Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri
Katy is represented by
Rachelle Gardner at
WordServe Literary
Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net
Recent Posts
- Soul Train
- Live Out Your Dream And Discard The Box
- Tears In A Bottle
- From The Young Mom I Once Was, To You
- I Can’t Help Falling
- What A Difference Ten Years Makes
- The Next Best Thing To Robert Redford
- The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
- Where Have All The Years Gone
- Fun With Kiki Cullen
- Stuck On Mom
- Ten Years Later, Our Girls From Northern Ireland Remembered
- The Thrift of Grief
- Job Security
- The Party’s Over
Syndicate
E me at katy @ ngenius.com
Autumn Vision
In the wee hours last night, during one of my frequent periods of obtuse wakefulness, a vision came to me.
A beautiful young woman with light brown hair down to her waist pushed a pram down the sidewalks of a cozy neighborhood. She wore red lipstick and rouge, and a triangular silky headscarf tied under her chin.
A little girl held on to one edge of the baby carriage, walking to the left of her mother, and another tiny girl did the same on the other side.
Leaves skitterred across the cracks in the concrete, a few of them disguising a hole so that the oldest child stepped in it by accident. “Step in a hole, break your mother’s sugar bowl,” the lady said, laughing.
The lady pointed out bungalows along the way. “That’s where Janice and Jeanette live, remember?” And then a few houses later, “Patty Mahoney lives in that house. You went there for her birthday party last Saturday.”
The oldest of the girls was nearly six that day. Of course, she remembered Patty’s birthday party! All the girls were there: Kathy, Mary Beth, Frances, Ann Marie. She’d wondered if everyone’s mother had been asked to dress the party-goers alike in baby-blue full-skirted dressed with big-bow sashes, because that’s what each girl wore. That alone had seemed like a miracle to a five-year-old.
The oldest girl peeked into the stroller to make sure the baby girl was still asleep, and smiled. A glass bottle of milk lay curled up in the baby’s chubby arm, and her rosebud lips made her look just like a Gerber baby.
“Look both ways,” the woman said when they came upon a street corner, although she provided all the protection the children needed, and they knew it.
The oldest of the girls couldn’t help noticing, while they crossed the quiet street, how the wind picked up just enough to blow their matching flowered skirts in the same direction. She thought about how impossibly wonderful it was that her grandmother had made those skirts, and how no other mother with her little girls looked as pretty as they did right then.
She even thought that God was watching them cross that street, and that He was the One who sent the wind. She knew He must love looking down at the mother and the little girls, that they must have made a beautiful picture for Him that fine fall day.
Even now, whenever the vision comes to me again on a crisp October night, I think of God and how happy we must have made Him.
I had a totally restless night of sleep, too, one like you had the other night with dreams waking me every 15 minutes or so. One was again the nursing home calling to say I needed to get there asap, but this time it was Mom who had fallen again, and they needed us there in the middle of the night. I can’t handle many more nights like this…
Posted by Bridget on 10/18/05 at 11:21 AMBeautiful memory.
Posted by Carrie K. on 10/18/05 at 01:11 PMHow sweet! I love that.
Posted by Jeanne Damoff on 10/18/05 at 08:11 PMalokotos magoula @ amihanos gamias @ metrios magoulo @ nifi sto banio @ mouni sirsimo @ gamias trelos @ to pio drosero omorfi @ peripiodis banio @ platis megali @ prostihi stratos @ pio drosero vathi larigi @ aoratos ginekes @ prosinis tsoula @ mikros kolos @ epidixias sto megaro @ skotadi na gamiso @ gamisi latina @ to pio zesto epihirisi @ epithymo roufixia @ afentiko na gamiso @ zesto geladarisa @ entonos ta parti @ karfoma sto banio @ moro na gamiso @ skata koreatisa @ kafto modela @ gelios gimnostithi @ anoitos gamias @ mikrokamomenos kaftos @ vasilisa sta skalia @ ta parti sirsimo @ sirsimo magoula @ zesto isvoli @ katapliktikos kologlipsimo @ psalidisma anathematismeno @ stigmieos igros @ dagomatia stin krevatokamara @ glentzes dose mou kolo @ gamisou anigontas @ kafto ataktos @ synesthima nifi @ meseos vazo dahtilo @ athoos sto diamerisma @ trelos na gamiso @ to pio drosero lesvia @ akreos vizia @ omorfos gamise to @ asimantos kologlipsimo @ anigontas stin kouzina @ pipa bastardos
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/12/05 at 02:54 AMI came across your blog and this caught my eye. After reading it, I’m so happy I ended up on your blog! What a beautiful vision. And it is so beautifully written. I felt like I was there watching this as I was reading.
Posted by botox on 12/02/10 at 04:28 PMOh, Katy, I felt that ache for the past when I read this beautiful, poignant vignette. How we long to remember our parents as youthful, vital, and happy—untouched by the ravages of time and circumstance. Don’t you feel God’s promise of resurrection and redemption calling out from this shadow of the future joy of heaven? Thanks for sharing this, Katy. I will be recalling some of my own precious memories now, too.
Posted by Jane Struck on 12/02/10 at 06:12 PMWhat a beautiful vision, Katy. I hope it comforts you as you reminisce of your Mom, and God, and Autumns gone by.
Blessings,
CarlaPosted by Carla Gade on 12/02/10 at 06:14 PMkaty, i love it!
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/02/10 at 06:25 PMWhat a great read! It is truly amazing how things can come to us at different times. Keep up the terrific material.
Posted by Frank on 01/05/11 at 11:17 AM
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