Tag: Home

Blessing the Hearth

Celebrating Women’s History Month!

The hearth was the center of the home.

A couple of years ago (pre-pandemic, when one still casually opened the front door to an unanticipated knock or ring of the doorbell by a stranger), I was accosted by a salesperson attempting to convince me to sign up for home insect control. Now, I’m not the sort of woman to simply slam the door in the face of some hapless huckster. I know that door-to-door sales work is a thankless job. So I usually allow them to get in a few (very few) words first before saying the obligatory, “I’m really not interested” and firmly shutting my front door.

But I did have a bit of trouble controlling my mirth when this young man gestured to the porch overhang, talking about all the spiderwebs that gathered at rarely-used front doors as family came and went through their attached garages. He pointed directly to the corners where such webs would be expected to lurk.

There were none. I mean NONE. Nope, those corners were free of spiderwebs, wasps nests, cobwebs, or cottonwood drifts from the blooming trees. It sort of put paid to his little demonstration. I grinned only a little as I told him I wasn’t interested and closed my front door on his bewildered face.

The only time I’d had greater enjoyment from a front porch peddler was the spring afternoon near Easter, when I’d opened the door to a proselytizer trying to drum up customers for a local church. He invited me to join with them on Easter Sunday to “celebrate Jesus’ death”. (Yes, he actually said that! I could not make this stuff up.) Now, it’s been a long while since I practiced organized religion, but even in my dim and distant memories of such Easter services lay the notion that we were joining to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection. For this particular porch peddler occasion, I did not even attempt to stifle my astounded chuckles. But I digress….

You see, there were no webs or cottonwood or nests, or indeed, any detritus of any sort on my tiny front porch or its rafters because I regularly practice blessing the entryway to my home. Stepping out armed with a broom, I sweep away anything on or above or around my porch and walkway while repeating the words, “Bless this home and all who dwell therein. This home is surrounded, enfolded, protected, and watched over by the Divine. Bless this home and all who enter here.”

Performing this personal ceremony, I feel empowered. With each stroke of the bristles, I claim the protection of the Divinity in which I believe. The exterior of my house is both cleansed and wrapped in a mantle of security; warded and protected; cocooned within a shelter of psychic defense that I create as I move from my front porch to my back patio, sweeping and safeguarding both entryways.

There was a time when such household protection rituals were common, especially when every home was both lit and warmed by a fire. The hearth was the center of the home; the place where family gathered for warmth, and where women worked to cook the meals or to sit nearest the light to sew and weave. To bless the hearth was to bless the home, and was the exclusive province of women. For centuries women, denied the right to be priests or ministers, or to even participate in any meaningful way in many, most, religions–those women were, nonetheless, the hearthkeepers; the ones who genuinely “kept the home fires burning”. Women swept away the ashes and laid the fresh fires upon their hearths and kindled the logs. Women spoke their blessings over the flames, weaving a circle of protection about their homes and loved ones; blessings woven of love and belief, and as sturdy as any cloth upon their looms. They swept their front steps and dooryards, presenting a clear path for all who came and went. They polished the brass of door handles to a shining surface, reflecting the faces of those who visited.

And so, sweeping my own path and entryway and porch roof beams, clearing the ashes from my wood-burning fireplace before laying a fresh fire to be kindled on another cold night, I feel the shades and spirits of those centuries of women who came before me. I am following, not in their footsteps, but in the path of their work worn hands, as I perform the same rituals they once did. Performing these homely rituals, I am translated, shifting from my merely human form to become the daughter of all those who went before me, themselves Daughters of Demeter, goddess of hearth and home; tenderly weaving words of beneficent protection about my dwelling, while envisioning all those I love cocooned within the warmth and undying fire of my love.

This post originally appeared on December 15, 2021. If you enjoyed it, you might also find other essays from that year to your taste. You can locate them in the Archives by scrolling down.

