I've been hither and yon and finally back to my Wildwood home for a spell. The weather has been cold lately - 8 degrees on Grandaddy's back porch this morning, as Dad proclaimed when he came up to the house to cook his deer sausage and eggs this morning.
It's been a nice few months to laze around here and "be a kid again" as Grandaddy puts it. I've gotten to fill up my tank with lots of love from family and friends. Think I've spend more time with family in the past four months than I did in the last four years! There have been times when I've wondered why the heck I'm here again, but all-in-all it's been good to be "home."
Reminds me of a quote from Nelson Mandela's autobiography, which I read in the last year - "There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to see the ways that you yourself have changed." So true.
Visiting with Grandaddy in the mornings over coffee has been one of the blessings of this season. He told me recently about his school days - he never had a problem memorizing things. In fact, his teacher told his parents that he wasn't actually reading, only memorizing things. So in order to help him learn to read, they had to actually point out words to him and ask "What's this word?" He said that's the only way he learned to read.
Additionally, they were required to memorize poetry, which he was good at. He said "The Squire" (The Canterbury Tales) and "A Psalm of Life" (Longfellow) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44644/a-psalm-of-life - were popular ones to memorize.
And he was also required to do public speaking, and his teacher taught him the 4 S's of public speaking - stand up, speak up, shut up, sit down! I would say those 4 S's still hold true today.
On a sad note, we went to the visitation for Mrs. Mary Hoosier yesterday. She used to live at the intersection of Pope Creek Road and Old Birmingham Highway, and she'd talk to me as I went for a daily walk. She was a cheerful person with a black dog - black as the Ace of Spades. She was 90 years old, the same as Grandaddy.
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