All about moments

Saturday after I got done with chores, around four o'clock.  I decided to take a book and go outside to my little nook and read for a while.  I knew Zorro would love that, and I knew I would too.  Sadly, I don't seem to allow myself much time for reading although I am an avid per-user of all kinds of literature.  All sorts of books sit upon my library shelves calling my name.

But...I digress.

While I was reading, every once in a while a wonderful scent would waft through the air, it was sweet, sugary, sensual, mystical yet light and airy as well.  It took me a while to figure out what it was. 

It was honeysuckle.  My neighbor has vines of it surrounding the fences of her deck.  Ooooh.  I wish you all could smell the honeysuckle...

This morning I got to thinking about Thornton Wilder's play, Our Town.  It takes place in a small town, Grover's Corners, New Hampshire and is about the residents who live there, and their everyday activities.

It is also about the passage of time...years really.

One of the town residents is a girl named Emily, in act three we are at the cemetery just outside the town. We are told of all the folks who have died between the period of act one and act three.  And we learn that Emily is now one of those people.  She died giving birth to her second child. 

At some point, I can't remember exactly where, Emily decides she would like to relive just one day of her life and she chooses her twelfth birthday.  And in spite of warnings from friends and neighbors 'who had gone before', advising her not to do that, saying she will not only relive the experience, but also be watching from death, she decides to return to earth anyway.  Eventually she finds the experience much to painful and cannot continue the experience. She realizes just how much life should be valued, "every, every minute".  And asks to return to death.  But, before leaving her twelfth birthday she says these beautiful words.  "Good-by, good-by, world.  Good-by Grover's Corners...Mama and Papa.  Good-by to clocks ticking..and Mama's sunflowers, and food and coffee.  And new-ironed dresses and hot baths...and sleeping and waking up.  Oh, earth you're to wonderful for anybody to realize you.

Back in death, she eventually asks whether anyone realizes life while they live it and is told "No.  The saints and poets, maybe--they do some." 

But, generally speaking we don't. 

So it is when you have the opportunity to smell the honeysuckle...do.  Value life, "every, every minute."