I love when I'm taking photos of the sky and discover when I get them transferred to my computer I see that I've also, unknowingly, captured a bird in flight - albeit so far away as to be unidentifiable.
There are many things I say I love: rocks, flowers, birds, photography, cows, cats, seasons, nature, books, memories, trees, oceans, waterfalls, streams, lakes, sunrises, sunsets, clouds, music and travel. Like most, I probably overuse the word love.
But there's one more thing I love - poetry. And Mary Oliver is my favorite female poet. Every once in awhile I discover one of her poems I haven't read before. That happened again this morning.
In Praise of Craziness by Mary Oliver
On cold evenings
my grandmother,
with ownership of half her mind-
the other half having flown back to Bohemia-
spread newspapers over the porch floor
so, she said, the garden ants could crawl beneath,
as under a blanket, and keep warm,
and what shall I wish for, for myself,
but, being so struck by the lightning of years,
to be like her with what is left, that loving.
I loved both my grandmothers. They both lived well into their nineties. One retained most of her faculties until the end, the other had some dementia and relied on the same phrases in her limited conversations. My mother's dementia was to the point that she did not even know me at the end. I don't want to live so long that I need care nor that I no longer can order my thoughts and speech.
But I do hope that I am left loving.
My favorite photo of my paternal grandmother, Bessie.
And my favorite photo of me with my maternal grandmother, Delphia.
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