Moe

Moe's first little walk in the park!

Calm

I love my city, my Cleveland. I love driving through Tremont. I love the people with their plastic bags.  I love the girl driving her bike with no hands. I love lattes from Lucky's Cafe. I love the grit and the musicand even the humidity. 

Feeling grateful,  expansive, strong,  and calm in this moment.  

Been needing this moment for a long ass time.

Love,  love,  it's all around.

First Walk of Spring

(Here's another post I wrote back in February or March-- once I opened the draft, the date changed to today so I don't remember what the original date was)  Anyway, I don't know why I never published it.  Flashback!!

Hi.  This is me. 

A tree fell right on top of our favorite spot to build fairy houses, which is cool because now there will probably be a ton of good pieces of bark to use for siding and shingles!

Gorgeous rivers in the wrong and perfect places.

 I felt like garbage with nausea and fatigue all day, but then I walked and played with the kids, took an I'm-gonna-hurl break, cooked, took another break to lie still for a half hour or so, finished up the pies, and the nausea is almost tolerable right now.  Almost.  I am proud of my sick self because I made pizza, a breakfast bake thing, Hungarian noodles (but I pretended I remembered the recipe instead of looking it up.  Turned out decent), and two pies.  Except the Crisco either got hot or cold at some point and the crusts came together weirdly.  We'll see if they past the taste test in a few minutes here. 

Simple Joys

Tiny post-it notes are one of the key tools in my intellectual and spiritual pursuits. 

Spa Treatments

Some days you get the very last cut of brie in the whole store and it gives you hope. 

I've been educated,  nurtured with essential oils and green smoothies,  allowed to sleep in, and I'm feeling stronger. 

The future.  Saying things out loud and hearing them.  Baffling, humbling reality.  Wondering how it got to this point and where to go next. 

And mainly going over 24 hours without feeling like my chest is caving in and I can't breathe.  Heavenly.  

Four Year Old Photographer

These are from Friday but I'm just putting them up now.  Enjoy our picnic through Jonah's eyes:

RAIN

Beauty is sun glinting off so many torrents of water rushing across the parking lot and down the sewer.  Rain water flowing through my sandals.

This is My Life

There was a moment today when I was balancing yoga-style on one leg in the kitchen, eating cookie dough, drinking afternoon coffee and carrying on a conversation with my husband in which he was helping me grieve the recent breaking off of an inappropriate attachment I had formed with another guy.

Beautiful in its surreality, this snapshot kind of captures the strange balance of what healthy means to me:
Taking care of each other.
Taking care of yourself.
Stretchy pants or no pants.
Facing conflict dead on like adults.
Cookie dough on a day of tears or whenever.
Coffee when you don't get to sleep.
Reaching for the phone immediately when I'm overcome by sadness.
Gratitude that the man I married can be such a good friend to me even when he is hurting.
Faith, true faith, that we will be okay no matter what happens, because the path we are on is one toward greater authenticity.
My health is my faith in listening to God's voice in my heart, my instinct, and acknowledging the truth and in trusting those more than any other social pressures or distortions.
Health is gaining more confidence by the minute.
Health is laughing to the point of tears in a conversation I feared earlier today.

My healthy is feeling:
Grateful for having blinders lifted.
Grateful for truth.
Grateful for honesty.
Grateful for seeing more and more of the true colors, because behind most rainbows, there are still clouds.  Sometimes the dazzle of the colors gets in the way.
Grateful for the size of my problems.
Grateful for moments of joy that I will carry in my heart like diamonds.

I know I've not been the greatest person ever lately.  But I also find great comfort in not hiding from the truth of it all-- good and bad-- because it will allow me to step forward with greater resolve and gratitude and joy.  No more dysfunction.  No more pussy-footin'.  Give me a life of bravery!  I'm ready to run  FLY!

