Mount Joy

Do you believe that certain books just "find their way" to you and your amazing mind? I think they do. When I was in elementary school, I loved the school library. My friends and I spent recess there sometimes, sitting on the steps down to a sunken primary section, we'd read plays together from a periodical called (duh) PLAYS. I found this delightful and they were nice enough to "play" along. Remember how my first glimpse of Betsy-Tacy made such an impression on me? Another book that I kept looking at, pulling down, even checking out but not reading was the book above written by Daisy Newman. I was ten years old when it was published and as much as I was in love with its cover, I simply didn't have the background knowledge to read it cover to cover. I thought of it a week or so ago and ordered it. Now, I know it's no coincidence that this book arrived on the heels of that "other" book that gave me the heebie jeebies. They are both written about history, one (the creepy one) about Italy and the other about France and Spain. So, my brain was already thinking about religion in the medieval times. Mount Joy is about a pilgrimage made by a young college student. A fanatic for medieval architecture and art, she travels from Paris to Mount Joy. It's a beautifully written book, so considerate of the intelligent young adult reader which is unlike many of the young adult offerings out there now. I researched the author, Daisy Newman. She was born of American parents in England. She went to Radcliffe College, Barnard University, and Oxford University. She died in 1994 at the age of ninety. She was a Quaker. Fascinating. Now that I'm almost to the end of Gladys Taber, I am ON TO Daisy Newman. This particular copy of Mount Joy had been pulled from a library in Ohio. I'm so glad it's mine now. Before I came home and found it had arrived, I had been browsing at the used book store (she only wanted about six dollars worth of my books, too many copies of the "creepy" book already sat upon her shelves). Anyway, a person could get lost in this store! Two by fours constitute shelving and there are all kinds of passageways and stacks and stacks of books on the floor and up to the ceiling. I found something special, a Lutheran hymnal. Five dollars bought me some sweet, quiet, liturgical moments for the next few months. Oh, I am so dearly loved by a God who KNOWS me. I also found a few copies of The Wind in the Willows (LOVE) and this old Living New Testament which I already have but I like to doodle and scribble in a fresh copy every now and then. Oh, you are so nice to have read this far. I have more to say. Smile.

And what I have to say is that I love days like today, when I am home and the sunbeams are shining into our house. It reminds me of my childhood homes. One little cottage where we lived until I was three or four - of course I can't remember much but I do remember sun shining in on the floor of the den, the tiny kitchen. In our next house, by the golf course, sun shown in the kitchen, too. I relished the bright clean look of our house and often my dad was out mowing the grass and the smell of THAT plus the shine of the indoors made me feel happy. When we lived in Spokane, we had bright winter days, too. I'd put the kids down for naps and sit in a squishy chair or sew by the window. I loved the domesticity of this. I am loving being home. Can you tell? Snow is supposed to come later in the week, but now I am going out to walk around in the clear cool air.

There are still flowers inside - so pretty. Kelli and Millie came over his morning to help Bill with some accounting stuff and I sat by the window holding Millie.

As I held her little pink self, I thought, "Here I am holding my seventh grandchild. I am blessed indeed."
And now Birdie has arrived with her daddy. She can come with me on my walk and we'll go down to the coffee shop and have a cuppa. More happiness. I wish you simple happiness today, too.