I turned the radio off this morning.
I usually like to listen to NPR's Morning Edition while I stir oatmeal and slather apple butter on biscuits, but it's gotten to be too depressing. I can't see starting the day off to the clanging gong of mudslinging politicians, empty promises, blame gaming, gloom and doom.
I'd rather hear the birds outside my window and my neighbor chasing a giggling toddler around their drive.
Those sounds are more hopeful.
With bowls and spoons rinsed, and shoes located and tied, we walked in the woods.
My men stuffed their pockets with acorns, their fists with blooming "weeds" and didn't think, not for an instant, that pockets should jingle or that fists are for dollars.
They don't worry about money, and I envy them that a little.
There, in the woods, gold is falling.
This is a fact that has nothing at all to do with the stock market or bailouts or a credit crisis, and everything to do with beauty, and the silent promise that this too shall pass.
These days the cool mornings and all the yellow fullness of fall keep us outside for our studies.
My men are carefree, busy little things, alternately working and chasing chickens, and of course, marveling at their good fortune - "Don't you just love all the things we gathered up for you Mama?"
They read, and they delight in rows of numbers, while I delight in the fact that even as all the furrowed brows on Wall Street are calculating the future, there is no fear at all in my own little bean counter's adding and subtracting.
There is only the miraculousness of order, the "magic" of math.
What more could a mother ask for her sons than that they may hold onto what they already have... they are surrounded by gold that is free for the taking, their tables overflow with bounty, their pockets are full of wonder, their minds are full of eagerness, their hearts are wide open.
We are so very rich.