This is an oddly celebratory post and I get that.  But you know what I'm learning?  The power of facing things head on is even greater than I ever realized.  The power of owning my shit and owning my shine.  I'm not callous, but real.  And this evening, I am choosing to clothe myself in strength and dignity and I am allowing Christ's mercy and peace to fill me and I am laughing at the future... which reminds me

Today these verses have been in my head and while I know I've fallen short of an ideal wife in a lot of ways, I look at this and know that I'm also doing a lot of things right.  And that those number far greater than the things I've done wrong.  I like how literally so many of these lines are true of the life I've cultivated, particularly all of the bits about doing work with hands.

10 An excellent wife, who can find?
For her worth is far above jewels.
11 The heart of her husband trusts in her,
And he will have no lack of gain.
12 She does him good and not evil
All the days of her life.
13 She looks for wool and flax
And works with her [h]hands [i]in delight.
14 She is like merchant ships;
She brings her food from afar.
15 She rises also while it is still night
And gives food to her household
And [j]portions to her maidens.
16 She considers a field and buys it;
From [k]her earnings she plants a vineyard.
17 She girds [l]herself with strength
And makes her arms strong.
18 She senses that her gain is good;
Her lamp does not go out at night.
19 She stretches out her hands to the distaff,
And her [m]hands grasp the spindle.
20 She [n]extends her hand to the poor,
And she stretches out her hands to the needy.
21 She is not afraid of the snow for her household,
For all her household are clothed with scarlet.
22 She makes coverings for herself;
Her clothing is fine linen and purple.
23 Her husband is known in the gates,
When he sits among the elders of the land.
24 She makes linen garments and sells them,
And [o]supplies belts to the [p]tradesmen.
25 Strength and dignity are her clothing,
And she smiles at the [q]future.
26 She opens her mouth in wisdom,
And the [r]teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
27 She looks well to the ways of her household,
And does not eat the bread of idleness.
28 Her children rise up and bless her;
Her husband also, and he praises her, saying:
29 “Many daughters have done nobly,
But you excel them all.”
30 Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain,
But a woman who [s]fears the Lord, she shall be praised.
31 Give her the [t]product of her hands,
And let her works praise her in the gates.

In My Element

The reality of being on Christmas break did not set in until this morning when no alarms went off, unless you count children.  Then I got to indulge in finishing Carter Beats the Devil -- between staying up stupid late to read, reading this morning over breakfast, and reading after lunch while the kids were sleeping.  Holy heck that is a fine book indeed!  I can't decide if I like that better than Kavalier and Clay.  This one wraps up more cleanly and enjoyably, but I like the very real painfulness of K and C because it feels authentic and like you can't breathe right for the last fifty or hundred pages of it.  There are more haunting images in K and C, but... well, I liked them both a lot and want to recommend them to people, but it takes the right kind of person to appreciate them, so I will be judicious with those recommendations.  Now what to read next?!?!?? 

Oh, and I left breakfast and reading because, in the process of cutting an apple this morning, I had three good ideas at once and had to write them all down or I'd lose them.  Caught two of the three, which is pretty good.  

And we ran errands and bought food to share with guests today!  And then two families with two kids each came over and played all afternoon!  We had a lovely tea party with fancy tea cups and saucers.  And it was so great to say, "Hey, just stay for dinner!  It's no problem!" and throw something good and healthy together and eat at the table and use the festive paper plates I bought and didn't use yesterday. 

Speaking of yesterday... I might have to murder this cat if she doesn't stop sneezing on me and lying on the keyboard... anyway, yesterday, we hosted three couples for dinner and busted out the good dishes.  .  I made breads (Jones was very excited and kept asking for more "home made bread" very clearly).  We averted a meat disaster successfully.  They liked dessert.  There was so much laughter and banter and goodness.  I liked watching the empty bottles collect on the table and the people sit back and stretch their full bellies.  

It was lovely to have the house filled with company two days in a row, to feed everyone and bring tea around, to hold other people's kids and smell new babies.  And more visiting tomorrow morning, which will probably bleed into feeding everyone lunch, which is beautiful.  

And tomorrow morning I'll probably make that baked oatmeal, but tweak up that recipe and ooooh whip up a caramelized pear sauce to top it off.  Yes!  With that good Greek yogurt from Mustard Seed.  Who am I kidding?  I fully enjoy prepping all this food and then I eat three bites and feel like I'm going to explode.  Ya'll are going to have to come over and get fat or this is all going to to go waste.  

