Amazing Grace

Last week Wednesday was another one of those days. In between cleaning and preparing to leave for a little vacation, it occurred to me that there might be a few hours that could be devoted exclusively to painting. So, I painted. But for various reasons, even after starting with brushes, I finished by using my fingers. Honestly, it's probably a cancer invoking health hazard to use one's flesh with lead based paints. If I grow a third ear, or cut off one of the ones already attached on either side of my head because of lead paint based insanity, I'll be sure to let my gentle readers know.

There was barely enough time to clean fingers and brushes before Reese and I were due at a neighbor's house to play bridge. The neighbor had knocked on the door to fetch us, but wanting to photograph the painting in good light, and knowing that we wouldn't be home before dark, and thinking there would be time to write about finger painting after bridge, I carefully yet hurriedly put the painting on the ground outside the back door to photograph it.

We have a pet. We have a five pound neurotic pedigreed out the wazoo toy poodle named Skipper Semper Fido. Skipper, with great devotion, follows me everywhere all day long. If I take three steps to the left, Skipper also travels the same distance in the same direction with the nails of his little paws clicking on the wood floors like a tap dancing lady in high heels. Add his identification tags which are a miniature version of a cow bell all day long, and please understand my immense dismay when I heard the clicking tinkling tiny cow bell at my heals. Skipper saw me in the doorway and was desperate not to be left behind. He launched himself into a stag's leap out the back door. Mid Skipper flight, it slowly began to dawn on me what was happening. That very wet painting was positioned exactly in the way of his landing. That dog must have somehow re-calculated and adjusted his flight pattern, or more accurately the landing based on the physics of everything, because those tap dancing high heeled paws of his just missed, by God's amazing grace, the wet painting on the sidewalk outside the back door by a hair's breadth. The neighbor was at the door waiting to play bridge, the dog almost gave me a freaking heart attack, and the excessively wet paint of the painting produced a big glare, as is evident in the accompanying photo.

And then, because of last minute preparations to drive to Mississippi for a Heidelberg family reunion, there still wasn't time to write a blog entry until now, now being one year exactly from our last visit here.

One year ago to the day, we were all in Jackson to celebrate my dad's 70th birthday. One year ago today, we went to church with my parents. One year ago today, I lost my glasses after leaving them in a pew at church...in Mississippi. Today, exactly one year later to the millisecond, after church, Reese and I were pointed in the direction of the lost and found. The lost and found is in a desk drawer of the church receptionist's office. The receptionist's desk and the drawer were behind a locked door. Providentially, someone with a set of keys to the office was near by, and knew which desk drawer hosted the lost and found. Slowly, Mr. Set of Keys opened the drawer. There appeared a surprising number of lost glasses. We looked through the ones in the front. None of those were mine. What about those glasses in the back? Mr. Set of Keys said that those were the glasses that had been there the longest. Then I said that that's where we should look, as my glasses had been lost one year ago today. As I looked in the back dark corner of that office drawer, the heavens opened and the angels started to sing. What amazing grace! Exactly one year later, in the deep dusty dark bottom of a desk drawer in a church receptionist's office in Jackson, Mississippi, were my glasses. Like the old hymn Amazing Grace says, they once were lost and now are found. I was blind, but now I see.