From Stillmeadow Sampler

I was going through some old notebooks with quotes and passages I had saved. It was a notebook that I labeled "Seasons", and has lots of notes I've written over the years about... well, seasons. I have a separate notebook for autumn and one for winter, but everything else is in the "Seasons" notebook. Anyone who knows me well understands that I'd have more notes about autumn and winter :)

I stumbled upon this passage from Gladys Taber's "Stillmeadow Sampler", and thought I'd share it.


"It is interesting to note how much like the seasons people are. I know some who are summer people, and I am happy to be with them. They are gay and easy and full of pleasant talk. But they would never do for an emergency. Then they are too busy or they are going away. There are people like spring, too, volatile and blowing one way one minute and another way the next. They are charming. Autumnal people are sober and grave, I find, but with bursts of sudden color.

But winter people are the best and there are few of them. They are the friends who are deep and true, once you penetrate to the secret warmth. The surface may not be as gay and charming but under the austere surface runs the living sap of lovingkindness. These are the friends to call when there is an emergency, big or small. They are the ones who never expect gratitude for favors done, it is a matter of course to help out, think nothing of it.

But it is wrong to expect summer people and spring people and even autumn people to be different than they are by nature. We cannot all be alike, and indeed it would be a sad world if we were. How much better to enjoy the gift of personality which everyone has and not expect a summer person to sit up all night with you while you watch a sick puppy. Ask that of a winter person, but enjoy the summer people for what they do give and for what you give them.

One of the wisest remarks anyone ever made to me was long ago when I was sad because a very dear friend had failed me in a very real way. Faith Baldwin said to me then, 'Love people for what they do have, never for what they do not.' And she added, 'Love them for what they have meant to you no matter what they may mean to you now.' ...

... Seasons flow one into the other, today moves inexorably toward tomorrow and we cannot keep even the most enchanted hour. World events shape different unknown destinies for mankind. Nevertheless these abide: love, friendship, faith in God. These armor us against the transitory aspects of life on this planet.

And so, as I look toward summer, my heart is thankful. And may God bless my neighbors all over the world, I pray, as I open the picket gate."

~ From "Stillmeadow Sampler" by Gladys Taber (1959)