Every story has to begin somewhere. I’m struggling with how to document the year 2023. It has been a year unlike any. And, why not? We are getting older, the world is getting weirder, nothing remains the same, even me. This year has been a year of change for our family in some life-altaring ways.
Many people know that I inherited the Meidinger girls gift of gab. My mom was a Meidinger. She, her sisters and sisters-in-law would gather on the holidays or for the annual summer picnic and cackle joyfully individual voices peppered with German Russian accents.
Never learning their language (big regret), I don’t have a German accent but I do love to talk. Conversations with cousins last for hours. Saying goodbye at a family gathering takes hours as each person has one more story to share before leaving. However, today I’m stuck for words. There’s been a lot to think about this year. While words usually roll off my tongue and out my fingertips like water from a wide-open faucet, I hesitate to write this year’s story with a linier purpose rather than my random posts about gardening, baking and life.
In spite of my somewhat opinionated blabbing, I have deep, soulful thoughts. It’s a shame I don’t record them. They are as fleeting as summer insects. I’m thinking about his because I read a sign in an office one day that read, “still minds run deep.” I asked the person next to me if they thought that was true. She said, “yes.”
Well, I disagree.
My mind flits like a bee in a garden of colorful flowers. It’s noisy, and words come out of my mouth without filter in an honest way. (The makings of a good reporter.) Every scene I see prompts the first paragraph of a book I plan on writing. Someday I will finish a book. Not for lack of trying, there’s a ton of false starts in notebooks, cookbooks and pieces of paper all over the house. It’s a focus thing. Writing is a discipline. I’m easily distracted, as you can see, because I am avoiding getting started on my story.
I am currently reading, among other things, a Ray Bradbury book on writing. Reading is critical to writers, and I have read many books on writing. The bottom line is if you write, you are a writer. I am a writer.
Bradbury talks about using little one-liners for writing prompts. Thoughts, ideas, things he notices or phrases he concocts on a daily basis. He records these until eventually a story emerges. I love his somewhat disjointed individual chapters combined into novels such as Dandelion Wine. Bradbury knit together a series of short stores he had written to create the Martian Chronicals. Brilliant book.
On page 51 of Dandelion Wine, a used book that once graced a library shelf in Beach Park Middle School, I found a quote, “As Samuel Spaulding, Esquire, once said, ‘Dig in the earth, delve in the soul.’”
Now we are getting somewhere. These are words to live by friends. Digging in the soil saved me this past year, the notorious 2023. Writing and gardening are where I find God. Our time is marked with growing plants, blooming sunflowers and ripe tomatoes. On my hands and knees, humbled by weeds, I see life from another perspective, from the soil up. Then I write.
There are days my thoughts are about fear of the future; days I welcome what today might bring because we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow. I need to remind myself daily that today is the only day I have, so I continue to weed and water and “hope” to see a good harvest from my garden and my days on earth.
Friends, I hope your today is blessed.
PS: Remember the saying, “once begun, half done?” I might be off to a slow start, but it is a start. I will try and post on Monday of each week unless life gets in the way.
You know what it says in James 4:13-15 “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’”
INDYchildrendotme 
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