Category: grandchildren

Balancing Between Earth and Sky

June 20, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Every child should know a hill,
And the clean joy of running down its long slope
With the wind in his hair.
He should know a tree—
The comfort of its cool lap of shade,
And the supple strength of its arms
Balancing him between earth and sky
So he is a creature of both.
He should know bits of singing water—
The strange mysteries of its depths,
And the long sweet grasses that border it.
Every child should know some scrap
Of uninterrupted sky, to shout against;
And have one star, dependable and bright,
For wishing on.
~Edna Casler Joll “Every Child Should Know a Hill”

photo of a windy day at Manna Farm by Danyale Tamminga

When I was younger
the world was full of wonder.
Forests were kingdoms.
Following the wind was freedom.
Children wielded branches
like sharpened swords

There was no separation
between dream and reality
no border to defend,
Blanket forts were impenetrable.
The monsters in the closets
could not reach us there.

We ruled from treetop towers.
We danced in the rain.
We needed no permission
to believe in the sacred.
It was simply everywhere.
It was simply
everything.

In those days
we were of the living.
~Logan Holder “Of the Living”

How brief are our childhood days,
when we can touch both earth and sky
without knowing any limits,
how we can fly downhill
and climb impossible obstacles,
how the ocean stretches to infinity
as our imagination sails away.

I now watch these treasured young friends I’ve watched grow,
held as babies, taught new songs and games,
helped their faith grow,
now getting married,
ready to grow up children of their own.

This, the unending turn of the years,
a stretching tether connecting
one generation to another.

Everything sacred, held so close
until one day it is time to let go –
and once again run, climb, fly,
touching the earth and sky at once.

Lyrics by Keane:
I walked across an empty land
I knew the pathway like the back of my hand
I felt the earth beneath my feet
Sat by the river and it made me complete

Chorus: Oh, simple thing, where have you gone?
I’m getting old, and I need something to rely on
So, tell me when you’re gonna let me in
I’m getting tired, and I need somewhere to begin

I came across a fallen tree
I felt the branches of it looking at me
Is this the place we used to love?
Is this the place that I’ve been dreaming of?

And if you have a minute, why don’t we go
Talk about it somewhere only we know?
This could be the end of everything
So, why don’t we go somewhere only we know?
Somewhere only we know

And if you have a minute, why don’t we go
Talk about it somewhere only we know?
This could be the end of everything
So, why don’t we go?
So, why don’t we go?

This could be the end of everything
So, why don’t we go somewhere only we know?
Somewhere only we know
Somewhere only we know

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Cut and Tumble, Sickness and Weeping

June 3, 2026June 3, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

God keep my jewel this day from danger;
From tinker and pooka and bad-hearted stranger.
From harm of the water, from hurt of the fire.
From the horns of the cows going home to the byre.
From the sight of the fairies that maybe might change her.
From teasing the ass when he’s tied to the manger.
From stones that would bruise her, from thorns of the briar.
From evil red berries that wake her desire.
From hunting the gander and vexing the goat.
From the depths o’ sea water by Danny’s old boat.
From cut and from tumble, from sickness and weeping;
May God have my jewel this day in his keeping.
~Winifred Lett (1882-1973) “Prayer for a Child“

I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.
~C.S. Lewis

I want to make a case for the Lighthouse Parent, a term that the pediatrician Kenneth Ginsburg and others have used. A Lighthouse Parent stands as a steady, reliable guide, providing safety and clarity without controlling every aspect of their child’s journey.

Like a lighthouse that helps sailors avoid crashing into rocks, Lighthouse Parents provide firm boundaries and emotional support while allowing their children the freedom to navigate their own challenges. They demonstrate that they trust their kids to handle difficult situations independently. The key is learning when to step back and let them find their own way.
~Russell Shaw from “Lighthouse Parents Have More Confident Kids”

celebrating a long-awaited pregnancy – 1985

This “prayer for a child” has hung on the wall in our home for four decades, purchased when I was pregnant with our first of three children.

The drawing of the praying mother watching her toddler leave the safety of the home to explore the wide world addressed my worries as a new mama. I would glance at it daily, knowing the world is full of peril; it would remind me of God’s care for our family through every scary thing, real or imagined.

It helped me smile at a few of my irrational fears. Tinkers and pookas and fairies were unlikely to find our children in our rural landscape but at times the world seems full of “black-hearted strangers” and other threats, known and unknown.

