LITTLE PLACE OF RETIREMENT PRODUCE THOUGHTS

The before-dawn songs of the robins, the sudden cheerful call of an early-returning purple martin are like the siren's songs from the Lorelei, calling me outside. But this is not a wicked siren luring me to destruction, rather to rejuvenation.

Each season has its charm and its comforts but towards the end of that season they grow a bit stale and one wants to burst out like a butterfly from a winter cocoon.

All the books I planned to read this past winter have been read. The crocheted rag wall hanging has been crocheted but not yet hung. All the words I needed to write have been written. I'm ready to descend the five non-icy steps and frolic like a young filly around and around the yard. That's only my mental attitude. In physical reality, I'll walk slowly around like a retired mare put out to pasture.

But it doesn't take a lot of alacrity to sit in the sunshine on the big stump where the wild cherry tree was, weave in and out amongst the cedars, and follow a mole's tracks, trying to mash down his trail.

The yard is awash with violets. Sometimes, instead of the stump, I sit right down in the middle of them. Can't quite manage the lotus position anymore. Don't know that I ever could. And I never needed a mantra to meditate. I just watch the bees flying from dandelion to dandelion and think about how well cared for they are. About the time they tire of the dandelion wine, there will be the white Dutch clover, then the autumn olive. Autumn olive, how funny, since it blooms in spring. Its fragrance is inimitable and I suppose the nectar is too. When the little creamy white blossoms unfold, the bushes tremble with happy bee life.

There are many sticks and twigs to pick up, so with little red wagon, I go around tossing them into its bed as frisky as a child pulling a wagon load of Teddy bears. Well, no, that's not quite right either, physically speaking. But with the newly oiled wagon wheels, and on a down hill slope it fulfills my recommended daily requirements of exercise. Not that I do it for exercise. There's a gene in Jean that in springtime says, "Clean up that little corner, and when you're through, do that one over there and there and there."

The gene manifested its authority early. Where the log smoke house formed a right angle corner with the picket fence on the old farm stead yard, I felt compelled and pleasantly satisfied to clean it out in the spring. Hollyhocks were springing upward at the base of the logs and a rambling rose bush, beginning to leaf out, either held up the pickets or vice versa. Over winter, weeds sprang up in that corner burdock, chickweeds, fever few, etc. Dogs loved that corner to chew on bones and leave them there. Windblown leaves and other refuse caught in the corner.

Without any bidding from anyone, I raked, pulled weeds, chopped down the healthy burdock and made myself a little place of retirement. Retirement in the sense that I could go there to be alone, no chores or duties weighing heavily. I could read my little story books or just sit in the warm sunshine watching the workings of early spring.

Sometimes I asked Grandma for a few zinnia seeds she would have saved form the past season and sowed them where I had destroyed the burdock. With the sound of frogs in the meadow's low places, cackle of hens rejoicing over yet another produced egg, the odor of the good earth mingling with woodsmoke from the chimney, I did not know I was ingraining a rite that would last to the final decade of the century. I only knew how good it felt to bring a little neatness into a small corner where I could be alone with my thoughts and activities.

Now, as I pull the wagon around, noting the Johnny-jump-ups I'm running over, the chickweed that needs pulling up, a little bare place where some zinnias might be sown, I think of my old book friend, Grayson, who said, "...if once a man has a taste of true and happy retirement, though it be but a short hour, or day, now and then, he has found, or is beginning to find, a sure place of refuge, of blessed renewal, toward which in the busiest hours he will find his thoughts wistfully stealing."

My young-old friend, Jesus, who rode into Jerusalem on a pathway of palms this day many, many years ago knew the most about the efficacy of being apart for a while. While I pick up real sticks and debris to toss on the burning pile, He picked up the sticks and dregs of humanity to offer them a new life, an eternal life!

REJOICE!