Ode to Charity

My youngest sister Charity has just graduated high school, so Eric and I ventured down to Iowa for the weekend to partake in the festivities. After much last-minute preparation, including yours truly painting a porch on Saturday, we were able to eke out a pleasant open house. A last-minute idea was truly brilliant: in our den, we had two Dance Dance Revolution mats hooked up, causing several students to declare Charity's open house the best yet. And one frequenter (pegged as a teacher by my perceptive grandmother) rushed into our kitchen to thank us for the offered food. In her words, she was going to lose it if she saw any more food on buns. Charity opted to serve cucumber sandwiches, cheesecake, fruit pizza, and many other delectable treats.

Charity, by the way, is amazingly talented at whatever she touches. She is skilled at playing the saxophone and is picking up piano and guitar, she creates awe-inspiring paintings and sculptures, and she is adept at conveying thoughts in prose and especially poetry. In fact, as an Honor's project her senior year she composed a poetry book and gave friends and family copies of the finished product. I'm still early in my reading of it, but here is one of my favorites so far:

Ode to the Alphabet
12.15.05
Oh, Alphabet,
sung by little children who do not understand your purpose.
Yet they sing you--a collection of silly sound as small words:
the nonsensical chant of the nation,
one of the most sung songs of every English speaker.

Yet you receive no praise,
but are rather used to test the level of drunkenness
with the same song of children.
So, the drunk sings of you but distorts,
distorts the truest, most trusting song.
You are shamed.
Dumbfounded.
Appalled by his forgetfulness.

Like an absentminded lover,
he has forgotten you.
You, his first and truest love and
yet he knows not how to sing your song,
Our song.
--Charity S.

She's great at playing with words, as seen in this second example:

Dating Pettiness
01.20.06
Pettiness crept into my heart and
I welcomed him. We sat down for
a chat as I flavored my tea with
tears and drank in remorse. He
was a very obliging listener,
nodding and falsely verifying my
worries. The longer I indulged
Pettiness with cakes of doubt and
unfounded pastries, the more at
home he felt. His visits became
more frequent and Pettiness and I
became an item. I began reserving
seats for him and together we
regularly dined, feeding on
concerns and superficial desserts.
We made quite the pair, but my
ever-so-soft-spoken conscience
encouraged the break-up. In
typical manner I delayed the
separation and watched our teas
grow into coffees, now more
bitter than bittersweet. But the
day finally came and I let go of
Pettiness and caught Regret on
the Rebound.
--Charity S.

Gosh, my sister's cool. I suppose it doesn't hurt her case that she mentioned me in her dedication, but I digress. I know several of my siblings and my mother have possessed the knack for writing poetry, but I find myself more inclined to be overly wordy in narratives. Perhaps I'll be more deliberate one of these days and dabble in poetry.

To acknowledge her graduation, I was domestic and made my first ever quilt, as seen here. I admit, I'm fairly pleased with myself. Good thing she's family, or it would be hard to part with my creation.