It’s harder this week to find things that have brought joy. I’ve been depressed, and sad and irritated, and tired, wait I’ve just listed all of the symptoms of prenatal depression. It hit me hard this week.
But here is what I have.
Apples are in season. I know you can buy apples any time of year, but only in the fall can you get new crop apples, that are fresh and deeply colored, and don’t taste a little bit woody. And they are so inexpensive when they are in season. We have been feasting on apples here. Every day my children wake up and help themselves to apples while they wait for breakfast. I love apples; some of my best memories have apples tied to them. Any day visiting at my grandparent’s farm was a good day. Picking apples in the fall was a great day, and eating grandma’s homemade apple pie with ice cream for dessert all adds up to one of my favorite childhood memories. She made these pies for Thanksgiving, often for Christmas, and ordinary days that were made special because she had family visiting. I remember starting on a long road trip with some friends when I was older and picking box after box of apples from a tree that someone had told us we could harvest. We kept those boxes at the back of our big huge white van, and all that drive down the coast we smelled them, and feasted on them, they tasted so good. Apples make me think of being home, and being loved, and these are great things to remember.
I found, quite by accident this morning, a song that I used to love, that I listened to and sang often during a similar period of sadness. Ironically it’s titled Joy. I listened to it again this morning, letting its beauty wrap around me for a few minutes as the notes dropped one by one into my weary heart, and smoothed a little of the rough sadness away leaving peace behind, and I’ve been humming it since.
Sitting outside in the cardboard booth we built for Sukkoth. (No it’s not Kosher, the roof is supposed to be of branches, but they frown on cutting things off of trees where I live, and we decided that since the Israelites would have made their booths from materials they could find in the wilderness, that we could make ours out of material we could find near us, and technically cardboard is an organic substance.) Reading to my children about God’s promise to come and live with his people being fulfilled while they cuddle near to me and listened.
These are the few things this week I have been able to find joy in.
Small Joys Fridays is from Crafty Momma. I found it through Misha