HISTORY IN A DRAWER

For over 11 years, due to poor health, I was unable to travel back home to Troy, New York.

Over the last year and a half I have been receiving Xolair treatments for my severe allergic asthma. It worked so well with me that I was able to get off my daytime oxygen. This fall my doctors decided to allow me to take a train trip back to visit friends and relatives in Troy. It turned into a trip with a rainbow of blessings.

The first Saturday we were there, my niece, Elizabeth, and her family, with whom my son and I stayed, planned an open house for us. It turned into a time of fellowship and fun with nieces and nephews I had not seen for several years. One of the unexpected delights was everyone signing their names inside a desk drawer from our old Sunday school room at Millis Memorial Baptist Church. When we were growing up all of my siblings except one had signed our names or nicknames inside the drawer and dated them.

My nephew, Steve, bought the old desk from the church group now meeting there. He thought it would be fun to continue the family tradition and brought the drawer with him for the nieces and nephews to sign. It was fun to watch them as they signed their names next to a parent or grandparent. Some of the signatures go back three generations. My nephew will see the name of family members every time he opens his desk drawer. A little bit of family history will flash through his mind as he reads them.

Similar to the names in the drawer are the memories we file away in the desk drawers of our minds. While back home many of the memories from my youth flashed through my mind. My son, nieces, and nephews enjoyed listening to me share my reveries. What a blessing it was to visit many of the scenes of my youth. It was a delight to my soul to think of the events and the people who touched my life during my youth. Some of those memories already appear in my poetry. I feel certain many more will come to mind in poetic form through the rejuvenation I felt during my visit home.

Another major blessing during my stay was to visit my family's gravesite and to see the beautiful new headstone over my parents and little sister’s graves. After 68 years it is a joy to finally see them memorialized! I also learned that one of my nieces, Debby, has faithfully maintained our family plot for several years.

At my age it is fun to mingle pleasant memories from the past with the ones I accrue day by day in the present. What a large drawer full of blessed memories I have stored away in my heart and mind!

As the holidays are fast approaching I hope you'll take the time, before things become too hectic to meander through your special drawer of memories. I know during the holidays life can become weary, even depressing. If that is the case with you right now may I suggest, in those dark moments of the soul, it is a good time to reflect back on special blessings.

Hug, in Christ’s and my love,

Don E. Cunningham, Patriarch Octogenarian Poet 11/12/08 562