Flies can walk upside down

When I was three, I lived in a little town called Mahomet, Illinois. Back then it had one tiny main street. My parents rented the upstairs of what to a child's eyes was a glorious mansion (which I found out many years later was actually what had previously been the town mortuary.)

One day, I was outside with my trike and I decided to go visit the grocer downtown and get an apple. I pedaled my trike the two and one-half blocks there, parked it outside on the sidewalk and went in. I walked to the apples, picked one out, and went to the counter and said, "I would like this apple, please."

I had their attention. They asked who I was, I said I was "Carol". "Well," they said, "Where do you live?" "With Mommy and Daddy, and Grandma and Grandpa Morrison," was my answer, although the Morrisons were not really relation, I just thought so.

Ahhh, a collective acknowledgment from all of them. The old Morrison Mortuary. The store owner lifted me up and sat me on the counter and said I could have the apple. They telephoned Grandma Morrison who got my mom who had been frantically looking for me.

About 10 minutes later, my mom showed up. Really, really mad. She thanked them, got me out of the store, told me to walk behind her and to pull my trike; she was too mad to let me ride. She walked very fast.

When we got home, we went upstairs and she was ironing in the kitchen. She pulled out the old yellow Cosco stool and said, "You sit there for the rest of the afternoon and don't move." Well, I was mad because I thought I had had a good time. I'd had a good trike ride, met nice people, and had an apple. So, I sat on my stool and I wouldn't look at her. I looked anywhere but at her. I looked at the ceiling.

And, on the ceiling was a fly. How was that? Upside down! How could that be? He was walking all over the place, really easily. And then he would fly a bit and land back on the ceiling and walk some more. It was magic. I wanted to ask my mom so bad how that fly did that but when I looked back down at my mom, her iron was working so hard on the ironing board and she still looked so mad I didn't dare, and I didn't want to be the one to talk first anyway.

But, that day when I was three was when I learned flies can walk upside down.

Campfire night!

When my daughter was a little girl we had campfires in the back yard by the fence. Her dad had dug a rectangular pit about 8 inches deep and it was between the back fence that bordered the alley and our 8 ft snap-set swimming pool. We would get a big fire going and it was a kid magnet. A good fire cost us two bags of marshmallows a night. One night, Erika, my daughter's friend from the next block down, got her marshmallow hanger red hot. She somehow got it off to the side and it ended up going through the wall of the snap-set pool about 3 inches above the ground. Because it was red hot, it just slid in there and we didn't know it until water was pouring on our feet and into the firepit. It filled the whole pit up and murdered the pool. It took a week for the firepit to dry out but the pool was done for the summer.

Rising from the ashes

While my blog is not going to be about Harry Potter, that is from where I have taken my name. There are layers and layers to uncover concerning Dumbledore's funeral in Book Six of the Harry Potter Series. First, we grieved with Harry as we listened to Dumbledore's beautiful phoenix Fawkes sing his song of mourning. We cried with Hagrid as he carried Dumbledore's covered body to the pyre. And, we watched spellbound as the fire consumed the pyre while a mystical blue phoenix formed of the smoke of the fire and the mist of the lake and swirled above the magically changed crypt.

After I thought about that for awhile, I realized that is what may have been Dumbledore's lasting message for us. He is not gone; a phoenix rises again.

I have gone through harsh fires lately and they have been consuming. But, I have deep faith, and the mist has formed and swirled around me and once again I will rise from the ashes.

I will leave behind the ashes of my despair, and soar with life again once more.

(Grateful appreciation to Renee LeCompte for permission to use her beautiful art. More of her graphics are at www.notonigon.com .)