Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘appreciation’

The Keys Are Where?

Posted in humor, tagged , , , , on November 5, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Getting lost is just another way of saying, “going exploring.” (Justina Chen Headley, North of Beautiful)

I should have said sayonara to this purse weeks ago. Right after I dumped its contents on a blacktop parking lot where there wasn’t enough light to guide an owl. No ring of keys anywhere. Or so it seemed. Then my son lifted the purse to my trunk and the back car lights flashed. The car key had to be inside. Halleluiah. But where?

 A hole in the bottom lining had swallowed my keys. The holes multiplied. They had also devoured some coupons, my watch, and the original key ring I swore had been buried somewhere between Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. I wrote about the loss. With certainty. One good possibility had been a sand dune. Vacationland, I apologize for blaming you.

How can an inorganic object develop kleptomania? Especially something I carry everywhere I go. It didn’t learn a thing about honesty from my experience. Like the time I went to the grocery for toothpaste and came home with six bags of everything else, or the time I had to admit the cherry pie was a no-go because I had used baking powder instead of cornstarch in the filling. The boil-over would have made an interesting science experience if it were an easier clean-up.

 I have been telling myself, I will cut through the rest of the leather and find enough cash to feed a city parking meter for an hour. Or maybe just a small cup of yogurt.

However, it would probably be best to simply say goodbye now. I have what I need. The purse served me well before its problems started. Wait, I found one more paper clip…

 

Read Full Post »

Happy Birthday, Jay! Let’s Celebrate

Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , on October 22, 2021| 2 Comments »

Oxford trail sun through trees

Age is of no importance unless you’re a cheese.  (Billie Burke)

 As my husband and I walk hand-in-hand along a park path, two younger women say that we look like a cute couple. Yup, we’ve been recognized as nursing-home candidates. Cute is reserved for the opposite ends of the age spectrum. Youngsters and oldsters.

We are in our mid-seventies. However, the spirit I carry inside is confused by the image I see in the bathroom mirror. The loose skin and sagging neck. The inner self gathers both pain and joy. It grows. Its form is not visible.

 I can always learn something new. About the world and about this red-haired individual I call me. Someone I love was in the hospital recently. The experience stole more energy than I expected. I am coming back.

 A cobalt blue sky speaks healing. The deeper kind. The kind that tells me to hold on when rain and storms break through.

 “I’m celebrating you today,” I tell my husband. It is his birthday. I appreciate a mate who loves me as I am. Presents and cakes don’t matter as much anymore. However, this living moment matters far more.

 

Read Full Post »

Birthday Number 75 and Still a Student

Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , on May 14, 2021| 2 Comments »

Bass Harbor signed

If we have not quiet in our minds, outward comfort will do no more for us than a golden slipper on a gouty foot. (John Bunyan)

“What do you want to do for you birthday?” my husband asks.

I have a few days to think about it. Not many. Age 75 is approaching with hurricane swiftness. No good options for avoiding the fact.

My unspoken answer is, appreciate. A goldfinch and cardinal appear at our bird-feeder. Their bright colors move against a cobalt blue sky. I am learning to paint. Acrylic layers take time. Each stroke crosses the canvas and dries. My work is imperfect. At this advanced age I am a student of both art and of life. The above painting of Bass Harbor in Maine was a recent gift for my husband.

What do I want? I want to be. Having is overrated. I’d like to turn off the news when I can no longer help. I’d like to recognize wrongfulness yet never allow hate to take over. I’d like to work without letting work be my master.

I will celebrate my entry into the world in a small way. And grab the beauty in the moment, even if it is hidden under a mountain of rocks.

Today I pick up a pencil and begin another drawing on canvas. A single graphite path. A short-sighted vision. Enough for now. Each stroke is only an imitation of the real anyway. What-I-do is what matters.

Peace. May it extend beyond an image or a moment.

Read Full Post »

Fog, Sun, and Hope: A Poem

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , on September 15, 2020| 1 Comment »

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one. ( John Lennon)

Fog, Sun, and Hope

 

Bare, black trees stand out inside a low cloud. Fog.

Headlights hide the vehicles they guide

 

until the cars arrive close enough to be

seen by other drivers.

