Tag: Bigger Picture

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The Bumblebee Story

Melissa, founder of Bigger Picture Blogs, and I are reading Wild Minds: Living the Writer’s Life by Natalie Goldberg. In her latest post about Wild Mind, Melissa apologizes for being behind in her reading, but if she’s behind, than I am way, way behind!

In Chapter 15, Natalie challenges us, the readers, to do an oral “I remember.” She tells us to do them with friends, and so here in the blogging world, telling a story means doing a vlog. In the following video, I tell about one of my first memories. (If you are reading this post in your email, please click to Lemon Drop Pie to watch the video.)

This story may sound familiar to some of you; I wrote about it a while back for Mommy’s Piggy Tales. Here’s what I wrote:

When I was little, I spent the whole summer with bare feet. So it is no surprise to me that I remember having bare feet when we were moving from Nebraska to Illinois.

I was three years old, and we were spending the night in a hotel. My grandparents, your great-grandma and grandpa, were helping us move, and Grandpa Jim was driving the moving truck. We got to the hotel first, and as we saw Grandpa Jim pulling the truck into the parking lot, I ran down the sidewalk waving to him. Great-Grandpa was just behind me, and he saw something I didn’t see — a big ol’ bumblebee, flying down from the roof of the hotel straight for my big toe! He ran up behind me, grabbed me under the arms, (I remember seeing his brown shoes) and yanked me away from that bee!

That bee had a one-track mind, and he stung my big toe anyway! It hurt like the dickens! Grandma Loreeta immediately put some ice in a bowl, and we soaked my toe in ice water. That made my toe feel a lot better!

Thank you for joining me on my trip down memory lane!

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Snow

Shortly after I read the prompt, snow, for ’twas the write before Christmas, tiny gentle snowflakes started drifting down from the sky. So softly were the flakes falling that it was a few minutes before Lily and Emmy noticed. As soon as they looked out the big bay window in our living room as we were getting ready to leave for school, they both started yelling, “IT’S SNOWING!” and began jumping up and down.

When we went outside, the flakes were getting fluffier. When snow is falling from the sky, the girls’ first instinct is to open their mouths and try to catch an icy crystal on their tongues.

But the day was just too warm for snow. Soon the snow changed into rain, and the streets and sidewalks were wet, not white.

Our fall in Chicagoland has been very mild this year; perhaps it is because our winter last year seemed so long, so cold and so snowy. We even had a real–and I mean real—blizzard on my birthday last February. We had so much snow that by the time Spring came around, I was ready for balmy breezes and warm sunshine. Whether we were swimming in the pool or playing on Lake Michigan beaches, paddling in a tippy canoe or getting sprayed by Niagara Falls, we soaked up summer. When autumn came, we relished the cooler air and lingered at the playground.

But now, now it’s time for snow again. December. The weather is cold; the clouds are gathering. Before long, snow will fall again, and this time, it will stick. It will accumulate and need to be shoveled. It will need to be gathered into snow balls, rolled into snowmen and swished into snow angels.

We’re ready.