I will admit that I buy Q-tips with tan bamboo sticks because they match the palette of my bathroom.
When you don’t have to explain this, then you know you have found your tribe. And what peace! What joy! What a relief to be yourself.
Conversations with my daughter-in-law are labored, her English, my French. But we have connected through a common palette. We both love the calming natural colors. She walked through my office and softly touched the tans and creams and whites and blacks. We laughed and smiled, both understanding the extensive joy that only a box of Jonathon Adler matches can evoke. Connected. Family.
When I was young, I remember people saying things like “you’ll find your way home,” “you’ll find love.” But maybe we have it wrong. I’m not sure any of it is found, but instead brought to life, nurtured, traveled, lived. And when it’s right, it’s as comforting as your signature palette. No performing, or worrying, just being. Oh, how I wish that for everyone! The comfort of your palette. The pleasure of your path.
I have lit candles in churches from the top of the red rocks in Sedona, Arizona to the Sacré-Cœur in Paris. In Rome. And New England. Minneapolis. Sometimes I say a prayer. Names of those I love. Wishes. Hopes. Sometimes I just breathe. Not in search of miracles. And I have chased them for sure, but it seems my handful (heartful) of miracles never came in moments of flee, but only moments of calm. It makes sense then, I guess, to give thanks in the same way, in the quiet glow of a candle.
I was gifted two new candles recently. And the real gift is, they know me! I love candles. And I light them immediately. I can no more imagine saving a candle, than saving love. I want to experience it now! So I lit the new candle in my bathroom yesterday, and for the first time, it seemed so clear — I wasn’t just lighting a candle — I was lighting a candle! (Sacré-Cœur). Every moment is special, sacred. Prayers and thanks are as real and magical in the ordinary as the extraordinary.
My heart smiled. It is not a cathedral, but it is my heart, my life, and as the song says, “I’m gonna let it shine.”
We do love our “holidays” in France. The Monday after Easter is a holiday. Everything is closed. Not that that’s different from every other Monday. If you want something special for a Tuesday, you will be wise to get it the Thursday before, just to be sure.
I still forget. Even Dominique forgets. And it can be annoying. It’s so easy to slip into the mode of “Why isn’t everything open all of the time?” — doing my best Veruca Salt – “I want it now!”
But today, still enveloped in the beauty that was yesterday, Easter Sunday, I’m glad it’s a holiday. I don’t really want the feeling to end. And why does it have to? Tomorrow even! Well, maybe a little less sugar, but I want the feeling to live on – this fluttering in my heart.
I don’t think the birds know if it’s Sunday or Monday, as they bounce in the air, singing all the while. I suppose that’s the magic of living – keeping that flutter.
And today doesn’t have to be different. The violet trees bloom under the blue sky. The grass is greening. I still love who I love – what could be more special than that?
So I direct the question, not to the stores in the street, but to my eyes, heart and mind, “Why isn’t everything open all of the time?!!” Let’s celebrate. Wide open! Today. The day after. And the one after that!
I still get excited. And why not!? Everything is in bloom. There is candy on the table and kindness in the air. Eggs of many colors. Family soon to arrive. Everything feels like hope.
My first Easter in France was so different from that of my childhood. There is no Easter bunny here. They have bells. Bells deliver the candy and hide it. Not in baskets, but behind trees and throughout the garden. Bells, I thought, how ridiculous – everyone knows a rabbit… I know. I heard it too. And so I joyously rang the bell, and let myself believe. It made no difference how the magic arrived. It was there, filling the trees.
My mother used to change the words to Peter Cottontail. As she skipped through the house with a basket of candy she sang, “Here comes Peter Cotton-fuzz, best little bunny that ever was…” Different words. Still magic!!!
There is room in the sky for all of it. All of us. Whether you celebrate Passover, Easter, or Ramadan, or just the bloom of spring. I think we all want to believe in the best of us. The renewal of goodness. The spirit of kindness. The lightness of hope. Let the message be delivered in every way possible – even on wings!