Decades later, I continue to pray for our grown children and their God-given spouses, and for six adventuresome grandchildren.

I pray because I can’t not pray, and because I’m helpless without the care and compassion of our sovereign God for each of us, especially when we are brand new, completely dependent and helpless. He is a true “lighthouse” in our lives,

May I be changed by my prayers, molded into a “grand” mother and a light for our half dozen cherished grandchildren, each a jewel in His keeping.

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Gone to Feed the Roses

May 25, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

Done are the toils and the wearisome marches,
Done is the summons of bugle and drum.
Softly and sweetly the sky overarches,
Shelt’ring a land where Rebellion is dumb.
Dark were the days of the country’s derangement,
Sad were the hours when the conflict was on,
But through the gloom of fraternal estrangement
God sent his light, and we welcome the dawn.
O’er the expanse of our mighty dominions,
Sweeping away to the uttermost parts,
Peace, the wide-flying, on untiring pinions,
Bringeth her message of joy to our hearts.

Ah, but this joy which our minds cannot measure,
What did it cost for our fathers to gain!
Bought at the price of the heart’s dearest treasure,
Born out of travail and sorrow and pain;
Born in the battle where fleet Death was flying,
Slaying with sabre-stroke bloody and fell;
Born where the heroes and martyrs were dying,
Torn by the fury of bullet and shell.
Ah, but the day is past; silent the rattle,
And the confusion that followed the fight.
Peace to the heroes who died in the battle,
Martyrs to truth and the crowning of Right!

Out of the blood of a conflict fraternal,
Out of the dust and dimness of death,
Burst into blossoms of glory eternal
Flowers that sweeten the world with the breath.
Flowers of charity, peace, and devotion
Bloom in the hearts that are empty of strife;
Love that is boundless and broad as the ocean
Leaps into beauty and fullness of life.
So, with the singing of paeans and chorals,
And with the flag flashing high in the sun,
Place on the graves of our heroes the laurels
Which their unfaltering valor has won!
~Paul Dunbar “Ode for Memorial Day”

I am not resigned to the shutting away
of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be,
for so it has been, time out of mind:

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.

A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look,
the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know.
But I do not approve.

More precious was the light in your eyes
than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay “Dirge Without Music”

Each Memorial Day weekend without fail ~

we gather with family, have lunch, reminisce,
and trek to a cemetery high above the Sound
to catch up with our relatives who lie there, still.
Some for nearly 120 years, some more recent,
some we knew and loved and miss every day,
others not so much, unknown to us
except on genealogy charts,
their long-ago names and dates and these stones
all that is left of them.

Seven generations together briefly,
above and below the ground,
age 6 through 200 years.

Yet we know each
(as we know for ourselves and others)
was tender and kind, even though flawed and broken,
was beautiful and strong, even though wrinkled and frail,
was hopeful and faithful, even though too soon in the ground.

We know this about them
as we know it about ourselves:
someday we too will feed roses,
the light in our eyes transformed into elegant swirls
emitting the fragrant scent of heaven.

No one asks if we approve.
Nor am I resigned to this but only know:
So it is, so it has been, so it will be.

Goin’ home, goin’ home,
I’m a goin’ home;
Quiet like, some still day,
I’m jes’ goin’ home.
It’s not far, jes’ close by,
Through an open door;
Work all done, care laid by,
gwine to fear no more.

Mother’s there ‘spectin’ me,
Father’s waitin’ too;
Lots o’folk gather’d there,
All the friends I knew.

Home, home,
I’m goin’ home!
Nothin’ lost, all’s gain,
No more fret nor pain,
No more stumblin’ on the way,
No more longin’ for the day,
Gwine to roam no more!

Mornin’ star lights the way,
Res’less dreams all done;
Shadows gone, break o’day,
Real life jes’ begun.

Dere’s no break, ain’t no end,
Jes’ a livin’ on;
Wide awake, with a smile.
Goin’ on and on.

Goin’ home, goin’ home,
I’m jes’ goin’ home.
It’s not far, jes’ close by,
Through an open door;
I’m jes’ goin’ home.
Goin’ home.

