The Sled

My neighbor, Ruth and I had similar interests. Gardening and reading for the most part. She was about my age, when we met. I was in my 40's. There was quite an age difference. We gardened across a green alley from each other. I started my love affair with Redbud trees at that time. They grew in her "natural area" as she called it. She told me that her dad and mom brought all the Redbuds in our little town up from Southern Illinois and gave them to people. Her dad was a builder and built many of the old homes in our town. We visited everyday, gardened, swapped plants, shared baked treats etc. She was the most generous person I have ever known. She never went to the store without bringing me the newest jelly, household cleaner, lambswool duster, paints and pens and so on. So, when in her old age, she decided to move to Georgia to be nearer her kids...needless to say we were heart broken. They had a big sale before they left. I helped get things ready for it and even though I knew that this was the best thing for them...it was hard. One day I heard a knock at the back door. Here was Ruth holding an old sled. She said that she had had many hours of fun with this old thing. She lived across the street from the park, and she would go sledding there during her childhood winters. She still lived in the house next door to her original home when she was growing up.

At that time I was busy with my painting. Christmas was the busiest time of the year. People brought me milk cans, saws, and sleds to be painted. She thought that I could paint this one. I looked at it and told her that I would never paint it. I would use it at Christmas to decorate my house and remember her and our fun together. Before moving she brought over some very old pictures of her, when she was a little girl. I decided to decoupage them to the back of the sled, so I could look at them every year. Ruth is gone now, but I think of her every time I see glitter, Queen Anne's Lace, May Flowers, Johnny Jump Ups, Trillium, Jack in the Pulpits, Dogtooth Violets, Bittersweet, Holly and the Hampshire Forest Preserve (where she would "spirit away (her words) some wildflowers that they would never miss." She was someone who baked cookies for all the shut ins in town, the merchants, the firemen, and the people at the post office. She always added a little "doo dad" that she had made...covered with glitter...she was the glitter queen. I miss her.

Balisha