Does anyone remember that song, In My Own Little Corner, In My Own Little Chair from the old Rodgers and Hammerstein's, Cinderella? Well, yesterday when I placed a little wrought-iron chair and wicker table on the sidewalk behind our garage (click photo to enlarge) that's the song I was singing--happily--for finally I've found a secret place on our four acres. Mostly, it's secret, anyway. Unless our neighbor is mowing the very back of his yard, no one can see me back there on that tiny bit of sidewalk. I have so craved a place like that.

Everyone needs their own secret place, I think. The only thing? I have to turn my chair to the left because to the right, there's this awful sight:

Sigh. That's Tom's area there behind the barn, all those tractors, tarps and rusty things belong to him (it's a whole other post the way God has used that sort of thing to make me a more patient person). But as I said, I can turn my chair to the left and behold our back meadow and woods, instead... rather like how we can all choose to view the good side of other people and leave their broken down, rusty parts alone.

Anyway, after two days of amazing temperatures and sunshine, I can't even explain how much better I feel. How good to feel good and hopeful and strong again! And what a relief to no longer ask myself (and God), "Where the heck did good ol' happy Debra go?" Thankfully, she just needed extra doses of sunlight to bring her back.

And all day I've been celebrating her return. In fact, after Bob the Milkman came with way more orange juice than I needed (what I was thinking to have ordered so much?) I took two quarts to our neighbor, the young mom of a sweet baby girl and we talked for at least a half hour outside in this amazing autumnal day. I gave her my price list from the dairy and raved about Bob the Milkman and all the stuff his old-fashioned truck carries throughout our neighborhood each Monday. I kept gazing at her year-old daughter, recalling my own faraway days as a young mother--funny how it all returns through the face of other women's babies, isn't it? All those happy memories, with the harder ones pushed so far back.

I hope you've had an amazing Monday, too.