 

In political fogs fact and factoid blur. Alternative facts,

lies that wear well-constructed masks. Fear wins.

 

Each lie repeats often enough to be used as beams for

followers. The mask asks people to scoff non-believers.

 

And the non-believers respond with taunts, point out stupidity,

lack of logic, inconsistency. A no-win war begins.

 

In the natural world, sun, blue, and clouds reappear.

Dead trees remain leafless. Headlights become optional,

 

a choice. Drivers can now see without them. Can eyes open

and human roots join for change? Must fog live in all seasons?

 

Or can sun live despite fog? As headlights point out need,

can drivers carry hope and respond with an ear instead of censure?

 

Yes, I hear where you stand, those who would

destroy the poor and give to the rich, but I disagree.

 

Peace for the world.

 Eventually. Please.

 

originally published in For A Better World

 

 

Read Full Post »

A Red Car and Metaphors for Us and Them

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 8, 2020| 1 Comment »

There is no us and them; it’s an illusion. We are all human beings, and we all have a responsibility to support one another and to discover ways of wresting the power from the very, very few people who control all the cash and all the property. (Roger Waters.)

Amazing how lost I can feel even though I know exactly where I’m turning left and right. Three errands. Each simple and specific. And yet my thoughts travel as if my brain synapses have no connections. I want to save the world. It isn’t going to happen.

A red car turns ahead of me into the parking lot as a small boy sticks his head out the window. He is a handsome child. Mocha skin. Hair shaved to reveal a perfectly shaped skull. He returns inside immediately. I imagine the voice of the driver, probably a parent. “Get your seatbelt on right now, young man.”

Then I see the identical shaved hairstyle of a smaller boy. He is seated in the middle of the back seat. The red car is no longer a vehicle in a line of traffic. It is its own world. A mini-community that turns toward another part of the shopping center.

I don’t know the family. And yet a scene hits me. The earth from a distance. Made from easily delineated parts. Water. Land. And everything is blurred as if it had no mountain, valley, creatures, or specks of dust.

When one group of people has never interacted with another, notions develop without dimension, fact, or touch.

“I’m not prejudiced,” an unnamed white woman announces. “I just think all lives matter.” The rebuttal comes, “But is your life being threatened? Has it ever been threatened because your pale-peaches skin has too many freckles?” And the response is a cold stare.

Us and them. May these words become pronouns again and stay out of the judgmental realm. They are too easily used as weapons.

A wider worldview. It may be the only solution. Yet not an easy one.

 

Read Full Post »

Cracks, Imperfections, or the Moments that Take Our Breath Away

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , on August 25, 2020| 2 Comments »

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.  (Maya Angelou)

 For when you experience more crack than sidewalk. And the news inside and outside your house could depress a saint. For the times when you explode over a request that overloads your already sinking-ship schedule. For the moments when the basement floods and you find a dry milk carton in the refrigerator…

 

May joy and laughter return in simple moments. A sunny day when rain was predicted. A call from a friend. A call to a friend. A smile from a stranger. A smile extended to a stranger. The realization that you have value no circumstance can erase.

 

Peace despite and through all the ugliness.

 

Read Full Post »

More Than a Swim at the YMCA

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 7, 2020| 1 Comment »

We’re capable of much more than mediocrity, much more than merely getting by in this world. (Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection)

A Child’s description of a YMCA pool. “Nothing like the ocean…deeper even at the beginning.”

Two brothers enter the pool. I hear the younger boy say to the other, “This water is eleven feet deep. But it is nothing like the ocean. The ocean is deeper even at the beginning.”

I smile at the child’s innocence. His simple joy. The boy has his green wrist band now. So, he can plunge into the deep end. With confidence. Swim tests completed.

Unfortunately, during Covid19 days those times need to be reserved. Socially distanced. Limited. Nevertheless, I watch the family interact. Enjoy. Celebrate. As I tread water. And reality. As well as I can.

“You have a delightful family,” I finally tell Mom. She smiles. A camera slung around her shoulders. Pictures captured inside.

She is an attractive lady. Black hair almost to her shoulders. Smooth skin the color of dark chocolate. The boys are a tad lighter, with a chestnut tinge. Lean. Active. The father, attentive. Smiling. He doesn’t see me. I smile anyway. To a beauty that I recognize inside him.