My brain is so unrestrained and undisciplined today.  I'm just allowing it to roam in all it's hyperactivity.  Probably also part of why I feel so in my element-- because I'm up to my elbows in fifteen different ideas and actions at any given moment today.  

AND today was bright happy sun and warmth outside (relative warmth for Clevecember), so we went out and chalked before lunch!  

And after everyone left and the dishes and children were clean, Emilia and I drew and I made my best Elsa yet and Emilia made her best Anna (with crazy hair because she was jumping on her bed, in case you can't tell)

A night scene where fairies and princesses played on the stars and snowflakes, my happy Christmas message, part of a table setting, which doesn't capture the beauty of the whole table, but I mainly just want to remember that using the wrapping paper as a table runner was a fine idea.

And this is just one day.  The first day.  And there are many more days of break to come, so more naps, more creativity, wrapping presents!!!!!! and visiting and fifteen kinds of other good times.  There is so much writing and studying I want to do, too.  Oh my peas, life is full of joys.

When You are a Badass Gardener

When you are a badass gardener, you put on your galoshes in the near dark of evening, tramp out to the east garden, and dig up the best of your late leeks.  Then you squelch through the yard, put away the shovel, and shake those leeks to get as much dirt off as you can before you bring your earthy self back inside.  And you wave your leeks around casting leek spells in the blue black sky.  Showering loamy leek soil in your hair and into the collar of your coat. This is why my jackets always smell like wind and dust and this is why the fish was delicious.

Today has been brought to you by HELL YES!

Too many to list, but:

1. Time

2. Dancing with my new bathroom duty friend

3. Singing the narwhal song

4. Reading a great book (Carter Beats the Devil)

5. Sharing parts of a great book with people who'll appreciate it.

6. Figuring out words I never bothered to figure out before

7. Cinnamon pinecone smell at Giant Eagle

8. Running to two grocery stores and doing two other errands in under an hour and a half!

9. Gardening with the kiddoes in December!

10. Teaching Nori how to add more brown matter to the compost and then watching her do it on her own, carefully.

11. Good tea

12. When my favorite Poptarts are in stock!!! 

Unfrosted Brown Sugar, baby.  Because up in here, we keep it real.

13. Knowing I'll be lucky if I get to eat one of them and being okay with that.

14. The way said Poptarts make me yearn for warm enough weather than I could take a toasted one on the front porch with a hot tea and a cold milk and a good book and sit out in the morning with the birds before everyone is awake.

15. Doing yoga this afternoon

16. Being where I am comfortable and at ease

17. Lots of good interactions with students today

18. Appetite is slowly returning a little

19. Any day I wear leggings is a good day.  Gosh, I'd live in these if I could.  

20. Walking around feeling loaded up with love and joy.  I glowed from store to store this evening, buying produce and feeling warmth radiate out of my pores and fingernails.  It was palpable to strangers, even; I could tell by the way our eye contact was different.  Footfalls springier and shopping carts more wieldy, made so by the extra goodness in the energy that propelled me on.  

I don't have answers to most of my most pressing questions right now, and that is a little scary, but the apprehension and uncertainty are dwarfed by the fact that wherever I'm going, I'm buoyed up by a God who has a plan for me and all my weirdness.  God can be confusing.  It's hard to always know His voice when it is calling.  But when I was walking through the grocery store today, I felt it loud and clear "Remember, GOD IS LOVE."  God I cannot always recognize, but Love?  Now that's something I can see.  Feel.  Trust.  So I let the love fill me til I'm overflowing, flow through me, pour out of me and I know that God is in that love and that He will lead me where I need to go.  

This love has been filling me, but today felt like some sort of floodgate opened.  In trying to tease out its source, it seems that the big thing is that I am finally embracing honesty.  Honesty fully.  Honesty about my dishonesty.  I was able to say some things yesterday and face bad things I've done, done with good intentions, but bad nonetheless because they weren't fully honest.  Honesty and love.  Pretty simple.  Beautifully simple.  Perfect.

