Intentions for a Week-End | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: Please join me in welcoming Author Michele Rhem, who presents us with her poignant memoirs of the Rabbit Patch, where her diaries weave tales of a simpler, expressive life lost to many, but gathered together in her most familiar environs - the Rabbit Patch.

    January is more like itself today. There is a cold wind blowing, pruning the winter trees and warning the daffodils all in one breath. I saw a little sparrow puffed up twice his size, trying to make sense of this January's behavior, when I got home. He was perched on a post in the picket fence and I wondered how he stuck to the place in the fierce wind. Nature never ceases to amaze me.

    I did not tarry to the back door of the old house on the rabbit patch. Christopher Robin did not even try to escape this time. Moon Shine, who used to be wild, has never attempted to brave the elements, since his civilization. When the door is open, he runs in a state of panic, to his "spot" as if he needs to claim it all over again.

    I have not been at the rabbit patch, on a week-end, in a good while. There is plenty of yard work, if the cold wind stops blowing. Branches are strewn there and yonder . It will take a fair amount of time to gather them, for another fire in the garden, some still, cold evening. There is a large cabinet in the laundry room, that can stand a thorough cleaning, if the wind "stays on like a week-end guest"-so I have a variety of tasks to choose from.

    I also have a new book to read. It is "Chasing Jubal" by Lylas' paternal grandfather, Bill Thompson. I was almost late for work this morning, because of it. I was on page forty, and had lost all desire to make money . There is something so completely satisfying about holding a good book in your hand-and turning a page with great curiosity. January is as good a time as I know of to get lost in a book. A winter day with a cold wind blowing, seems to give you permission to read for hours if you are so inclined-and I often am.

    Once, my mom and I were at a yard sale, when she spied an entire box of books written by an author she said her mama loved. I grew up with my maternal grandmother but she died suddenly one night when I was just ten years old- and so I bought the box without a moments' hesitation and commenced to reading them. They were well written historical novels by Victoria Holt. Somehow I felt like I was visiting with my grandmother as I read them. We went to tea plantations in India, castles in Ireland and royal gardens in England, that summer. I imagine those books were about the only way, Grandma ever got off the farm . I still have them. They are safely stored behind glass- paned doors in an antique cabinet, in the rabbit patch library.

    I plan to cook "Sunday Dinner", this week-end. It has been a while since I have done so at the rabbit patch. It is the kind of weather to cook foods slowly and deliberately, after all. I have a roast that will work nicely and if all goes well, I may bake a pie. Pie is especially good, when mama and daddy are here -otherwise, it is just pie.

    I sure hope I can finish Chasing Jubal, before the Sunday dinner. A good book has, in the past, turned my great expectations into pipe dreams, on occasion. A good book has caused me to burn a pan of biscuits. Once I scorched a pot of beans to the point, I had to throw the pot out, all because of a good book. . . and so, I declare here and now, not to have that book anywhere near me or the rabbit patch kitchen, this coming Sunday- especially, when I attempt to make the meringue for the pie.