Tag: melancholy

The Little Blue Heron

I just took the dogs out and the little blue heron was sitting out there waiting for us. He comes to our backyard often, picking various perches to look for food. The little blue heron is never excited to see the dogs. He stubbornly holds his position until the last minute that one of them almost reaches him, and then he flies off, loudly squawking his disapproval and disgust. I smile to myself every time I see him. My husband always says that the little blue heron is his dad paying us a visit.

My husband’s father passed away when my husband had just turned 30. We received one of those awful “middle of the night calls” (the kinds of sickening calls that you wish were only true in movies) with the news that my father-in-law had passed from a sudden heart attack. He was 59.

My father-in-law was a complicated man. My husband had a complicated relationship with him. But my husband was his only son of five children, and I never doubted my father-in-law’s love and pride for his son. When my husband was earning his MBA from a prestigious, challenging university during night school, while supporting our family of me and our two young sons with his day job, my father-in-law sent a regular stream of handwritten letters and newspaper clippings, as a form of pride and cheerleading and support.

My husband and our two middle sons took off from work/school today, to go fishing together. I just waved them off, feeling their excitement and anticipation reverberating in my own heart. My husband often fished with his own father when he was a boy. Maybe when the little blue heron flew off just now, he was heading out to sea. Maybe the little blue heron has “a boy with his own boys” to look after today. Perhaps they need the little blue heron’s pride and cheerleading and support.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

379. Who knows you better than anyone else?

Closed Doors

I read this prayer the other day. It really is beautiful:

Buddhist Prayer of Forgiveness

If I have harmed anyone in any way either knowingly or unknowingly
through my own confusions I ask their forgiveness.

If anyone has harmed me in any way either knowingly or unknowingly
through their own confusions I forgive them.

And if there is a situation I am not yet ready to forgive
I forgive myself for that.

For all the ways that I harm myself, negate, doubt, belittle myself,
judge or be unkind to myself through my own confusions
I forgive myself.

I was flipping through podcasts yesterday as I was doing some household chores and I heard a man briefly talking about when we go through certain doors in life, once you go through these doors, they shut behind you and you cannot go back. “Coming of age” is one of those doors. Any major experience that has had a huge impact on our perspective of people, of ourselves, and of the world itself, is one of those heavy, ironclad doors. Because even if you call a master locksmith and you pry the door open, and you try to go back to where you came from, what you see behind the door, will not be the same. You don’t have the same eyes nor the same heart looking at the experience anymore. Sometimes we make really conscious decisions to reach for the heavy handle, and to walk through one of these doors, full well-knowing that we will never be the same, once we do it. Sometimes we are forced through these doors by experiences which we had no control over, and even if we bang and bang on the door, we cannot go back. It takes bravery to walk away into the future from closed doors. We do it a lot in life. We are brave beings. We journey forward, through winding paths between closed doors, one step at a time. Beautiful prayers ease the way.

Picture credit: Guillaume Issaly

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1028. What proved to be a game changer in your life?

Soul Sunday

Good morning. Welcome to poetry day on the blog. I like to think of poetry as the secret code of our souls. In order to write poetry, you have to put your most sensible, guarded, orderly part of yourself aside and let the poetry write itself. It is the one form of communication that you come to as blankly and open, as someone else who is just reading it for the first time. How many times have you written a poem and thought, “Oh wow, I wrote that?? That’s what is stirring deep inside of me??” Get to know yourself better and write yourself a poem today. I wrote this poem about a lovely bridal shower which I attended yesterday:

“The Elders Table”

We watched the beautiful young bride excitedly unpack each gift,

Clean, shiny, unmarked, powerful tools to create the sustenance of a fairy tale.

We reminisced of the days when we sat in her seat and her spotlight.

So full of hope, and promise, and energy, and expectant excitement.

We marvel at the versions of ourselves who long ago, once sat in her seat,

Radiant and innocent and ambitious and determined and clear.

We still have many of the tools showered upon us, on those days, long ago when we were the brides.

The tools are well-used, scarred with marks, some almost broken, but determined to continue their purpose.

We, who are intently watching the bride, are now the continuance of the women who bestowed these gifts upon us.

And it is only now, that we deeply understand why it was so imperative for our elders to impart these gifts upon us.

The gifts weren’t just pots and pans and knives and nightgowns and a little wad of money for extras.

They were the tools that helped sustain the hope, and the excitement, and the energy and the promise,

When life’s storms were determined to make their marks, sometimes gashes, all to test our tenacity and plans.

Would the inner gentle flower of our young bride’s heart wilt under the load of life?

Or would the dried, sustained, circle wreath arrangement of our elders, be our borrowed strength,

When we decided to fondly pick up a remembered tool, from a lovely little bridal celebration, and to calmly use the implement, so to carry on with life . . . . .

