Discovery and explanation...
“same, same but different” -- Dot Fisher-Smith
When I was a little girl each of us would spend a week during the summer with my grandmother Mimi. I remember overlapping on occasion with my younger brother’s week but typically it was a rare opportunity for indulgences like extra slices of bologna and a sip of beer to accompany heaping plates of spaghetti.
Mimi would drive to the Grand Union where I was tasked with picking up a trinkets to place in a drawer just to the left of the refrigerator. I remember picking up a game of jacks, one of those pink rubber balls, an assortment of paper dolls and coloring books but most of all a kaleidoscope.
The sound the glass made shifting with each turn of the tube — if you know, you know.
Not being someone often mired in memory this week has been revelatory. We built a new generously sized bookcase and declared its new location — the library. I think my amusement of calling Steve, Colonel Mustard has finally worn off but this room is becoming my pride and joy.
The slips of paper and mementos that have slid from the pages of books previously stacked elsewhere in the house are precious to me now. Handwritten recipes in my Mimi’s handwriting, notes from our boys and ticket stubs from museums around the world are little archaeologic findings from a different season of life.
Listening to Dot describe kaleidoscopes and her views on a life well lived has been magic.
I hope it lands well with your heart too…
“A child of wonder and astonishment”.
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.” — T.S. Elliot
These poems now accompany the turn of my kaleidoscope, a welcome incantation of the beauty of another day.
“We die with the dying;
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.”
―T.S. Eliot