gifts

Magical treats

/ Fran Haley / 18 Comments

My room at school is kind of magical.

It’s decorated with a Harry Potter theme. I have a Diagon Alley backdrop behind my desk. Whenever I sit there to catch up on email, I blend in; people entering the room don’t even realize I’m there. When I speak, I startle them – next best thing to a Cloak of Invisibility!

Children from all grade levels, kindergarten through fifth, love to come by to look at my books and memorabilia. They share what they know about the series. They ask questions. They tell me which Hogwarts house they belong to (Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin) and which houses their moms belong to. Always the moms. Every once in a while, a child will bring me a gift, like a Harry Potter pencil or sticker: “When I saw this, I thought of you, Mrs. Haley!”

My colleagues have done the same. I have been given a Hedwig owl hairclip, a Hagrid birthday cake topper for my water tumbler straw, Harry, Hermione, and Ron Pez dispensers, assorted little figurines, and Harry Potter Hershey’s Kisses (yum!).

These are more than random acts of kindness. They are gestures of love, and they humble me.

In the last couple of weeks, more magical treats materialized. A volunteer gave me Harry Potter gummies:

Note the word Alohomora! in the upper right corner: Open!

A colleague gave me a bag of Harry Potter Butterbeer Goldfish:

The moral of the story here is much like that of the series itself: It’s not really about magic, wizards, or witches. All that is just the backdrop. The real message is that sacrificial love and friendship – along with the courage to stand up for what is right – are more powerful than fear, hatred, and evil.

Thank you, precious gift-bearers, for the timely and delicious reminders.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the March Slice of Life Story Challenge

For my finch followers: returning thanks

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

Dear Delivery People:

Thank you
for respecting
my taped-up signs
that say stay away 
from the front porch
it’s a bird sanctuary again
the house finches nested early
on the door wreath I left for them
Mama laid four tiny eggs in blue cold
mohawked nestlings hatched in a snowfall
by mid-March I thought the fledglings
had all flown, for there was no more
happy chatter-song at the door 
and when I checked I found
two perfectly beautiful
fledglings dead
in the nest

how 
why
what
happened
here

I placed them together 
in a deep pile of dry leaves 
at wood’s edge because birds
do not bury their dead
they are creatures
of the air

I tore down
the death-nest
and my taped-up signs

and read online
that birds grieve
the death of
their young

the next day
blades of green grass
appeared on the wreath
where the nest had been

the day after that, more
grass and flowered strands

scientists say that only
the mother finch builds
the nest but I am here
to tell you that the father
worked just as hard

in tandem they flew
with string and fluff
in their beaks
chattering their
architectural plans

in five days,
recreating 
what was lost

and now
in the most
exquisitely-lined nest
I’ve ever seen

there are new blue eggs

exactly
two

so thank you,
Delivery People
for reading my
freshly-taped signs

this
is a sacred
little space
where miracles
of nature
take place

*******
with thanks to b.c. randall for today’s VerseLove invitation on Ethical ELA:

“Write today’s  poem for someone else: the boy who bags your groceries, the neighbor who walks by your front window every day, that colleague or friend who has been on your mind. Craft the poem  to be left for another to unwrap (a gift that we all need).”

Slices of life recycled

/ Fran Haley / 17 Comments

If the writer
observes the world
then the artist
recreates it
and the poet
preserves it all

Knowing yesterday was a milestone anniversary of my father’s death, a friend created this digital image as a gift. She took lines from one of my blog posts, Fresh-cut grass, written in his memory: Grass, though cut, always heals itself and grows again, and you are always present in that sweet scent. She used pictures in my posts to make the grass…here in these blades are slices of my first Christmas, the cross necklace my father gave me, a portion of his Air Force uniform, and a lamppost like the one that stood in the yard of my childhood home; my father used say that when he turned onto the street he could see the light of home shining straight ahead.

I’m in awe of the gift and its artistry.

A metaphor for life itself.

My father’s presence remains in the scent of fresh-cut grass. Here is Sunday’s poem, marking the twentieth year of his passing: September, When Grass Was Green.

*******

with thanks to E. Johnson for the digital masterpiece and to Two Writing Teachers for the original impetus to start a blog for capturing Slices of Life. I began by writing each Tuesday in April 2016, then every day each March, then for Spiritual Journeys on the first Thursday of each month, and on occasion for other writing communities like SOS— Sharing Our Stories: Magic in a Blog…and every day thus far in the year 2022.

If you are reading…thank you.

We are our stories. Let us write them and live them well. And bring healing to one another.

What the sea teaches

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and, greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.”

—Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift From the Sea

Lindbergh’s words come back to me as I contemplate the frenzy of living and the pull of making the most of every moment, especially on vacation (how often do we say we need a vacation after returning from our vacation?). Life is not always a matter of doing, of endlessly digging for treasure…but carving out time just to be and to see what treasures may come. For they will. And we will be far less likely to miss them.

A cup of light

/ Fran Haley / 14 Comments

In his poem “Tuesday, June 4th, 1991,” poet Billy Collins writes of an ordinary day that would be forgotten if not for sitting “empty-headed at the typewriter with a cup of coffee, light and sweet.”

He begins to record his feelings, his thoughts, his surroundings. His mind travels through history. He captures images, real and imagined, in his stanzas “as unalterably as they are seated in their chairs in the ontological rooms of the world.”

Ontology. The study of being. Certainly this is what writers, what poets, do. I’ve said I write to know that I have lived… recording people, places, images, emotions, ideas, pulling back layers of meaning, discovering connecting threads. Attempting to capture or recreate bits of my existence, whether it is or once was tangible, or just a fleeting, ethereal breath of a thing in the mind… yet still being.

Collins ends his poem with an image of the goddess Eos, or Aurora, slipping out of bed (as his own wife had, prior to his waking and sitting down to write this poem):

But tomorrow, dawn will come the way I picture her,

barefoot and disheveled, standing outside my window
in one of the fragile cotton dresses of the poor.
She will look in at me with her thin arms extended,
offering a handful of birdsong and a small cup of light.

As I sit here, now, at dawn, empty-headed at my laptop with a cup of coffee, feeling that I have nothing to offer today, Collins’ final lines whisper in my mind. They do not demand, or bang on the door, or tug. They do not pierce; they just stand, waiting, whispering. Aurora rises from the sound, from the mist, and I see her looking in at me, too. In the grayness there’s a flutter of her plain gown, of her long hair. I see those thin arms, one hand holding the birdsong and releasing it. I hear it, airy and new and alive again, as it is every morning.

And that small cup of light she’s offering.

I can almost see her earnest face, her pleading gray eyes: I brought it for you. It is yours. Please take it.

And I think, the day is new. What gifts will it bring? Unexpected little treasures that I don’t want to miss, just waiting… and what cup of light might I offer the day in return?

There’s only one thing to do. I know it as sure as I am sitting here.

I hold out my hand.

Aurora smiles.

Photo: “Cupping the Light.”  Caitlinator. CC BY 2.0