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What is Left Undone Will Wait

May 6, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

To rest before the sheaves are bound,
toss the scythes aside, bare the feet and sink
into the nearest haystack, release
the undone task and consent to sleep
while the brightest hour burns an arc
across its stretch of sky:
this is the body’s prayer, mid-day angelus
whispered in mingled breath while the limbs
stretch in thanksgiving and the body turns
toward the beloved.

This is the prayer of trust:
what’s left undone will wait. The unattended
child, the uncut acre, cracked wheel, broken
fence that are occupations of the waking mind
soften into shadow in the semi-darkness
of dream. All shall be well. Little depends on us.
The turning world is held and borne in love.
We give good measure in our toil and, meet and right,
obey the body when it calls us to rest.
~Marilyn Chandler McEntyre “Noon Rest (after Millet: 1890)” from “The Color of Light: Poems on Van Gogh’s Late Paintings”

Van Gogh: Noon Rest at Musée d’Orsay, Paris

When you lie down, you will not be afraid;
when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.
Proverbs 3:24

Thanks to retirement, I have learned to love mid-day naps.

After forty-plus years of 10 hour work days, then awakened with calls at night, I managed to semi-thrive on minimal sleep.

Not any more.

In my new reality, I have discovered that it is possible to leave things undone, something that was never possible during doctoring and patient care. Now it is okay to set a task aside and think about it later. All this hasn’t come naturally to me, but I’m learning.

So it is time to kick off my shoes, pull a quilt up to my chin and close my eyes, just for a little while.

All will be well. The world keeps turning, even when I’m not the one pedaling to keep it going.

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Leaning Lest We Fall

February 17, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

Today we both fell.

Eventually balance moves
out of us into the world;
it’s the pull of rabbits
grazing on the lawn
as we talk, the slow talk
of where and when,
determining what
and who we will become
as we age.

We admire the new plants
and the rings of mulch you made,
we praise the rabbits eating
the weeds’ sweet yellow flowers.

Behind our words the days
serve each other as mother,
father, cook, builder, and fixer;
these float like the clouds
beyond the trees.

It is a simple life, now,
children grown, our living made
and saved, our years our own,
husband and wife,

but in our daily stride, the one
that rises with the sun,
the chosen pride,
we lean on our other selves,
lest we fall
into a consuming fire
and lose it all.
~Richard Maxson, “Otherwise” from Searching for Arkansas

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
I fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) I want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
~e.e. cummings “i carry your heart with me”

May the sun bring you new energy by day,
May the moon softly restore you by night,
May the rain wash away your worries,
May the breeze blow new strength into your being.

May you walk gently through the world,
And know it’s beauty all the days of your life.
~Apache Blessing

Our days are slower now, less rushed, more reading and writing, walking and pondering, taking it all in and wondering what comes next.

I am so grateful not to hurry to work every day, planning how I should parcel out each moment when my energy and strength is waning.

Should I stay busy cooking, cleaning, sorting, giving away, simplifying our possessions so our children someday won’t have to?
Might our grandchildren tire of my attention? Or should I find ways to be of service off the farm to feel worthy of each new day, each new breath?

This time of life is a gift of grace, waking most days with no agenda and few appointments. What comes next remains uncertain, as it always has been. In my busyness, I simply didn’t pay enough attention before.

So I lean lest I fall.
I notice beauty and write about it.
I carry as many hearts as I can hold.
I keep breathing lest I forget how.

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One Small Cry

January 16, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

The children have gone to bed.
We are so tired we could fold ourselves neatly
behind our eyes and sleep mid-word, sleep standing
warm among the creatures in the barn, lean together
and sleep, forgetting each other completely in the velvet,
the forgiveness of sleep.

Then the one small cry:
one strike of the match-head of sound:
one child’s voice:
and the hundred names of love are lit
as we rise and walk down the hall.

One hundred nights we wake like this,
wake out of our nowhere
to kneel by small beds in darkness.
One hundred flowers open in our hands,
a name for love written in each one.
~Annie Lighthart,“The Hundred Names of Love” from Iron String

I thought I had forgotten how to wake to the sound of a baby’s cry or a child’s voice calling out in the night.

I thought I wouldn’t remember how to gently open their bedroom door, entering their darkness from my own darkness, sorting out what was distressing them, sensing how to soothe them back to slumber, wondering if I might sing or pray the words they needed to hear, bringing a blossoming peace and stillness to their night.

