the view from my front doorThis morning I found myself wondering about Nanny McPhee. (She’s the Mary Poppins-like character depicted by Emma Thompson under a lot of heavy make-up, complete with one large tooth straining against a disapproving lip topped by a hard-to-look-at hairy mole.) I found the first movie charming (I find that my kids are too old for the sequel out soon. Or now. Whatever.) and loved the idea that, as soon as the children she came to help learned their lesson (as I said, Mary Poppins-style), her youth and beauty returned, one magically disappearing hairy mole at a time. Her beauty restored, she knows it’s time to leave that particular family and go on her merry way.
What got me thinking was the process in reverse, the process that lets her know another family is out there in need of her services. I imagine it goes something like this: first, her brow wrinkles and the hair knits itself together into one solid mass sadly in need of a tweezing. The nose spreads, develops red veins and takes on the properties of the bulbous. The gnarly tooth that once knew its place begins to once again protrude and the mole that sometimes betokens beauty takes on a life of its own and sprouts hair like weeds. How depressing it must be to see herself age and become, well . . . ugly. Worse, yet, it means her life on the coast of some sun drenched villa in Italy she shares with a handsome and dashing man (or so I imagine) is about to be interrupted (yet again) and a return to dreary England to whip some brats into shape is about to begin (yet again).
It must feel awful.
Which is exactly how the end of summer vacation--the end of long, sunny, unstructured days, of walking outside in bare feet of an evening, of roses and jasmine and heliotrope perfuming the air, of velvety petals to fold between my lips--the end of that carefree existence, feels to me. Time for cold, dark, painful (both physical and emotional) days and weeks and months to begin. This is why, once the leaves on the Liquid Amber tree begin to turn red, I tend to run around in a bit of a panic, snapping photos of whatever I think might capture a bit of sunshine for me to pore over come winter.
With camera in hand, I attempt to bottle the sun.
Sun shining on the leaves . . .
Warming the petals . . .
Setting glass to glowing . . .
As well as the sky . . .
Sunlight pooling in the crevices . . .
And drenching me from the inside out . . .
click here to read about the above bench which I made with my own two hands and a very spiffy electric screwdriver.
click here to read about the above bench which I made with my own two hands and a very spiffy electric screwdriver. Click HERE for a wonderful book giveaway (including a copy of Miss Delacourt Speaks Her Mind) over at The Chocolate Chip Waffle!!!
This entry was posted
on Monday, August 23, 2010
at Monday, August 23, 2010
and is filed under
end of summer ruminations
. You can follow any responses to this entry through the
comments feed
.
Posts
