Re-filling

These milk bottles remind me of my youth in the suburbs of Los Angeles. We'd wake each morning to find a wire carrying-rack filled with beautiful shiny bottles of milk. I had not seen glass milk bottles in years, until recently. So slowly, one-by-one, I've purchased enough milk to now have this collection of bottles that we fill with distilled water.

Every couple of nights Mr. Fun makes another batch of distilled water in the water machine my big sis gave us. We can't seem to keep them filled because I am always using the water.

Those bottles remind me of myself and the need to be filled. Reading dozens and dozens of student papers doesn't contribute to a diet of quality literature. My students are truly learning how to communicate in writing. Their vocabulary, syntax, semantics, and grammar skills are severely lacking; that's why they are in a basic writing class. Teachers and parents who teach children how to read are also not exposed to quality literature when listening to a youngster sound out the words of a story. They must do their own quality reading later.

So last evening I was hungry for some good words. I asked Mr. Fun if he would read outloud an essay by one of my favorite authors, Scott Russell Sanders. Mr. Fun said "Yes!" The essay, "The Force of Spirit" is from his book of the same title. Scott actually mailed me a copy of the book in October 2000 with the note "For Carol" and signed his name. Mr. Fun & I had traveled the length of the Ohio River with a colleague of Scott's, Jim Thom, also an author. When Jim returned home, he told Scott that I was a fan, so Scott sent me the book.

Here is the lead paragraph from the essay that Mr. Fun read to me last night,

"My wife's father is dying, and I can think of little else, because I love him and I love my wife. Once or twice a week, Ruth and I drive the forty miles of winding roads to visit him in the nursing home. Along the way we pass fields bursting with new corn, stands of trees heavy with fresh leaves, pastures deep in grass. In that long grass the lambs and calves and colts hunt for tender shoots to nibble and for the wet nipples of their mothers to suck. The meadows are thick with flowers, and butterflies waft over the blossoms like petals torn loose by wind. The spring this year was lavish, free of late frosts, well soaked with rain, and now in early June the Indiana countryside is all juiced up."

Mr. Fun continued and read the entire essay to me. Sanders' words were so satisfying. The moment was like filling those glass bottles. If you've enjoyed Sanders' words, I've enclosed two more paragraphs below.

Good night from Southern California -- our bottles are full.
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol


"On our trip to the nursing home this morning, I drive while Ruth sits beside me, knitting. Strand by strand, a sweater grows under her hands. We don't talk much, because she must keep count of her stitches. To shape the silence, we play a tape of Mozart's Requiem from a recent concert in which Ruth sang, and I try to detect her clear soprano in the weave of voices. The car fills with the music of sorrow. The sound rouses aches in me from earlier losses, the way cold rouses pain from old bone breaks.

Yet when I look out through the windows at the blaze of sunlight and the blast of green, I forget for minutes at a time where we're going and what we're likely to see when we get there. Ruth must forget as well, because every now and again she glances up from her knitting to recall a story or a task or some odd discovery she's read about recently."

I hope if you like the essay, you'll search for it and read it to the end. ~~Rosie