Brilliant Finds

In one of my dumpster picking adventures, a year or two ago, my brothers and I found a milk crate full of old records.  We were in our church clothes, picking through these musty records in a light rain and I came home with an armload of polkas and other good stuff.  Among them was this:  

Yeah, with the single of "I Want to Hold Your Hand."  But looks were deceiving because this record sleeve didn't have the 1962-1966 compilation in it.  Oh no.  It had MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR!!!  Which is the first Beatles album I ever bought (well, I went in half and half with Jack) and probably my very favorite.  The single is warped and not playable, but it looks cool.  I could probably come up with something to make out of it.  Someday.  Or not. 

Anyway, that was a great surprise.  

AND the Johnny Cash album I pulled out of the same milk crate was in really great condition!  I do so like good surprises.  My life's been full of 'em.  

Ah rich vinyl sound!  Oh damn.  Oh damn. Oh damn.  It's weird but the sound of records playin on a proper stereo like this makes me feel some type of way.

Thanks

You who know any ounce of me know that gratitude is the refrain for my song.  And on a day devoted to giving thanks, the need to speak it feels even greater.  Even deeper.  

I don't have words for it all.  Not shareable words, but I was writing in my mind earlier and I'll try to capture what of it I can remember (worded less gracefully, connected less fluently).

--Oh, and a necessary quick interlude before I go on-- can we sing the praises of French press coffee?  Can we take a moment to bask in its innate superiority?  Okay.  I'm done stalling.

I guess the gist of it is that I am grateful to recognize the God behind all of the difficulties I have faced in my life.  I know that in the physical pain I've faced, my body crumpled and broken, He draws me closer to him.  In the guilt of dark wishes answered, He draws me closer to him.  I know that in the ache and sadness, in the worry and uncertainty, in the hope and in the wind dropping from my sails in open water, He draws me closer to him.  

It would make sense to prefer an easy life.  And I do wish to be delivered from all these thorns that catch at my skin so I can dance and dance and dance, but I know that I wouldn't feel as constantly drawn to Him if it were that easy.  Or I would, but in a less complete way.  The struggle and the wait has a way of deepening my connection to Him.  Probably, obviously, because it requires faith.  

The gratitude helps me welcome the hard parts.  I try to embrace it as another chance to prove my mettle to the One who trusts me with questions this big.  I don't usually feel like I need to prove myself, but with Him, I want to be worthy of who He is and what He's given and worthy of the promises in store.   And I'm grateful for the opportunity.  It's a many faceted love. So I feel lost sometimes, yeah.  And I want to get churlish and demand answers.  And I feel so in love with the One who made this world and so glad He sees all the beauty I see.  I feel frustrated and unsure.  And I feel confident that He's giving all of this to me for a reason.  I feel humbled and small and grateful for all of the goodness He's poured into my life.  I feel like I'm a cup with no bottom.  I want to faithfully receive what He has to give me in full knowledge that there will always be more good than bad.  That even sitting and choking  in a broken Corolla, I could see the micro-slivers of shattered glass make the most beautiful motes in the slanted sun.  

Ach this is getting listy and I hate when my writing gets listy.

But right now, in this heap of heavy I've been carrying for months and years, I'm grateful for the parts that are drenched in gold.  I know He's got God ideas-- which are better than my crazy-eyed plans.  And my crazy-eyed plans are damn good.  As much as I long for the answers and the green light, I close my eyes and breathe.  He's there in my breath, filling my lungs with exactly what I need right now.  It's comforting to know that what I've been given is what I need and I fully, gratefully intend to embrace it.  Even the thorny parts. And when I bleed, I'll gently tuck my wounds in the bigger ones He suffered for me.  And I'll know it's nothing because I've already been given everything.

It's not the typical Thanksgiving pie motif, but Faith, Hope, and Love.  That's what my heart spoke to me today.
And love and love and love.

Love

Nora is currently playing a game in which the bananas are madly in love with each other and keep standing up and saying "I love you" and giving each other kisses. It's one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

Daily Gratitude

It's that time of year again-- posting my daily gratitude in a public place.  I forgot to start posting over the weekend, so please walk back in time with me a few days and then, if you are so inclined, please join me in sharing your gratitude for the world.  This kid wouldn't claim any kind of wisdom or great worldly understanding, but I can say that cultivating a more vocal spirit of gratitude makes a big difference for me.  It allows me to tune in to the blessings and tune out the sad trombones...although, now that I think of it, that womp wahhhh sound is something to be grateful for, too.

