Yevet Tenney

The song “Amazing Grace” has been on my mind lately. The image of Il Divo, a male quartet, singing the song at the Coliseum in Rome is etched in my memory.

Laundry piles high, dishes totter and spill on the counter, crumbs scatter like ants under the table, and the teal carpet lies cluttered and brown from the want of a vacuum while I sit frustrated, once again, that I let things get out of control. Oh, I have my bag of excuses.

Writing a life history is like gathering a bouquet of flowers to give to a friend. It would be ludicrous to cut every flower in the garden. Bouquets are beautiful because they are rare and fashioned with a loving eye. Only the best flowers are chosen and displayed to show their delicate beauty.

We live in an increasingly noisy world. We are bombarded with honking horns, telephone jangles, cars pumping along with the drumbeat blaring from inside the cab, people yelling at the top of their lungs at someone who stepped wrongfully into his or her space. Parents yelling at children.

Whoever the calendar guru was, I wish he would have made New Year’s in the bright morning of spring instead of the midnight of winter. It would have been so much easier to make resolutions and keep them. In spring, you have the birds chirping, new flowers leaping into blossoms and grass spreading velvet green carpet everywhere.

Year after year, we listen to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and swoon with wonder at his understanding of the human condition. The three ghosts, Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future, come to all of us in some form or another. In the autumn of my life, I am plagued with all three at one time.