Scarlet Pimpernel
Gratitude List:
1. The bank of wildflowers in that lawn at the edge of Yorkana.
2. Tomatoes and peppers in the freezer.
3. Two-year-olds. They turn my heart to puddles. They could wrap me up in spiderwebs and lead me off to faerieland without a struggle.
4. Rest.
5. Connection. Interface. Meeting.
May we walk in Beauty!
I can’t quite make sense of my motivations for how I want to write today’s Gratitude List. I’m thinking too hard about thinking about it. You see, I have been complaining all day. Really complaining about how many things have been going wrong. I keep it sort of light, too, whining delivered on a platter of intended humor: “I think all the appliances and motorized things on this farm have had a conference and decided to break down at the same time.”
Pretty lame, actually, but that’s the place where you’re supposed to groan with empathy, and pity me my breakdowns: Poor woman can’t keep her food cold or drive her car, and her lawn’s turning to jungle. But I don’t think I am looking for pity, really. Well, perhaps a little commiseration. That’s such a great word, such a great idea. Let’s be a little miserable together at the unfairness of the world, and it will all seem a little easier to bear.
I have been making an internal list today (not necessarily intentionally) of all the things that have gone wrong. If I twist that list into my gratitude list in some artful way, I will have had my chance at a rant. But is that really gratitude?
I think it is. Yes, because this business of writing a gratitude list is not only about finding the wonderful things that do happen; it’s also about putting the brokenness into perspective, about spinning the story into something positive. Not for spin’s sake, but for gratitude’s sake. For the sake of centeredness and peace of mind.
In Pronoia, Rob Breszny talks about how when something goes wrong, we focus on that one or two or five things that aren’t working instead of the hundreds of things that are working. It’s about where you place your focus. The clocks still work. Gravity continues to hold me to Earth. The plants grow. The children laugh. The stovetop cooks my morning egg to perfection.
Today I am a Spin Doctor. Not in search of pity, except as it comes with a little good mojo for all my motorized things to work.
Gratitude List:
1. My father’s car, and his gracious sharing of it while Roxanne Buick is having herself repaired to pass inspection.
2. A new (to us) fridge being delivered this week, and the old one taken away with no extra effort from us. And working substitutes in the meantime. We’re so fortunate that we have the farm store fridge to tide us over until the new one comes.
3. The string trimmer works again. We can at least keep the edges tidy. And sometimes keep your edges tidy is just the thing.
4. Spinning.
5. Perspective.
May we walk in Beauty.
Magic! Toadstools have appeared by the shop.
Gratitude List:
1. The scent of my friends lingering in the air around me after hugs. All day, I catch these little wisps of scent that I can trace to people I hugged this morning.
2. Being part of a community that welcomes and blesses the babies with great intention and love. What joy. And the sweet soft sounds of a contented baby in her grandfather’s arms next to me in church.
3. My philosopher-son. On the Sweet Honey song “On Children,” Ellis said, “Mom, I think that last verse is about not trying to make your children be like you, but trying to be more like them.” Oh yes, kiddo, you got it.
4. Steam rising from the roads after the storm. That rain took the temperature down almost 20 degrees in 45 minutes. Whoosh.
5. The “Wheep!” of the great-crested flycatcher in the woods at my parents’ house.
May we walk in beauty.
Cheshire Fred
Gratitude List:
1. Catching Ellis in an unguarded moment singing love songs to his hens.
2. Hard work, and then more hard work.
3. The love songs of bluebirds.
4. This moment.
5. And this one.
May we walk in beauty.
Gratitude List:
1. Watching fireflies rise from the fields while the children dance around and chase them.
2. Pearl, that little white dog who loves my dad so very much. She watches everyone who enters a room, but gets a particular look of adoration in her big brown eyes when her Pawpaw comes in.
3. Sitting around the table with the family, laughing together.
4. Spinning wool with my nephews.
5. Gypsy Wind. It unsettles me and fills me with longing, and makes me want to take wing. In the end, it always reminds me why I love this here, this when. So I am grateful, even when my spirit longs to wander.
“You are beautiful, and I have loved you dearly, more dearly than the spoken word can tell.” –Roger Whittaker
These are the days when I become a quiet rock,
a quivering leaf, an ear of lichen
listening to the stones grow.
The words have wandered away,
eloquence eludes me,
and all my sentences begin
with the word So.
Wind will sing in my feathers
but my own story waits
like a seed in the heart of earth,
like a dream that must rise through mud,
a bubble, the nymph of a damselfly
crawling through centuries
up the stalk of a smooth green reed
to be born to the blue light.
There is a roaring in my ears
like the sound of grief or rage.
But it is only the lazy hum of summer,
of fireflies clicking their rhythms
into the velvet indigo of solstice,
communing with the moon.
Another day I’ll dawn,
but for now I will sink
slowly into the pond
with Grandmother Moon
and leave my message with the fish.
The makings of a batch of medicine bags: spinning the wool, crocheting, and adding beads and cord. Portable and easy to fit in the spaces of a busy season.
