A Woman Named Fairlight

When I first read the book Christy, by Catherine Marshall, I was about twelve. I loved it for the adventure, bravery, and romance. I re-read it after I had been married for a few years, and got something entirely different out of it. This passage is one I think of every day when the sun is shining warm and bright and the dishes are crusty in the sink. It features Christy’s best friend in the mountains, Fairlight Spencer. Her very name is poetry.

“[Fairlight] taught me something important about the use of time and how to enjoy life. With a husband and five children to cook, clean, wash, even make clothes for, and with no modern conveniences at all not even piped-in water, Fairlight might have felt burdened and sorry for herself–but she did not. Often, she found time to pause in her dishwashing to let her eyes and her spirit drink in the beauty of a sunset. She would interrupt her work to call the children and revel with them in the grandeur of thunderheads piling up over the mountain peaks, heat lightning flashing behind the clouds like fireworks. “It lifts the heart,” she would say, and that was explanation enough for any interruption.

There was always time for a story in front of the fire with the children snuggled against her; always leisure for the family to gather on the porch “to sing the moon up.”

Fairlight told me how on the first fine spring day, she considered it only right and proper to drop her housework: “The house, it’s already been a-settin’ here for a hundred years. It’ll be right here tomorrow. It’s today I must be livin'” and make her way to one particular spot she knew. There she would kneel and with her long slender fingers brush aside the dead, sodden leaves and gaze wonderingly on the first blossoms of the trailing arbutus.” (Chapter 17, Christy). 

Yesterday was a day when I remembered Fairlight and threw the daily routine to the wind. One o’clock is when my two-year-old Isaac is supposed to go down for his afternoon nap. But the sun was warm, the day was bright, and the cold rain that had plagued us for a week-and-a-half was finally gone. We spent an hour outside, pretending to spin the pine straw all over our yard into gold (Ella’s favorite outdoor make believe game). You’ll be relieved to know that we spun enough gold so that the king decided not to throw us into the dungeon. Believe it or not, it was Isaac asking “Can I take a nap now?” that finally sent us inside. Poor kid. I maintain fresh air is just as good as a nap, but maybe not for a two-year-old. Fortunately for him, he got both. Now that the gray day is back, we hold the memory of sun rays on our warm faces until it breaks through the clouds again. And, yes, I did get around to washing those crusty dishes.

What feeds your soul is different than what feeds mine. Bright sunshine may be nice, but what you may really love is baking scrumptious chocolate delicacies, or creating beauty out of nothing but fabric and thread or a few blocks of wood. Maybe getting your car really clean or organizing your kitchen pantry makes your heart sing. Maybe it’s just sitting by the fire with hot coffee and your loved ones. Whatever it is, remember Fairlight and leave the laundry unfolded. Grab a book, grab your family, grab your favorite baking ingredients, grab on to what makes you feel alive, and tell everyone, “it’s today we must be living.” And have a truly amazing weekend.

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