Volunteers: A Silly Rhyme
Volunteers
Cheery sight these are to see
though not planted by me.
Popping heads through soil
not by my toil.
Reaching for sun
the volunteers come.
Taking up space
in the wrong place.
But I haven’t the heart
to tear them apart.
Yank from their warm bed
despite what gardeners have said.
So they stubbornly stay
to grow another day.
Wouldn’t have it any other way.
Unlikely Friends
My brother snapped this picture, probably a decade ago by now, from my cousin’s farm, adjacent to our property. (Part of the original farm our grandfather owned.) My cousin, who shall remain nameless to protect his reputation, was so embarrassed of these two unlikely friends who spent so much time together.
This picture reveals why they became friends. My guess is after her own calf was separated from her, she adopted the pig to nurse off her and be her new baby. So the cow got her mothering needs met and the pig enjoyed fine dining.
I have kept the pics all these long years because, upon seeing them, they still make me smile.
Cultivating Thankfulness
Confession time: I’ve never been great at keeping a journal. Just not my thing, even though I am a writer. But for more than a year and a half I’ve been keeping a gratitude journal.
I started out doing something called the examen which had its roots in The Spiritual Exercises by St. Ignatius. The gist of it is that at the end of the day, you write down the moment you are most grateful for as well as the moment you are least grateful for. The former cultivates gratitude, the latter awareness of possible patterns in life and areas that might need to be addressed.
After six months of doing the examen, I decided to change the way I spent those few moments in reflection. I simply wrote down what I was grateful for that day. Not that I ignored the bad or pretended it didn’t exist, just that I chose to focus on the positive.
What I have noticed from this little daily exercise is that slowly but surely, it is shaping my perspective. I am more optimistic. I am more content. I complain less. I am more in tune with the hundreds of blessings all around me in my day-to-day existence. I am more careful to choose my words because I truly believe they direct the course of my life.
Keeping a gratitude journal need not be difficult. First, choose a journal that you like. (Mine is pictured above with my favorite coffee mug.) My friend Patty bought me this beautiful leather-bound journal with a tree embossed on the cover and a bead and leather strap to secure it. I love the way it looks. It’s so me.
Next, decide how you will go about keeping your gratitude journal. Maybe you like the idea of the examen or simply jotting down something you are thankful for every day, as I do. Or maybe the thought of doing this daily feels like one more thing on your to-do list. Setting aside some time once a week might work better for you, then. Whatever you decide, I would suggest that you don’t beat yourself up over any missed days. It’s not about leaving a perfect record for every day or choosing a specific number of items you will list. The point of this practice is to change your attitude. Perfection has nothing to do with it.
Finally, choose a time of day that best works for you. Typically I will review the previous day the following morning, though not always. If something that morning occurs to me, I write it down. I have no set amount of items to list. Often I do about three, but I have listed anywhere from one to half a dozen. There are no rules, unless you make them.
Try it for yourself. You might be pleasantly surprised by your changed outlook!
My Danish Sister
I lost a good friend to cancer last week—Andrea Heiberg. Having no sisters of my own, I called her my Danish sister. We met about ten years ago when she found my editing website. She’d been looking for an American editor to help her realize her dream of writing in English—her second language. While the initial book we worked on together was never published, a collection of her short stories was—Next Stop: Sejer Island. It’s a great book, by the way. 
Our friendship grew from our working relationship, and we often shared pictures and stories from our lives. We discovered that we’d both been raised on a farm and had a similar appreciation for the little things in life. And while I’ve worked with other foreign writers, there was this connection between us that’s hard to explain. Language was rarely a barrier. We just seemed to get each other.
Andrea was an amazing poet, and it’s sad for me to think no one will ever see most of hers. I’d like to share two of them today because she wrote one of them for me, and the other she entered in a contest I held years ago on my editing website.
This first poem, which won my contest, she wrote as a tribute to American service men on Veteran’s Day.
The Grass is Green
and whatever sky,
it’s blue,
I tell you
because
I saw it
with my own eyes
the day
I met my roadside
bomb.
I heard no birds
and mama
wasn’t there.
She wrote this poem from one farm girl to another.
The Stable Minute
The dim light,
the sound of 68 cows,
the smell so clinical clean,
the sound of the machine
milking
the
animals lined up chewing
and Dad working hard to keep us all alive
and
Red
saying good morning
in her cow language
and me saying the same
teaching her to speak properly.
Andrea, I will miss your friendship, your wonderful sense of humor, and your amazing words. See you later, my dear sister!