So here we go.

November 1st Daily Gratitude: Brothers, great company, stopping in the middle of party prep bustle to read about King Solomon, the Cleveland Museum of Art.

November 2nd Daily Gratitude: The fellowship in a group of women I know, driving alone so I have complete control of the soundtrack (and can sing like a madwoman), going back to Evolution Yoga after a too-long hiatus, and feeling God's beauty wrap around me and support me.

November 3rd Daily Gratitude: Crazy looking handmade dresses from the thrift store, having friends to talk to on rough days, ropes + yoga, laundry + Munk/Walking Dead, wordmath.

November 4th Daily Gratitude: Work days at work, guitar in the background (and how it makes my brain work so much better!), spontaneous thrifting adventures, a chance to teach yoga (that's a blog post in itself) walking in the wind, coming home to my kids and those hugs and that garden and playing outside, watching a large cardboard box cartwheel down our block in a beautiful way, and then watching my darling husband run across the street, dropkick it, roll over, rassle with the box, and bring it home for us to fill with leaves.  Laughing hard.  Play dough, bath time, Nora's constant talking, love love love is all around.

Post your own gratitude!

This is the Stargazer sculpture at the CMA

 

Steady study steady

This morning finds me in mourning and studying to steady my mind. Come ponder with me.


It helped last night, after everyone left, to scrub the coffee pot and the counters like I always did on my first night (or first morning) there.  I put on music, blasted the stereo like he always did, one or two clicks past loud enough, and we cleaned and sang and cried. Chris, Gracie, and I.  And we sang and cried and talked and cleaned.  This is all really hard.  And I am so glad we are staying there.  I'm so glad I can sit in  my spot here and my spot there and wipe this sink or sit in this chair and breathe in the smell of the towels and cigarettes.

Do you know he saved every card?  More on  that later.

I gotta walk now.  Gotta walk.

Here's some of what I was studying this morning.

First, from Plotinus, FIRST ENNEAD, SIXTH TRACTATE: BEAUTY


4. But there are earlier and loftier beauties than these. In the sense-bound life we are no longer granted to know them, but the soul, taking no help from the organs, sees and proclaims them. To the vision of these we must mount, leaving sense to its own low place.
As it is not for those to speak of the graceful forms of the material world who have never seen them or known their grace- men born blind, let us suppose- in the same way those must be silent upon the beauty of noble conduct and of learning and all that order who have never cared for such things, nor may those tell of the splendour of virtue who have never known the face of Justice and of Moral-Wisdom beautiful beyond the beauty of Evening and of dawn.

Such vision is for those only who see with the Soul's sight- and at the vision, they will rejoice, and awe will fall upon them and a trouble deeper than all the rest could ever stir, for now they are moving in the realm of Truth.

This is the spirit that Beauty must ever induce, wonderment and a delicious trouble, longing and love and a trembling that is all delight. For the unseen all this may be felt as for the seen; and this the Souls feel for it, every soul in some degree, but those the more deeply that are the more truly apt to this higher love- just as all take delight in the beauty of the body but all are not stung as sharply, and those only that feel the keener wound are known as Lovers.

That middle paragraph just hits me.

And from The Confessions of St. Augustine, some thoughts on fire and weight and love.  All things I also happen to distinctly enjoy.

