I Saw God Wash the World
By Bill Stidger
I saw God wash the world last night
With His sweet showers on high;
And then when morning came
I saw Him hang it out to dry.
He washed each slender blade of grass
And every trembling tree;
He flung his showers against the hills
And swept the rolling sea.
The white rose is a deeper white;
The red, a richer red
Since God washed every fragrant face
And put them all to bed.
There’s not a bird, there’s not a bee
That wings along the way,
But is a cleaner bird and bee
Than it was yesterday.
I saw God wash the world last night;
Ah, would He had washed me
As clean of all my dust and dirt
As that old white birch tree!
May showers continue falling, bringing more greenness to our hills and coaxing out the wildflowers. Mom called these showers “the cold May rains,” the forerunner of our warm spring days. I loved to hear her tell of this time of year when she was a little girl down on Big Laurel Creek.
The winter firewood would be already burned, and as these days were still cool, she remembers going out in the field with her mother and hunting rotten pine stumps. (She couldn’t have been very old, as her mother died when Mom was only eleven.) They would push over the old stumps and carry them to the fireplace where they burned hot and cheery. It made the old house warm and welcoming.
The ice would have melted on Big Laurel Creek and broken up, going out to Elk River with the crashing roar of a dozen locomotives. Then the red suckers would travel up the creek where three little girls, Addie, Ruby and Mom would have their fishing poles ready. Of course their fishing rods were just a sturdy limb cut from a tree–usually hickory–tied with strong twine and a straight pin hook fastened on it. They perched on the Big Rock above the creek where they did catch suckers and sometimes a horny-headed chub.
Springtime was great on Big Laurel Creek. The school term was over just about the time the soles were worn off their shoes, and it was time to go barefoot anyway. Mom would tell of the good times she had playing with her sisters, and she made it sound so pleasurable that I longed to be a little girl and play with my mother down on Big Laurel. I’m sure it wasn’t as pleasant as Mom made it sound, but it was those memories that she carried with her even after Alzheimer’s had taken a toll on her mind.
After I broke my leg and had to send her to a personal care home, she thought she was back on Big Laurel Creek. She was very content there, and after my leg healed and I was able to care for her, I wouldn’t move her. She told me one time that she thought Heaven would be like going back home to Big Laurel, with Dad and Mommy and all her brothers and sisters. That would be Heaven for her!
The common ox-eye daisies are blooming now, their cheerful faces shining all along the roadsides and brightening up the fields and meadows. It seemed that the daisies greeted the beginning of our school vacation and were just waiting to be used in our playhouses. Oh, the delicious freedom that we felt on the last day of school! We ran down the hill from the school house “glad in the freedom of school let out!”
Off came our hot shoes, and the tender new grass was cool and velvety-soft on our feet. The pleasures of summer were waiting for us and we were anxious to plunge into it. Pink and white rambler roses grew outside my bedroom window, and when I awakened on the first day of freedom, I could smell their fragrance through the open window and hear the warbling of the songbirds. “No school today!” swept through my mind, and we began planning the day’s adventure.
There was a clay mud bank at the edge of the creek that provided the gray-blue clay that was great for modeling. A huge rock, which we called “The Big Rock” bordered the creek, and was tailor made for our artistic efforts. We made dishes, bowls, and an assortment of animals which we left on the rock for the sun to dry. Where the rock leveled out there was a deep cleft which made a natural aquarium.
We spent hours catching penniwinkles, lizards, minnows (which we called “minners” and crawdads to stock our aquarium. It was a summer long project that we worked at diligently. We were allowed to wade the creek, but swimming wasn’t allowed until later in the summer. Of course we “fell in” many times and used the opportunity to swim a little bit.
We never heard of an electronic game, an I-phone or a Tablet (except the coarse, yellow tablet we wrote in for our lessons) and we wouldn’t have had time to fool with one if we had it. There was too much to do–trees to climb, woods to explore and fairy houses to build in the bank above the “little road” that ran by our house. It was a summer of innocent play, and I’m so glad and thankful for my childhood.
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I want to share a letter from a friend, Darren Porter, who lives in Kentucky in a place he calls “Dark Holler.” This is his description of the hills: “The hills are that wonderful new green color! This is my favorite time of the year. I wish the greening of the hills would last a month. The soft new colors just don’t stay long enough. They will soon fade to a dull summer hue, but right now it is a blended painting of differing shades of light green, with yellow-green highlights and white spatter from the dogwoods which are still blooming. The turkeys are gobbling, and the gold finches have turned yellow. This is my world.”
We Thank Thee
By Ralph Waldo Emerson
For flowers that bloom about our feet;
For tender grass so fresh and sweet;
For song of bird and hum of bee;
For all things fair we hear and see,
Father in Heaven, we thank Thee!