Gratitude List:
1. Clouds. Not cloudiness, which is its own sort of blessing at times. But clouds, those Michelangelo works of art that have been so magnificent in the recent spate of changeable weather.
2. Vegetable Gardens. Have you seen it, too? Everywhere, woven through people’s flower patches, a few tomato cages, a wide-spreading squash. Or off to the side of the house–out front, even–tidy or wanton, fenced or flowing vegetable gardens. If this crazy economy has been good for anything, I think it has empowered people to remember that they can grow their own food.
3. The way things come together sometimes, even when you’re not quite trying. This is especially nice when I remember the times when things haven’t come together, even when I’ve tried desperately.
4. Day lilies and chicory. Bright orange stars on all the back-road banks, and chicory’s beautiful blue eyes, almost as sparkly as my Jonny’s. Let’s throw in some lace, shall we? Queen Anne has plenty to spare. And something golden to balance the lace–buttercups! And just here, a cascade of lush lavender vetch. Oh summer! You fill my spirit.
5. Making. There are moments in these busy days when I have to sit down and rest, but my hands still want something to do. I have found my way back to making again, and am satisfied.
May we walk in Beauty.
Gratitude List:
1. Fickle weather. Shall we have a little shower? Okay. So a bit of thunder? Now some sun and a gentle breeze. Here’s some lightning and a whoosh of rain. Mist and drizzle? Sure. I loved the variety of weathers this day.
2. Burning Bridges. Well, ours at least. We went to the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the day Union troops burned the Wrightsville bridge to stop Confederate forces from crossing the Susquehanna. Tonight they lit fires on the piers of the old bridge, closed off the modern bridge so we could stand on it and watch, and then lit fireworks. On the way home, Jon asked Ellis–who was wildly fascinated by all the bits of engineering involved in the process–what his favorite part of the evening was. He said, “There were good jokes.” He liked the camaraderie with our friends the Freibergs and the odd Civil War historian. That warms my heart.
3. The fridge is working again. Jon is right–being without it was really not big deal. We have other working fridges in the house for farm things. But I was getting really tired of running up and down the basement stairs just to make breakfast, and then to put it all away.
4. Break time with the farm crew. Speaking of camaraderie, I love the conversation and community of sitting around the table eating together.
5. Bed. I am tired, so tired.
May we walk in beauty.
Gratitude List:
1. That moon! I finally did catch a glimpse last night. Beautiful.
2. Sweet little Otis (for myotis lucifugus, the Latin name for little brown bat), who roosts in the barn. May he and his kind live long and prosper.
3. The call of the goldfinch: “So Sweee-eeet!”
4. Getting back to spinning again. Follow the twist up the strand. Release. Let go. Trust the spiral to catch and hold. Magic.
5. Billy Collins.
May we walk in beauty.
Gratitude List:
1. Sense of Wonder Camp for Girls. All those girls: wiggly giggly, serious and silly, poised and awkward and graceful all at once, thoughtful and playful and full of light. The women who put it together, the mothers and mentors who were there to celebrate their girls. I felt like I could see the silver webs, like a veil of light, that connected us all.
2. Leaving a place with a sense of dissatisfaction, not because events were dissatisfying, but because there were so many people there whose words I wanted to feel settling into the shells of my ears, and there was not time for it all. I drove home surfing a love wave. “Oh, and then there was her! I could have talked with her all night. Oh, and her! I just love her. Right, and then her! What a tender and kind heart.”
3. A new green T-Shirt with a Rachel Carson Quotation: “Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
4. Josiah, though still a little warm, is acting like himself again after a couple days of fever. He refused the Ibuprofen last night and let the fever do its work on its own.
5. Longest day. Summer’s here. Happy Solstice to you! May the sun warm you all the way to your bones, fill you with life and health and radiance. Every day the world begins anew.
May we walk in Beauty.
This wasn’t today’s sandwich. I ate that too fast to even think of a photo. I think that is a Cherokee Purple tomato.
Gratitude List:
1. The first tomato sandwich! That crusty, yeasty brown bread and an Iron Lady tomato with sharp cheddar and mayo and salt. Oh my, oh my, oh my. . .
2. Was it Andrea who said something at break today about a man who said that when he was a boy he could hear corn growing? Like a whistling sound, he told her. I love that so much.
3. Life force. That corn up there in #2, and the mung bean sprouts that Ellis grew this week, how they pushed up the lids, and then grew an extra half inch in a hour this morning.
4. The old, old woman from my dream last night. Her name is Grafa. “Sometimes I wake up in the night and fling off the covers,” she tells me. “I wake up in the middle of the night just to tweak the energy a bit.” Grafa–writing or drawing? From Old Norse or Proto-Germanic (according to Wiktionary), means to dig, to bury, to engrave.
5. The random way that Joss throws words together or sings a word repeatedly while he’s playing, just for the fun of the sounds. “My teeth are devious!” “My foot of God.” “Nairobi, Nairobi, Nairobi!”
May we walk in beauty.
