Being Thankful

Don't you just love these sunny November days? It's almost cool enough to open the windows so I know I need to tackle the job of cleaning all those windows. Now my mom didn't sit me down and remind me to schedule this in once every fall and once every spring. I merely observed her pattern of doing it season after season, year after year. Although my mom often did it while we were in school I had the privilege of helping my grandmother do her windows. She did the inside and I got to climb the big ladder and do the outside. (Grandmothers: even though the children might not do quite as good as job as you would, these create life-long memories of working beside you). It almost feels like a piece of cake to do my windows which only involves washing the outside and inside and hosing down the screens. Because we lived up north "doing the windows" was at another level. Each screen was taken down and stored away until spring and the heavy storm windows had to be taken out of storage and washed and put up. This meant that for each window opening there were two sets of windows to wash! It was important to do this in the fall as cold weather would be soon approaching and the extra window helped to keep out those cold winter winds.

If you drove by my house today you would see my bedroom curtains hanging between the crepe myrtle tree and a ladder. (The ladder already fell over once so I had to tie it to my van with a small rope. I guess when the piano students come this afternoon they'll think we're practicing for the "limbo".) I love for the curtains to blow in the breeze and linger in the sunshine. Clean windows are a lot of work but the result is worth the effort. Once the task is done the sunbeams can come dazzling in and your family can enjoy cool breezes at night minus the spiderwebs and other things that were swept away. (By the way, for me this is a multi-day task. I don't have big enough chunks of time or enough energy to tackle the whole house in one day like my mom seemed to do. I'm glad I can have memory snapshots of her being superwoman.)

~ Brenda Edwards