Sowing seeds

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.
Robert Louis Stevenson

My bloggy bud Robin at All Things Heart and Home always has me thinking about "living my legacy." She has done an entire series on this topic that is so worth your time reading. Just look under her "All Things" button in her left sidebar and scroll down to "legacy." She very eloquently suggests that each one of us is living our legacy each day and can be guided in our choices about how we want to be remembered.

Have you thought about it before? How do YOU want to be remembered? Robin has been making me think. Part of what I enjoyed the most about my Dad's 80th birthday party, was how many reminders there were of my own childhood. Everywhere I turned was a memory of another time period in my life.

One of the people I was excited to visit with was a church friend of my mother's in the picture below. Three things come to my mind when I think of Shirley. Russian tea, fudge bars and Little House on the Prairie books. I don't know if she knew at the time how much I was paying attention to her when she'd come to my mother's for tea. I sensed her motherly wisdom in raising a family of 4 and loved how her baking and friendship rubbed off on my own mother. I also recall the day she gave me my first Little House on the Prairie chapter book to read. I was in 4th grade and just learning how to read with stamina. She told me I could do it, a chapter at a time, and she knew I'd love the story.




I recall crawling into bed at 8 most nights and having my mother yell for me to shut off the lights at 9:30 and I wouldn't want to. A whole new world was opening for me and I couldn't wait to fly through the pages. I couldn't help but relate to this girl. Laura would talk about Pa chopping wood for the fire as I'd go throw another log on our own woodburning stove. In a weird way, I felt like I was making a new friend every time I picked up a book. And now reading is that faithful companion I carry with me still today.

But Shirley's legacy doesn't end with just me. My brother Lee shared with me that his daughter Madison, has turned into a book lover as well. He said he goes in search of her sometimes in the house and finds her sprawled across her bed, reading, and can't help but think of all the times he watched me do the same when we were young.



Madison has recently discovered Judy Blume, and that in itself speaks volumes to me. I know a whole new world is opening to her as well. So when Madison came for my father's birthday, I gave her a few books. I gave her a "tame" version of a Judy Blume, and her first Little House on the Prairie book, with a promise for the rest of the series if she continues to enjoy them. And I told her I was passing onto her what someone had once passed on to me. Its a bit of my legacy and I am all too thrilled to start encouraging that same love in a seed already planted in the next generation of book lovers.

So how about you? A Robin always asks... are you living your legacy each day? What seeds of yours will get planted and flourish?