elizabeth

I have an acquaintance named Elizabeth. I would love to call her a friend but sadly I’ve never been able to spend much time with her. She comes and goes, popping up in my life when I least expect it.

Elizabeth is somewhere in her thirties. She has a quiet spirit but knows how to have fun; sometimes her face bears a mischievous smile and her eyes always sparkle. Most of the times I talk with her are at the old fashioned dances where she happily wears the “TV Western” dresses that she and her sisters love to sew to dance in. To me she is the embodiment of a lifetime past, a beautiful, slower world where cows are hand milked, wool is spun; generations live together and share wisdom as well as laughter.

Elizabeth has Mennonite roots and currently lives on a family farm that’s over one-hundred years old. She and her sisters and brothers are working side by side making plans to breathe life back into their family heritage there.

She is a sweetheart, making people feel loved and welcome. Posessing much wisdom she shares but doesn’t throw it at you. She slowly offers her experiences and life lessons, making them so appealing that you would love to gather them all up and store them away in little boxes to look at whenever you please.

To me she has the air of someone who might have had a tragic romance in the past. But perhaps I let my imagination runaway with me.

Lest you think Elizabeth is stuck in the past you should know that she has a teaching degree and has been mentoring and mothering her classes as a professional teacher. Elizabeth strikes me as a woman who has the brain of Madam Curie, the wisdom and wit of Eleanor Roosevelt and the adventurous heart of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I wish I knew her better.