recording, dictating and remembering

 

 

in an effort to record and dictate all that is beautiful and lovely and simple and small around me, and also in part to discourage annonymous spam comments that appear to arise when you neglect your little corner of the web for a bit too long, i am determined to write more regularly. if only for myself to read, or my sweet mama.

because there are things like cardinals perched on old swingsets and beans sprouting up through fresh dirt that are so beautiful and tiny and precious that i want to share them. or things like the time this weekend that i saw a tail creeping along the old back steps outside the breezeway and we discovered the black snake that has  plagued nanno's land for years, only to meet its final destiny on the sidewalk beside the wild onions. or how on thursday night i sat feet away from sam beam singing "passing afternoon" in a garden in virginia, my bare feet right in front of him and the knees of my sweet (and indelibly cool) parents pressed gently against my back.

we planted our garden last week and i can see it from the back bedroom window and it brings me deep joy. not because it's fruitful quite yet (in fact, the family of deer who live in our woods may turn it into nature's buffet table), but because it reminds me of the time last weekend when i, ankle deep in dirt and compost, shoveling until my little arms were sore, looked across the yard and saw robert on the mower, and felt entirely grateful for the act of movement, of bending down to push and pull the earth, then molding it into rows for our seedlings, my gloves caked in clay cooking in the may sunshine.

i remember every time i put on my favorite dean martin record and dance in the living room with pablo how quickly time flies and how grand of a thing it is that we have things like blogs to record our memories. i gave my right ring finger a callous in elementary school because i wrote every single thing down in a burgundy floral journal marked "read and die" (a bit extreme for entries filled with heart doodles and misspelled words). now the callous is gone and all i want to do is share my writing. funny how a little time and perspective creeps up on us day by day, isn't it?

so here's to a week of living, really living, the little moments, and throwing shouts of praise back to Heaven for each one of them.

on mondays, this sometimes hits me hardest

there was a drudge this morning. a physical slowness that hit just about the second my eyes adjusted to the sunshine spilling in across the covers. the heaps of winter afghans and blankets piled onto our bed in the middle of april in a futile attempt to save money by turning off the a/c unit, which works well on humid, sticky weeks like the last, but not so great when spring dallies a bit too long with winter and nights get down to near freezing.

i awoke and immediately prayed my morning prayer, that the Lord would open the doors to His will for my life today. that i would live as He saw fit today. that today, He would place the people in my path that needed someone to journey with, if even for a second over the water cooler.

there was no burst of excitement, unlike this weekend, filled with celebrations both big and tiny, the sweetest little pocket of rest. rather, there were papers, spilled coffee and car maintenance issues to wrestle with. then i read these beautiful, heart-stirring words, and realized that here, today, was indeed a blessed miracle of the most holy sort:

My eyes will never know China’s jade green Li River. I’m never going to see those black-haired boys

under straw brimmed hats fish off their bamboo rafts with the ringed cormorants, the mist rising behind over the karst formations, surreal and dark. I am never going to be ascending the Loita Hills of Kenya to witness the dance of gazelles migrating up by the millions from the Serengeti. I am not going to be swimming the sapphire waters of some South Pacific grotto, or sitting up late listening to the wind whisper through the Sequoia woods, or spending my golden years scaling the summit of emerald Machu Picchu.

I run my hand across the thick of the terry towels. I’m a farmer’s wife. I’m the homeschooling mother of six children. There are no fancy degrees, titles, diplomas hanging on these finger-smudged walls. Are there places that must be known, accomplishments that must be had, before one is really ready?

Isn’t it here? Can’t I find it here?

These very real lungs will breathe in more than 11,000 liters of air today, and tonight over our farm will rise the Great Hexagon of the blazing winter stars-Sirius, Rigel, ruby Aldebran, Capella, the fiery Gemini twins, and Procyon, and in the center, scarlet Betelgeuse, the red supergiant larger than twice the size of earth’s orbit around the sun.

