Five acts of gratitude

1. The quiet dark of a room when the only light is my computer screen and the only sound is my fingers making words on keys.

2. The empathy of a three year old when he notices a bug bite (which he pronounces with a German accent), looks at you and says "oh no" with so much sincerity it makes your heart ache with love, finds his silkie and wraps it around your wound as if the love and softness can heal all. And it can.

He meant that feeling something was never simply a state of submission but always, also, a process of construction.

[...] We care in order to be cared for. We care because we are porous. The feelings of others matter, they are like matter: they carry weight, exert gravitational pull. 

-Leslie Jamison, "The Empathy Exams"

3. The elder gentleman who stops you at Carl's on your way back from the bathroom and says, "Excuse me, miss, but have you ever lived in Tennessee?" It's a Monday, and you've been drinking--but just two beers. Because you're honest you say, "No, but I did live in South Carolina for a few years." He doesn't miss a beat before responding, "Cause you're the only ten I see." You laugh and say thank you and mean it.

4. The neighbor who asks about the art in your living room and you get a chance to point out the pieces by your friends. "Waving Goodbye" by Sara Hamilton, "Yellow Energy" by Kerri Ammirata, "John Petrucci" by Steve Snell.

5. The friend you ride tandem with for the first time, who takes the back, who trusts your steering, who says "I got you" when you slow to stop because her feet touch the ground and yours don't, who understands the metaphor of teamwork.

Phillip

I could keep writing about Australia in pieces--snapshots of curtain figs, fake Aboriginal villages, croc-prone waters, curlews calling in the night--and I might, but at the heart of it all is Phillip.

For me, our honeymoon was perhaps what it should be: the fact that it was the two of us together exploring the world was the best part of it all. We could have been anywhere, and as long as he was my partner, we would have found our way. For me, it was those small moments with him that made the experience. When, somewhere between Rockhampton and Townsville, he suddenly pulled the car over and asked me to take photos of the grassy mountains, near monoliths, at our side; those are some of our best and favorite photos. When Auntie Florence started calling him Prince William and he blushed and shook his head. When I watched him jump full on into waves as they hit Trinity Beach, joyful like a child, and snorkel in the distance for hours on his own personal journey of the Reef. When he dropped his Coke into Paul the five-meter croc's enclosure because I startled him yelling "Mosquitoes!" as he was photographing ants on the ledge. When he lifted a kangaroo's tail to feel its heft and lounged next to one to get the full effect. When I thought he was taking photos of me jumping--a classic beach pose--in the shallows of Hervey Bay but when I asked if he got it he said he'd been taking a video because I looked beautiful. That's my husband. That's my best friend. That's the man I'm so grateful for, who took this leap of faith with me and went abroad, went to my grandmother's homeland, and when we got home we wanted even more of each other because we get so little sustained time.

I loved all of our time in Australia, but I loved it more and because I shared it with Phillip. That is the real story.

Strokes

There is a cross above our front door, stenciled black on the flat green wall. It was the former owner's, her personal reminder of grace or god or love or sin, perhaps instead of one she could wear around her neck. Perhaps these fifteen foot ceilings felt like a cathedral to her, majestic and meant for symbols of something higher. It's the most detailed piece in this house; elsewhere, lines are sloppy, and brushstrokes tell of laziness. Perhaps, like Jesus supposedly saved our sins, the mere presence of the cross saved her from finishing edges. The end outweighed the living.

I've begun our claiming. First, azaleas in the front bed, hostas on the corners. Then impatiens where once were weeds out back and, now, a front door that from the street sings hello in yellow. Next, the living room walls, where blue samples in patches are teases for completion. The cross will soon be gone. I will tape my trim and fill in gaps with small brushes. I will sand down cabinets and slow cook hinges. I will sit quiet in the dark and listen to the house breathe, a hush I only hear when I slow.

Outside, a garden spider will make its nightly home across our stoop, swept from the tree to the post. I duck under it when I can but don't always anticipate the angles. It builds its home point by point, hoping for a catch, a meal and some peace. I watch its confidence as it hangs in the air, reaches its legs to the future, and think that this creature, one small miracle, is our grace, our connection, our wonder in this one life.

"We are here to build the house." And we will do it on our own, with diligence, with detail, with love.

Spirituality emerged as a fundamental guidepost in Wholeheartedness. Not religiosity but the deeply held belief that we are inextricably connected to one another by a force greater than ourselves--a force grounded in love and compassion. For some of us that's God, for others it's nature, art, or even human soulfulness. I believe that owning our worthiness is the act of acknowledging that we are sacred. Perhaps embracing vulnerability and overcoming numbing is ultimately about the care and feeding of our spirits.

-Brene Brown, Daring Greatly

On nostalgia

Sentimentality is about lies, he says, nostalgia about "real things gone," not so much about what we remember, but itself "an almost fatalistic acceptance of the permanence of loss." The body cannot remember a lie. 

[...] I used to believe that my nostalgia was so intense because I felt I had lost something I never possessed. But the truth is that we do not possess our lives. As true exiles know, we stand too easily to lose them, and in the end we are all just passing through. It is what we remember of the journey that we possess. 

- Lee Zacharias, "Mud Pies"

 

 

 

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