And I think about how the ocean seems deeper, even at the edge. A long way between shores. A deep space between peoples.

“Have a blessed day,” I say to the woman as this group’s assigned time ends. As the staff prepares to clean. To keep the space safe during a pandemic virus.

Safe. Such a short word with such an expansive unsaid meaning.

Peace. For all.

Read Full Post »

Lost—Again (a Poem)

Posted in positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 17, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost. (Erol Ozan)

 

 

The directional app on my phone

remains mute, while the road twists

and my mind twists with it 

into places where I am lost, again.

 

Memories explode bully-style inside

my brain synapses, creating panic.

No sound, but an arrow on my screen says

turn left at the next corner. I remember

 

the shop with the worn yellow sign.

And space in my head and heart opens.

I know to move through uncertainty.

Celebrate my detours. Consider

 

the possibility that others hide pain

behind strange, sour, surly behavior.

May peace be made from pieces,

one imperfect turn at a time.

 

published in For a Better World 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

Stella by Starlight: for Young Readers and Older People with Open Minds

Posted in book review, inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , on June 3, 2020| Leave a Comment »

by Sharon M. Draper

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”  (Alice Walker)

 “Nine robed figured dressed all in white. Heads covered with softly pointed hoods.” And Sharon M. Draper sets a scene with two short sentences. Not soft. Or safe. She writes the novel to honor her own grandmother. Her heritage. Yet, it embraces a larger truth. Heart. Courage.

 Human creatures wear skin color. Stella and Jojo, silhouetted on the cover of Stella by Starlight, are amazing human individuals. With a story. Skin color is only the cover, the beginning.

 I lost count of the number of times I have read Chapter Eleven: Truth. Two pages. Written in the main character’s handwriting. Prose poetry. 

To find truth in my life, I ask my mirrored reflection what I see. Beyond wrinkles. Beyond the piece of spinach caught between my front teeth.

 Am I more than today’s limited experience? Can I speak out, reach out? Admit failure. Try again. I can’t tell my darker friends I know how they feel. I don’t. Except in an empathetic sense. Listen? Yes! Care. Definitely. Stand for what is right? Of course.

The character, Stella, epitomizes power, seized when it was needed. However, the power of the oppressed can never be found without allies. Peace. May as many people as possible join. Now.

 

Read Full Post »

Childhood Innocence Versus Racial Prejudice: A Story from 2011

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , on May 26, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of to-day. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has his fairy godmother in his own soul. (Francis Thompson)

 Instead of a rant about racial prejudice, I reprinted this long-ago blog from March of 2011. I will let the children in the scene speak. May their innocence win.

 

A two-year-old girl at the Museum Center in Cincinnati protects one of the Children’s Center’s naked dolls as if it were her own. Her mother laughs. “I wonder how we are going to get out of here without it.” I watch as it becomes clear that she only wants this brown doll, not a nearly identical pale one she picks up by mistake. The little girl has ivory skin and wisps of honey hair, but she gravitates toward color.

 

 Funny, more of the pale dolls appear abandoned on the floor of the toddler room than darker-skinned ones. I smile, then laugh when I see my granddaughter Rebe making the same choice. “Baby” goes down the slide with her, takes a trip to the grocery in a miniature grocery cart, and explores the sandbox. Sometimes the doll is held upside down, but Rebe is visibly upset if “Baby” disappears into the arms of another child.

 

 Fortunately, I find another. Lots of pale faces lying around. But Rebe is not satisfied with the Caucasian version. As soon as the doll she wants is left for a second, she adopts it, with the speed of a hawk diving for prey.

    

True, Rebe has grown up in a mixed racial community. So did her father. But it seems that another awareness is involved here, on an innocence level lost long before adulthood. I think of the number of adjectives that describe darker skin, from mocha to mahogany to ebony. I can’t think of anywhere near as many words to describe fair and olive-skinned folk. 

 

Little people don’t need words. They go to the essence of a beautiful reality without it.

The photo is created from a simple colored penciled public domain photo, designed to mimic innocence. 

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »