Memories and Wonders

My sister Kathy came to visit me on te weekend.  She was also visiting her daughter who is up here for the winter.  Her daughter, Micki knits so Micki and I are planning a knit day where she will come to visit me once she can drive again.  I tried sending yarn home with Micki but was unsuccessful but for the remaining balls of Velvet that I used for Carters blanket.

Kathy is not a knitter though.  Kathy paints.  Some of the things she has done are so beautiful that it almost hurts.  She made this for me from a picture she had taken at our old house.  The yellow of leaves on a damaged branch are so striking framed as they are in between my much loved birches.  I know this bent tree and know exactly where she stood.  

I am in love with this just the way that I love my painting from my then ten year old sister, Glenda.  Just like that one, I have it where I can look at it and dive into the depths of it. I don't think I will ever tire of looking at it.  

She also brought me something that stunned me.

They are two of my dads hankies.  Such a small thing. So ordinary.  So simple. I sat there after she left to go home and touching them felt like hugging dad.  He always had a hanky at hand and though his everyday ones were usually blue or red with white polka dots, these were his Sunday best.  I sat there thinking of him and found tears falling though all my thoughts were happy, gentle, loving  ones.  I miss him so much and talk to him a lot inside my head.  I miss the answers and the warmth of his smile.

Even though I had company, there was time to slip in a few rows on Jane's blanket, enough rows that it is done.  I have about a quarter row of the ends to weave in along the sides and am chiding myself for not weaving in as I went.  

Cassie and Marcus popped by with their dad to do some chores and to pick up Marcus' blanket.  He loves it and wrapped himself in his cats the whole time he was here.  It was a good time for Cassie to see the colours for her blanket too and she is really happy with her choices.  So am I.  I will start her blanket today.

Other than that, I am looking forward to an ordinary day full of little mundane things like looking at the early morning frost on the roof of the community center barn over in the ball park and watching all the people walk. They are not mundane or even remotely ordinary.  They are wonders in and of themselves. I love this community and I love my life.  Sure there are things and people I will forever miss about what was, but I hold them in my heart.  It is enough and isn't that a wonderful thing?