spark

grace in small things: midsummer

:: the happiness that comes from successfully planning a fun outing with friends

:: karma chameleon on the radio, six-year-old grooving later to oldies with great guitar, 11-year-old remembering watching an old-school Sesame Street bit when he was younger

:: witnessing the moment when a friend understands what all this fruit-picking love is about

:: little bits of unexpected nature - a funny "trash bug" larva, a stunningly beautiful horsefly, a small nest for ripe fruit

:: children who give hugs and flowers freely to friends, including the grownup friends

:: remembering the first time i ate fresh blueberries. i had previously only had tinned ones (the kind that come in a little can with a package of blueberry muffin mix) and thought i hated them. these miraculous berries floated in a bowl of cream and each one popped in my mouth when i bit it. it was a revelation.

:: three simultaneous but separate playdates for three children with three friends. everyone content and full of companionship.

:: a saturday afternoon nap after showering off the berry-picking stickiness

:: delicious thrown-together recipe success

:: workout plans - pushing myself to build better habits

:: learning poker hand rankings

:: 11-year-old coming in from a nighttime walk with his friend to tell me that the supermoon is out

 

 

related posts:

grace in small things: joy

midsummer mothering makeover

a little while does fortune smile

Following stress reactions (early stress fractures) in both shins, I'm on the long road toward building back up to my previous strength and endurance. This morning I took a 2-mile half-jog-half-walk (run 1/8 mile, walk 1/8 mile) in my neighborhood and the local elementary school's track and vita course, and toward the end I stopped to do some back extensions on the parallel bars. Face-down to the mulch, I spotted a little shred of paper that turned out to be a fragment from a fortune cookie. 

At first, I was bummed that it was incomplete, but then I realized that I knew what the fortune was. I had received it in a cookie years ago, and saved it, and later created a notecard with it, and I still haven't found the right occasion to use the card. 

Thinking about this phrase eventually led me to the middle stanza of John Byrne Leicester Warren, Lord de Tabley's poem Fortune's Wheel:

A little while did Fortune smile

On him and her and me:

We sang along the road of life

Like birds upon a tree.

(The first and third stanzas are about lost love, but those are unimportant to these musings.)

Motherhood - and life in general - have been frustrating lately. There are so many things that must be done or that I want to do, and so many distractions, and also so much about the developmental stages my kids are in that bogs us down and prevents me from doing all the other things I must do or want to do. The youngest is very clingy and whiny right now. The middle son is absentminded and needs to have somebody make direct eye contact and keep him on task. The oldest is preteen and moody and both pushing away from his parents and desperately in need of them. 

But this, too, shall pass. The frustrating stuff, and also the good stuff that hides under it. I might not have time for everything, but there are things more precious than my time, and first among those is the truth of who we all are right in this moment.  The wants and needs are never going to go away, so I need to set aside time every day in which I tell all the wants and needs to bite me, and just focus on the truth of the hour and the people in front of me. 

What are the precious truths confronting you right now?  How do you interpret "truth is more precious than time"? 

be like water

While browsing in a Kennebunk gift shop, the mug caught my eye. "Be like water," the small white text on its side read. At that moment, in the middle of a long Maine vacation, it evoked other phrases like "go with the flow." Be easygoing, be open to whatever happens, allow yourself to drift on the current.

Although I didn't really need yet another coffee mug, I allowed myself to be seduced by the charm of the color and the phrase and the smooth feel of the cup in my hand, and left the shop with it nestled in tissue in a bag hanging off my arm. 

Once home in Virginia again, I filled it with warm, creamy coffee and sat in my living room with a book. Griffin approached, read the mug, and asked what it meant. Rather than tell him what I thought, I asked him what water is like, and how a person might have qualities like the water. He recalled a time last summer when the current in the James River nearly swept him away, and answered that water is strong, so being like water must mean to have strength. 

It interested me how his first thought was so different from mine, and I considered how many characteristics water might embody. While unpacking a box of vacation paraphernalia that afternoon, I uncovered some beach cobbles - rocks smoothed by centuries of being tossed in the waves. Each is different - speckled granite eggs, sparkling mica-flecked stones, pebbles cris-crossed with bands of contrasting minerals. If I were to take a lesson from these, it would be that water is persistent. It works slowly, over time. It does not tire. It is always present, sometimes ebbing, sometimes flowing, but as constant as the cycles of the moon.

I wrote these thoughts down and left them for a while. Then, today, while reaching for a cup for my coffee, I saw the mug again, and wondered what it might mean to me today. It is the day before Thanksgiving, and I just finished making the brine in which I will soak our turkey overnight, after the mixture has steeped and cooled. Brine is water full of delicious things that mingle together to make something savory and wonderful. It imparts its flavor to the turkey and makes it juicier, more delectable. How can I be like this water, the brine? I could fill myself with good things - new skills, self-care, good thoughts - and then let them percolate for a while before imparting the other people with whom I connect. What flavor do I want to give the world around me? This is especially appropriate as the holiday season begins, because I'm starting a small initiative that I'm calling "Comfort and Joy," the purpose of which is to make the world a less stressful, friendlier place through small practical acts of consideration for others. (Stay tuned for more about that or look for #ComfortAndJoy on Twitter.)

