Rippling wine

Snot oozes out of Ezra's nose like a slowly-creeping glacier.  Forming a squeegee from my hand and a tissue, I gently scrape away the dribble, dab the clinging clots, and toss the wet cloth into the trashcan.  Sliding into the sixth day of head colds, we are all ready to be healthy again. 

Before colds, we endured an entire month of pink eye.  The inevitable domino effect applies to every illness that infects our family.  One person feels the fringes of the illness, then in a day or two another person falls victim.  By the end of the week, the entire family is suffering together.

Does the same ring true in your life, friend?  Or, if not with illness, then with relationships or events?  Do you ever feel that a single stone tossed in your general direction leads to a ripple of waves that crashes over your head, one after the other?

My mother always says that bad things happen in threes.  It does seem to happen that life events - both bad and good - tend to cluster.  Perhaps, friend, we should delight in the wine we can make with such clusters; share with a friend; and, toast to good health.  Then, whether bad or good, life's events can hearten our souls, just knowing that it is shared with those who care.

Happy heaps

A simple pile of blankets sits upon the sofa.  Velveteen and fluffy, each one provides more than warmth and coziness.  With the help of two creative kids, these squares of soft cloth become elaborate tunnels, the roof to a toddler-sized house, cushions for jumping into, and togae or capes.

With the vast array of kids' toys that are on the market today, it always amazes me that the most fascinating objects to my boys are often the most common.  Blankets, shiny pans, wooden spoons and whisks, a painted turtle crawling through the yard, a bit of yarn, tinkling bells, and books gallore.  These bring more smiles to their faces than most of the toys we have for them.

Life is like that for adults, too.  Think of what brings you true moments of joy?  For me, smiles on the faces of those I love, freshly blooming flowers in the garden, a colorful sunrise or sunset framed by deep blue mountain crests, and the magical beauty of transformation - the emerging butterfly, a cicada skin, the reawakening of a tortured soul.

How does happiness creep into your life?  Which simplicities matter most to you?

Perhaps you could share some of life's beauties with a friend that may need reminding of how much you care.

Authentic attempt

Imagine you are painting a picture.  The feel of the brush in your hand is comfortable and sure.  Bright white canvas, freshly gessoed, anticipates your masterpiece.  Vivid colors blot your palette and seem to whisper the elements of life: blood-drop red glistening, clay-rich orange red that clumps in calloused hands, yolky yellow that seems to cling like a cloak to fluffy chicks, greens that creep through an array of hues depending on the season, bountiful blue shades braiding skies and dancing along riverbeds, indigo stains like velvet twilight, purple plumes present on mountains, eggplants, and even dawn-breaking cloud-wisps.

Each stroke captures an intricate image from your mind, whose storehouse swells with memory.  Emotion creeps into the arrangement of color: some reverberate joyous occasions; others, hellish recollections.  But overall the picture is an amazing creation.  It intertwines moments in such a way that a grand pattern emerges in staggering complexity that appears with such simplicity.

Now, close your eyes.  Imagine what your painting would be.  What colors would bedeck your palette?  Which imagery would impress upon the viewer?  How would your life whisper from the folds of time? 

With a sigh and a smile, dare to really look around you: does the day dazzle your eye even amidst the trudgery?  Does your perspective need some readjustment to scatter inspiring prisms about you? 

Let yourself limn an authentic attempt at a life well-lived.

Myriad Messes

Lush soil pools into the palms of eager toddlers.  More dirt spills onto the tabletop than the containers for transplanting seedlings, brimming with the promise of smooth-skinned eggplant, tasty tomatoes, dark green zucchini, broad basil leaves, and sweet Mediterranean melons.  The bare wood floor seems to sprout a dark brown carpet under the footfalls of enthusiastic tykes.  I pull out the vacuum and vroom about the kitchen.

Joey tips a spout.  A stream of water pours into an advancing puddle, which threatens to overtake the available space on the table.  He adjusts the watering can and soaks the soil engulfing tiny sprouts, instead.  I blot the liquid spread with cotton cloths and ring water into the sink.

We return the trays to the covered porch, where sunlight slashes slits onto the baseboard, and keep them in a well protected location.  Ezra chases bubbles that Joey creates with a sticky wand.  Bubble solution trickles down the canister, crosses over fingers like cars over speedbumps, and drips onto the gray porch boards.  Inside, Ezra takes a turn and spills soapy solution on the floor.  Miniscule bubbles froth and foam as I wipe them up. 

