Nobody Living Inside

I passed by an abandoned house on Tulls Creek Road in Moyock, NC.  I was drawn to it.

I wonder what the rhythm of the falling rain sounded like on that old tin roof...

As I explored the old place, a song started playing in my head, the sound track of my life that my brain plays at odd moments:

Well there's too many windows 

in this old hotel 
And rooms filled with reckless pride 
And the walls have grown sturdy 
And the halls have worn well 
But there is nobody living inside 
Nobody living inside...

I picked my way past the abandoned garden... 

and the pond...

To peer in the windows and see one of at least three wonderful old fireplace mantels...

As always, I wondered about the house and how it ended up empty with the curtains still on the windows.    I took this black and white pic through a broken front window.

I stopped by at the library just behind the old house to inquire about it. A kind librarian handed me a fact sheet about square footage and numbers of bathrooms.  But that so wasn't what I wanted to know.

What woman stood in the kitchen in a gingham apron and put up preserves?  What children romped and shrieked and raced through the hallways?  Did they run down to that parlor with the fireplace to see what treasures Santa had left for them while the entire world was at war?   Did women with pearls and starched A-line sleeveless dresses play bridge in that parlor on July afternoons,  gently stirring the breeze with fans printed with funeral home advertisements?

Whose footfalls echoed down those stairs day after day?  When did they stop, leaving only the sound of the wind scattering the early fall leaves as the goldenrod gently swayed in the front yard?

Simple Things

The trouble with getting out of the habit of posting regularly is that as you ease back into it, you think that you must publish something momentous, stupendous, or deeply significant for the functioning of the world as we know it.

I don't know about you, but my life isn't like that, so as I get behind and try to catch up, I keep trying for that elusive next big thing to post about.

And then there's Alex and Living the Small Life, a favorite blog.  Alex posts nearly every day and I check up on her every day, too.  She doesn't post about momentous, stupendous things, but about her daily life and how she lives it.  And you know what...it fascinates me.

http://livingthesmalllife.blogspot.com/

I decided to jump back into blogging with the intent to try to chronicle something every day.  As Carole King says, "My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue."  Life is mostly about the small stops and highlights of the journey, not the occasional enormous achievements.

My enormous achievement for yesterday was to minister to the kids next door.  Their mom struggles because their dad in another state doesn't pay his child support.  There are four of them and they hunger for adult attention.  I am closest to little Genesis.  That is her above through the mesh fencing of McDonald's play area.

A Happy Meal.  Chocolate milk.  Playing.  Picking out a little pumpkin. Eating a package of Starbursts on the way home.  Pure joy and chocolate milk mustaches.  Doesn't get any better than that.

Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of heaven.