Simple Moments

[catherine]

Sometimes the most inspiriting simple living things have been minuscule images or acts that have been emblazoned on my memory. For instance…

…the thread that CathyA just posted about landlines brought me back to when I was raising a family and had very little money, but our phone bill was always high--this was when you paid for long-distance by the minute, and our extended family all lived out of town. Occasionally, in the course of having to juggle bills, I'd run to the drug store the day of a shut-off to pay, because they would take payments for the phone company which would be immediately credited to my account. One day an older man came in to pay his phone bill. It was only $25.17, andy he paid in cash, carefully laying out the twenty, the five, and the exact change. I don't' know why, but that stuck with me throughout all these years.

A second moment was when I was a girl, maybe in my teen years, I was watching the movie Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn, and there was a scene when she was upset about something and ran to her desk in her room to write a letter. The desk had nothing but a very neat stack of writing paper on it, and she pulled out one of those plain sheets of white paper, and the ONE pen that was on the desk (probably a fountain pen), and wrote the letter. The wonderful simplicity and minimalism of that one image has also stuck with me for a long time (obviously--I still remember it and it had to have been almost 50 years ago).

Does anyone else recall any images or living snapshots of simplicity that made an impression? Have they motivated you in any way towards your simple living journey?

[Sad Eyed Lady]

catherine, I am sure there are some moments like that for me too, but right now I can't bring any to mind. I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed reading your's though - very refreshing. Sometimes we get so caught up in the rightness or wrongness of a situation, the craziness of the world, our opinions, and so on that it is so good to read something "simple". Two beautiful stories, one fiction one real life, that you shared. I am looking forward to reading others.

Oh, wait I have thought of one! When DH and I had only been married a couple of years, we wanted to go on a "vacation" but had very little money. So, we went on a one day vacation. I cooked a picnic lunch and packed it up, and we drove to a national park not far from us. On the way home it started to rain and we saw a stranger, an old man, walking by the road so we stopped and gave him a ride. Then accidentally we ended up driving behind my grandfather before we got home. My grandfather only had a couple of more months with us but of course we didn't know that at the time. When I look back on this day, and I have many times over all these years, that day still seems special and almost magical to me.

[pinkytoe]

Several come to mind...when I was in fourth grade, I befriended a girl from Denmark named Pernella. Whenever I went to her house to play, I was struck even at that young age at how simple and tidy the whole household was. Her bedroom was small with shiny, wooden floors, sparkling windows with no curtains and very simple furniture. Her toys were wooden or cloth; she did not have Barbie dolls or other mass-marketed toys. I also recall my grandfather's simple house and ways. He lived in a tiny three room wooden house by the railroad tracks and grain silos but it was mostly very quiet in that small town. He had only a few pots, pans and dishes so we had to wash them several times each day. He saved every piece of metal, wood and machinery and spent his days in his old shed with a pot belly stove making all kinds of contraptions from his found objects, ie he was resourceful and it rubbed off on me.