And at the same time,I will embrace the skin of a boy child that my body grew from a seed. The low heavens outside the paned windows fill with more snowflakes than stars, no two-stacked crystals the same; the trees in the wood draw in collective green breath to the still of January hibernation, and God in the world will birth ice from His womb, frost of heaven, bind the chains of the Pleiades, loose the cords of Orion, and number again the strands on my head (Job 38:31; Matthew 10:30).

Isn’t it here? The wonder? Why do I spend so much of my living hours struggling to see it? Do we truly stumble so blind that we must be affronted with blinding magnificence for our blurry soul-sight to recognize grandeur? The very same surging magnificence that cascades over our every day here. Who has time or eyes to notice?

-from one thousand gifts by ann voskamp

there is magnificence here, blinding, if we clean our vision enough to let it permeate. today, i am clearing the smudges of dissatisfaction, impatience and anxiety. will you join me?

a weekend in carolina: the cold and the warmth

 

there was an afternoon this weekend when i tried my best to pull weeds from the flowerbeds in front of the house. i dug my nails into the earth only to find tiny slivers of ice and a frozen ground. it reminded me that we are still very much in the middle of this carolina winter. when days can turn from pleasant to blustery in the instant that wind picks up your hair and cuts into your chest.

but there was another afternoon when sunshine cut through the pasture near our house and spilled into the brick floor of the sunroom and reminded me, soon. soon there will be dirt to churn for the garden and honeybees in the backyard. there will be lights strung from the shed and suppers on old picnic benches. there will be sundresses and bare legs and feet, and entire evenings spent listening to music on a blanket by the clothesline.

mama taught me never to rush things. to not wish away days and write too many things on my calendar in anticipation. so i'm trying to appreciate these last few weeks of cold. the early mornings by the coffee pot and the nights spent wrapped in blankets by the fire with heavy socks on. soon enough, summer will raise her heavy head and coat our little corner of the world with thick heat and i'll wish for these mornings where my little honda creaks under the shock of heat running through its veins after a night spent in a cold garage.

oh, the foreshadow of hindsight. such a delicate little oxymoron she is. 

half-full

 

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even though we swore up and down that we weren't going to give each other gifts for christmas because we took our trip the week before the holidays, my sneaky husband got me a new cd player for my car. mainly for me, but a little bit for him, because every time we rode in my car we had to play either the radio or a CD from the 1990s, because the player stopped reading new discs.

with this newfound player, i have discovered the joy of hooking up my phone--oh the pandora mornings! as i drove into work, i played my favorite ingrid michaelson station, and "giving up" came on right as i entered onto the highway, saying a prayer for a clear lane.

and this line: i am giving up on half-empty glasses stuck out, clear and big as the billboards on the roadside.

i am giving up

on half-empty 

glasses.

i'm giving up on the negativity. on the worries. on the little defeats that threaten to upset a day. on the nights where it just feels better to get in bed at eight than stay up and make the hard day any longer. on the rude tones, drivers, and restaurant patrons.

this notion of giving it all up, relinquishing that suffocating, tightening, destroying control is such a beautiful thought to me. i don't have to even look at the thing anymore.

and maybe i'll put a half-full one in its place, or maybe i won't. maybe i'll just drink the dang water and forget about the philosophical strings tied to it. let it slip deep down and nourish. fill me up enough until i'm the glass. because there's a vessel inside each of us and i'm giving up the empty parts in exchange for the hope that maybe, just maybe, there's enough full to last for today.

give us this day

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there are some days when my coffee turning cold too quickly is all it takes to undo me.

yesterday it was a long line at taco bell. monday it was traffic. not stalled, angry traffic, but just the mundane hum of the highway and a gloomy sky.

it's always the litte things. because we know, don't we, that they're never really that little. especially not when they conglomerate and stick to each other and turn into a giant thing. lately, i've become so "of" this world that it's hard to remember i'm really just "in" it.