In the weeks and months and years to come, I know that this mug will continue to provoke meditation upon the many things to be learned from water. 

Be like water.

What does it mean to you, today?

the opposite of wishing

What would the opposite of a dandelion be? What would happen when you blow it - or would you inhale it, instead? Is there an opposite of wishing? Is it the elation of having (or being), or the in-between state of contentedness? Is it merely allowing life to unfold? 

noticing: a winter walk

Thinking about the magic circle and the safety circle, I realized that over the course of this winter, I've been emerging from hibernation and getting ready to leave my comfort zone and find some new magic.  While reflecting on this, I realized that it had been a long time since I took a photo walk around my neighborhood. These walks can be as short as just to my backyard or as long as many blocks away from home. On a sunny afternoon, I fitted my 100mm macro to my camera, popped in a fresh battery, and set out. My goal: to notice something new. It could be small or big. It could be something that has just appeared or something that has always been here. 

My first discovery was that my one lonely hellebore isblooming. I adore this plant - the rose-and-cream sepals, the fibonaccian whorl of the tubular petals, the fuzzy anthers. I took a moment to gather all of the wayward garden gnomes into one spot where they could wait for spring planting. I breathed in the hybrid tea aroma of the blossoming mahonias and admired the bees on them, wondering if there would have been more bees in less climate-changey times. My four-year-old joined me and we took to the alleyway, finding seedpods and fertile mosses. I noticed cracks on the faces of cupids on a neighbor's planter. I made mental note of milkweed that needs to be removed from our fig tree and admired its curling dried vines.

None of this was earth-shaking, but it was refreshing. Sunlight, cool air (but not too cool - this is, after all, Virginia, and our winters are mild), nature, companionship, and the comfort of dials and the shutter. 

Perhaps what I noticed most of all was a sense of peace and wholeness. It's good to come out of hibernation.

security blankets and the magic zone

A friend posted this image on Facebook last week, bemoaning how stuck in her comfort zone she has been lately. I identified with the drawing, and recognized myself as moving out of my comfort zone lately and into the magic sphere. These things tend to happen in cycles - hibernate, create, hibernate, create, et cetera.

But then, later, I realized that the image wasn't quite right. You don't have to leave your comfort zone to find magic! Magic can be found in everyday, normal, boring things. Enjoying a book under snuggly covers on a winter morning can be magic. Hot chocolate with marshmallows can be magic. A child's goodnight kiss can be magic. There are other, bigger magics that can also happen well within the confines of one's comfort zone.  

There's also a tone to this image and the comments from those who linked and re-linked it that struck me as sad. There's a stigma attached to remaining in your comfort zone. If you're really living your life, the assumption goes, you'll force yourself outside of your happy security-blanket space and into the really real world. If you're not experiencing magic, you must not be brave enough, ambitious enough, energetic enough, zen enough, rested enough, balanced enough. If you're not experiencing magic, you must not be terribly good at this whole life thing.

That's just crazy, shame-y talk. Magic is all around us, both inside our safety zone and outside of it waiting for us to push ourselves a bit. Sometimes it's a good thing to face a challenge and discover something new, and sometimes we need to be in a place that is all about hibernation and not at all about seeking out wild, unexplored territory.

With that in mind, I recreated the graphic:

They're not separate spheres. Push yourself to move outside of your comfort zone, hole up in a safe non-magic-y space, or dwell happily in the overlap. It's up to you. There is no wrong way to do it.

grace in small things: joy

Six things that are bringing me joy in small ways and in big ways
on this beautiful Monday morning:

 

cozy, stripey socks

 

a cart piled full of fresh fruits and veggies

 

a new book group and new acquaintances (literary and human)

 

winter blooms and morning light

 

having squeezed every last drop of goodness out of a holiday

 

 

and most importantly, the joy of new life, the strength of a woman,
and the beauty of them both

resurrection

“The moment a woman comes home to herself, the moment she knows that she has become a person of influence, an artist of her life, a sculptor of her universe, a person with rights and responsibilities who is respected and recognized, the resurrection of the world begins.” ~Joan Chittister

a brand new week...

everything is possible today

you are everything you need to be

you are wholesome and good

(and fabulous, beautiful, lovely and lovable)

you can live your life full and free 

moments

Catching up on the family blog (finally up to June...ugh). Looking at forgotten springtime photos is lovely on this chilly autumn day.

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moments...

 

in which you find tiny things left by strangers to brighten your day

 

in which you explore the fun of sticks - as a human or as a puppy

 

in which you discover something new 

 

in which you just plain recover

 

(you can take as many as you need)

 

in which

you feel

free

 

(have a moment)