Life's simple pleasures....

Open our front door and there is a delicious smell of smoke wafting through the chimney of our wood burning stove.  On a frosty winter morning, it fills my senses and makes winter worthwhile.  It's not that I don't like winter, I loathe winter.  Sledding, snowmen, skating, even Christmas tree hunting, have been an insidious form of torture, which I have endured on occasion for the benefit of children and grandchildren.  It's kind of like giving natural birth...the pain eases as you hold your incredible miracle in your arms.  The laughter and sparkle in the little ones eyes, their enjoyment, take away, for a moment, the cold that finds it's way, creeping into my very core.  But...then there is the steamy, fragrant, frothy bubble bath that reaches into my core and pulls out the last bit of cold.  Added to that, a hot cup of chocolate, and a roaring fire....winter is good....how else would I be able to feel and smell these other wonderful, intoxicating senses.  The Book of Mormon puts it wonderfully, "there must be opposition in all things."

Throughout my life, I've taken great joy in moments.  They are fleeting, they don't stay a long time, but how I have loved them!  Lilacs in the spring with butterflies darting in and out around the blossoms, all I can say is wow!

  A sunrise with a full moon in the first light of the morning, that is a sight!  Coming home from an ugly, at best, graveyard shift, watching the moon getting larger as it goes down over the western skyline, at the same time the sun rises in the eastern sky...that is amazing.  I recommend it for anyone who hasn't seen it!

At one of my church meetings, Zan Bowles asked a poignant question, "When was the last time you saw a sunrise?"  At that time, we had the dairy, which was the most enduring, and brutal time of torture I've ever had.  I was waking up hours before dawn every morning to milk the cows.  The thought went through my mind, "when was the last time I didn't see a sunrise?"  But the sunrise was always one of Heavenly Father's tender mercies for me.  No artist can truly catch the Majesty of nature's pallet.

Believe it or not, it wasn't all that long ago we didn't carry phones with us!  We actually had to have a land line in our home, or workplace, and there were these things called 'telephone booths' that we put loose change in to make a call when we were on the road.  I was not one who was easily enamored with the advent of cell phones.  I truly thought they were an invasion of privacy, and still do at times.  But, for business purposes, we broke down and got one, and from that time to this, it has been one more thing to misplace, but the value exceeds the personal bubble it popped.  One of the things I loved about it, was when I saw a beautiful full moon, I would call home and ask the children to run outside and see it.  There is a time in the early evening when the moon rises and it is HUGE!  I wanted my children to share that moment with me.  Some of my children thought that was great, others thought and probably still think, at times, that I have a few loose screws.  But when we get Moon pictures from Afghanistan and other places, I know it is an infection that was transferred...and it makes me happy! 

Then there were the very, very fleeting sightings of the aurora borealis in the Northern skies when we were living in Idaho!  Yes, they did come down that far on occasion.  That was something everyone in the family rushed in to tell the others to run and see when it was sighted.  Most of the time, it was SO fleeting, in that small space of time, the lights were gone, and we had to wait for another time and opportunity to see them.  We never got the brilliant hews of the more Northern regions, but what we got, we treasured.  

Smells, songs, can bring so many memories and feelings of deja vu.  Special times, okay, I admit it, it can also bring back horrific, terrible memories, but I'm just focusing on the special ones; come back as if they were yesterday.  The other day we looked up the songs that were #1 the week we were born.  That was fun...and a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away!  There is a song Simon and Garfunkel sang that brings me back to a moment in time when I was going to college, walking down a dreary, drizzly sidewalk on my way to work...wait, that was one of the not special memories....but it was there, and part of my life.  Kenny Chesney has a song "I Go Back".  It's true, there are experiences we have had, just waiting to jump out at us through a song, a smell, a memory.

This is SO not original, but life is hard!  But life also has some of the most amazing, incredible, unbelievable moments that make everything else worth whatever it is we are going through. I love the quote, "Life isn't measured by the number of breathes we take, but the moments that take our breath away."  I believe that is one reason the scriptures tell us so often to remember.  

There were so many times, especially when we had the dairy that I couldn't see the tree for the bark, an out take on, you can't see for the forest for the trees.  Life was so in my face, at times it was hard to breathe!  But there were the sunrises, the aurora borealis', watching the children grow, learn to work, do back flips off the hay stacks into the grain, ride the four wheeler, go to the top of  7 mile canyon and look over the valley, the beautiful full moons, the baby killdeers in the spring, the smell of fresh mown hay, the beauty of ripe grain fields, the taste of fresh peas in the garden ( we all loved to pea in the garden), watching the calves frolic and play in the evenings, watching the calves get born, finding the nests when the cats had their kittens, the big water guns on the pasture with their swish, swish sound, and so much more!

Today, in Missouri, I'm finding more things to savor, the moments, the smells that make life wonderful in all it's complexity and variety.  I feed birds.  I love to watch them come to the banquet!  At times I look out and there are at least 15 Cardinals.  They never fight, they never chase away the small birds, they grab their sunflower seed and fly away to crack the shell and savor the morsel that is inside.  I never tire of watching them, I never will.

I love to watch the chicks that we hatched out grow.  They are little for such a short time.  But they know my voice, and if I don't frighten them, when I talk they arch their necks and look to see where my voice is coming from.  Soon they will be laying eggs, which we will enjoy eating and hatching, a new generation will emerge.

I love the smell...and taste...of bread fresh from the oven!

Life's simple pleasures...it's worth it!