It was in thick cup. White with a pinstripe around its rim. Heavy. Sturdy, I thought. Probably could withstand a drop or a toss across the room. After I tasted the coffee, I understood why.
Church basement coffee. It was never the best. Even before coffee became a lifestyle, I think we all knew. But then we had better. Delicious coffee. Robust. Full. Flavored. There was no turning back.
I suppose it’s the same with everything. Especially people. I think back to the way we treated people in Junior High, and I cringe. I assumed life would change dramatically as we got older. But some still seem stuck. Childish. Bullies. Name calling. I’m over it. As we all should be. I’ve tasted better. I’ve been liked better. Loved better. And there’s no turning back.
Are my standards high? I hope so! I hope yours are too. Let’s not waste our time with mediocrity. I want to be better. At everything. Mostly at being a good human. And I think we help each other achieve that by raising the bar. Let’s get out of the basement and live! Fully flavored lives. Robust even!
The cup has been flung. The bar has been raised. Good morning!!!
A few years ago I received a mixer as a present. It’s a nice mixer. I took it out of the box. My husband looked at it, and asked, “What does it make?”
I smiled. “Well, it doesn’t “make” anything. I can use it when I’m making bread, or a cake, but by itself, it really doesn’t do anything.”
People ask me all the time, “What inspires you?” I suppose it’s the same answer. Nothing. If you are looking for something else, someone else, to do the work of inspiring, then you’re going to be very disappointed, and well, uninspired. You have to participate. It’s not enough to find inspiration, you have to “be inspired.” Gather if from within. A book on its own is only paper. But if you pick it up, read it, feel it, look up the words, trace them with your fingers, really live inside the pages – you, my friend, will be beyond inspired. Now, you might say, “Well, it has to be a good book.” Again, I disagree. When I’m reading something fantastic, something I adore, I think, “Wow, I want to be this good! I want to be better. I want to work harder!” When I read something that I don’t think is very good, say – I can see the ending coming for miles, then I think, “I can do better than this!” So I write some more.
Paintings. Music. Nature. It’s all out there. Just waiting for you to look, listen, explore. Eat the candy. Drink the coffee. Light the candles. Sip the wine. Take the walks. Have the conversations. Be inspired!
It’s messy, for sure, but delightfully so! Get your mind, heart and hands, covered in dough.
I suppose I’ve always been a romantic. I have never experienced a poverty of imagination.
I was often alone as a child. That’s not meant to be sad, and it wasn’t. It gave me time to create. We had a large green lawn on Van Dyke Road. On summer days, I took all of my dolls, stuffed animals, anything that could possibly have a personality, and placed them on the grass. They went to the circus. I tossed them in the air. They hung off branches, and bounced on basketballs. They visited other states and countries, as I walked them all through Hugo’s wheat field behind our house, dragging them in a rusted red wagon. They were rust stained, grass stained, and exhausted. And they were so happy. I suppose by “they” I mean me.
As I read more, learned more, I became more curious. What would it be like there? It must be exciting, I thought. I could hear horns honking in New York. Porches creaking in New England. Beaches in California. Cowboys in the south. And I imagined it all. How the sun felt as it beat against the writer’s shoulders. How the fire crackled with love and gathering. Paint splattered studios and hands. Everything was romantic.
I can still do it. I still do it. But the trick, or the blessing, is to see that romance, in the actual – the everything around you. And I do see it now. Oh, it can get lost, so easily – caught up in the ordinary, or the overwhelming events of life. But then I stop. Breathe. Gather all the romance around me until my chubby, youthful arms are full! Because I AM in love with my bathroom. The candles I light every morning when I take a shower. I adore breakfast with my husband – talking and dabbing every speck of croissant off of the plate, as to not miss a single taste. I am love with the violets and reds and yellows of springtime in Provence. I melt when I hear the birds singing, because I know that I have the paint and the hands, and the time, to capture them on canvas. To carry them with me, like a favorite song. Everything is not too much.
Maybe one of the best gifts that Van Dyke Road gave me was space. It wasn’t crowded. No dream was too big. I filled my heart, my brain, our front lawn, the gravel road, with the romance of all things possible.
