Spring Cleaning Somewhere Else

It seems the time is flying by.  Over this long Memorial Day weekend, I have purposed to do some Spring cleaning — especially my office space.  I just have to close my eyes and toss things away at times.  I inevitably find new projects, abandoned projects, and procrastinated projects in the midst of all my stuff.   These discoveries side track me and turn two hour cleaning exercises into four hours of reminiscence.  I gathered up two years worth of greeting cards to sort through.  I cringe to toss some away while carefully laying aside those with lengthy notes and others of sentimental value.  The only people who have never failed to give me a Valentine’s Day card — my parents.  The wonderful birthday and Christmas greetings of close friends.  I scooped up all that I saved and headed to the storage box in my garage.  I opened the top and added these to the pile of sentimentality dating back to high school.   Oddly enough, my high school is preparing to have multi-year reunion on June 13.  I will be at the Atlanta Eucharistic Congress that day but high school memories surface here in my plastic storage bin.  I have my Senior memory book and open to a familiar poem.  A classmate gave me this poem, ripped from a Sunday School magazine, she said it reminded her of me.

Green Fields

Out there
Somewhere
I think
There are green fields
Spotted with white daisies!

Out there
Wherever
I think
The people dance gaily
To a joyous melody.

Out there
Someplace
I think
There is a rainbow hanging
In a blue, sunlit sky.

If what
I think
Is there is there
Why shouldn’t I opt
To find my freedom, too?

But
What if
There, as here,
The eternal green fields
Grow only from within?

What then?

—- Franklin Farmer

I think about this sometimes, as though the person is always thinking of someplace else.  My parents would say I was in a fantasy land or dream world of my own — sometimes lovingly put and sometimes critically.  A Baptist church friend of my mother’s, who after learning I was joining the Catholic Church, said, “It doesn’t surprise me.  She always seemed to be someplace else.”   Well, my someplace else is a wonderful place to be.