Tension tightens my shoulder blades, then froths and foams inside like the bubble solution.  Motherhood is constant motion; there is never enough time to finish the tasks at hand.  Taking time to teach my sons life virtues and skills saps my own patience now and then.  It reminds me of the human propensity for messes.  Do you ever feel tension mounting and patience dwindling, friend?  Do you ever feel that there are more messes around you than not?

Each day holds ample opportunity to make a mess.  Sometimes, we moan and groan and make it worse.  Other times, in quietude, we clean it up.  Either option has varying results, depending on our bearing.  Sometimes, just pausing and reminding ourselves of the direction we want to take can make a huge difference.  A difference that, when internalized, can also impact the world.

Backdoor blessing

The kitchen has a back door, which yawns open to overlook the honey-hued morning sunlight dribbling on leafy rhubarbs, a white-washed storage building that emits as much hum from boring bees as from the drone of a freezer, and a simple porch that allows easy access to a flagstone walk edged by a mob of mint.  The door is not seen by passers-by.  And yet, it is the most gracefully adorned exit from inside the house.

Lace-edged curtains seem to droop a profusion of daisy-looking flowers, that part just enough to show the swaying green trees mingled with blue sky outside.  A silvery white, diamond-shaped bead garland stretches across the doorpost and sprays a gleam here, a glint there - something pleasing to glimpse.  A gold-lined frosted-glass angel, with wings whispering mid-flight and a held breath about to create the first notes from a musical lute, hangs from the curtain rod.  I imagine a blessing sprinkles down as someone leaves through that back door.

But, I wonder, am I always receptive to that blessing?  Often, my shoulders are tensed with the day's concerns and irritations - the long list of items left unaccomplished.  Is it like that for you, too, friend?  Do failures and nonfulfillments distract you from that which you did do, today - no matter how few those achievements have been?

Let's imagine a blessing sprinkling down on us, today.  And, instead of passing by unaware, lift your head and smile - knowing that if nothing else today, you let some joy seep hope into your heart.  A hope that is sure to grow and spread like mint.

Chasing chickens

Swift hens dodge the boys, whose gleeful gaits continue tirelessly for almost an hour.  It amazes me that chasing chickens can hold such fascination for my little boys.  A Rhode Island Red would stop to peck and scratch at the lushly-weeded garden only to take off like a roadrunner a moment later with a toddling 2-year-old in chase... an empty planting pot held high in his hands.

But those chickens are smart.  And after an hour of exercising those children, the hens were ready to return to the comfort of their coop.

Sometimes I feel like my boys - chasing after dreams that are always just out of reach.  Do you ever feel like that, friend?  Is there a dream you need a net to reach, and even then it seems impossible?

I want to believe that anything is possible, and yet I am realistic enough to know there are some dreams I will never realize.  On the other hand, my life is full of opportunities I never could have dreamed.  So, perhaps I need to focus on how answers to my dreams have been fulfilled in ways I did not expect.  I'll keep chasing chickens, sure, but also realize that sometimes (when those dreams are ripe for picking) they just might come to fruition on their own.

Sunpooled footprints

An azure orb of sky stretches over bristling gray trees, a calm duck pond, and the expanse of indigo mountain that sleeps along the horizon.  The pond reflects thin white wisps where once a plane traversed, but already the lines unravel into azure. 

As I trek across the wintered field, dodging "moo-poo" (Ezra's clever coinage) while grasping a little hand in each of my own, the plodded paths of cows become more evident.  Overlain hoofprints keep the grass at bay in some areas and clear larger swaths around the waterers and vitamin-block holders.  Mud sucks prints off Joey's boots as he runs ahead to follow the distinctive tread from tractor tires threading through gates toward the barn.

In the field on the edge of the woods, we find an abandoned birdnest, wound from coarse tendrils of cow hair, pine needles, and even shriveled, slate-colored cedar berries.  Sleek black feathers, shimmering with turquoise and purple when twirled in sunlight, and fluffy feathers like unmeltable snow dot our path back to the house. 

Traces of life abound around us.  Not only those we found during our walk today, but also the finger trails on handmade pottery, colorful toddler footprints plastered to a recent painting, tire tracks along a snow-covered road, kiss marks on glass (left by a compassionate almost-two-year-old), cookie crumbs trailing across the floor, a circle of leaves showered from a tree, ...

What types of traces can you add to our list, friend?  What traces are you leaving with each step you take?  Imagining the evidence of my life in its wake, I am more mindful of the ways I live and the impression I make.  When waves of time lap my footprints from the shore, will the world be sad to see those traces go?