Artistic Flair

I asked my sister Peggy if she remembered
taking this Bleak Mid - Winter photo from the back porch
of our house in Clover Meadows (St. Charles County, Missouri)
probably 50 years ago, in January 1968.

She said: I kind of remember this picture.
The tilted camera was my attempt at artistic flair!

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A few others shared their memories as well:
Our little brother Aaron: "Definitely remember this view. Beyond the telephone pole was our baseball diamond. But who left the tracks in the snow????"

Our little sister Diane: "Aaron, it was probably a dog or a deer?"

Our neighbor Debbie: "That sure brings back childhood memories . . . from back when there were hardly any other houses around!

And I reminded Aaron: "Remember when you fired your BB Gun into that telephone pole and the BB ricocheted right into the lens of your glasses? Whew! Those glasses saved your eyesight! It's the moral of the BB Gun Christmas Story movie, as everyone keeps telling Ralphie: "You'll put your eye out!"

Playing in the backyard ~ 1968
Diane, Kitti, Aaron, Bruce

20 years later ~ Summer 1988
Diane, with her children Aaron & Jessica,
showing Uncle Gerry the garden.

This photo was taken, looking in the same direction as Peg's artistic winter scene. The telephone pole is gone, but would be somewhere right behind Gerry. The old farmhouse has been replaced by a large contemporary barn. Even this was 30 years ago, so no doubt a current picture would differ yet again.

Diane's son Aaron (named after his Uncle Aaron; the shy one above, peeking out from behind his mom) shared a perspective from the second generation of kids to grow up in the same house:

"The view there has changed quite a bit. That side is about the same but just down Central School Rd is Home Depot, Chick-fil-A, Starbucks, and a million other places. We have some friends who live on the other side of Central School Rd, in the neighborhood next to Rolling Meadows. It’s funny to be over there visiting, so close to where I spent the first 8 years of my life (1982 - 1990)."

A Little Touch of Eternity

"I do hope your Christmas has had a little touch of Eternity
among the rush and pitter-patter and all.
It always seems such a mixing of this world and the next
-- but that after all is the idea!"

~ British mystic ~ Evelyn Underhill (1875 - 1941) ~

~ Solstice Sliver Moon ~

~ The Supermoon on New Year's Night ~

~ Moonrise on January 2nd ~

"The moon on the breast of the new - fallen snow
Gave a luster of midday to objects below . . . "
If I want my Christmas to include a little touch of eternity, all I have to do is watch or read the closing lines of A Child's Christmas in Wales:

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept. ~Dylan Thomas (1914 - 53)

Or the American counterpart; set a couple of decades later, but capturing the same magic of childhood, A Christmas Story, concludes with a similar bedtime reverie, the boys tucked under their blankets with their new toys, the snow falling outside the window:

That Christmas would live in our memories . . . All was right with the world. Next to me in the blackness lay my oiled blue-steel beauty [the Red Ryder BB Gun], the greatest Christmas gift I had ever received or would ever receive. Gradually I drifted off to sleep, pranging ducks on the wing and getting off spectacular hip shots as I dissolved into nothingness. ~Jean Shepherd (1921 - 99)

"this world and the next"