When our son’s family arrived three years ago from thousands of miles away, staying with us until they could settle in their own place, I was reminded my nights were never meant to be mine alone.

As a child myself, I had such frequent night-wakenings that I’m sure my mother despaired that I would ever sleep through the night. She would come when I called, sitting beside my bed, rubbing my back until I forgot what woke me in the first place. She was patient and caring despite her own weariness, sleep problems and worriedness. She loved me and forgave me for needing her presence in the night; her nights were never her own.

So I too responded with compassion when my own children called out in the night. As part of my doctoring life, I woke regularly to phone calls from the ER or hospital and from patients during forty-two years of medical practice; I listened and tried my best to answer anxious questions with gentle understanding.

And when a grandchild sleeps here overnight, I’m on call again, remembering the sweetness of someone responding in the dark; the fears of the night need the promise of the Lord staying with us until the new day comes, usually only a few hours away.

Little child, be not afraid
Though rain pounds harshly against the glass
Like an unwanted stranger, there is no danger
I am here tonight

Little child, be not afraid
Though thunder explodes and lightning flash
Illuminates your tear-stained face
I am here tonight

And someday you’ll know
That nature is so
The same rain that draws you near me
Falls on rivers and land
On forests and sand
Makes the beautiful world that you’ll see
In the morning

Little child, be not afraid
Though storm clouds mask your beloved moon
And its candlelight beams, still keep pleasant dreams
I am here tonight

Little child, be not afraid
Though wind makes creatures of our trees
And their branches to hands, they’re not real, understand
And I am here tonight

And someday you’ll know
That nature is so
The same rain that draws you near me
Falls on rivers and land
On forests and sand
Makes the beautiful world that you’ll see
In the morning

For you know, once even I was a
Little child, and I was afraid
But a gentle someone always came
To dry all my tears, trade sweet sleep for fears
And to give a kiss goodnight

Well now I am grown
And these years have shown
That rain’s a part of how life goes
But it’s dark and it’s late
So I’ll hold you and wait
‘Til your frightened eyes do close

And I hope that you’ll know
That nature is so
The same rain that draws you near me
Falls on rivers and land
On forests and sand
Makes the beautiful world that you’ll see
In the morning

Everything’s fine in the morning
The rain’ll be gone in the morning
But I’ll still be here in the morning

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You See, I Am Alive

November 24, 2025 barnstormingblog1 Comment

I am a feather on the bright sky

I am the blue horse that runs in the plain

I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water

I am the shadow that follows a child

I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows

I am an eagle playing with the wind

I am a cluster of bright beads

I am the farthest star

I am the cold of dawn

I am the roaring of the rain

I am the glitter on the crust of the snow

I am the long track of the moon in a lake

I am a flame of four colors

I am a deer standing away in the dusk

I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche

I am an angle of geese in the winter sky

I am the hunger of a young wolf

I am the whole dream of these things
You see, I am alive, I am alive
~N. Scott Momaday from “The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee” from In the Presence of the Sun: Stories and Poems

I wonder if, in the dark night of the sea, the octopus dreams of me.
~N. Scott Momaday

If I am brutally honest with myself after my recent cardiac brush with my mortality, one of my worst fears is to have lived on this earth for a handful of decades and then pass away forgotten, inconsequential, having left behind no legacy of significance whatsoever.

I’m well aware it is self-absorbed to feel the need to leave a mark, but a search for purpose and meaning lasting beyond my time here provides new momentum for each day. The forgetting can happen so fast.

Most people know little about their great-great-grandparents, if they even know their names. A mere four generations, a century, renders us dust, not just in flesh, but in memory as well. There may be a yellowed photograph in a box somewhere, perhaps a tattered postcard or letter written in elegant script, but the essence of this person is long lost and forgotten.

We owe it to our descendants to write down the stories about who we were while we lived on this earth. We need to share why we lived, for whom we lived, for what we lived.

I suspect, although I try every day to record some part of who I am, it will be no different with me and those who come after me. Whether or not we are remembered by great-great grandchildren or become part of the dreams of creatures in the depths of the seas:

we are just dust here and there is no changing that.

Good thing this is not our only home.
Good thing we are more than mere memory and dreams.
Good thing the river of life flows into
an eternity that transcends good works
or long memories or legacies left behind.
Good thing we are loved that much and always will be.
You see, we are alive, we are alive,
forever and ever, Amen.

