violets rule

"Living is like licking honey off a thorn" - so says Susan Lenzkes in her book about living wisely in a world of pain and sorrow.

Great concept.

And doesn't the honey taste sweeter knowing you must taste judiciously and can't just blunder in greedily?

I love the idea of contrast and don't know if truly you can understand health if you've never endured sickness, life if never brushed by death, joy if never crushed by sorrow.

And so today would my heart have leaped so high to see at the turn of my daily walk, one regal violet pushing out of the brown earth, if I hadn't crunched through snow at that exact spot two months ago?

Good Friday

I'm always puzzled why this holiday has stuck with the US public. Wall Street, of all institutions, is closed today. With all the hue and cry about separation of church and state, why would this most singularly Christian holiday still be observed. I understand that Easter and Christmas are also Christian holidays at the conceptual level as well, but the Good Friday observation goes beyond that. Think of the traders on the floor at Wall Street and guess how many of them truly observe the Crucifixion aspects of the day. I think it would make a fascinating study.

Whereas, even having grown up in a very religiously-oriented household, I still remember almost no religious rituals connected with the day.

Except, of course, the exquisitely devout practice of egg-painting.

I know I've written of this before, but it was such a happy time! And my nose still twitches at the remembered acrid scent of the dyes hitting warm, hard-boiled eggs. We began so earnestly, carefully sketching designs, the colors still pure. But as cotton swabs picked up other colors from the eggs, the colors in the cupcake tin began to muddy - as did the eggs.

A life lesson in the making!

Convictions so startlingly pure and decisive in the start, when they start rubbing up against others, start to morph into new shades. In the end, some riveting blends exist.

Something to be said for that.

the moment

There are no adequate words for this time of year. I reach for literary vehicles that will convey the absolute joy I feel as I walk around the lake these days. Every few steps reveals a new shade of green, yellow, pink, white, magenta - all crowned with the bluest of skies.

It is the season of anticipation.

I think of all the things I look forward to - dinner with friends, vacations by the ocean, trips to the city, afternoons alone with a book, a good movie, family times... on and on. Almost better than the event itself is the anticipation of it. The thought rests feather-light on your soul for days. Something good is on the way.

Springtime is the ultimate something-good.

hopscotch

That tangy smell of earth these days transports me back to school days. As we had no sidewalks or any paved area to chalk, our hopscotch days were necessarily in the warm earth days. When spring came sashaying into our school yard, the grounds grew soft and then downright muddy. But that's when we would take sticks, make them as sharp as we could and carefully sketch out the hopscotch board in the soft earth. Then the trick was to find a flat stone with a nicely balanced heft and off we went! I can never pass a hopscotch grid on my walks even now without hopping through the single, double jumps! What an extraordinarily simple bit of fun. Do kids these days even know what a hopscotch game looks like?

Again, this theme reverberates that as a child I played a lot of the games my parents did as children. When our sons were growing up, they played some things we did. But this generation of kids finds their pleasures in such enormously different playgrounds that it's hard to take in. A swing, rope and board, metal chain and seat, old tire and rope - whatever variation provided hours of fun! Trees were for climbing, fences for straddling, field and creeks for exploring. Now so many hours are spent with a gadget of some kind in hand.

Sad.

Hopscotch rocked!

March tease

With wavering resolve
winter caves
to spring.

Brown dry withered brittle
flares
into green,

And
birds,
people,
insects,
breathe
yes.

Snow morning

When I awoke and looked out the window every leaf, twig, branch, trunk, weed was ridged with cotton ball snow. Glorious. And even though it was my day off, I pushed myself out of bed to walk in the still falling snow. My walk time around the lake was dotted with pauses to take another picture!

Now it's 3 hours later and I can't even see a flake of snow - anywhere!

Carpe diem. To the max.

Sometimes age pushes us to pursue opportunities that are fleeting.

 More often, the energy thing kicks in and we say, maybe next time.

A mix of the two responses is acceptable, but this morning is a reminder that the effort taken will be smiling back at me for a long time.

"Attention is the doorway to gratitude."

Those words stopped me cold on Sunday morning. But then I started turning them over and over.

Attention. Sometimes, upon reflection, I realize I have gone through the whole day with very little attention.

My mother was attentive - to beauty, especially.

She noticed the nuances of the seasons - geese flying north or south, yellow-green of new willows, golden Norway maples, the snow-scented air, greening meadows.

As we drove she pointed out daffodils by stone walls, sunsets, creamy clouds in blue skies, shadows dancing across stretches of patchwork fields. Small, bountiful things.

But she was also attentive to feelings. She knew the smallest child at church by name, and visited elderly friends in retirement homes on sunny days, sweltering in their over-heated rooms. She laughed, cried, joked, cajoled, comforted with family, friends and neighbors.

She saw life between the cracks.

Thankfully, I remember.