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

30 Bags

There is this movement called the “30 Days of 30 Bags Challenge” where you get rid of thirty bags of stuff, in the spanse a month. I have been attempting this challenge, with admitted fits and starts, since the beginning of this year. Yesterday, I decided to make up for lost time. My daughter, who is our youngest child of four kids, is home from college for spring break, so I decided to take on the family board game cupboard, and the kids’ books cupboard, with her help and input.

We ended packing up at least 5-6 big bags of stuff. We donated these bags to our local community library. Despite over the years of my pertinent insisting that our kids look in the cupboard for a required reading book, before ordering it on Amazon, it turned out that we had four copies of The Scarlet Letter and five copies of Othello. Hmmm. Someone must have “lost” their copy of Othello. Still, the library was pleased with the donation of “good” books, and my helpful daughter got the prize of a delicious slice of coconut cream pie, which the library was offering up, in celebration of Pi Day (3/14), yesterday.

Cleaning out cupboards is ordinarily an exciting, satisfactory feeling and overall, yesterday was indeed purifying and cleansing, but this cleansing happened with a big ol’ dollop of Bittersweet soap. Invariably, among the books and games were old notebooks with my children’s handwriting, and a whole shelf worth of yearbooks (which still remain here at home.) The above picture is one which I found in one of my own notebooks, that it appears my daughter had “swiped” (she had written a confession in it – “This is my mom’s notebook.”) My daughter had drawn the picture above in the notebook, which was a self-portrait of when she was a little girl in a quirky T-shirt, that had been one of her all-time favorites. The t-shirt had an alligator on it, and the words, “Careful, I bite.” My daughter wasn’t actually a biter, but we both got a kick out of that shirt, and in some weird way, I thought that it made my precious little girl, safer from would-be predators. (My eldest son was the only biter of our four children, and he only once bit another child, other than his siblings. Unfortunately that one time, the victim happened to be the preacher’s kid at Vacation Bible School. My son’s explanation, while rolling his eyes in exasperation of having to explain himself, again and again: “I already told you, I was pretending to be a lion!”)

So yesterday, after completing the chore and getting caught up on the bag challenge, I sighed a sigh of happiness, satisfaction, and also a little heartache for an era of my life, which has now passed on. I tossed out my old notebook, after tearing out one important page of a cute little girl’s doodle. That page is now posted on my blog, and it also has a special spot of its own, on the side of our refrigerator. This picture won’t be in any of my “30 bags” any time soon. We have room.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Two Sides to the Blade

PRAYER OF THE SELFISH CHILD

by Shel Silverstein 

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep,

And if I die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my toys to break.

So none of the other kids can use ’em….

Amen. 

“Egos trip, but humble doesn’t stumble, baby.” – Think Smarter (Twitter)

My husband and I stopped at a local “hole in the wall yesterday”, known mostly for its kooky-named craft beers. It was in an industrial park, was furnished with thrift store furniture, had only one, addicting, retro arcade game, only played vinyls on an old school record player, and until recently, was only open on Sundays. And it was so cool.

I read about it, in an article written by a hesitant fan of the place. The writer was caught on the edge of the blade, that we have all been before, that edge of wanting to share with the world, something that you love and adore; something that is so unique and special and unfathomably undiscovered, wanting to give a shout-out to the creator of such an amazing thing, and yet shaking in fear, and prescient of the disappointment, of the other side of the sword. The other side is knowing that inevitably, your discovery’s amazing-ness will catch on, the item/restaurant/singer/band/foodstuff/TV show/vacation spot/store/blog (ahem) will become as immensely popular as it deserves to be, and the magic of the best-kept secret gemstone, will be lost to the masses, to the pretenders, to those who only appreciate that which is already “proven,” and thus your discovery’s novelty, rareness and sui generis will fade to the rank and file, putting you on yet another quest for the next, unexplored, uncharted, great thing.

I almost felt guilty going to the joint yesterday. Wonderful places, yet undiscovered, make you question whether you are worthy. I wanted the waiter to say, “It’s okay. You’re kinda old, but you are cool enough to be here, because you were brave enough to try.” This is probably how the first discoverers of the ancient Egyptian tombs felt. I am sure that the explorers to the new world, had to wonder if it might be better to keep their magnificent findings, to themselves and retrospectively, the native people would have probably been better off remaining undiscovered. Things tend to follow the same cycle of life, that we do. Nothing escapes it. New, fresh, undiscovered people, places and things, grow and peak and then start to decline to the archives, until some of the new, fresh, undiscovered people of the new times, rediscover the validity of the stunning archives, and the cycle starts all over again. It’s the cusp periods, on the edge of the blade, that have us all holding our breaths, watching that what we love and sometimes try to hide and hoard, about to enter its peak on the life cycle of its ultimate story and history.