Good Hours

One by one they come back down the stairs, a plate of hot food in their hands. The 

album pages have been pushed aside and the conversation is lively. I hear the pros 

and cons of marble vs. granite counter tops. I hear tips about good vacation spots. One 

woman is catching up with someone she hasn’t seen in a while, sensitively asking 

about her son’s progress in school. The middle school years were tough – the first year of 

high school is better.

The chicken – spinach – pasta bake that I made is a hit, and everyone’s wondering about my secret ingredients. The conversation shifts to pinterest.  iPhones buzz, and someone teases me about whether today’s lunch will make it onto the blog. I smile to myself, knowing that pictures of this meal are safely stored on my memory card…and that, yes, today’s lunch will probably make an appearance on the blog.

{recipe}

It’s funny how much these gals applaud the food I fix for them every week. I think it’s probably because someone else has actually done the cooking and they’ve gotten to take off their care-giver cap for a few hours. I’m guessing that the food tastes better to them then it really is! Whatever the reason, watching my friends relax and enjoy this time is one of the highlights of my week.

I stand up and start to collect the plates, “reminding” everyone to get back to work. Break’s over! As I climb the basement stairs that lead to my kitchen, I leave laughter and chatter behind me. Lunch is over, and we have a few more hours of scrapbooking before we have to head off to errands or to work or to collect children from school. These are good hours.

Hours spent on us and a craft that we enjoy. Hours spent with women we’ve grown to trust – at least enough to promise each other that what happens at scrapbooking, stays at scrapbooking! Hours spent making sure that our stories –the stories that make us who we are - will be passed down and told for years , for generations to come. Yes, these are good hours.

Back at my table, I sit quietly, choosing photos and planning layouts. A silence settles over the room, as each of us turns our concentration to the project before us. It’s a comfortable silence. It’s in this moment when I discover, quite by accident, how beautiful a subtly patterned sheet of paper looks behind some of my instagram shots. I cut...arrange...tape….and a walk I took this past spring comes back to life.

As I lift my eyes and watch the other five pairs of hands doing as I have done, I’m struck by the significance of this gathering. Called to these workshop tables to create memory books, we have been given so much more. We’ve been given warmth and nourishment, friendship and purpose. We are not only preserving memories, we are making memories. Together.

Glimmer

The breeze beckoned me. She teased me as I stood at my sink scrubbing the grimy oven racks. She invited herself right into my kitchen, tenderly kissing my cheeks and playing with the untethered wisps of my hair.  “Remember what you promised yourself yesterday? That long walk? You were going to bring that fancy camera of yours with you and take the time to spoil yourself. Remember?”

Of course I remember, I countered…to no one in particular. To the breeze. To myself. I glanced at the clock on the oven and started to calculate how much time I could allow myself for this walk without ignoring the to do list that was running on a loop in my mind. Ok, I bargained. I’ll finish cleaning the oven, and then give myself an hour…

As I was calculating, a glimmer of light caught my eye. Turning back towards the breeze, I lost sight of the clock and fixed my gaze on the tree covered hillside that stretches beyond our back yard. Another glimmer. A flicker. The sun had partnered with the breeze and they were putting on quite a show. As the leaves surrendered gracefully to the gentle wind, the sunlight caught them from every angle. They fluttered and sparkled as they danced for me. “Look at us! Do you think you can capture this with your lens?”

Just do it. Just go. You’ll feel better after you walk. You did make a date with your camera. Your to-do list deadlines are self imposed. Let them go. 

Water off. Sneakers on. I grabbed my camera and took off towards the pond.

Less than ten minutes later I was watching a small red maple leaf float across the water. The shutter clicked. A duck floated by, along with a yellow leaf. Click. Click. Yes. This is good. But I better keep moving. I started up the hill unaware that a blue heron had just landed in the top of a tree and was waiting there to pose for me. How exhilarating! The right lens and perfect timing. I clicked away, lingering for at least thirty minutes with my winged subject. In spite of this great gift, that list was still nagging at me, telling me to hurry on. I heard its “tsk-tsk” as I turned down the path and autumn's new face appeared all around me, begging for her turn in front of the lens. Which leaves? Which fading plants? Focus up towards the sky or out towards the water? There just weren't enough hours to capture it all.

