AMANDA'S PENMENSHIP...

Sometimes as the evenings wear on, and I'm drowsy by the fire,

I'll stare at the blue flames dancing and licking the ashes, struggling to stay together. Rigid, charcoal squares, it almost looks as if a small animal is roasting on the spit. In the flames I lose myself in a thousand dancing yellows, oranges, and reds.

It invariably dies down, and I will go next to the hearth and add another log. I don't need to think. I don't need to plan. Just slowly watch the sticks burn. Hear them snap. Watch them become brittle and old like me, but so full of the sun's yellow power and heat. I'm fascinated because I'm so cold at the center of my being.

I can hear Amanda scratching away on her parchment. She's is working at her red/brown roll-top desk. She's practicing her penmenship. I don't know what's she's doing. I can't understand it. She has a book to help her along. She studies it most days.

But no besides watching the fire I like to listen to the soft bristle of her pen on the paper. My strokes would be so harsh and clumsy. I'd tear it. She glides as if she's weaving silk or gold with her beautiful writing.

She's worrking on a parchment that is bordered by flying angels, their wings and heads are all that that is visible. The letters dip and bend, struggle, and circle one another until I become dizzy looking at it. They almost do not seem to have a beginning or an end.

An eagle is perched on something that looks like the letter "D". A rose bursts from what appears to be an "S". A peacock struts his feathers towards the bottom.

She labors on her parchments for days and weeks. But nothing is hurried. No one is hurried in our household. We've no deadlines. She can make it as elaborate as she wishes.

She sometimes sells her parchments is the small mountain town near the bakery, when the weather and time permits. Not often as she must be up to the cabin to plan her next project.