Puffy Socks Finds a Home (Sort of a Pandemic Story)

§   Pandemic has changed everything… §

Every summer for the past four years, my twin great niece and nephew, Mya and Kai, have arrived in Indiana to spend the season with their grandparents, my brother and his wife.  Every summer we all gather together for family picnics, and afternoons at splash parks and pools.  We visit the Indianapolis Children’s Museum and the zoo together.  We play card games and spend time in the kids’ room at the library, and visit the playgrounds at every single park within a 30-mile radius! The twins ride bikes and ponies, hold squirt gun battles, stay overnight with their Aunt Paula, and climb trees. Together we all eat mounds of mac & cheese and chicken nuggets.  We color and watch videos and go to movies.  Mya and I paint each other’s nails, and I comb her long hair into braids and ponytails.  Kai builds forts out of my furniture.  The big baskets of toys that I keep on hand just for them are always filled with fresh playthings that I’ve picked up through the year at garage sales and flea markets. GrampsCrop4 The whole family troops out together to watch a July 4th fireworks show.  And, finally, after we’ve kissed a tearful goodbye and seen them winging their way home, I send letters—one letter every week—and homemade books; books filled with photos describing their summer adventures and telling them stories about their “Indiana pets”.

Every summer that is, until this year.  Pandemic has changed everything.  The plane that would transport them here would be, we fear, little more than a container for incubating the Covid-19 virus, and there would be almost nothing for them to do, anyway, even if they arrived, for all the city pools and splash parks are closed, as are the museums and movie theaters; the zoo is open by reservation only.  The Independence Day celebrations, those open-air gatherings crowded with people, will be canceled. The park playgrounds are shut down.

The collective hearts of our family are breaking over this sad reality, yet we know that keeping the twins safely in their home state is for the best.  Nevertheless, my thoughts keep zigzagging back to last summer,  remembering a moment when Kai, while petting my big old orange kitty, explained seriously to me that they, the twins, were the reason I have Puffy Socks the cat.  I agreed; Kai was absolutely right.  Three years earlier, Puffy, a homeless feral, spent a whole summer coming to play with the twins each week on my patio.  At the time, Puff was living under a neighbor’s mini barn.   Each week he waited eagerly for the moment the three of us stepped out onto my patio.  A clatter of sound would announce his presence as he darted through the spare lumber stored behind the barn before leaping majestically over the fence to rush to the children: “The twins are here!!”  Their mutual admiration society was touching to watch.  And when Kai and Mya left for home that summer, I (after a failed attempt to rehome him) adopted the big old softy of a cat they loved so much and had named.

So this week, in honor of my beloved great niece and nephew, who I am missing so much that my heart feels shattered–in their honor, I’m printing here the little storybook that I wrote and sent to them the following winter about the sweet, homeless orange kitty who became so dear to all our hearts.

PS Pic     Puffy Socks Finds a Home  

There was once an orange kitty with white feet who lived in a nice house.  But his owner moved away, and she left Orange Kitty behind.

But Orange Kitty was a smart little cat.PS3 pic  He made lots of friends in the neighborhood.  They petted and fed him, but none of them could give him a home.

So Orange Kitty slept under barns to shelter from the rain.  He curled up with his tail over his nose when it snowed.PS4 Pic

Then one pretty summer day Orange Kitty made two new friends.  They were the twins, Mya and Kai! 

PS 6 Pic (2)PS5 pic (2)They were playing on the patio at their Aunt Beckett’s house.  They liked Puffy very much.  And he liked them, too!

Since their Papaw and Nana had an orange kitty named Puff, Kai and Mya thought this Orange Kitty should be named Puffy.  Their Aunt Paula had a kitty with white feet named Socks, and this new Puffy cat also had white feet.  So they decided Puffy should have a middle name: Socks!  Kai thought Dragon would be a good name, too, just like Puff the Magic Dragon. And Aunt Beckett believed they should  add Esquire, because he was a gentleman cat. 

So  Orange Kitty became Puffy Socks Dragon, Esquire!

When the summer ended and the twins left, Aunt Beckett found Puffy Socks a new home. But that lady could not keep him, after all.  Puff was very sad!Puff Visits 2 (3)

So Aunt Beckett decided she would keep Puffy Socks as her very own kitty.  She even bought him his first Christmas stocking!  PS 14

At first, Aunt Beckett’s other kitties, Zoe and Bella and Lilith, were a little upset to have a new cat in their home.  But slowly, they all began to get along and to love each other.  IMG_20181208_144305066_HDR (2)

Happy PuffSo Puffy Socks found a happy home at last!

                                               The End

 

I miss you both very much, my darling great niece and nephew.  And Puffy Socks misses you, too.