hamster

Rituals

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

DSCN8997
Filling in the tiny grave.

Our sweet little Afil Hamster died yesterday.  We are all sad.  I have known some pretty calm and friendly hamsters over the years, and Afil is probably the sweetest one I’ve met.  She would sit still in the crook of an arm to be petted.  When she was out running in her rolling ball, she was always underfoot, following the people feet around the house.  Rodents don’t look you in the eye in quite the way cats and dogs do–they don’t have time for that–but it seemed that Afil could stand the briefest moments of eye contact.

Jon laid her out on a bed of moss in a little box, and we buried her in the bare spot where the beehives were.  Both hives died over the winter, which is another great sadness, so it felt apt to put our little Afil there.  Children have a natural understanding of ritual and ceremony.  It shouldn’t amaze me anymore.  They knew what to do.  Plus, they like to dig, so there’s that.

Such a tiny creature, but she held such a big place in our hearts.  I’m going to miss those bright black eyes, and the little sneezy noises she would make when she woke up to get our attention, how she would climb up into her loft to wait for one of us to open her cage door and pick her up.

Gratitude List:
1. The small furry people
2. Rituals
3. Bees.  Bless the bees.  May other hives and colonies flourish.
4. Three yellow crocus.  Some years no yellow ones appear, and sometimes one or two.  This is, so far, a three-bloom year.  They’re a deeper gold than the sunny aconites.
5. The way you can see the sap rising in the trees down at Flinchbaugh’s Orchard.  There’s a new vigor and color to the limbs.

May we walk in Beauty.

Sublime and Cute

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Tomorrow, we are going to Mennonite World Conference in Harrisburg.   I was reluctant to sign up because the abstract idea of the crowds and the planning and the getting there and all of it made me a little anxious for some reason.  But my parents are giving us a day on their passes.  Feeling lucky to get a chance to go.

Gratitude List:
1. I think Somebody handed Michelangelo the brush this evening and said, “Go to town!”  Those clouds.  That sunset. Tonight I had a brief moment of really understanding magenta.
2. Magenta wants its own number.  It looks so nice snuggling between tangerine and violet.
3. Hearing about the opening of the Mennonite World Conference in Harrisburg.  The ones who told me had tears in their eyes as they described the procession of Conestoga people who came forward and told Story: the history of European and Native interactions, the loss of land, the Paxtang Boys.  I wish I could have been there.
4. Getting my hair done.  I am upping my appointments lately–four or five a year instead of two.  I like to be pampered once in a while.
5. Watching a tiny hamster savor her first blueberry. Cuteness is sort of sublime sometimes.  I think there’s a spiritual muscle that responds to cuteness, but we trivialize it because it so often gets a schmaltzy, saccharine over-sentimentalization.  But cute draws us out of ourselves in a way similar to awe, I think.

May we walk in Beauty!

Looking Back

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I have been thinking about all my recent Shakespeare raving, and I realize that, in the interest of basic honesty, I ought to mention that not all my students are as excited about Shakespeare as I am.  Some are, in fact, rather un-keen on the Bard.  Still, I hope that some of them will catch a little enthusiasm for the language and poetry and rich thematic content of his plays.

Today’s prompt is looking back.  I have been toying with images of Lot’s wife and the pillar or salt, of two faced Janus, of mirrors and reflections.

At what point do you decide that you have reached
the edge of the chasm of all the collected moments,
that it’s time to look back and see how far you’ve run?

The end of the month, semester, year–
how have the seasons added up?
What do they add up to?

The real question is,
when I turn my face again
to face the leap before me,
will I feel upon me the gaze
of a future self
looking back upon me?

Gratitude List:
1. The Guard Dogwoods are settling into bloom.
2. Dinner with colleagues.  Good folks.  Good singing.  Good food.
3. Shifts in routine–adding freshness, and pushing me out of my comfort zone
4. That curious little hamster
5. Hosta

May we walk in Beauty!

Vertigo

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

2014 April 020
Last April, lichen

Sitting here in my grandmother’s chair
where she took yarn and hook,
made yards and yards of fabric
loop by precious loop
to cover her family

and reading Pinsky’s “Shirt”
about cloth, about the ones who leapt
to their death from the Triangle fire
and about Irma and her approval
of his own crisp cottons,

was it vertigo
or something else
that gave me the sudden urge
to check whether my seatbelt
is fastened securely?

Gratitude List:
1. Hike and Apple Picnic in the fields with the wee folk
2. The golden-green of the fields in sun across the bowl of the hollow
3. The delight of two happy children upgrading to the next level of bicycle
4. The Beautiful Words board and the way the students have taken to adding their own favorite beautiful words: serenity, wanderlust, wallflower, Nelson, and LOVE (“This is really the only one you need up there, Ms. Weaver-Kreider.”)
5. That sweet little hamster and how she watches for her man to come pick her up, how she gets absolutely still while he pets her

May we walk in Beauty!