And then, there it was. Another glimmer of light. More subtle, more divine than the one that had pulled my eyes from the clock back in the kitchen. A small pine, tucked in the woods, with a beam of sunlight caressing the end of a bough. Follow the light. Just the whisper of a notion that swept through my mind like a tornado, carrying with it every last barrier.

I yielded.

And spent the rest of a perfect autumn afternoon following the light around my pond.

This piece was written for a Bigger Picture Blogs Writing Circle, where a group of writers convene online, respond to a prompt, and share their words to receive collective praise and constructive advice. 

You can find out more about them HERE.

And we're sharing our Simple Moments at Corinne's today.

Please join me tomorrow for Six Word Fridays. We're linking up right here on my blog and this week's word is WANDER. {click on the tab at the top for details!}

Fervor

“I FOUND  IT!” he yelled.

His little hand slipped over the edge of the sidewalk and down between the automobile’s tire and the curb. I stopped walking, not believing it possible.  But he turned around, looked up at me with huge eyes and a ‘told you so’ smile and showed me the little piece of plastic. Sure enough, he had retrieved the tiny toy. He had others – not just others kind of like it – but plenty of other little three quarter inch pieces that were exactly the same. In my mind it was a ridiculously insignificant nuisance of a play thing. To him, an important treasure.

You see, five days earlier, as we walked our daily route between his kindergarten and his sister’s elementary school, one of his Power Rangers lost a gun.  Now, each Power Ranger came equipped with several guns. And these “guns” didn’t actually do anything. They were just cheap little pieces of molded white plastic. But, bless this boy’s heart, one of these guns had gone missing and he was not going to stop searching until he found it.



Let me set the scene. We lived in Paris at the time. Not at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, or next to the Louvre. No, ours was just a typical neighborhood ~ shops on the ground floor, apartments above. So the route between the two schools brought us past a florist, a book store, a hairdresser...down sidewalks and in between parked cars. Sometimes we walked back and forth to school four times a day. And since the loss of the precious weapon, those trips had grown unbearably slow.

Because he was determined. One might say, obsessed. His sister probably did say obsessed. I can still hear myself telling him to let it go. That it was so silly to worry about such a little, unimportant play thing. That it was impossible to find it, given the number of cars that would have driven in and out of each spot. And given that in Paris they clean the streets, sidewalks and gutters so regularly. There was just no way. I was as sure of the impossibility as he was sure of the possibility.

It just burned inside of him. You’d think that after twenty-four hours a five year old would have forgotten all about it. But not him. Never. His intensity to get a result ran deep. Sometimes it was just a child’s longing to have something his way. But, often, it translated into an arduous desire to figure things out. To win. To learn. To complete a mission. To find things!  And not because someone asked him to or expected it of him…but because he felt it. Or wanted it. And believed he could make it be so.

This piece of my son fascinates me. I was forty years or so past five years old when I began to know and to trust my own gut, my own heart like he does. It’s not in my nature to approach things passionately or spontaneously….or just because I want to. No, I weigh and I measure. I look around, acutely aware of the reactions and the expectations of others. And I hesitate, becoming unsure of myself. Even in this moment I wonder what I should say next...or if I should be writing at all!

Sigh.

I'd really like to wake up one day with the fervent spirit of that sidewalk-scanning-not-gonna-sleep-until-I-find-it little boy. But since that’s probably not going to happen any time soon, I’ll just watch his face as he watches a soccer ball. And follow his lead as I learn to listen to my own voice a little more each day.

                                                          This piece was written for a Bigger Picture Blogs Writing Circle.

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Please join me on Friday for Six Word Fridays. We're linking up right here on my blog and this week's word is CAPTIVE. {click on the tab at the top for details!}