"Let Me Count the Ways"

How do I stay happy on bleak November days?  Especially when COVID-19 keeps me isolated?

"Let me count the ways," as the English Romantic poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), said about her love for Robert Browning whom she met after years of isolation and illness due to a spinal injury and a lung ailment. Her example of courage in the face of adversity gives me hope! (See How Do I Love Thee in "Sonnets from the Portuguese" -- 1850.)

I'm so happy that the weather, which was really ugly at the end of October, has changed and we are given  a few more days of sunshine and milder temperatures. What a miracle!

When we were digging out our winter clothes, granddaughter Kathryn happened to be here with us. She looked at the twin scarves Hardy and I had in the closet and said, "Oma, look at the brand names! These must have been expensive. Where did you get them?" 

I received them for Christmas one year from my students, mostly Korean and Chinese, whom I tutored privately at home and at Rockway Mennonite Collegiate. The memory of that Christmas party at our house makes me happy. And so does the touque I'm wearing, which says CANADA on it.

I have the privilege of being a citizen of this great country. I can go for a walk along the lake close to our house and meet fellow Canadians, all enjoying the last days of autumn. The Canada geese are mostly gone now, although there are still some flying across the sky making their strange honking noise.

As I walk I remember my loved ones, those who have gone before me and those who are still with me. I stop at the pussy willow bending low over the lake. It reminds me of my mother.
Earlier, in spring, there was a mother duck with eight ducklings under that willow tree (my mother had eight children). Later I only saw seven and I wondered what had happened to the eighth one.
My brother passed away recently, the first of us siblings.
I stop at the willow and I bless my mother and my three brothers.

I go around the bend and meet up with five pine trees, straight and tall, bravely enduring the cold days, and the colder ones to come. They are my four sisters and me, standing together, in good times and bad. We can't meet physically these days, and we miss each other. I stop at the five pines and I bless my sisters.

When I get home, the sun is setting behind the huge maple in our backyard. This maple has not yet dropped its leaves and only the leaves of one branch have changed color! I marvel at the bright oranges and yellows of the setting sun, and I thank God for my life, and that I am strong and healthy like this maple tree. I got the flu shot recently (for the first time in my life, as I'm not usually plagued by the flu) and I hope that the COVID vaccine will soon be a reality.

                

Our house is warm and cozy, and my autumn décor makes me happy. I brought my ceramic butterfly inside; it reminded of the day I went to Crock A Doodle with daughter and granddaughter to make it.

      We didn't carve pumpkins with our 

      grandchildren this year, but Sasha 

      sent a picture of the pumpkin she 

      carved at school. It looks like a 

      happy pumpkin!

I'll be baking  peppernut cookies early this year (it's a Christmas tradition). Two of our grandchildren in Ontario have birthdays in November and they will need a care package to cheer them up, since we haven't seen them all year!

My sister Ruth enjoys painting rocks and giving them as gifts to people. This one encourages me to remain positive during dismal wintry COVID days! It reminds me of my Dad who had a birthday in November. He was always my rock and continues to be that for me. November is also the month in which my parents got married. I say a prayer for them; a prayer of thanksgiving and gratitude:

Blessed are we who hold in our hearts

our beloved family and friends we have lost.

those who have loved so hard and endured so much,

whose earthly story has now been told.

O God, you alone know the whole of it.

You know their sufferings, their joys, their hopes,

their winding paths and every movement of their souls

and ours too, as our lives touched.

                                                           (excerpt from 'a blessing for the day we mourn our dead' by Kate Bowler)