Dear Reader:

Recently I updated my membership to Timrod because I simply have missed going in to that old historical building and smelling that wonderful old “library” smell that takes me back in time….I love seeing card catalogues again…and remembering the libraries of my childhood and the pleasure they brought me each week when mother dropped us off to return our books and check out new ones.

Since I enjoyed Karen White’s latest novel ( The Sound of Glass) earlier this summer… I decided to check out another book of hers called The Lost Hours.

 I have only read a few chapters and already run across a phrase that made me stop and jot it down. In the story, our young heroine, Piper, is advised to use some of her grandfather’s inheritance and take a trip.

She responds: “There’s no place I want to go. Besides with my back and knee problems, I don’t think  long-distance travel would be a good idea.”

Mr. Morton (the estate lawyer) regards Piper quietly….” It’s not always the distance of a trip that determines its value. Sometimes the best trips are only as far as the circumference of your own heart.”

Obviously this is the big clue as to where the story is leading…a journey into love and explorations of the heart….

This time of the year families are trying to “squeeze” a vacation or trip in before school resumes and most come back more exhausted than before they left. Then they still have to deal with all the preparations to get the kids registered again at their perspective schools.

(I can honestly say that I don’t miss those days since many a year was spent with me playing both teacher and mom roles…registering others while I had to scramble to pay registration fees for my own children.)

Sometimes the best trips really are the ones from the heart that don’t cost a penny…especially the ones down memory lanes.

When a lot of the brain research on learning styles and retention came out…  a couple of decades ago… I remember one workshop explained how memories are stored and saved.

When you create a memory, a pathway is created between your brain cells. It is like clearing a path through a dense forest. The first time that you do it, you have to fight your way through the undergrowth.

If you don’t travel that path again, very quickly it will become overgrown and you may not even realize that you have been down that path. If however, you travel along that path before it begins to grow over, you will find it easier than your first journey along that way.

Successive journeys down that path mean that eventually your track will turn into a footpath, which will turn into a lane, which will turn into a road, and into an inter-state highway and so on. It is the same with your memory: the more times that you repeat patterns of thought, for example when learning new information, the more likely you will be able to recall that information

………………………………

Lee and I started laughing while re-calling a shared memory as we celebrated Ben and Vikki’s birthdays at the Old Village Post House Inn the other Sunday.

Lee had drawn a picture of an owl ( an elementary year art project)….giving it to Ben one Christmas…it was all very cute and we all oohed and aahed over it.

But (for some reason) Ben never left with the owl and so by the next Christmas Lee would give it to him again….this continued way into high school…with it getting to be the Christmas family joke.

Ben would pull into my driveway each Christmas Eve stating that Lee better not give him that “damn” owl again this year…but I could tell (underneath all the huff and puff) he would have been disappointed if it had not turned up.

I can’t remember now when the owl disappeared and never made another appearance at the Christmas Eve family gathering. (Probably after Lee went off to college.)

Now Lee gives Ben some wonderful (latest tech) musical/guitar  paraphernalia…but I still secretly hope that the famous “owl” will reappear one more time and bring laughter and shared memories from a  ‘trip around the circumference of the heart.”

So until tomorrow…Help us realize, Father, that we don’t have to worry about money, luggage or baggage if we travel the circumference of our hearts for our vacation this year.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

* Honey and a friend went to St. Jude’s Chapel of Hope yesterday and she emailed me that God waited until she was preparing to  leave to  send His “wink.”

There was a planter next to the altar and when she glanced down as they were leaving there was a rock inside that said HOPE with a carved bumblebee (mom’s symbol)) and dancing leaves (for Honey) at the bottom!!!!!!!!!

It never fails…every visit…something new appears that wasn’t noticed before….

* As I was walking back towards the house after checking the mail yesterday…I noticed that morning glory leaves do resemble  little cut-out green hearts….perhaps this image is to remind me that home  (my happy place) is the destination and  circumference of my heart.

In the past few days my morning glories and moon flower blooms have gone crazy…finally going from one random bloom to several blooms together…team work! Even my gerber daisies are making a come-back!