beacuse this is all so much to take in. the super sized combo for seventy five cents more. the buy one get one free. the movies and the music and the restaurants that cost more than they did five years ago. and i'm a visual learner. the same girl who could stare at a whiteboard for hours and have a ball with an overhead projector screen (the thing i miss most about elementary school), is the same one who now sits on her kitchen window to watch the sunrise. i put hymns in my earbuds and sat out on the side porch this weekend as a storm blew furiously around the yard, twisting the oak  branches around and stirring up mud.

because i'm still learning, you know. and i'm taking this world in, one deep, gulping day at a time.

it hit me while getting ready this morning. while putting on the makeup and the dress and the heels. while chopping the garlic for tonight's chicken and twisting my hair into a side bun.

God gives us our daily bread.

not our daily foie gras or free range chicken. not our daily extra large milkshake or target shopping spree. not our giant movie screen or popcorn with extra butter. we are not entitled to such luxuries. they are there for us, yes, and they can be so beautifully fun.

but when it comes down to it, the bread is all we really need. such simplicity in a world obsessed with anything but is a hard concept to swallow. but i'm convinced nothing goes down easier.

there's a reason restaurants serve bread at the beginning of a meal. it's a little taste of what's to come. an appetizer for the main course.

and such it is in life, too, i suppose.

perishable goods

around midnight, all my appliances start glowing. my laptop casts a pretty blue light around the office, my cell phone glows in the dark bedroom, buzzing occasionally with a late night call from my sister. the television, in all its glory, beckons me with light and sound and moving images just waiting to take me out of my world, off the couch in our tiny house by the side of the road, and into a realm of glamour, where giada can eat five pounds of pasta without gaining weight, emily can deny a boy a rose and make him cry, and country stars can sashay around in painted on jeans. even the news doesn't seem as scary when delivered by a pretty blonde in a smart blouse.

but last night, when i was directly in the throngs of technology, i looked over at robert and pablo and had a clear thought. if i wanted them to be, every single appliance in this house could be here forever. this iPad can sit right there on the sofa until i'm 90. it's not going anywhere at all. it's a non-perishable good.

but these boys looking back at me? why, that's a different story. we're aging. pablo hesitates to jump up on the guest bed now. it's harder for me to touch my toes in the morning. even robert has a few renegade grays in his beard. the truth is, we're perishable. it's not morbid or sad, it's a beautiful truth. we will go bad one day, just like the cucumbers hanging in the kitchen, or the bread on the shelf. so i have to remind myself to savor the good. the now. the ripeness of today.

of course, if i plan on saving pablo, i've got another thing coming. that pup's been spoiled since the day we got him.

seconds, minutes and hours

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robert and i drove down the road yesterday in the balmy carolina summer air. the kind that hangs stagnant without relief of breeze. we rolled the windows down and pablo stuck his head out, catching the sunshine and heat square on the nose.

and as we drove, we tried to remember last week. what we ate for supper, how we spent our evenings. for events that happened less than seven days ago, we had a terribly difficult time recalling their details. between the day-in, day-outs of how was your day, lie on the couch, bachelorette on monday, bacon and tomato sandwiches every evening on the porch, crash on the couch in that old blanket, lunch breaks at the grocery store, midnight trips to the water bowl with  pablo, thrift store perusing, etsy selling, sleepy, tired, exhausted workdays we just lost track.

but that's the glory of it, sometimes. the forgetting.

letting the seconds and minutes pass, but holding on to the hours.

i think it's one of God's greatest blessings and one of life's greatest kindnesses that some things we forget. at least, some things lose their momentum with the passage of time. a few months ago, i ran into the boy who called me a stutterer in front of the entire lunchroom in the seventh grade. it wasn't bad, and i wasn't mad at him anymore. that sinking feeling in my gut eventually rose. and i can look at the facebook page of my sweet friend who passed away in that awful car wreck in 2007 without my computer screen fading away behind blurred, watery vision. it doesn't mean i will become friends with that boy, or that i don't miss and think about my friend every single blessed day. it just means i forgot the initial shock, and for that i am grateful.

