An Old Song, A Wise Old Song

I have a real love for the old editions of Ideal magazine. The poetry is centered on home and the simpler side of life. Recently I acquired three rather old copies, from the 1950's. Many of the stories and poems reflect a "looking back" to when times were simpler than they were in the 1950's. Yet we often look back to those times for our "those were the days".

Many years ago we embarked on a journey to live our lives different from the mainstream. My husband and I share goals of living simply, living apart from the world of keeping up with the Joneses and actively maintaining a life where home, love and family are the focus. Not the job, the house, the money, the stuff you can accumulate.

We raised our children that way too. Seeking for them to know the value of work, the value of family ties, the value of doing what is right, honorable and ethical. We raised them with a strong tie to God too. We taught them at home, home schooling for 17 years. This life seemed so old fashioned to family and to some friends. My husband and I spent years planting seeds in our children's hearts and today, with them all grown, we can sit back and enjoy the harvest of a wonderful family, now, with a new generation on the way. Were we perfect ? No, of course not, but we were happy to walk the road less travelled and stick to it and it has paid off. We have a family full of love and contentment. We kept constant our desire to live simply, to not need so much that the stores have to offer. To content ourselves with games played on the floor by soft golden lamplight, to ride to town in the pony cart and wake at dawn to milk goats and make cheese. To use soap made in the kitchen, to hang clothes even in the dead of the winter. To heat the home with the warmth of the wood stove. These things do and did make our life different in so many ways. I was hanging clothes a couple days ago and talking to the little boy next door over the fence, he said to me, "Patty, why do you hang clothes, we think its stupid". I just smiled at this 4 year old who asked what he heard his family say, and told him, " because I like to". It was the truth. A dryer would steal away from me the exercise of hanging clothes and more importantly the profound joy of hearing birds sing, of seeing new flowers, tiny insects, clouds sailing by in constantly changing shapes, and I would miss the fresh air filling my lungs, and so much more. Hanging clothes is just one example of our choice to live simply. But its the one folks make the most comment on : )

My mother used to talk to our neighbor while hanging clothes, my grandmother too. Everyone seemed to do wash the same day, and took opportunity to chat while hanging up clothes. Of course most women stayed home in those days too so there was that opportunity to chat over the task at hand. Ahhh the good old days !

When I read my old Ideals magazines, the poetry, the pictures, seem to reflect what we strove for in raising our family and establishing a home.

Every once and again, my desire to know more takes me on a side trip that ends up to be a road that doesn't take me where I really want to go, its like taking a trail that is pretty but just ends up to be the long way around to where you started from, but I grow from it, it makes me stronger in some ways. I am not embarrassed by my searching and learning and even sharing along the way.

Its my nature to enquire, to want to know, sounds like that newspaper by the checkout at the store, but there is always something running deeper keeping me heading back to my foundation and I see this very same thing in so many today. We are lookers, seekers, want proof.

I don't see that mentality reflected in the old books I read or the poetry in the old Ideal magazines. We now are more discontent with just faith and acceptance. We want to know the how and the why and the how come of everything. An information generation.

But here today I found the words to this old song, and it contains wise, good information.

Written long ago in the 19th century....a truth for today too.

MRS LOFTY AND I.
Words by Mrs. C. H. Gildersleeve.
Mrs. Lofty keeps a carriage, So do I:

She has dapple grays to draw it, None have I:

She's no prouder with her coachman Than am I;

With my blue-eyed, laughing baby Trundling by.

I hide his face, lest she should see The cherub boy and envy me.
Her fine husband has white fingers. Mine has not;

He could give his bride a palace,-- Mine, a cot;

Her's comes home beneath the starlight,-- Ne'er cares she;

Mine comes in the purple twilight, Kisses me,

And prays that He who turns life's sand Will hold His loved ones in His hands
Mrs. Lofty has her jewels, So have I;

She wears her's upon her bosom,-- Inside I;

She will leave her's at death's portal, By-and-by;

I shall bear my treasures with me When I die, For I have love and she has gold,-- She counts her wealth,--mine can't be told.
She has those who love her--station, None have I;

But I've one true heart beside,-- Glad am I;

I'd not change it for a kingdom, No, not I.

God will weigh it in His balance, By-and-by,

And the difference define 'Twixt Mrs. Lofty's wealth and mine