A long time ago, the other day, once upon a time are all phrases that indicate vague dates.

"Once upon a time,"is the usual way a fairy tale begins, such as, "Once upon a time there lived in the middle of a live oak forest a single palm tree."

When one uses "The other day," he is usually referring to some event that happened day before yesterday or last week, maybe two weeks ago, i.e., "The other day I was in a floral shop and witnessed someone arranging for 350 palm fronds to be delivered to a church."

"A long time ago," smacks of something that really happened as opposed to the questionable veracity of "Once upon a time." For example, "A long time ago I, along with other children marched down a church aisle waving palm branches."

Do you see the common denominator?

Well, to pin a date down, very definitely, today is Palm Sunday and a long time ago I did participate in the last example given.

What we waved, though, were not palm branches but Boston fern fronds. Not many, probably none of us living on the river valley farms had ever seen a palm tree. But we sure did know about Boston ferns. Every housewife for miles around had at least one huge Boston fern. They may all have been started from some original mass of roots. One purpose for keeping the ferns alive and healthy was so that a few fronds donated by each housewife would keep going the annual children's ritual of Palm Sunday.

We may not have known about palm trees, but we sure did know about that long ago day when the followers of Jesus went before him into Jerusalem strewing palm branches in the pathway of the donkey upon which Jesus was riding. And I remember that long ago question posed by red-haired Ercle in the Sunday School class that had preceded a Sunday morning church service. "Why did his followers do that?" Ercle knew about helping his father pitch hay from the barn loft down into v-shaped mangers for the horses to eat and strew straw for the cows to lie on at night.

Our teacher paused before answering, evidently knowing she would be speaking to impressionable minds, then said, in essence, "To show that he was welcome into their city and into their lives."

We understood the "welcoming him into their city." We'd seen small parades welcoming home soldiers from WWI. Maybe we couldn't yet get the full import of the abstract "welcoming him into our lives." But that would come later.

Anyway, a long time ago I, in my Sunday best, along with others, marched down the little country church aisle, waving a fern frond in each hand. The congregation, as always, arose and applauded. Hearty "Amens" instead of "Hosannas" were heard here and there from those who knew what such welcoming meant and intended that ere long we fern/palm wavers would too.

Once upon a time, a long time ago it happened, and I got to thinking about it just the other day.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.