but then, there are things i can't hold onto tight enough. memories of my mama running down the hill behind our house. my day out with dad, when i got my first cast. the time against that old honda, when robert turned to me on my driveway and whispered that he loved me. my first job interview, and the letter that followed.

i want to get to the end of my life with a storage vault of such hours. an arsenal of time. that i can slowly unlock and resavor. but maybe, after all, it's the seconds and minutes we save (the good ones at least).

if we're lucky, we'll get to the end with one good, solid hour. of a million nanoseconds of love.

that's all i can really hope for, come to think of it.

where i have and haven't been

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i apologize for the silence in these parts lately. truth is, i've been super busy. so busy that when robert surprised me at work and asked if i could take a quick walk to the end of the parking lot with him i said no. and right there, at eight in the evening on a saturday in june, those words were the meanest things i've ever spoken to my husband.

because yes, i could have taken a break to walk thirty feet with him.

yes, i could have put my ipad down and sat with pablo while he ate supper. my back against the warm knotty pine cabinets, stroking his back as he dove headfirst into the red bowl, then to the blue one for a drink. but i sat in the office instead and he moped around until he finally got his courage up enough to go into the kitchen without me, gulping down fistfulls of food in a fit of nerves.

yes, i could have called my sister and brother instead of texting them goodnight, like i've done every evening for the past week. heard her voice on the phone and his music in the background. but it was past midnight and i figured they'd be asleep. so i shot off a quick message and sunk dizzily into the bed.

and i could have made myself breakfast. or coffee. i could have taken a minute to sigh into child's pose or downward dog. just a second of stretch.

i could have read my Bible and played my hymns. tended to the garden better or made robert a home-cooked meal. well, at least a meal in the crock-pot.

because as terribly busy, exhausted and sleep-deprived as i was, those things matter. those things matter more than anything in this entire earth and they are worth my time.

it's important to do things as you are called. and it was actually an honor to be tasked with the work i was this week.

but i have another calling too. a deep, sacred, privileged calling. and it's about time i picked up.

an emancipation proclamation

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one day in september, there was an afternoon where the cool, midday sun hung in the trees for hours.

i was fourteen and still swinging in the old tire hanging off the tree near the creek behind our house. i would lay on my belly against the rubber, my eyes facing the cracked mud and tiny clover on the ground. i remember turning in circles, twisting the rope until it was tightly coiled. then i would pull my legs up to my chest and tense my body as the swing unraveled itself, spinning me dizzily.

i thought about that afternoon this morning. that specific day. i don't have many days that i specifically remember from my youth. i have stages, sure. the big t-shirt phase. the year i chopped my hair into a horrible bob to look like mary-anne from the babysitter's club. on that note, the years i read nothing but babysitter's club books in my spare time and even formed my own club at school. the humid summer i met robert. the short season i like raisins. there are waves of time that encompass entire years and half-decades. days often elude me. but not that one.

i thought about that sensation. that tensing and releasing, tightening and loosening. and i realized there's a similar one stirring now. an anxiety sitting on my chest. a wound rope around my heart in need of a good unravel.

so it's warm bath time. front porch rocker time. bible reading in the early morning when the house is still asleep time. beach towel on hot sand time. it's slower now than that september day. more methodical and intentional. but the unwind will come. the release is already happening. and just as i pushed off the red clay, muddying my tennis shoes and spraying pebbles into the wood, i am preparing for takeoff.

this morning, it means lots of dark coffee and deep breaths. tonight, it will mean sitting by my grandfather's bedside as he prepares for another type of liberation. a breaking of the chains of this life. we're all winding up. it's how we unfurl that defines us.

jesus, the short-order cook

so they went out in the boat, but they caught nothing all night...at dawn, Jesus was standing on the beach, but the disciples couldn't see who he was...when they got there, they found breakfast waiting for them--fish cooking over a charcoal fire, and some bread...Simon Peter went aboard and dragged the net to the shore. there were 153 large fish, and yet the net hadn't torn.

