My mother gardened all her life. It was one of her great loves, next to family, God, and country. Because she grew up during the Depression, she learned to use every last item from her garden for canning, preserving, drying or pickling. Every year at the end of the green bean season she made leather britches, dried beans that would keep for the winter. These were the last beans hanging on the vines. The beans inside had grown to full size with outsides a bit withered. They were beyond the stage to can or preserve, or even to pickle. Although her fried pickled green beans and corn bread were the best in the world. (Well, next to her biscuits and fried apples.) Mother started the drying process with clean beans. She would spread a clean white sheet on a table in the wash room and spread the beans out on that, giving them space to dry. Sometime she would carry the sheet outside and put them on a table in the sun to further the process. The next step involved needle and thread ...
This is the way we should all feel about ourselves. Thank you for this. I really needed it today... Susie
ReplyDeleteThanks, Susie. I'm not an educated poet but I just like using the form at times to express what I feel.
ReplyDeleteIn my journal I can say things I wouldn't ordinarily say to anyone.
Happy you had the time to read.
Thanks much. Barb
PS I enjoy reading your work. I think as we write we only get better.
The words are perfect...if I could do that, it would be even better.
ReplyDeleteI like your new coat....I wonder if it comes in my size.
ReplyDeleteMy new coat is free to everyone just for the asking. It's a heart coat and not a physical one.
ReplyDeleteSo go put on your coat and kick up your heels. RIght now it's too hot for a coat and I can't get my leg in the air. Until later, B
Great poem..true feelings..I wish we all could come to that point where we are honest with who we really are and learn to accept and love that person. Sometimes I think that's why we (me) hate our pictures taken because we (me!) don't want to see the honesty of the shot..how we really look..who we really are. Sad huh? Love the poem and I'll try on that coat please!
ReplyDeleteI'm sending you a coat of blessings to wrap yourself in - it's just that we women seem to see all our flaws magnified at least we see them and our men think they look great just the way they are. Thin, tall, skinny, fat, bald. Women tend to be critical, too critical and we have to put a stop to it one by one. So I guess I'll be the first. Put on your coat of self and join me.
ReplyDeleteI love your poem, Barbara. It is a coat we should all wear.
ReplyDeleteOnce there was this fellow who came to preach and what he preached was different than anything we'd ever heard. He made the comparison of each of us to a finely crafted piece of woodwork. But over the years, each person who thought they owned that art would change it, some would paint it one color and some another and eventually, there were so many coats of paint, the original luster could not shine through.
ReplyDeleteHe said people also come into our lives who make us unsatisfied with that paint job -- this person may be irritable -- like sand paper. S/he may be caustic like paint remover. But s/he's doing his job.
Because s/he helps us rebel against the paint that others coated us with. And through our efforts to recapture the "I AM" we come to the point where we are brave enough to take off the coats. To stand perfect as we are, as we were created and so carefully and artfully crafted.
I will add that it is wise to Bless and release both those who painted and those who sand-blasted -- for they are all our co-writers of the stories we are writing with our lives.