I remember your lectures, Professor Scott Momaday, now nearly two years after you passed from this earth at age 89 – your voice, your stories and your poetry live on.

You are alive. You are alive…

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A Halloween Forty Years Ago

October 31, 2025October 31, 2025 barnstormingblog3 Comments

In the quiet misty morning
When the moon has gone to bed
When the sparrows stop their singing
And the sky is clear and red
When the summer ceased it’s gleaming
When the corn is past its prime
When adventures lost its meaning
I’ll be homeward-bound in time
~Marta Keen from “Homeward Bound”

On Halloween day in 1985, I packed up a roll-up mattress pad, grabbed one lonely pumpkin from our small garden, locked our rental house door for the last time, then climbed in my car to head two hours north out of Seattle.

I don’t recall looking back in the rear view mirror at the skyline after nine years living in the city. My husband had moved to Whatcom County two months earlier to start his new job. I had stayed behind to wrap up my Group Health family practice in the Rainier Valley of central Seattle.

I was leaving the city for our new rural home and a very uncertain professional future.

I knew two things for sure: I was finally several months pregnant after a miscarriage and two years of trying to conceive, so our family was on its way, and we were going to live in our own house with a few acres and a barn.

A real (sort of) starter farm and starter family, a dream we both shared.
Our home sits in the midst of woods and corn fields, with deer strolling through the fields at dawn, coyotes howling at night, Canadian geese and trumpeter swans calling from overhead and salmon thriving in nearby streams. The snowy Cascades greet us in the morning to the east, the Canadian Coastal range majestic to the north and not far to the west, the Salish Sea/Puget Sound.

Since it wouldn’t be a farm without animals, I stopped at the first pet store I drove past and found two tortoise shell calico kitten sisters peering up at me, just waiting for new adventures in farmland. Their box was packed into the one spot left beside me in my little Mazda.

With that simple commitment to raise and nurture those kittens alongside the life growing inside me, life seemed very complete.

I will never forget the freedom I felt on that drive north. The highway seemed more open, the fall colors more vibrant, the wind more energizing, our baby kicking my belly, the kittens mewing from their box. There seemed so much potential even though I had just left behind the greatest family practice found in any urban setting (at the time, it was the most ethnically diverse zip code in the United States) with patients from all over the world: alongside the multi-racial inner city population living in subsidized housing developments, my patients included Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and Indonesia, Orthodox Jews, Italian Catholics, and refugees from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

I will never know so much variety of ethnic background and perspective again. If I could have packed them all into my little car and driven them north with me, I would have.

Despite what I was leaving behind, there was certainly a feeling of freedom that rainy Halloween day as the big city disappeared in the rear view mirror.

No longer would I sit captive in freeway rush-hour bumper to bumper traffic jams. I traded that for a new rural commute winding through farm fields while watching eagles fly overhead. I could become part of a community in a way I never could manage in the city, visiting with friends at the grocery store, playing piano and teaching Sunday School at church and serving on various community boards.

After the new kittens, dubbed Nutmeg and Oregano, arrived on our farm, we added even more diversity: a Belgian Tervuren dog Tango, a Haflinger horse Greta, Toggenburg goats Tamsin and her kids, a few Toulouse geese, Araucana chickens, Fiona the Scottish Highland cow, then another Haflinger Hans and another, Tamara. I worked as a fill-in doctor in four different clinics before our first baby was born, then settled into part-time practice in several different clinics for most of my career.

With those new commitments, life was fulfilling and busy – we soon added a little brother and seven years later, a sister. Then it felt like our family was complete.

Forty years later, our children have grown and gone to homes of their own, all married to wonderful spouses, raising six delightful children for us to lavish love on.

Somehow life now feels even more complete.

A few cats, a Cardigan Corgi, and three ponies still live at the farm with us. Now retired from our professional lives “in town”, we enjoy the freedom of slower and quieter days, nurtured and nurturing.

It all started October 31, 1985 with two orange and black kittens and a pumpkin sitting beside me in a little Mazda, my husband awaiting my homecoming 100 miles north. Now, forty years later, we celebrate this Halloween anniversary of farm and family, still pregnant with the possibility that life is never truly complete when there is always a new day just around the corner.