"now come and have some breakfast!" Jesus said. none of the disciples dared to ask him,"who are you?" because they knew it was the Lord. -john 21:1-12 

he walked on water. consumed a burning bush. rose a man (and himself) from the dead and gave a blind man sight. but one morning by the ocean, Jesus was just a man in a robe, cooking some fish and inviting his friends for breakfast. i found this passage a few weeks ago and it has since become one of my favorite in the entire Bible. because it presents Jesus in ways i don't often think of him. 

the great savior who knows the length and number of every hair on my head also enjoys cooking with charcoal, like my dad did in the nineties on his old black grill out back. and as i slink into the very back corner booth during my lunch break, he stood and shouted, not wanting to eat alone. the lover of my soul loves company. and fellowship. and good meat and bread in the morning. i can see the mist of dawn rising over the sea, the sun and moon in that celestial tug-of-war that happens every sunrise. i bet it was chilly, as seaside meals can be. i spent one morning two octobers ago on cannon beach, oregon. robert and i ate scones and looked at haystack rock in the distance. i dipped my toes into the pacific ocean for the first time. a thick haze covered the ground below and in front of us. i like to picture that scene in this story. a master in the mist.

oh but listen to the rest of it! yes, this is one of the most human accounts of Jesus in the Bible. i also love the passage where he prays in the olive grove, bowing down to his Father but also asking if maybe, just maybe, the cup of suffering may be willingly taken from him. but this is a more than mortal experience.

the disciples weren't catching fish. they were out all night scavenging the ocean bottom to no avail. but as soon as they see Jesus and he suggests throwing their net to the other side, they catch more than their net should allow. but it doesn't break. of course it doesn't. as he fed the thousands, he fed his friends. more than enough, but never too much to handle. that's a miracle.

i didn't get too far past the first ripple of the pacific ocean that morning on cannon beach. it was freezing and my toes were bare. but the disciples ran off the boat to Jesus. not only had their savior returned, he was ready with a warm fire and food. alive in the realest sense. and even on the mistiest of mornings, no truth is clearer than this.

waiting for one day

i have an old leather journal my friend brought back from italy my senior year of high school.

i wrote john mayer lyrics in it at first, then sonnets from that shakespeare class i took my first year of college. when the dogwoods were enchanting and every walk to that old brick building was pretty. then, somewhere in that span of time after college and before now, i wrote a quote along the lines of "everything will be okay in the end. if it isn't okay, it isn't the end." i thought it was the sweetest thought. such optimism!

but as i was making the bed yesterday morning, i thought about that. waiting for the end. waiting until that day when it's all okay. when i don't stammer or when my grandfather isn't sick anymore. holding out for a change in course, a veer to the right that will straighten out to a direct path of delightfulness. not death, mind you. just a moment when that challenge is over. a sunny weekend morning when nothing is on our plate or hanging over our shoulders.

but what about the in-between? the moments of struggle and perseverance. the late nights and early morning prayers. the search. those are beautiful too and they might slip by if we discount them as time spent reaching toward the "end." the time when we can rest. collapse into an overstuffed arm chair, content. i spent so much time last night wrapping up my homework so i could relax. so i could sit on the couch and watch my strange addiction and veg out for a minute.

i worked so hard it was almost midnight before i looked up. or rather, looked down. pablo had been lying on the hard wood floor with a toy in his mouth the entire time. waiting to play. i reached down to pick up the little stuffed elephant and threw it across the hall, yelling fetch. the tired pup just dragged his sleepy self to bed.

it's okay now. it's gorgeous now. and if it's not, time will reveal that maybe the hard part was the beautiful part of it, after all. chalk it up to my impatience and inability to wait, but this isn't one-day. it's monday and it's waiting on me.

or just a stirring in my soul, who knows?

 first: thank you all for the sweet birthday wishes and prayers for my presentation. i  have never in my entire life felt the Spirit so tangibly. i was a bundle of nerves the entire day...up until the moment they called my name to present. a heavenly calm washed over me and i spoke clearer than ever. so really, thank you for rallying. now, the story:


