An Old Friend

There's a place that I find every year. I've found it every year since I was a child. I first remember finding it in my Grandma's strawberry patch. And then on her mossy brick patio. I found it jars of lightening bugs stacked full of grass and pierced through and through with "breathe-holes". The side walk on the west of my Grandma's house hid my place well. Among snails and mashed leaves I explored. When I find my place I turn tiny. Although I become a giant next to the millipedes and baby wolf spiders, when I look in on their world I feel like I shrink into it, and become a citizen. When I find my place and go there, I am surrounded by the memories I keep there. I think the same thoughts I did when I was 6. They come back to me when I find my place. I add new thoughts and wonder about what my 6 year old thoughts mean to me now. I found my place for the first time this year yesterday. I was digging in the garden, planting peas and plucking violet blossoms for jelly. I crumbled clods of dirt between my fingers and watched for the earthworms to struggle for their freedom. I never want to hurt the earthworms, I watch for them when I dig and try not to cut them. They are nurturers and the earth belongs to them first. I found my place in the dirt. I felt the smell of my place and I knew that my memories would come to the surface soon. When I have these memories in my place I never cry, this is because I know that I am safe in my place. If I think about these things somewhere else tears will be sure to find me. I dig and think, dig and wonder. What did I know the first time I wondered about that? Frost, I can't remember thinking about you or your sister before you were here. But I do remember thinking about a great happiness that would come to me someday. A warm feeling, a deserving feeling, a true feeling, a wholeness. I think now that that must have been the two of you. I feel that when I am in the garden, working the earth, that has been worked before and will be worked after us. I am doing something that countless others have. I am a part of this world despite not knowing most of the others that cut the groove out before me. From my place I watch stillness turn into wind, the breath that blows the dust somewhere leaving a space for me to add another memory. This year I added my thoughts of you.
The apple blossoms are perfect this year.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you.