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Longing to Be a Passenger Again

October 20, 2025 barnstormingblog2 Comments

I want to be a passenger
in your car again
and shut my eyes
while you sit at the wheel,

awake and assured
in your own private world,
seeing all the lines
on the road ahead,

down a long stretch
of empty highway
without any other
faces in sight.

I want to be a passenger
in your car again
and put my life back
in your hands.
~Michael Miller “December”

I heard an old man speak once,
someone who had been sober for fifty years,
a very prominent doctor.
He said that he’d finally figured out a few years ago
that his profound sense of control,
in the world and over his life,
is another addiction and a total illusion.
He said that when he sees little kids sitting in the back seat of cars,
in those car seats that have steering wheels,
with grim expressions of concentration on their faces,
clearly convinced that their efforts are causing the car
to do whatever it is doing,
he thinks of himself
and his relationship with God:
God who drives along silently,
gently amused,
in the real driver’s seat.
~Anne Lamott from Operating Instructions

Up north, the dashboard lights of the family car
gleam in memory, the radio
plays to itself as I drive
my father plied the highways
while my mother talked, she tried to hide
that low lilt, that Finnish brogue,
in the back seat, my sisters and I
our eyes always tied to the Big Dipper
I watch it still
on summer evenings, as the fireflies stream
above the ditches and moths smack
into the windshield and the wildlife’s
red eyes bore out from the dark forests
we flew by, then scattered like the last bit of star
light years before.
It’s like a different country, the past
we made wishes on unnamed falling stars
that I’ve forgotten, that maybe were granted
because I wished for love.
~Sheila Packa “Driving At Night” from The Mother Tongue

The moon was like a full cup tonight,
too heavy, and sank in the mist
soon after dark, leaving for light

faint stars and the silver leaves
of milkweed beside the road,
gleaming before my car.

Yet I like driving at night…
the brown road through the mist

of mountain-dark, among farms
so quiet, and the roadside willows
opening out where I saw

the cows. Always a shock
to remember them there, those
great breathings close in the dark.

I stopped, and took my flashlight
to the pasture fence. They turned
to me where they lay, sad

and beautiful faces in the dark,
and I counted them-forty
near and far in the pasture…

I switched off my light.

But I did not want to go,
not yet, nor knew what to do
if I should stay, for how

in that great darkness could I explain
anything, anything at all.
I stood by the fence. And then

very gently it began to rain.
~Hayden Carruth from “The Cows at Night”

Some of my most cherished childhood memories come from long rides home in the car at night from holiday gatherings. My father always drove, my mother hummed “I See the Moon” in the front passenger seat, and we three kids sat in the back seat, drowsy and full of feasting.

The night world hypnotically passed by outside the car window. I wondered whether the rest of the world was as safe and content as I felt at that moment.

On clear nights, the moon followed us down the highway, shining a light on the road.

Now as a driver at night, transporting grandchildren from a family gathering, I want them to feel the same peaceful contentment that I did as a child. As an older driver, I don’t enjoy driving at night, especially dark rural roads in pouring rain. I understand the enormous responsibility I bear, transporting those whom I dearly love and want to keep safe.

In truth, I long to be a passenger again, with no worries or pressures – just along for the ride, watching the moon and the world drift by, knowing I’m well-cared for.

But of course, I fret about the immense burden I feel to make things right in this dark and troubled world.

I am a passenger on a planet that has a Driver who feels great responsibility and care for all He transports through the black night of the universe. He loves me and I can rest content in the knowledge that I am safe in His vigilant hands.

I am not the driver – He knows how to safely bring me home, even in the rain.

I see the moon, it’s shining from far away, Beckoning with ev‘ry beam.
And though all the start above cast down their light, Still the moon is all that I see
And it’s calling out, “Come run a way!
And we’ll sail with the clouds for our sea,
And we’ll travel on through the black of the night, ‘til we float back home on a dream!”
The moon approaches my window pane, stretching itself to the ground.
The moon sings softly and laughs and smiles, and yet never makes a sound!
I see the moon! I see the moon!
Part A
And it’s calling out, “Come run a way!
And we’ll sail with the clouds for our sea,
And we’ll travel on through the black of the night, ‘til we float back home on a dream!”
Part B
I see the moon, it’s shining from far away, Beckoning with ev‘ry beam.
And though all the stars above cast down their light, Still the moon is all that I see
~Douglas Beam

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