Find Me in These Fields

The majority of my childhood, the house we lived in on Route 1 was backed up to a field. It was another world for me. I played up and down the length of the street behind everyone’s houses. I remember tics having to be tweezed out of my scalp, burrs on my socks. I took blades of grass and made the greatest sounds as I blew on them taunt between my thumbs.

Great treasures were found in those tall grasses…butterflies, wildflowers, lady bugs, “money stealers” and let’s not forget the snapping turtle that came out of the field…so big and scary but I wanted to keep it. The “money stealers” I think now might have been milkweed, but I would take them in the house and keep them as pets…in my jewelry box with the musical ballerina. I’d let them out to fly around the bedroom and place them back into captivity. A bit of the field in my own bedroom.

All kinds of role playing went on in the field…including Charlie’s Angels. We had only seen a few of the episodes … but Scarlet, when she played was Farah Fawcett, Melanie was Kate Jackson and I was Jaclyn Smith. And to be quite honest….I think I played my role by myself a lot of times. :O) The only time I really remember them playing was in the foundation of a house way back in the field where a new subdivision was springing up.

The Birds…I loved the birds…the songs, sometimes I gathered feathers and always felt lucky to find one. And these birds, well, hanging out with the birds for years…I hear…earned me hystoplasmosis. It’s one of those things you can have and not have any symptoms or you can be real sick from it. I found out I had it about 19 years ago when I went to the Chiropractor and after Xrays he showed me lots of little spots on my lungs…I was told I developed antibodies that encased each spot and protected me from infection…crazy, huh? But I’ve seen them on the X-rays…I hate to blame it all on the birds…I think the fugus grew in the mold on the basement walls of the church I grew up in, too.

Anyway…the birds shouldn’t be solely to blame…and whether they are…or not…I have so enjoyed their songs…their flight…in fact one of my favorite Bible verses growing up reads, “Oh, that I had wings like the dove, I’d fly away and find rest.”

So, I’m reminded today as I walked through the field behind my house…of my childhood field and the joys and trauma’s I experienced in them. Trauma? Oh, yea…Melanie jumped off the fence onto a cattle ramp…and onto a rusty nail…that went right up into her foot. The way home was so long…and other trauma’s we won’t mention here.

It’s funny, as I walked today, I started singing a song by Phil Keaggy, that I heard a good 20 years ago…and honestly hadn’t heard it since, that I can recall. “Find Me In These Fields.” The lyrics are very soothing…the melody reminds me of Paul McCartney’s work.

I have a field loving partner, too…My Daisy, girl…she loves the field…the tree line, the creek, the hay barn, the groundhogs. She was chasing a hawk today…little does she know the hurt that mighty hunter could have put on her.

The breeze couldn’t have been any finer than it was today. Neither one of us wanted to turn back. I took self portraits in the yellow flowers. I’ve wanted to have pictures taken in them…cause my grand kids and Daisy look so awesome in the midst of them. Of course, on the edge of 47, I cannot even come close to their striking photos, but I’m documented now…in yellow flowers…just like they are.

The yellow flowers up close are so full of imperfections. I tried to do some close ups the other day and they resemble nothing but weeds. But if you stand back and see them from a distance in a grouping... they are vibrant. ...Maybe analyzing (close up) takes the beauty out of the here and now.

That being one of the thoughts I had as I walked the “Hundred Acre Wood.”

To sit in the midst of the field…and see the tallest trees framing the sky at it’s bluest…to have the flowers and the grasses blowing around you…the songs of so many different birds, but the “Conk-a-reeeee” of the red winged black bird…dominate…I don’t even remember hearing the highway…I never noticed the traffic some distance off…and flutterbys flitting here and there. I’m telling you…I am at rest. My mind can actually drift away from worries.

I escaped to the fields as a child…for pleasure…and here, teetering closer to another year…I am again…finding pleasure in this God created sanctuary.