Often, when I think of my grandmother, I think of the fields around her house. They looked like rolling hills of tall, messy grass but throughout, treasures could be found. The grass was sprinkled with Queen Anne’s Lace which has always been one of my favorite flowers and my grandmother would let me wander off to cut a bouquet. Deep at the bottom of a hill where the woods began, there was a thicket of saplings she had shaped into an arch that my sisters and I loved to run through. To the left of the arch was a patch of milk weed where we would often spot this beautiful stray cat that acted uninterested in us but followed us everywhere. Likewise, my grandmother hated cats but was always asking where he was. A ways past the arch were blackberries which had grown wild and thorny but the berries were huge and sweet. We would pick to the sound of chickadees and the odd groan of someone biting into a berry that wasn’t quite ripe. We would return from the field with burdocks clinging to our shoelaces which we would painfully pick off before my sisters and I competed to seeing who could separate the tiny segments of a blackberry without destroying them. When summers ended, always too soon, and the dark Maine winter began to settle in, my grandmother would entertain us indoors. That’s when she taught me to make tea and roll biscuits which we would eat with jam from the berries.
I was the youngest of the youngest so to me my grandmother was always very old. Once a tall, formidable woman, known for being harsh, I knew her to be bent over and almost completely deaf. She spoke very little when we were together, in fact our visits were usually filled with the sounds of birds or whistling tea kettles but every once in a while, there would be a disorienting rupture when I would catch a glimpse of the less than amiable woman she had been. One day, while pouring me a cup of tea, in her somewhat snobby New England accent she said, “darling, if someone has to tell you they are rich then clearly they aren’t.” I struggled for a moment with the severe transition from our previously cozy afternoon and looking to fill the silence I asked, “what if they tell you they’re broke?”. Her reply was, “never trust that either”. A few weeks later she stood in front of my mother’s new wallpaper and made a similar comment about people who tell you they have good taste.
It’s possibly my grandmother’s influence that I shake my head at what I believe to be the ironically named “smart phone”, a device which crashes after updates, needs to be helmeted in protective gear at all times and somehow, despite being a phone, can’t often do things like tell you when someone has called. I also imagine her disgust at seeing how this toy has seduced us to look only at a tiny screen rather than the beautiful world and people around us. I think of all the memories I have just of that one grandmother, memories filled with sounds, smells, tastes and fantastic quotes – seriously, I could never make up half of the stuff that woman said. I want to create more of those memories and I want my son’s life to be filled similarly. My challenge to you all and myself is set the phone down. Remind yourself how to look at things, rather than how to look things up. Teach yourself how to listen for sounds other than vibrate or ping and then go play. Let the world be your view and let yourself be the explorer.
~ Upcoming Events ~
Sunday, October 28
Team 4 Acolyting
Rev. Heather will be preaching this Sunday, we would love to have some parents available to help Antonio with worship and Sunday school.
Children’s Liturgy
10 am | Chapel
Sunday School
10:30 am | Sunday School Classroom
Nightmare Before Christmas
El Capitan Theater
4 pm movie, we will meet at church at 3 pm
Tickets are $11 for kids under 11 years old,
$14 for kids 12 and older.
Please RSVP to Heather by Thursday if you would like to come.
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Sunday, November 4
Daylight Savings
Team 1 Acolyting
Children’s Liturgy
10 am | Chapel
Sunday School
10:30 am | Sunday School Classrooms
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Sunday, November 11
Team 2 Acolyting
Children’s Liturgy
10 am | Chapel
Sunday School
10:30 am | Sunday School Classrooms
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Tuesday, November 13
Good Enough Parenting: Raising Emotionally Healthy Children
Presented by John Philip Louis & Karen McDonald Louis
7 pm | Huntington Middle School Auditorium
Research has shown that when core emotional needs are not met during the formative years of a child, schemas (life traps) will develop. While no one’s parenting can ever be perfect, hear from authors John Philip Louis and Karen McDonald Louis of “Good Enough Parenting: Raising Emotionally Healthy Children” step-by-step ways parents can learn to meet these core emotional needs and provide parenting advice that is “good enough” to prevent exasperation and schemas from developing in their children.
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Sunday, November 18
Feast of St. Edmund’s
Team 3 Acolyting
Children’s Liturgy
10 am | Chapel
Beginning of Christmas Pageant Rehearsals
10:30 am | Sunday School Classrooms
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Sunday, November 25
Team 4 Acolyting
Children’s Liturgy
10 am | Chapel
Christmas Pageant Rehearsals
10:30 am | Sunday School Classrooms
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Sunday, December 2
Team 1 Acolyting
Children’s Worship
10 am | Worship
Christmas Pageant Rehearsals
10:30 am | Sunday School Classrooms
Goat Yoga & Craft Fair
11 am | The Close
Yoga will be $25 a person. To sign up contact Heather.
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Sunday, December 9
Team 2 Acolyting
Children’s Liturgy
10 am | Chapel
Christmas Pageant Rehearsals
10:30 am | Sunday School Classrooms
Service of Lessons & Carols
7 pm | Sanctuary
Please feel free to contact Heather if you have questions.