25.

this was it--the next big milestone. that next leap after 21 and before 30. john mayer called it a "quarter life crisis" and even though i can't say i agree with much that john says these days, i kind of like that sentiment.

but what does a quarter life crisis look like? it's not a mid-life one, with a cherry red convertible and boyfriend half my age. it's not a sweet sixteen meltdown with a tiara slipping down my forehead.

rather, this much resembles a quiet unfolding of self. of coming into my own, finally, for better or for worse. for example, i figured out on monday how i like my coffee. with the tiniest splash of cream and one sugar. i know exactly how may degrees left and right i need to turn the rusty metal knobs of the bathtub faucet to reach my perfect soaking temperature. i've come to understand that i really do need something on my feet at all times or i will catch a cold. that i have my mama's back and my grandma's knees.

i've learned i really just need a hot mug of coffee and maybe some pretty words, and that can be enough for the morning. that i simply don't care for rascal flatts. or the road. that i have a conscience the size of texas and can't even tell a fib on april fool's day. that i cry at the drop of a pin and wear out my emotions like the old bob dylan record on my shelf.

it's not much. no oprah moment. more of a slow exhale, an ah.......ha. so this is me. this is courtney. well, welcome girl.

with every catching of my reflection, i'm reminded there's a universe there. a world of favorites. of dislikes. of preferences.

and really, it's more of a metamorphosis. a jellyfish expanding and contracting in the sea. looking inward, facing outward, looking backward, moving forward.

a step and a leap. a fist and a palm.

regrets of the dying: a nurse's perspective

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over the weekend, i read this interesting blog post.

the essay is written by bronnie ware, a former palliative care nurse. during her time in this position, bronnie had a chance to speak with many patients who were facing the end of this beautiful life. they often voiced their regrets. things they wished they had a few days, months or lifetimes to correct.

the post details the reasons behind the regrets, but here is a summary: 
 
1. i wish i had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. i wish i didn't work so hard.
3. i wish i'd had the courage to express my feelings.
4. i wish i'd stayed in touch with my friends
5. i wish that i had let myself be happier

man. my gut fell to my knees. because i am young. and in many aspects, just starting. i'm still a rent-paying, stay-up-late because i can, take-a-roadtrip-down-the-pacific-coast-highway-whenever-i-get-the-fancy newlywed trapped in the chasm between student and worker, teenager and adult. it's hard to think about my plans for this weekend, much less my long-term plans for life.

but i can relate to almost all of these five regrets. already.

this summer will be the summer of staying outside longer. feeling dirt under my nails and playing in the grass. closing the laptop. doing more of the things i did before i discovered facebook, and the wonders of computers in general. when all i knew about the bulky machine on our office desktop was how to access microsoft encarta to look up information for school papers.

when i called my friends daily, and played with them often. when i cried deeply and laughed without sound.

i'm headed back there again, if that place still exists. even if it doesn't, i'm determined to recreate it. to live again in my world of exploration. so when i reach the end of it, i can tell God, in the same way erma bombeck did: i used everything you gave me. every single day was used. every day.

taking back sunday

it usually happens when i'm on my side in bed, one hand propped under the cotton pillowcase and the other hanging loosely above my head. when everything in the house is silent save for the sweet puffs of breath pablo and robert let slip out as they dream.

when the day is done, and the headaches and stresses, little annoyances and big worries all go back into their rabbit holes for a few hours. that's when i pray the longest, and the hardest.

i love the idea of prayer as a continual conversation. of never really saying amen. i whisper little thank yous when my lane is clear on the highway. when a stormy day turns sunny. when i'm rocking on the porch swing with a big bowl of salad and a sweet tea. i whisper little please Gods before a presentation, a work engagement or a dreaded conversation.

