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Lessons of the Porch |
I have a large American flag mounted on the southern deck of my house. We live in the mountains so nobody sees it except family, but that’s okay. I like watching it wave in the wind. Sometimes the wind whips the flag up and it gets wrapped around the pole. In the past, I’d run outside, take down the flag, and unknot it so it could once more fly free in the wind. An hour later, the scene would repeat itself. Some days, I’d make five or six trips outside to untangle the flag.
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 “How do you know if a guy has a good heart?” This was the question my daughter asked me the February she was seventeen. The boy she liked and her date for the upcoming Valentine’s dance had done “something” (she wouldn’t go into more detail) that was causing her to have second thoughts about Mr. Wonderful. Summoning all the restraint I could muster, I didn’t push her to reveal what the “something” was, as I knew that would send her fleeing in fear of a pending inquisition.
Many thoughts jumped into my brain. Make sure he respects you. (I’d preached that one for years). Does he listen to his mother? (More important to me, no doubt, than to her). But I sensed she didn’t want to hear a rehash of the platitudes and pearls of wisdom I’d tried to instill in her since birth. I didn’t want to screw this up. Her coming to Mom for advice instead of to her teenage peers was more and more a rare event. She wanted something new, something simple and concrete that she could use as a yardstick in an attempt to measure the true nature of a human heart. Years before, I’d read a quote from Immanuel Kant, a famous 18th century German philosopher and ethics professor. It had stuck in my mind, probably because I love animals so much. My daughter does too. The quote seemed to fit our situation. I considered it a pretty good yardstick. So did my daughter, who eventually found and married a man with a good heart, a man that adores her and shares her love for animals. “We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.” Immanuel Kant. Thanks for stopping by, Deborah Hi y’all,
It seems May is a month of celebrations. In addition to the birthdays (my son and brother's), graduations, Mother’s Day, and the Memorial Day holiday, this month has many lesser known, but equally deserving holidays to celebrate. For example, did you know May was Family Wellness Month and National Military Appreciation Month? Being from the Gulf Coast, I especially want to mention that May is American Wetlands Month and give a special shout out to Capt. Wendy at bayouwoman.com for all her work in helping restore and protect the wetlands of southern Louisiana. In May, we also have National New Friends, Old Friends Week: 15-21. It’s the perfect time to reconnect with an old friend and reach out to a new one. Eliza Doolittle Day is May 20th (for our cousins across the pond), and we can’t forget May is also National Barbeque Month,in honor of all grill-masters everywhere, especially Nathan, my husband and griller extraordinaire for almost thirty years. So in honor of so many wonderful happenings in May, I am giving #free #kindle downloads of my ebook, Breaking TWIG. on May 20th. Find it at: http://amzn.to/rPjpKo Have a wonderful month and thanks for stopping by, Deborah Hope you and yours had a wonderful New Year's weekend. It was a little quiet here in the mountains of Montana. I have a new link to my author's page at Amazon that I want to share with you. It's a shorter link.
https://www.amazon.com/author/deborahepperson Also, if you try the recipes on the Recipes page, please let me know how it turned out by using the Contact Me form. Apparently, there is no way to inset a simple Comment box at this time. If you have a home-grown recipe you'd like to share, send it to: breakingtwig@yahoo.com Thanks again for stopping by. Deborah |
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