Chapter IX

But was not either the Father, or the Son, borne above the waters? if this means, in space, like a body, then neither was the Holy Spirit; but if the unchangeable supereminence of Divinity above all things changeable, then were both Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost borne upon the waters. Why then is this said of Thy Spirit only, why is it said only of Him? As if He had been in place, Who is not in place, of Whom only it is written, that He is Thy gift? In Thy Gift we rest; there we enjoy Thee. Our rest is our place. Love lifts us up thither, and Thy good Spirit lifts up our lowliness from the gates of death. In Thy good pleasure is our peace. The body by its own weight strives towards its own place. Weight makes not downward only, but to his own place. Fire tends upward, a stone downward. They are urged by their own weight, they seek their own places. Oil poured below water, is raised above the water; water poured upon oil, sinks below the oil. They are urged by their own weights to seek their own places. When out of their order, they are restless; restored to order, they are at rest. My weight, is my love; thereby am I borne, whithersoever I am borne. We are inflamed, by Thy Gift we are kindled; and are carried upwards; we glow inwardly, and go forwards. We ascend Thy ways that be in our heart, and sing a song of degrees; we glow inwardly with Thy fire, with Thy good fire, and we go; because we go upwards to the peace of Jerusalem: for gladdened was I in those who said unto me, We will go up to the house of the Lord. There hath Thy good pleasure placed us, that we may desire nothing else, but to abide there for ever.

To My Dirty White Gloves

I like this 500 words a day challenge.  This is day five for me-- I missed a day (thanks, stomach flu), but other than that, I've been writing more in my journal and here.  If I had fewer obligations, I'd be writing even more because it's kicked my writer's brain into gear.  If only I could just stop what I'm doing and write whenever the ideas came.  Some day....

Today, I just wanted to write a regular old post about my gloves, but it came out like this.

To my dirty white gloves:

Ambiguous mittens

Gray and gritty, the grime of ropes and coils

Chipped paint from playground metal

Caught between your fine-knit fibers

Your fingerless hobo state

Derailed if my bluster-hardened fingers can just

Gah just

Hang on

Get a grrrrasp of the

Uuuahhh cold little

White loop of elastic

That,

There,

Frees the mitten top to warm the

dancingest parts of my hands.

Dirt where you’ve made contact

With fences and handles,

Pressed pedestrian signal buttons,

Drummed on metal bleachers,

Scratched a nose,

Brushed hair away from eyes,

Sloshed coffee.

No longer crisp and ladylike,

You’ve taken on the dust-and-wind smell

Of all my coats.

I bought you to transform me into

A creature more ladylike and refined.

Instead, you have become slightly frayed,

Unmistakably soiled,

Broken in,

perfect.

Read a better ode to an inanimate object here.  Because Pablo Neruda is divine.  

Read the last poem I wrote here. 

Other reflections:

On Ellen this week, Jennifer Gardner referred to her post baby body as her "everlasting baby bump" and she called it by her three children's names.  I think that's pretty awesome.  Love me a little celebration of healthy women's bodies and all the changes they go through.  Full disclosure, I read about this on some news website while I was looking for Ebola articles.  I didn't actually watch Ellen.

This morning the wind was coming from the north -- not the first time this school year, but today was the first time the air smelled arctic.  Summer's been lingering in tree smells.  I picture it lurking in the shade of the oak trees in front of Sts. Peter and Paul.  It tucks itself up under the low branches, which are still a good twenty feet off the ground, and it curls up its feet, letting fall blow around beneath it.  I know the summer is waiting there, looking for the right time to leap down on us one last time before it blows away til next year.

So yeah, fall smells have been trading days with the tail of summer.  There have been a few salty, southern smelling mornings, too.  But today was barren, windswept plains and the grey of geese, snow snakes slithering down highways, and tall grasses bent under the weight of hard frost.

A Day of Many Days

I'm sitting on the deck outside the upstairs bathroom right now.  I'm in my underpants and watching a gamboling humdinger of a lightning storm roll in.  Except for the glow of this here computer screen, it's great.  Ah the clouds just broke!

New scene: I'm lying on the floor beside Muffy's crib.  The window here faces a good part of sky and its proximity to leaves creates ocean sounds out of the wind.  You could be anywhere if you are here.  Sailing the high seas in your underpants, guided by glowy screens instead of a sextant.  Too poetical, maybe.  How about I'm just here.  A Helen in a rainstorm in the dark in her underpants and the front is passing through and my babes are all asleep.  And where I am is good.  It always is, if I make sure I'm fully there. <--That right there is a whole other topic for another post. Today is for writing about days of many days.