but the true, guttural voice that rises from me to reach out to the heavens only truly comes out at night. and i've thought about how to change that. how to make it the first thing, not the last thing i do. i don't want the most integral, important part of my life to be an afterthought. something i attend to after my everyday duties are accomplished and i'm just about sacked out.

the other day, i realized an important element behind why i think this way: i consider sunday the last day of the week.

i've always been confused by calendars, because they typically start the week with sunday, and end with saturday. i've gone against this trend all my life. monday, the dreadful beast that it is, is always the first day of my week. my new chance to start fresh. to write in my planner more and clean my desk. to plan meals and spend more time with pablo.

but it needs to be sunday. it has to be sunday. if i keep sunday as the last day of my week, i continue the trend of pushing my rest and religion to the very back burner. oh sure, you can have church, and a day of thanksgiving and reflection. only after your monday through saturday things get done.

so tomorrow is the last day of my week, as far as i'm concerned. and sunday will start it anew. my end is now my beginning, as it should have been.

mama once told me, there's no sweeter way to fall asleep than in prayer, deep in the arms of Jesus.

but there's no sweeter way to wake up either, i'm certain.

an off day

 xxx

i am thankful for a windowsill this morning. a ledge upon which to balance my mug. a warm tea i'm beginning to love, with honey to sweeten. a beautiful song on youtube that somehow, in some odd otherworldly way, knows my heart words.

it's a day off work, but not off. of running around planning for a sweet friend's bridal shower this evening. of dragging my still sick self to the shower and letting the hot water pour down the drain. of getting dressed. swiping on lipstick. wearing the little kitten heels.

of moving forward, physically, even when my weary mind is still stuck somewhere between monday night and the early dawn of tuesday, when i had my first cup of coffee in a month.

because we're not machines, us sweet humans. we're soft and squishy and blood beats through us. so we find the little ways to nurture that life. to breathe into it and let it return the favor, one sweet thursday sunrise at a time.

to look for the dust

i know this isn't a trick of gravity, but it's just fun. and somehow relates to my post. we may or may not have let this stand for three hours last night.

while i was in the thrones of my coughing and sneezing, robert slept on the couch for his own well-being. (and partially for his sanity, as i was up half the night.)

on sunday morning, i slid up next to him on the cushions and let the sunshine pour in and let pablo burrow his nose into the crook of my arm. there's something about sunshine. for all its golden beauty, when it hits a little house at just the right angle, it illuminates every single dust particle in every single nook and cranny.

i looked at the coffee table. how can you sit here and not be bothered by that dust? i asked him.

oh, i don't know, he replied. i guess i just don't look for the dust, that's all.

but i realized something. i do.

i look for the dust. the speck of mess. the splatter.

i seek out the things to change. to tidy up. to wash and put away. to vacuum and swiffer.

reasons to fall just a few steps behind as robert's walking out the front door and i'm straightening up piles, drying that last dish or arranging the magnets on the refrigerator.

some saturday mornings, robert sleeps late and i clean. i pull out the wash rags and put on my old cheerleading shorts and get on my hands and knees against the linoleum. and it feels good. and it should be done. but how many chances have i missed to catch pablo as he first wakes up? that sacred moment when his eyelids peel open and he yawns with his head thrown back. or that sweet sigh that escapes as robert rolls over and lays his arm on my side of the bed.

the thing i'm starting to realize, is that the work is hardly ever done. to seek it out is to only make our already stressed, busy, bodies go crazy.  

instead, i vow to look beyond the dust. at what's on the table. the roses sitting in the izze juice bottle. the literature books. the pretty baby fern taken from mama's big fern in the living room where i grew up.


to feast my eyes upon the beautiful, and let the rest slide beyond my view.

to everything, a season

 xxx 

it is the journey of my life to find the answer. to seek to understand, wrap my little mind around, the tangible concept. it's why i study with flash cards and spend way too long mulling over quiz options. why i drive myself crazy with my cheek against the pillow at midnight, a million questions and thoughts and scenarios spinning around behind my eyes until finally the momentum is fast enough that i get dizzy and fall asleep. it's a never ending cycle of wandering, wondering and feeling around in the dark for that one moment when everything aligns and a second of comprehension reveals itself.

