Carking Cares

I've turned back to my favorite comfort novels during this unsettling time and to favorite garden and food writers.

In one of my Richardson Wright books the longtime editor-in-chief of House & Garden Magazine writes of admiring one breed of wine enthusiasts, "a small coterie of rare souls, who write in true humility, men endowed with the sure and penetrating touch of the mysteries."

One he quotes often in his books is André Simon, often enough that I squealed with delight when I found an old book written by Simon in a thrift store. More on that another time, possibly, but here is the quote that Wright, a layman Episcopalian, was taken by:

Wit is not sold in bottles over the counter. Wit is in us as the spark is in the flint; wine strikes the flint of the intelligence and sparks cheer in the gloom; but it must be flint, not chalk, if there are to be sparks. Nor will any quantity of the best wine remove carking cares. Carking cares are a physic trouble not of the body but of the soul, and the soul liveth by the finest wine of all, a wine that is a food with a drug action a hundredfold greater than that of the best red or white wines; its name is Faith.

I had never heard the term carking cares but found that it is a Middle English term that means "to be burdened with trouble; worry."

Anyone experienced that recently? I have.

Those that be are searching for cures right now but maybe André Simon is right and the cure for our present personal carking cares is faith. 

I've known that all along and consider faith as my personal spiritual gift but it sure is good to be reminded, daily and often, especially at 3:30 a.m.

Know what I mean?
 

 

Sweet Memories and Sorrow

My mother and I on my second birthday....

Less than a week after my last post my beautiful mother slipped peacefully away to her heavenly home, probably feeling that it was past time to join my father, already there for many years.

My sisters and I miss them both so much but we are full to the brim with wonderful memories and so thankful to have been their four daughters.  

Though her passing was not unexpected at 95 years old, the depth of the sorrow my sisters and I have experienced was more than we ever could have imagined. 

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers for our mother's big family and for the families devastated by today's tornadoes in Nashville. All of our family is safe but so many have lost their homes and some the places where they worked and others have lost their lives.