THAT THING WITH FEATHERS

So I brought a nasty little cold back with me from North Dakota. But of course I wouldn't trade a second of time spent with my father. Even the tough moments I wouldn't part with. You know what I'm talking about.

The word for the day is HOPE, and I almost wish I had chosen it as my word for the year. It certainly pops into my head often enough, especially since my youngest son has taken a shine to a girl named Hope.

Eric smiles every time the word hope arises in conversation, and the other day when we were watching Orangutan Island on Animal Planet, he told me at a commercial break that the word hope had been said 18 times already. We found the word hope on the wall at Bismarck Cancer Center, and on the lips of cancer survivors and family members of non-survivors at AppleFest, the big fundraiser for Bismarck Cancer Center Foundation.

Could there be a more optimistic or necessary word?

I leave you with Emily Dickinson's lovely little poem:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.


- Emily Dickinson