This Past Saturday | 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.

    Sunday is fading fast. The shadows made by evening light are falling in their familiar places. Sunday nights are typically still and quiet at the rabbit patch. I make a good effort to have the house in good order as the weekly routine unfolds before the dawn of Monday. Clocks end our morning dreams and we scatter from the rabbit patch, each in a different direction. Monday, shows no mercy.

    Tonight, I vow to remember Saturday. It was Mama's birthday and so Daddy and I were taking her to a restaurant in Greenville, just thirty minutes away. Mamas' official party is scheduled for next week end. The day was spring-like. Tulip trees bloomed along the road to Greenville . A Bradford pear with its' pure white flowers made me think of Easter. February has been quite a disorienting affair.

    My sister from Raleigh, devised a plan, to meet us at the restaurant to surprise Mama. It worked out beautifully and it did me good to see Mama so happy. The meal was good and the waitress was friendly. Delores brought a small cake and we both gave mama small tokens to open. It was a happy occasion, altogether and concluded with the birthday song being sung with strangers in close proximity.

    My oldest children were in Wilmington. They took Lyla to the ocean, as the weather was so pleasant. Lylas' uncles, Tres and Brant, climbed an ancient live oak and took Lyla with them. They sent pictures to prove it. There is something so extraordinary to see your children become parents and uncles. They all take their roles very seriously. I watch my boys with Lyla and whether one is playing a guitar for her or up some tree-well, words fail to do justice, to the state of contentment such things bring about.

    The contents of our days, may not seem so spectacular, when isolated from one another-but when you consider sightings of blossoms on trees, pleasant gatherings with family, and your mamas' seventy-fifth birthday, Saturday was not a bit short of spectacular.