Yesterday, the starlings came to check up on me.

They were flying high above, on our way to work.

Don't you want to hear how we swooped over "Pearly Cow's" ears this morning. I said, another time, but I am much obliged at your care and staying in touch. They said they could not forget our season of conversations. People hardly get their jokes, they said.

I said the jokes are over my head, but I try to understand them anyway. We laughed all the way to work at that one...

Kary-Anne's Harpsong

6 year old Kary-Anne was a prodigy. She and her harp were inseparable. Daily, her waking hours were spent in the enjoyment and delight of practice and learning new music. This was the renaissance of Pompeii. She was among many, many young talented people who spent their hours fully attached to their instruments while their parents worked and developed culture around them.

I never saw a mighty man in any movie like the one I saw in the clouds the other day.

Whoever has cloud duty knows exactly where to put the things that they want me to see. I am not going to see the whole sky. I have sky-phobia, sometimes. New Yorkers are not used to seeing so much of the sky. I avoid looking too much at the huge sky that they have here in NC. They must have taken stock in the sky in early pilgrim days. New York has a little piece of sky and it seems our desire to paint skylines everywhere. Anything to block the sky from coming too close. We push it away and I have to resist my natural desire not to look. It is beautiful down here, though.

I thought of our great savior, who is stronger than the strong man and mighty to deliver and save, all who come to God through Him. I always think Uncle Charles is telling me that. It wasn't his style, though. He usually has sublime messages for me.

I have truly missed the laps that the cows used to do...

So often, on the way home, I would see the bull playing hide and go seek with the cows in the pasture. It was adorable to see that huge animal, look over to me and tell me not to tell the cows where he was.

The bull would be standing next to a narrow tree, with most of his body sticking out on both sides and quietly waiting for them to find him. They were giggling and moving in his direction to pretend that they didn't see him. I guess that is their little secret!

The Squirrels said the bluejays are not the only animals who find interest in tennis...

Usually, it is Ms. Bluejay, coaching me from the rafters, when she sees me with my children. Now, my times with my children are few and far between, at the courts, at least. She was around, but silent in her criticisms of my lack of motivation and lack of clarity to create the passion for flight in my children.

In years past, she would stand right over my shoulder and shout about what I wasn't including of my motivation for the motions of continuous wing motions that we share in common. Bluejays realize the relationship between flight and the swinging of the arms in tennis. They say that teaching your children to play that sport is as close to being a bird and tossing them from the nest that there could be. Especially the service motion is pecked at by her, whenever I see her. If you could do that motion 100times fast, you might be hovering over the ground. She loves it. She giggles on the fence thinking that I am trying to fly and teach my children to fly.

Now that my childrearing is at the end, we find fewer meetings to giggle about our commonality. This Saturday was such a moment. I drug Ez onto the courts from the swings for 15 or 20 minutes of "sharing" on the court. Shame that what used to be insistent and intense instruction and coaching has condescended to "parental sharing". I love what age does to relationships. The elder children know me in the intensity of my "overhead" They know the "better duck!" look on my face, when the drool to knock the hair off the ball comes into my eyes. Not Ez, he knows tennis as a peaceful time of secret abilities that he is not yet really privy to how the ball and the racket come together to form a rally. What is a rally? Mrs. Bluejay turns her back, she can't look at such a travesty.

Well anyway, the squirrels said they had found their commonality with the sport in the aim that I take on my serve. They said it is like when they choose a branch on the heights to jump to. They were aiming above me and a mommy was showing her little ones the joys of jumping from tree to tree. Sometimes hitting the branch you aimed for and sometimes falling to a lower branch. It was fun to see them enjoying the same interaction I was having with my little squirrel.

A Beacon in the Night and a Beacon in NY, I think they are the same thing, sometimes. Light us with Your Truth, Lord. I miss my dark and wonderful city!

Precocious or a rabble rousing Cow?

There we were traveling along a country road. Cattle on a thousand hills were here and there. I was gawking at the splendor so much that when a bunch of starlings darted out in front of the car, it startled me. It didn't startle my husband driving. Had it been me, I would've swerved. I had to turn and see who did that. I saw a giggling and running lone cow running from the scene of the crime. I laughed with her, that she had gotten those starling's back for the many times that they had startled her. She was leaping like a deer and glad that she had gotten the last laugh, that great Sunday Morning. I call her "Yitzahka". Don't you know it's Sunday Yitzahka?