but last night i sunk into the bath and reversed, for a moment, my thought flow. or rather, my thought rush.

maybe it's the questions. the asking. the holding your head up to the sky and sending a request up to God. the rising early and gathering the blankets around your feet, brewing that first cup of coffee just to get your head right. the attempt -- goodness knows-- the blessed, sacred attempt. the days you wake up and think today will not be like yesterday and by mid morning you realize, oh actually, today is just like yesterday. but you push forward until nightfall anyway. for the fringe of hope that maybe, just maybe, tomorrow will be different. better. brighter. warmer.

and you keep searching and asking and yelling and rebelling.

praying and questioning and researching and reading.

and one day you understand you must be good enough to yourself to know when to stop. when to realize it's not the answer you need. not the new day or the different night. but just to lie in bed and hold you arms against your chest and breathe in the cotton and remind yourself that it's okay not to know. not now, not in a little while, maybe not ever. there's a reason for the gray. a season for the fog.

a reminder at midnight

the sight of my eyebrows in the bathroom mirror confirmed it.

the neat arches had given way to furry little blobs spawning renegade hairs, teetering dangerously on the verge of joining in the space above my nose.

the week after a vacation is always difficult. a delicate balance of catching up on sleep in one's own bed (one of life's greatest simple pleasures, i've determined), and fulfilling work and school duties that blissfully, momentarily fell by the wayside, replaced with sea salt, chicken tacos and late night movies.

it was midnight before i slipped into bed last night, and my eyes still held beneath them the glow of a computer screen. that little floating light that buries under the eyelids and sits stagnant, disrupting sleep like a full moon outside the window.

i shut the laptop, turned off every light in every nearby room, and showered in the dark. and as i breathed into the water and heat, my mind, muddled with terms and deadlines and obligations and dates, cleared for one second to allow me one conscious, concrete thought:

i am one person and this is one day.

it's just one. i won't solve anything alone and this day does not stand alone. there's only so much time and space one person can fill. it's the great ambition of our lives, to make the most of every day. to rise early and sink into the covers late, to get to the end of our days and say, i put everything i could into those hours. but perhaps a greater ambition is to let a few hours go by unattended. to sit on a porch swing. eat a frosty in the living room. listen to an entire CD. take a bath at two in the afternoon with the sun high above you like a spotlight.

together, we are incredible creatures, capable of wonderful things. but we're also one. sometimes that's enough. enough for today, enough for now.

a question for you: moving past the beginning

 via

i wrote a paragraph on friday night.

it was succinct and short and simply an introduction. but i loved it.

the first five lines of the novel. the one i've put off for 24 years. the one i've  been formulating and rewriting on napkins and old receipts, on word documents and the back of worksheets. the one that will compile and make sense of the senseless one-liners i've texted into my phone.

this is the story that will put words to the feeling i get in my gut when i hear a certain song at five in the evening with the sun beating down on the interstate.

but what followed was rubbish.

the second paragraph was just awful and i erased it immediately, almost embarrassed at the lines that flowed from my fingers.

so i have a question for you. you bloggers and authors. you painters. you etsy sellers. you early morning musicians and late night poets.

how do you continue? how do you push past the curse of the blessed first sentence? i'm afraid i've entered the party in my best dress and i can never make such a dramatic entrance again.

how do you turn back around, put on something else, and saunter back into the crowd?

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p.s. speaking of bloggers, my friend jen from singing in the rain is hosting a giveaway as part of her one year blogoversary. hop on over and enter to win a giveaway to my etsy shop!

last night, this morning

love,

i used to think it was the church bells that were my favorite sound. sitting on the front porch swing at two in the afternoon when they'd ring from down the road. but last night, you rolled over in your sleep, and you let out the slightest puff of a sigh, and suddenly, that was my favorite. this morning, i sipped my coffee and wondered to myself if they were really all that different.