There’s a quaint picture book penned and illustrated by Barbara Cooney. It features a lady named Miss Rumphius who has dreamed of seeing the world and having a house by the sea, but as a child, her grandfather gently reminds her that the most important dream is that of making the world more beautiful.
When the oldest one was younger, this story found its way into our book basket. We would sit shoulder-to-shoulder turning the pages slowly and pondering, too, how we could make the world more beautiful. Even a decade later, she still remembers Miss Rumphius and what the pages hold.
Throughout the story Miss Rumphius fulfills her dreams, but it is the last dream that holds a seemingly poignant metaphor to the past five months. In her quest to make the world more beautiful, Miss Rumphius selects the very best lupine seed, and then scatters it along highways and down country lanes, around the schoolhouse and back of the church, and even into hollows and along stone walls. What she sows, tends to flourish, more and more every year. The children gather around her, and she shares her stories. And when they part ways, the children leave seeking to make the world more beautiful.
It has been a heart-full and thought-full journey – we will forever be grateful that our journeys’ paths have crossed with yours.
~ A note to the Fehrs accompanying a copy of Miss Rumphius (Feb. 2020)