You have those days of many days, right?  So full of moments and conversations, adventures and tasks, that they seem like many days.  Today was one of those.  A week's worth of connections (some half made, maybe, to be picked up later), struggles, and just goodness and laughter, skin and the smell of children's hair on hot days, smiles from former students, oh and the disappointment in myself for forgetting one of my special one's names.  To be fair, he graduated two or three or four years ago, but I still should have remembered.  Even in the half light of the parking lot, I could see his disappointment. Poor kid.  He was a bright spot in my life that year, too.  Now he will think he was just forgettable, but he wasn't!  

The point is that I like the fullness of days like this.  I want to relive them sometimes, so I could space all the moments out and savor them a little longer.  Let the flavors roll around in my mouth before I swallow.  I listed some of them in my paper journal and more came and bells rang and a half list remains.

Last night, Chris and spent a few hours on the front porch after the kids were down.  In the course of our excellent, meandering conversation, we talked about how there are people in life we love but don't say it to.  Here's one of those times when I especially sympathize with men because our world makes it harder for them to verbally express love to friends.  But even as a woman, there are many relationships that ARE love, but the love isn't spoken.  It's too bad.

Remember those times when you were dating and you had that talk-- the one where you finally said you loved the person?  And your heart was beating in your throat somewhere and you weren't sure what they would say.  Part of you wanted to splash into a puddle on the floor and the rest just wanted to sing it out because it was real and it was love and you felt it.  Then you said it and you emptied and filled all in the same three syllables.  It really doesn't even matter how the other person responded because you said it.  You sat down and intentionally stated the words, eyeball to eyeball.  No casual "love ya."  The real thing.

I wonder why our friendships don't tend to give phrase "I love you" the place it deserves.  We might say it, eventually.  Your friend gets the flu and "Oh no!  Is there anything I can do?  Feel better!  Love you!"  or after a heart to heart you say goodbye and "Thanks for listening!  Love you so much! We need to get together more often!"  There's no denying that these are beautiful expressions, but I wonder what it would be like if we took the time to sit down with friends and confess our love.  I've had two friendships in which we did that.  One was a little more complicated of a relationship at the time, but that conversation solidified our friendship and gave it a foundation that has allowed it to last almost two decades.  The other was just a pure and simple long-time friend.  It felt so good to say the words in a serious way. I LOE you.  (That's an inside joke, not a typo).  And to hear them in a way that was intentional instead of in passing.  It made me love that friend even more just knowing that we took the time to say it in words.

There are a lot of people in my life who I do love.  I'd like to challenge myself to say it more.  To get over the fact that people just don't do that very often and get over the fact that it might be weird.  Frankly, if we all knew how loved we were, we'd probably go about life with more kindness, calm, and a generous humility that comes from feeling sure we are loved.  I challenge myself in this way knowing that I will still probably wuss out for a  while.  I mean, I love these people and the last thing I want to do is alienate them with declarations of love.  But then, who keeps their light under a bushel basket, right?  Can I get an AMEN?

Little pleasures

A rough past four or five weeks are blessings in some ways because,  in a need to stay afloat, I refocus on the many small beauties in every corner.  Looking at the beauty doesn't fix the big problems,  but it helps me calm down and be where I am.  And where I am is full of wonder, which is in every moment, floating above the worry,  the heartache,  the ummoored sense of being lost that chip away at my foundations.  Above it all is beauty.  I don't know if this is true,  but I think the more we look at the beauty, the deeper is roots go until eventually it penetrates even the depths of those negative feelings. I hope so anyway. 

These are the spike cream cones my kids and I made after school.  Truly sculptural. 

Flowers at a friend's home.  Garlic and mint. I love seeing artistic potential in the ordinary through other people's eyes.  

Fairy Names

In an effort to direct attention away from the fact that Jonah kept killing fairies by saying he did not believe in them, I asked the kids what my fairy name would be.  Their answers were immediate and in rapid succession:

"GLASSES!"

"CRACKER!"

"HOWITZER!"

Yeah, Howitzer.

Then, after a thoughtful pause, and some discussion, they settled on "Peppermint Rose" and I would be a garden fairy.  

I'll take that.