Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Thankfulness in Nature



My Thankfulness involves Nature today. A wonderful healing for my spirit always...
Back in 1982, I was looking around for a house to invest in for my old age and found an ad in the paper for one. I arranged to go back and stay in this little place for two weeks and I fell in love with the Amish, the area and the quaintness of the DePeyster Village where the house was.
I bought this house 3000 miles away from where I was living and by 1984 had sent money back to the renters for repairs and was looking forward to moving and getting settled in.
I am a Florida girl born and bred and had never experienced any REAL cold. LOL. I finally got a chance to move to my "dream" home a few years later in 1989. The 7.1 earthquake had happened in San Jose/San Francisco area where I had lived for a long time, and I though there is not a better time to move on out of here. LOL.
We arrived after an eventful 8 day journey with a 24 foot truck, two other pulled vehicles and what looked like a convoy moving from California to Upstate NY. The truck broke down only 50 miles from our destination on a cold day in December, with 3 feet of snow on the ground. The house was cold, dark, and empty as the renters had moved out a month prior to our getting home and the house was full of rodents trying to escape the winter cold.
We had such a hard start to our life there but my children were little troopers. The furnace blew up and black smoke invaded the home within a week of our arrival. The mice had to be extracted and they were hesitant to leave. LOL. The furnishings arrived a few days later and we were in!
Little did I know that the next 18 winters would be one of survival, many hardships, and tragedy as my marriage fell apart.
I have written these things down for my children but I don't think they will ever want to read about them. We lived them...
One upside to the move was the cemetery.. I have told you all what a nut I am about History and Genealogy and within a short time I discovered that my Kith and Kin were buried 1/4 mile from the very home I purchased. It was a discovery that made me sure I was in the right place at the right time.
I could write all day long about all the things I found while digging in the garden that made me know I was home. The dolls, the toys which included marbles, little metal trucks, a large 1900's wagon, and many medical bottles and such. Since I was a doll collector, a Nurse and loved old things, it made my day!
In the early crisp mornings before winter, I would go out to my picnic table and drink my coffee. I would have to bundle up because Thanksgiving was approaching and it was pretty nippy, but I wanted to see what ever nature wanted to show me.
One morning as I was sipping my coffee, out of the woods came a magnificent wild turkey followed by two females. He has his feather extended fully and was prancing around trying to attract one of both of the females. He danced and wiggled, flapped his majestic wings, and the females avoided him like he was the plague. I said to him, you are going to have to do better than that to get their attention and just then he did.
He started moving his head up and down in a ballet type move. At least it was as graceful and his wings seemed to sway up and down. It seemed like slow motion, it was so incredibly beautiful. I could not take my eyes off this amazing dance he performed for me and for the two other females of whom, he finally had their complete attention. My coffee grew cold as I and they wallowed in this magic moment. I have thought of this so many times over the years and have always prayed to be worthy of such a gift.
This was but one of the many magic moments that started my day as I sat at the picnic table or my thinking rock.
The house still stands today and a new family lives within its walls, but my spirit will linger I know, as long as it is there. I put down roots in those early mornings, in the rocks, in the trees and the over 200 bulbs that I planted around that place and it brings me comfort knowing that it lives somewhere..
I love you all so much and pray that thankfulness of Nature will heal and nourish you as it does me.... Always, Kimmee


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