movingforwardslowly

The waning morning moon was visible today.

Cloaked in sheer chiffon clouds, moving slowly,

Spreading thin in wispy patches.

My eyes gazed upon its beauty.

I could feel my spirit lift, knowing the moon’s presence

Was my protection from darker spirits hiding in man-made corners.

I hope this feeling stays with me as I move forward throughout my day.

From the darkest corner in the room comes a voice clear and crisp.

I am here by myself, and yet I am not alone.

God lives within us all, and I have opened my heart to his.

A blue sky, warm sands, and a life giving sun resides within his world.

The water here flows free and wild for those who come to drink.

The birds here fill the air with joyful song.

They invite us all, who can hear them, to sit and listen,

And to embrace nature with love and care.

I recently found an old diary I kept from Jan. 1973 — Aug. 1976. I was 13 soon to be 14 when I began to write in it. Today I read an entry I made on Oct. 21, 1974. I was 15 years old. I had to write a poem for a high school English class. I could not believe I found this entry because I have been thinking about this poem recently. I did not remember that I had written it into my diary. I thought it was lost in time. Here it is:

A time to give thanks.

A time to reflect on what is right and what is wrong.

A time to make peace with myself and those around me.

A time to trust in good intentions.

A time to lift myself up and then help to lift up those around me.

I need to believe that most people will do the right thing.

I need to trust in my instincts, and then stop to think with my heart and mind.

I need to filter out the negative. I need to see and appreciate the positive.

I cannot deny the darkness, though I can stop it from taking center stage in my life.

I need to see the light, so that I can move forward with hope and purpose.

A white sparrow stands out against all the garden green. It cannot hide. When it streaks across the foliage your eye is forced to follow.

It is a rarity normally destined for a shorter lifespan. It attracts all the birds of prey. The sparrow brood accepts it for they have no choice. The parents do their best to help it, though all will scatter at the shadow of a hawk.

One spring my garden played host to this white sparrow you see here. Every day I watched for it, hoping it had lived another day. There was nothing I could do to change its fate. All I could do was hope.

Every time I spotted it, I rejoiced. I kept my binoculars close that spring. It played among the treetops across several fenced yards. I kept my fingers crossed. It was never meant to be a pet. The natural laws held its fate in their hands. Sometimes luck steps in to help, though it is never obliged to do so.

By the middle of that summer I no longer spotted it. I never saw evidence that it had met the merciless claws of a predator, so I will never know for sure what happened or why it failed to come my way again. I can only guess.

I have not seen another white sparrow since that spring and summer. When I am reminded of its presence in my garden, I like to think luck was on its side, and it traveled elsewhere, following a more abundant path.

I never knew much about my maternal grandfather. By the time I was born the relationship between my mother and her father had become estranged.

My mother’s parents were divorced when my mother was very young. She had one older sister that was about 12 years older. Unfortunately her older sister, Betty Lee, died from appendicitis when my mother was only about 6 months old. Her father moved out west to California from Branson, Missouri. My mother and her mother stayed behind in Branson. Her mother moved to Kansas City to work, and my mother went to live with her maternal grandparents.

I only remember seeing my maternal grandfather once when I was very little and my parents and my siblings and I lived in Monterey, California. My dad was training at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. I was only about 4 years old at this time. I remember my grandfather had a wife named Helen or maybe it was Ellen.

We moved back east when my father had finished his work. Our life moved on and I don’t really remember asking much about my grandfather. When I did ask my mother she always gave some vague response. When you look at my parent’s wedding pictures, you will see that it was my mother’s Uncle Gilbert Hughes that had walked her down the aisle and gave her away at her wedding.

I remember when I was in high school my mother was notified by her father’s wife that he had died. Now that I think about it, I am not even sure she referred to this woman as his wife, but she was a woman that had cared for her father in his old age. I just learned today that he lived to age 89. I don’t remember whether my mother even went to his funeral. I do know that she told the woman notifying her of his death that she wanted nothing from her father’s estate.

Life moved on and I had long accepted that I only had one grandfather, my father’s father. I did not really think about my second grandfather until my own mother became interested in her father’s family history. My mother was much older by this time, and I guess any hard feeling she had about her father had been set aside. She had a cousin interested in genealogy that was able to find out some information for her.

Soon before my mother died she made a big point of passing along all her family’s history to me. She knew I was her only child that might be interested in pursuing any of it. I have to tell you it took me many years before I really had the time or interest in looking through all the information that she had gathered.

Still there was not a lot of information about her father Ernest Eugene DeVall, so I began to do a little online searching. This was when I began to get a little upset. When I would locate him on an ancestry site, it would list his marriage to my mother’s mother. However, it would state that he only had one daughter, Betty Lee DeVall who had died when my mother was very young. I found only one daughter listed at more than one website. I began to think that someone had attempted to wipe my mother’s paternal lineage from the record books. She had been disavowed in some way.

Finally this evening, not only did I find online evidence of their connection, I also found a picture of my mother with her father. I had never seen this picture before this evening, however, my mother is clearly identifiable to me, and I have many pictures of her where the resemblance cannot be denied. She looks to be around the age of 13, give or take a year or two. The memorial listed under my grandfather does list my mother as his daughter. I cannot explain how this made me feel relieved. My mother was not being forgotten at his grave memorial. Thank you Sharon for providing the picture and the family history. I can begin to understand why my mother and her father became estranged, though I will never really know the spoken words or actions that created this family fracture.

The website is : https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/196971576/ernest-eugene-devall

I now know where my maternal grandfather is buried. I don’t know whether my mother ever visited his grave. I do know that after she had lived through her own divorce and broken trusts, her view of marriage and family connections certainly changed.

It is sad when family connections become disconnections, in need of reconnection somewhere down the line.