Yesterday girl child and I spent our day with crowds of people. The first part of the day was in our city's old cemetery and the afternoon and evening in rehearsal and set up the youth theatre's production of Rapunzel. Move In Day, for this theatre group, is when they occupy the entire church that the play is staged in, taking over the hallways, room and chapel so completely that for the next three Sundays, the sermons will be delivered in front of a tower used to imprison a certain lanky locked princess.
That would be over a hundred people running around a church for six hours, trying to get a big job done. Dramatically.
I can't say that I always prefer the company of the dead over the living, but they certainly are quieter.
During the summer months, the kids and I tend to find ourselves in the cemetery often. Older cemeteries often have mature trees and benches in shady spots. They are quieter and cooler than the playgrounds and public parks, and there is much of interest to occupy young minds and their adult handler for a few hours.
I am not the only one who thinks the graveyard is a great place to take your kids. It's also a good place to read, have a picnic, talk a walk, do some rubbings, have a quiet chat with your companions living or otherwise, and, I suppose if you are feeling silly, ponder your mortality.
This particular cemetery is our city's older one that is no longer accepting any new clients. It's very close to the center of town, overlooking a nature sanctuary. The only way to have this one as your final resting place is to already have an unoccupied spot held by your family or, I suppose, marry in. The newer city held cemetery is a couple kilometers out of town. We hope to visit next week sometimes but, I suspect, it will not be as peaceful as this one. Some of the best places in the world are old cemeteries, where the bones are well settled in, the grounds are a beautiful combination of meticulous grooming and wild undisturbed brush and there are few visitors who move quietly among the stones.
I use to hang out in a cemetery when I was a kid. It was so quite and peaceful. And I liked to spy on people and write about them in the notebook I carried with me everywhere (a la Harriet the Spy).
ReplyDeleteI think we may have to seek out some of the cemeteries around town. I bet the kiddo would love to do the rubbings.