The first part of the day on a Saturday morning is a favorite time of mine.  I “rise and shine” everyday and wait for the morning light.  Every day feels like it’s my birthday, when I get up early.  I love the changing light.  Its’s an old and familiar magic-and nothing less.

The time of very early morning slips away dependably too quick for me.   I love to spend some time hoping for the best- and wondering what that will be.  It is a time to send prayers and best wishes to the world. I remember the reasons I have to be glad about.  This is the shine after the rise.

When I linger too long in sleep,  I feel like I robbed myself of something beautiful-truthfully that is exactly what happens.  Those days start with a hurry, which  I have decided is unhealthy and ought to be avoided .  All day long I miss my lost time at my morning table with its’ books, coffee in a china cup, journals and favorite pens.  That table is neatly piled with things that I love- And on Saturday mornings I spend a good deal of time there.

This morning, I am glad for Magnolia trees.  They are already showing off this year!  I walk by a row of them daily.  They are young trees.  I have been noticing their dear-to-my-heart blossoms in the highest branches.  I have smelled the fragrance that makes me stop in my tracks to breathe it in deeply.  A young friend of mine, Melissa spotted a flower on a lower branch, yesterday and invited me to go with her for a closer look and of course I did.  It was a lovely thing to do and I considered it time well-spent.

Finally, my “Mothers Day  Rose” is blooming.  It is really a pink ladybank rose, but it faithfully has bloomed on Mothers’Day for as long as I remember, until this year.  It is too beautiful for me to complain about that, though.  When the little pink roses hang about a picket fence and spill on to the grass of the “Quiet Garden” I feel like singing an out of season “Joy to the World”!

I plan “Sunday Dinner” on the first part of the day, on Saturdays.  Tomorrow will be an especially nice one  as Mama, daddy, and my  daughter, Jenny is coming with my son-in-heart, Will and our Lyla.  Lyla is just one. Lyla was born on an Easter sunday, which is a big factor in the “rabbitpatch” naming.  She calls me “Honeybee” because of a silly song I made up to make her laugh.  She says “Bee” with a french accent of sorts and it is adorable!  I will show her the Ladybanks  in all its’ glory tomorrow.

I heard a beautiful family story this week.  I wrote about my great-grandmother recently and how her husband died young and suddenly.  She was left with four children and a farm in a time void  of any organized social assistance-but she got some anyway.  As it turns out, the situation was as dire as I had imagined and it came the time that the farm was to be auctioned off.  Mama Hodges had lost her husband, and now she was losing the farm.  When the day of the foreclosure dawned, she and all the farmers in “Old Ford” turned up at the courthouse.  Not one farmer would bid.  They had made a pact that they would stand united on her behalf.  Mama Hodges bought her farm back for $1.00.  The compassion of those farmers did not last just that day.  Their nobility meant something for four generations.  This happened around 1940.  For four generations, that was our Mama Hodges’s house-the house known for its’ daffodils and  where Christmas came every year and called us all home. 

Beauty has many sorts of forms.  In the first part of the day I think about that- and my heart is grateful for  things like ladybanks roses and magnolias, for Sunday dinners with loved ones -and  an old story about a young widow and some noble men who conspired together to become heroes.