French Christmas

Goodbye, Summer

The last day of summer is today. Usually I’m sad, waving goodbye like a reluctant Girl Scout on the last day of sleepaway camp.

This year, though, summer was like one long, hot anxiety attack. At least for me it was. So I am welcoming the crisp mornings, greeting them with a scarf and steam rising off a hot cup of tea and honey. I am welcoming pumpkins and frost and the coming holidays spent with loved ones.I am welcoming cold nights full of piercing stars that my fevered brain can crawl in and rest among.

But that does not mean I don't appreciate Summer for what she was and what she gave. What she gave me was indeed a violent growing season, but a growing season nontheless.

And she gave me trees. Tall, endless trees who threw up their arms in vaulted Cathedral ceilings that I walked under. Trees whose righteous green leaves whistled in the breeze, swirling above me like a million tiny fans. Trees whose thick sap ran through like lifebood, which now stops and silently seal up the wounds caused by growing pains. 

 

Archives

I should have written this post last week.

I should have written this post last Tuesday on the actual anniversary.

But I didn’t. Even though I had it in my head and I wondered if I would find a way to make sense of the words and images that were swirling around in my brain and actually get them out into in a Word Doc.

Then yesterday Kim honored me on her post about 7 archival links. How perfect, to think about the past and to dig into the archives for a post about my grandfather.

So we’ll begin here, with the post I wrote a year ago that explains my grandfather and the circumstances of his death. It’s a funny thing, death. It’s funny how sometimes its arrival sticks to your mind more than others, like when people die too young or in some violent, unexpected way.

(My grandmother passed on New Year’s Eve but on New Year’s I do not think of her. Perhaps because she slipped into the next world so peacefully, like a sigh, and didn’t leave anything behind.)

I think my grandfather left something behind. I think I have taken it inside.

That archival post, you see, talks about how bull-headed and stubborn my grandfather was. He did things his way. There was no other way. This might not have made him the most likeable person, or someone easy to understand. This means he did a lot of things that were really inexcusable. But it also means he survived things like losing both of his parents and living in an orphanage during the Great Depression.

This year I did some things I wouldn’t have believed if you told me a year ago that I would be doing them. And I think my grandfather leaving something behind for me, a little piece of himself, may have had something to do with it.

I don't have champagne to toast him with, or a crystal flute, but I do have this Boleslawiec mug adorned with Peacock feathers. I think my Grandpa would have liked this better anyhow.

Prompt 16: #Trust30

Wholly Strange and New by Bridget Pilloud

When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name;—— the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Can you remember a moment in your life when you had life in yourself and it was wholly strange and new? Can you remember the moment when you stopped walking a path of someone else, and started cutting your own?

Write about that moment. And if you haven’t experienced it yet, let the miracle play out in your mind’s eye and write about that moment in your future.

(Author: Bridget Pilloud)

--

Ha! That moment is right now. I have been wondering about this. About how I can feel one part of myself die—it withers and shrivels and falls away to the ground—even as a new slender shoots twist out and upwards.

I know it mostly because the tenor of my dreams has changed. They speak to me in a language I don’t know yet. They are foreign and exciting, like a kiss with a stranger.  

Prompt 15: #Trust30

One Thing by Colin Wright

Do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Take a moment, step back from your concerns, and focus on one thing: You have one life to achieve everything you’ve ever wanted. Sounds simple, but when you really focus on it, let it seep into your consciousness, you realize you only have about 100 years to get every single thing you’ve ever wanted to do. No second chances. This is your only shot. Suddenly, this means you should have started yesterday. No more waiting for permission or resources to start. Today is the day you make the rest of your life happen. Write down one thing you’ve always wanted to do and how you will achieve that goal. Don’t be afraid to be very specific in how you’ll achieve it: once you start achieving, your goals will get bigger and your capability to meet them will grow.

 __

No. I refuse to believe we only get one lifetime to accomplish our dreams. 

I have known people so beautiful and also so scarred from the bumps and bruises life has thrown their way when they were barely old enough to string a sentence together. It would take more than a lifetime for those scars to heal. It would take more than a lifetime for them to develop the muscles and strength to run. Right now they are lucky to walk. I refuse to believe this is their only shot.

(Likewise, I feel this way for myself. I’m working on getting my shit together; I’m working on it hard. But I refuse to have a deadline tightening its noose around my neck, choking the very growth I’m trying to coax out of the shadows.)

I believe that as we make space for our own evolution, the Universe in turn gives us the opportunity to evolve, be it in this life or the next, be it as a person or a bird or a shooting star.

Homecoming

Homecoming. In the sense of nighttime football games and high school dances and first corsages. But also in the sense of returning, of settling in under blankets and lighting candles and watching the full moon outside. In the sense of coming back at the end of a long growing season, after the delicious adventures of stretching your petals and reaching up towards the sun. In the sense of bringing back your harvest and finding ways to let it fill and nourish you as the twilight settles in, as sleep and rest begin to settle in.

What did you grow this season?

What are you bringing home with you?

August #Reverb Prompt

Describe an unexpected moment, activity, sighting or conversation that touched you during July.

Sighting: Yes. That would be the word for the thing I saw this summer.

 

This thing I saw that might you lead you to believe my cheese has slid right off my cracker.

 

This thing I saw on a really bad day, when the whole world was upside down and inside out.

 

This thing I saw, even though I’m not really religious at all. Even though this year I sorta stuck my toes in those waters.

 

This thing I saw leaning up against an old fence down the street, that I might have almost missed … but I didn’t.

 

This thing I saw that reminded me of Kelly Cutrone and what she says about the Universal Mother.*

 

This thing I saw that stared back at me and stopped me in my tracks.

 

This thing that I saw on my way home, that when, still unbelieving I went back, it was already gone. This thing that was there long enough just for me to see it and know it was there.

*"I can't really explain the Universal Mother in words ... no alphabet will do her justice, though people have tried over time: Mexicans call her Guadeloupe, the Christians call her Mary, the Egyptians call her Cleopatra, the Greeks call her Athena, the Buddhists call her Tara, and the Hindus call her by several names, from Laksmi to Durga." -- Kelly Cutrone, If You Have to Cry, Go Outside