Dear Reader:

Aren’t windows happy items by nature? Simply because they let the light in? I read the other day a quote that I liked…(I think it was from a window retail outfit…still the message rang true) that I can only paraphrase but the concept was ….“The bigger the window…the more happiness pours in.”

Since yesterday was cloudy and rainy in intervals…the house seemed extra dark…so I threw open the “shutters and the blinds” and let the natural light come in…my spirits were lifted immediately.

I think John Greenleaf Whittier was right when he said, ” The windows of my soul throw wide open to the sun.” My soul craves the light too.

Today I am finishing with the last excerpt from Small Graces by Kent Nerburn (that I will share with you) so any of you potential buyers will still have lots of vignettes of faith and hope left to read and enjoy. This excerpt touched my heart profoundly…but then all  twenty vignettes did the same thing.

In this vignette Nerburn talks about his love of windows and how he always finds just the right home with the right window for him when traveling and moving from place to place. At his current home he says “From my window the day arrives like the distant chanting of a prayer.”

One day during this sacred time watching the sun rise from his window he remembers Alice. He was doing research on nursing homes and had become so upset and disillusioned by so many of them and the shells of people left living…but no longer in the shell. They had escaped mentally to another place to wait for the end.

He was supposed to interview one resident named “Alice.” As he approached her she smiled and nodded her consent again to talk to him about her life in this nursing home. She seemed distracted, however, and her eyes kept staring out the window.

Nerburn decided not to disturb her until she was ready to talk so for awhile silence fell between them. And then finally she spoke:

“Look, she said pointing out the window….far in the distance was the cupola of a cathedral. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she said. “I come here every day to watch the sun rise. “I’ve been all over Europe. I’ve seen Notre Dame and St. Peter’s and the Duomo in Florence. But none was more beautiful than this, and I can see it every day.”

Then she reached over and grabbed my hand…”Isn’t this a gift?” she said.

Nerburn confesses that he didn’t know what to say. He had expected to look sadly on the “shrinking horizons of her life, to weep for her lost dreams, and the tiny window that framed the boundaries of her day. But those were my tears, not hers. Her tears were for the beauty. From her window she received, too, the spirit of the dawn.”

As he left…he realized suddenly that “Alice was an artist of the ordinary which is the highest extraordinary…she painted with the colors of her heart… I thought I would see her prison, her depressing restrictions from her former life…but where I wanted to see limitations…she had wanted to show me possibility. She had shared a small communion of their spirits that day.”

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The luck of the Irish….yesterday started out sunny, then cloudy, then rainy, and then sunny again in time for Lachlan’s birthday party. If Lachlan looks a little green in the first picture…it is because dad put on all the Irish fixings/decorations and green lights on his new birthday present (meaning Walsh’s new mode of transportation present) and took the kids around the neighborhood for their own St. Patrick’s Day Parade! Only issue…biting gnats…descended out of nowhere…so there was a lot of scratching going on.

Tommy and Kaitlyn’s little dogs were in demand to be held and why

not? They are so so cute….go Pip Super Dog Hero!

Jakie might be the smallest grandchild (with the exception of Eloise) but he has a mighty appetite and is always first in line for cake.

Of course everyone took turns holding Eloise…she is such a good baby…just went to friends and relatives without a blink…including Eva Cate and Aunt Mandy!

Everyone had to “pull” together to “pull” this birthday off…but it was great fun…they even “hired” the cutest waiters!

Many of you saw Kaitlyn’s article in the Charleston Weddings (Spring 2018) magazine edition on Facebook Friday…but for those of you who didn’t see the article it is called “Lovely for Less” or “How to have a wonderful wedding for $7K. So proud of you Kaitlyn!

At the party she had a copy of the magazine and gave it to me but I told her she must sign it first!