The sun is shining – rich with possibility. My heart’s porch is sending you an invitation to the day! Isn’t it romantic?!!!
My mom had a doll when she was a little girl. It was to be her last doll. She knew that. Time to be a big girl and stop playing, after all, there were so many real babies, her other 8 siblings. But even as children, I think we know, we can see the lines we are crossing, and it was special, she was so special, this beautiful baby doll.
One of the smiling faces pictured above was the culprit. Left it outside, up a tree, in the rain. Her poor little painted face was running down into her dress. That wasn’t the way she was supposed to go. She was beautiful, and meant to be cherished. But as I think of her, I suppose she still is, cherished, I mean. I’m still telling her story.
These two aunts, my mother’s sisters, have recently passed away. So I write the stories. The stories of little girls that still play in the rain and annoy their sisters. The stories to show how fragile life is, how precious. In hopes that the words can climb the tree and stop the rain, and hold them all close, all together.
Each line. Each day. So special. So beautiful. Cherished.
Certainly I have never been mistaken for normal. But what does that even mean? And should it be something we strive for?
The world is ready at a moment’s notice to tell us what is good. What is beautiful. Right down to the color of the year. Do people actually paint their interiors because they saw a color survey on Instagram? We are bombarded with what we “must have” from Amazon. What everyone is buying from IKEA. Fast fashion from H & M.
I guess we are filled with this from the day we are born. We are told what is beautiful. What is good. It used to be Norman Rockwell that captured the moment. And if you didn’t have the father at home smoking a pipe by the fireplace, then you weren’t supposed to be happy. You weren’t complete. They showed us in books and on television. If you didn’t drive the right car, or drink the right cola, how could you be happy?
I gave up those standards long ago – some by choice, others by force, but it all turned out to be a gift. I got to make my own standards. My own happiness.
We always ask each other in the morning “did you sleep well?” “Why not” is our usual response. We have different sleeping habits, my husband and I, neither “perfect.” Rarely do either of us sleep “all in a row.” And certainly not for eight hours. And I suppose I used to think, well, I must have slept badly. But years ago, I gave that up. Why was it bad? Did I sleep some? Rest some? How do I feel? Fine? Then what was so bad? So when he asked me this morning, “très bien dormi?” I replied, “I had seven or eight really good naps.”
I came across an old journal. I was eighteen years old. Just graduated from high school. My mother and I were traveling from Minnesota to Washington State…by train. For my European audience, this might seem like nothing, a day trip on a fast train, a couple of journal entries at best. For my Americans, you know that I easily filled this book. It was not a fast train.
We boarded the train at night, still filled with the hopeful romance of it all. I went to sleep. Deep sleep. Deep dreams. Awakened six hours later. With no curve in her lips, the romance seemingly gone, my mother said, “We’re almost to Fargo.” (That’s a two hour trip by car.) Oof.
We started to look around. Not outside – we had seen this outside countless times. Inside. Now this was something. Those two men were sitting awfully close to each other. For a long time. Were they… I think they might be… yes, another trip to the bathroom confirmed it, yes, they were handcuffed, to each other. Transporting a prisoner. Were we in a movie? I wrote it down.
We went to the dining car. It was several away from our seats. Navigating between cars was tricky – not Indiana Jones tricky, but close. In the rattling we saw a man, well, “ratting” a woman. Maybe it was romantic after all. Returning to our seats later, we saw him sitting with his wife and child. Not the same woman. I wrote it down.
We had stops in unsavory depots. Mace was suggested. We didn’t have any. We only had each other. And the handwritten evidence that I was compiling in my journal.
A train derailed in front of us near the grand canyon. 6 hours later, watching only the motionless front of the train and the motionless back of the train out our window, we began the chug again.
I don’t remember if it was two days, or more, but oh, how we laughed. We found the story, wrote it down. Reread it. And laughed again. This inefficient, bumbling Amtrak gave us the greatest gift of all — time. I picked up my journal and held it in my hand. My heart rattled with joy, along with the prayers that time would actually, once again, slow to Amtrak pace.
