I took a photograph as ’21 turned into ’22. I shook the image into view. Winter turned to spring before my eyes, and petals fell from trees. Pinks turned into greens. Splashes in sun-warmed water sounded like promises. I put sleeves on tanned shoulders, and never dreamed goodbyes would have to be said to love that fell from the tree that gave life. Bundled and braced. Memories wintered my soul in the white of the photograph — the photograph made not with a click of shutter, but the blink of an eye. The same blink that opened ’23.
Open lens. Open heart. Smile! I’m just getting started.
Cluttered with nightmares and nonsense, I don’t normally put that much stock into my dreams. But all last night, I was trying to sign up for another year of university. Hour after hour I searched for the registration. Went through the pamphlets. Made appointments with my advisor. Even after waking up twice, I went right back to it. Would I rent the apartment near campus? Would I get an advanced degree? Academia all night long. I’m not complaining – it was far from the normal hauntings. So was it a sign?
Signs are funny things. They are probably all around us – all the time. Some meant for us. Some maybe not. Some gathered in. Some trampled over. I guess it is what we choose to see. And maybe when we miss it, it repeats itself. Over and over again. Until we pay attention.
I guess it’s time for me to keep learning. Or maybe, it’s a sign to tell myself that I AM still learning. I will forever be learning. And that is not a nightmare, but a gift. And that’s a hard one for me to, well, learn. I can get myself trapped in a worry. Stuck in a pattern of fearing the unknown. But it will always be there — through all the nightmares and nonsense — there will be growth. There will be challenges. There will be learning. Beauty in it all.
The sun rises brand new, telling me, “If I’m not happy in this time, in this place, I’m not paying attention.”
There was always a kleenex in my grandma’s pocket. A breath mint in my mother’s purse.
We think we have to do the grandiose gestures to be loved. I have been guilty of this, for sure. But I teach myself, daily, as I remember the little things, that life is a series of smalls, little pieces of love and kindness that fit into those tiny spaces of your heart, and fill it.
Maybe it was because she started when I started. Since I was five, I went into my room and came out, presenting it to my mother. She said it was great – and I believed her. She used the same words that others would come to use, but when she said them, and oh, I can still hear it (please let me forever hear it), yes, when she said it, it meant the world to me. When she said the word “beautiful, it wrapped around my heart, the “b” connecting the vowels around each beat, into the “ful” – and yes, my heart was so full!
I guess nothing becomes familiar in true love. Never ordinary. You can say the words again and again — I love you — and when it’s real, little sparks continue to fly. When they enter a room, these loves, it’s the grand float of the parade we’ve stood on cement sidewalks waiting for in the heat of the summer sun. The same sidewalk where grandma handed you a Kleenex, after your Crazy Dayz grab bag from Ben Franklin turned out to be a dud. The same sidewalk where mother slipped a mint into your sweaty hand, as you were daring to say hi to the teenaged carry-out boy from 7th grade English. The same sidewalk your husband-to-be switched places with you so you would be out of traffic’s way.
I march in the parade of little things. I hear the tiny words, “I love you,” and believe them. Step outside with me today. Wave your hands in figure eights. True love is passing by.
I always asked for art products each Christmas. Maybe a craft. Shrinky-dinks. Candle makers. Paints or pencils. Sketchbooks. Anything that could be made into something. I suppose I’ve forever been an artist, but there was more to it than that. I think I knew there would always be the 26th. The day after. No more presents to open. Festivities done. Decorations coming down. In all that ending, I would have something to begin.
Each year my French family asks me what I would like. My go-to answer is, still, anything to do with art. They ask what. Doesn’t matter. What kind? Doesn’t matter. What brand? Doesn’t matter. I guess because it ALL matters. It all works for me. It’s not just love, it is love extended. It fills the hole of the day after and turns it into the day of! Uplifting the let-down. Offering the start of a new season. It gives. It becomes.
Maybe that’s what true love is. Joy in life’s 26th. Wonder in the ordinary. Lights in our darkest hour. Beginnings. Again and again. Celebration all year long. That’s what I wish for you! May you find it today, and every day. Happy 26th!
You can see it in a painting. In a poem. When it’s just trying too hard. Overworked. Exhausted. It sucks the beauty right out of it.
I called her Grandma Lois. We weren’t related, but for the love of painting. She was hovering in her eighties. Still brush in hand. I offered my youth. She offered her experience. Our palettes combined. She told me the hardest thing for her had always been learning when to stop. To look at what she had painted and say, this is good – what I’ve created – it’s enough. To learn, and create again — that was the real beauty, she said. We smiled. Painted. Connected.
On canvas, I have learned this. It’s harder in real life. There are some people with whom you think, if I just tried a little harder, maybe if I was just a little brighter, better — if I was just more beautiful, inside and out, maybe they would see me. All overmixed paint turns to brown. Some people just won’t see you. And you have to walk away. Step aside and say, what I offered, it was enough.
Surround yourself with those who can see it. Can see you. In the purest, most simple strokes. Wow – to sit in that beauty – that beauty of being. Knowing your all, their all, is more than enough. Not gasping, just breathing. This, I think, is the art of loving, of living. This is good. This is beautiful.
