{{memory}} - DPP '10

I have always been captured by simplicity.  Uncomplicated life - not easy necessarily, just an unpretentious, clean, sincere, modest and wholesome life.  When I was small (maybe 4?) I remember seeing a picture of a bonnetted girl in a dress holding some flowers.  Her name was Holly Hobbie.  I was enchanted from that moment on.  I wanted to have her life.  She was kind, thoughtful, and a friend.  She spent time gardening and giving away produce, mailing letters to sick friends and far away ones, quilting together with old and young, and wandering through fields alone pausing to look at the bees and clover, sitting in the shade of a tree and pondering...  It was my dream to be that lovely of a person.
She disappeared from my life as I got older.  Then I became a mom & I suddenly wanted those dreams for more than just me.
I researched Holly Hobbie and much to my surprise found her to be the illustrator of the cards, books, and poems I had dreamt over as a child.  Then I found she had just began a new series of books for this new generation.  I wondered if it would be as sweet and beautiful as Holly had been to me.   I found Toot & Puddle just before Christmas one snowy afternoon in one of those cutesy, over-priced novelty shops that I was browsing through.  I sat down in a chair close to the window and began reading about these 2 best friends in that magical winter light.  I finished it in tears & read it again.  It was the same Holly Hobbie who loved home, and relationship, and simplicity.  This time, however, it was 2 little pigs (the cutest you ever saw) & they love each other enough to let the other be themself.  Toot is a traveler, but never forgets to write home and always comes home anxiously in the end.  Puddle is a homebody, but he loves hearing of the faraway places and makes Toot's homecomings the best.
My kids all love these stories now right along with me.  We love the beauty of the illustrations, the fun way Holly tells their stories, and the adventures, but what we love most is their love for one another.  Their bond.
I don't know Holly, but I wish I did.  I wish I could tell her how much she has meant to a little girl who grew up in rags with the hopes of being someone who would be loved by others for her love and care for them and who had enough to give abundantly.  I wish I could tell her how 3 kids, years later, grew up watching their mama get choked up over the sweetness & beauty of 2 best friends giving each other  the best of themselves without reserve.  I wish she could know their love for each other and their friends and how they feel built up and are filled with a desire to be even better friends when they read her stories.
They are captured by simplicity, though our lives are anything but simple.