Tag: what matters

Can I talk to you tonight?

Our tear ducts are our soul’s pressure valves. A friend told me that years ago. I’m not one prone to tears because my dad always told me when I was little that big girls don’t cry. But I’ve cried streams this month, April, the month of showers. I’ve tried to save my mother all of my life, but I can’t. I know it. I just have to try to save her stories. And no, she’s not gone yet. But it has been so hard to watch her decline over the years. I’m tired and she seems tired too.

Gather

Gather. Prayers, family, friends, flowers, memories, sorrow. Gather.
Children, moments, days, love, hope. Gather.
Sunshine, seasons, a cure, the moon. Gather.
Together. Remembering. Grieving. Ourselves. Gather.

Earth, ashes, dust. Scatter.

Former Etsy Narrative for my Archives

[Here in my etsy shop, I share with you reclaimed paperbacks, many of them favorite books I’ve read myself, including pulp fiction, pop lit, bestsellers, and classics I haven’t.]

I have always loved books. It was my excuse to get a degree in English and the humanities (the one major that fed my reading addiction). Besides going to the library every Saturday with my sisters and dad as a child, I ended up working in libraries for years starting in high school and through college. Before he took off for Vietnam, after he’d moved us North in case he didn’t come back, my dad took us to the local library to meet the children’s librarian, Mrs. Nickerson. He did come back and we continued our weekly library jaunts to libraries wherever we were living at the time from Steubenville, Ohio, to Oceanside, California, back to Cape Cod and more. When I had my own children, the library was an outing at least once a week, usually more. We’d spend hours there in the Fletcher Free Library in Burlington, Vermont. Libraries always felt like home to me. Even on vacations, we always went to the local library.
A library job is what brought me from Vermont back to the Cape, and while the job didn’t work out (people change) and I miss Vermont terribly, my love of books remains constant and saves me from total despair at times.

[While some of these books are well worn, they are not in tatters and still highly readable. Some are even written in so you can share another reader’s journey as you take your own. With a book, you can escape to all over the world. You can inhabit the life of someone else when you need to escape from your own. You’re never alone with a book. And along with a book, goes a good cup of tea. I am a tea connoisseur as well as a bibliophile and will include in each package some hand-stuffed and tied bags of some of my favorite teas. Enjoy!]

Hope

There’s that expression, “false hope,” but do you believe it? I don’t think there’s any such thing. Unless you know for sure that all is lost (life basically), then how can you believe there is anything but HOPE? Like Yogi said, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”

Role Reversal

When did it happen? As I left the rehab center the other day, I turned and waved to my mother from the walkway outside. She waved back to me from the window of her room. All I could think of is how it must have been for us when I was 5 years old, waving to her from the window of the bus on my way to kindergarten, as she waved back to me.

Reading

My parents were readers and I am a reader. I love reading as much, if not more, than I love baking (and drinking tea). Reading becomes my Looking Glass, I can get lost for a very long time in a book. My first “real” job after babysitting was in a library and it continued off and on for many years. So, it only stands to reason that I love words and how they are strung together, playfully, seriously, nonsensically, poetically…some folks express themselves with canvas, clay, flowers, …others express themselves through farming perhaps or setting a beautiful table and so on…It’s all art to me. All of us tell a story when we do this although we ourselves and others may not be aware of it. Because one must pay close attention. The story isn’t always where we’re looking for it. And somewhere in all that work, the kernel of the story is rooted in love. In the latest book I’m reading, it is prefaced with a quote from Clarissa Pinkola Estes, one of my favorite storytellers. It’s from “The Gift of Story: A Wise Tale About What Is Enough.”

“Of all the gifts that people can give to one another, the most meaningful and long lasting are strong but simple love and the gift of story.”

Ordinary

I’m happy to be blogging again but am aware of the risk of narcissism, self-indulgence, and ego creeping into my posts. I want to be careful of that but sometimes it’s hard. We all want our lives to count for something, to stand out from the crowd, to matter, to transcend our history (hopefully), and we’re here this go round for such a very short time.

We want to be special, not just ordinary like everybody else, and yet that is where I feel most connected to another, when I learn I am not alone in my feelings, that they are common and ordinary and shared. My life is beautiful in its everyday ordinariness, and I am happy to share it with others who are struggling with the ordinary too.

Nollaig Shona

I heard Bono was busking on Grafton Street in Dublin yesterday…how cool is that?

We enjoyed long walks, a quiet evening watching Joyeux Noel about the WWI Christmas truce in 1914, and then sitting by candlelight before bed for reading and rest. I love this quiet low-key Christmas. Today was a leisurely day visiting both sides of the family, and tomorrow I’m off to Vermont with Molly for more visits with family and old friends. ‘Tis the season to make time to spend with the ones we love.