We always made one last trip to the lake, my mom and I, after running along the Magnificent Mile for two days. In measured steps, we walked the quiet Sunday morningsidewalk. Past the water tower. The drowsy Drake hotel. Then under the street. Up to the beach. There it was. Lake Michigan. Always important. Never urgent. And we breathed. Offering thanks, with the slow reverence it deserved. Both of our wrists still marked by the weight of shopping bags, we held out our hands and waved, not goodbye, but in recognition.
Some days, I still try to urgent away the emotion. I could vacuum. And dust. Ironing needs to be done. And I could write lists of more things to do. But then there is the important. Calling. In waves. So I take out my sketchbook. My paints. Tape off a square. Imagine the calm. And with blued brush, I gently put it on the paper. And I feel it all. The tender of memory and time. I smile and breathe in the important, and watch the urgent roll on by.
It wasn’t a recognized brand name. The only “flying” it did was behind me as I ran. But I loved that wagon. It carried everything that was important to me. As red as I imagined my heart to be, I filled it with stuffed animals and baby dolls. I put a blanket down first so their backsides didn’t turn orange. Yes, it was rusted, but not through. It was strong. Carrying every dream that I imagined for myself, and all those I pulled behind.
They were bounced over gravel day after summer day. To the circus and picnics. To schools and playgrounds. To airplanes. To malls. To weddings. To the future. Anything, anywhere I could imagine. My fingers gripped the handle. My heart gripped the possibilities. I had everything.
I will admit in recent days, I have felt that if I were to touch my heart, my hand would come back orange. Tear-rusted. And it might be true. But I don’t love it any less. I don’t want to love anything less, or anyone less. So I feel it. Embrace it. And hang on! Because now is the time for more. More feelings. More dreaming. More possibilities. More love. Heart wagons filled and racing behind legs of youth. Forever with me. With us. As long as we hold on.
I battled my French lesson this morning, word by word, accent by accent. And “they” know when you are struggling — a little prompt comes up — “Even when you make mistakes, you’re still learning.” I smile and pray it is true, with everything I do.
Sometimes I’ll say a few words to a stranger in French, and they will answer in English. “Wow,” I think, “it’s really that obvious?”…as if the crutch of my broken language is dangling from under my arm. If only the real struggles of everyone were that easy to see.
It’s so easy to be unkind. To be impatient. I know it is a lesson, I, we, must work on daily. It’s impossible to see what everyone is going through. The “how are you”s and the “fines” just don’t tell the whole story. The limps of the heart go undetected. So I guess the answer is to just keep trying. Trying each day to be more kind. More empathetic. And even on the days we fail, when others fail, to understand that we are all still learning. Arriving at something close to hope, and beginning our journey again.
I am bombarded with Birkenstocks. I’ve only recently come to like them. I saw a documentary on the company right before traveling to the US in September. What I remembered most was the CEO saying he neither wanted, nor needed celebrity endorsements. He was confident in their product. The airline lost our luggage, and I was in need of a pair of shoes. So I tried my first pair. And I loved them. People can change.
I looked online to find some for my husband. With one look, I have been pegged. Now all I receive are Birkenstock ads. Over and over and over. But that’s what the internet does. The slightest movement and you are forever tagged as that kind of person. And that’s one thing for a computer. I can let that go. But it got me thinking, do we do that as humans? To each other? I’m so afraid that we do.
I know for certain that I am not the same person I was at 14, or 17. I’m really not even the same person that I was last month. Life changes. We change. With any luck, a bit of grace, for the better. And I want people to see it. Of course we all do. But I am just as guilty as the next person…seeing someone that I went to high school with, and still thinking of them as they were, the jock, the brain, the stoner… But I don’t want to be stuck there, so why would I, should I, want to hinder the growth of others? We all need the chance to grow. To wander. To learn. To become. Every day.
As I scroll through the morning ads, I smile. I, we, are not stuck. We are not trapped. We are not one thing. We are allowed to change our shoes, our minds, even our hearts. We are allowed to grow. Welcome to the garden.
Maybe he was more aware of how little time there actually was…maybe all farmers are, as they watch and work the seasons. Or maybe he was just smarter than the rest of us, but my grandfather did not suffer fools. He just didn’t want to hear it. He had no time for the whining… the “but he got to do it” or “it’s just not fair”… No, he would have none of it. Even when what we were battling was not each other, but something deep inside ourselves, the answer was always the same – “Focus on something else. Focus on someone else.”
And it has always worked. Which is why it is so surprising to me, with this 100% effectiveness, I have had to learn this lesson again and again and again. Yesterday I was having a bit of a melt down, and I’m being generous. It was not pretty. All morning long. By the afternoon, even I was tired of hearing the voices in my head. So I changed them. Focus on something else. Someone else. That something was going to be cookies. That someone was going to be my mother in law. Because even nearing a century old, she still loves sugar.
The signs were there – as I suppose they always are. Two cups of butter. That’s a lot of butter. Of course there was going to be a lot of dough. But I mixed up the recipe. Filled my mixing bowl to the rim. Made my tester cookie. Perfect. Hurray. Soon the voices in my head were silenced by a layer of flour. Roll. Cut. Bake. Roll. Cut. Bake. There were so many cookies. And then the frosting. It was hours. By the end I was exhausted. And lighter. And happy.
Today we will deliver the cookies — sugar and lessons in tow. The seasons of both are so very sweet.
