, metaphorically, sweep up such sunshine and keep it in your mind and heart, as I have done with that incident.

Haven't I done so with the sunshine as it reflected on the carbide light? The post oak leaf? The horse's harness?

Such swept up and stored away sunshine has enlightened my vision. It reminds me of the time when Stephen was just a little fellow and wanted to Trap The Sunshine.*

The midsummer day had been long and hot, filled with bean canning and hoptoads, pieces of string, bean canning, lost balls, jelly sandwiches and more bean canning.

"Mommy, what makes a toad hop? Mommy! Come, lookie, here's a worm with a fur coat on. Is the sun a balloon? Who holds the string?"

At long last he lay still in his little yellow bed, his eyelids drooping steadily. I tiptoed to lower the shades, for the man with the string hadn't yet pulled the sun below the western horizon.

"Mommy?"

"Yes, dear?" I sighed wearily.

"Why don't you close all the windows and pull the shades and keep the sunshine in here all night?"

"Well, son ..." But he was asleep.

Who wanted to trap the sunshine? I thought. It was so beastly hot, canning beans.

The red-gold of the western sky had turned to pale amethyst. A farmer's wagon creaked down the road. A lone mockingbird began his evening concert in the hedge. All these things I saw and heard and felt, yet the peace that usually came with the close of day did not come. There seemed a nagging, nebulous half-question nibbling at my brain. I kept thinking, Trap the sunshine. What did the sunshine mean to him that he would want it all night?

A brown thrush flew to her nest in the lilac bush. The mist was gathering in the low places. The stars came out timidly and the fireflies matched their radiance. Ah, I thought, these are the lasting things, the grain separated from life's chaff, the things I want to remember forever.

Suddenly I understood! Trap the golden hours! Why, that's what he was saying. Sunshine to him was synonymous with all the wonderful things in the world. The soft tickly feeling of the grass to his bare feet, the fuzzy white dandelion tops that needed to be picked and blown, the black and yellow butterflies that needed chasing and the feel of Queenie's wet muzzle against his cheek. These are the things he wanted to keep.

The mockingbird began his second show down in the Park. The moon rested momentarily on the top branch of the old sycamore. It shed a silver light over everything. I began to plan for tomorrow.

We would take our lunch down by the creek in the meadow. I would show him how to catch a minnow. Maybe we would build a dam. We'd gather great handfuls of violets. The beans would get canned sometime.

I tiptoed back into Stephen's room. "Good-night, sonny," I whispered. "My traps are set. Tomorrow we will harvest the golden hours, print them indelibly on our minds, take them down into our hearts and close the windows so they can't fly away. When the gloomy days and darkness come, we will get light from our treasure chest of golden hours. And if you ask, in days to come, 'Mommy, what did we do the summer I was 4?' shall I say, 'Oh, I canned beans'? No, that was the summer we made the tent from the feed sacks and camped under the apple tree. You were an Indian chief and the world was ours for free!"

The century wanes. It has been an incredible span of time. I don't know what adjective will eventually be attached to it. Explosive? Revolutionary? Quantum Leap?

For myself I will call it the Light Century. Not enlightened as pertains to the vast dissemination of knowledge via the Information Super Highway. Not light in that nothing much happened. But reflected light that opened my running conversation with God, light that makes me look and see lest I miss a single word. Light like the kind you can sweep up and hold in your heart and mind so you can "see" your way through wars, depressions, sickness and loss of loved ones, and be able to say, with joy in your heart, along the way:

"That butterfly! You did a good job on it."

"You tickle me with that giraffe, God and those stripes on the zebra and the exactly three red feathers atop the flicker's head."

"God, you know I don't academically understand it all -- theology and the -oligies of the "other sheep in the pasture," but I thank you for talking back to me in the way I can hear."

"You made a good day, God."

REJOICE!

* "Faith Today," October 1949

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.