Living as gift

Amazing leaf-gift from my friend, Catherine

I have been pondering the act of giving, and how we can live more as a gift to ourselves and others.  Instead of living in the commodity mode of exchange our culture fosters, how can I give of myself more steadily to others?

Is this even a goal of which to aspire?

Here is how I’ve been thinking about it.  Life itself is an amazing gift we’ve all been given.  If we’re alive and reading this sentence, we’re blessed with minutes and hours and days and perhaps years.  The earth gives so much to us: fat books with delicious stories, blueberry pies baked by a co-worker, smells of sweet grass in fields.  She gives us sunrises, sunsets and wild thunderstorms.

Just think of what she supplies, so graciously, oh it’s nothing.  Here’s breakfast, lunch and dinner and even a decadent red apple hanging oh-so-beautifully from that dappled tree. Here’s wood to keep warm, wind to blow your laundry dry, cool lakes to relieve that summer heat.

Dive in, enjoy all the gifts!

Feelin’ birthday blessings…

 

I am driving back home today along the shores of Lake Superior, thinking now of you and you and you. The car tires strum pavement, waves lap and seagulls wing overhead.

Have just spent almost a week with my mom downstate. It was a rather unexpected trip, not planned until the last minute. I wish I could spend more time with her. It was also a delight to see my brothers and their wives.

It has been a little more than six months since my dad passed.

And today, yes today, is my birthday, 59 years since Joanne and Dale gave birth to their first child, a baby girl.

I wasn’t planning to celebrate on social media and turned off the birthday setting on Facebook a couple weeks ago. I love birthday celebrations but am off line so much during the year at times that I miss wishing Happy birthday to so many others. So I thought–let’s just keep quiet this year, Kathy.

The Universe, however, had different plans and somehow the birthday wishes are singing on my cell phone and Facebook because the announcement is unexpectedly on anyway. It feels so warm and lovely.  I feel so blessed. (And the Universe is grinning ear-to-ear at its little joke.)

I will never forget that a Native American friend once shared that traditionally her people utilized birthdays as a time to give thanks for friends and family. Gifts were showered on others.

Therefore, I give thanks to you and you and you. Thank you for being in my world. You have enriched it with your presence.

P.S. The fawn pictures come from the farm where my dad grew up in the Thumb of Michigan. Mom and I were walking along Nostalgia Lane and glimpsed these two spotted babies.

P.S.S.  Mom, don’t worry–I am not reading birthday messages while driving!

P.S.S.S.  Even stranger than anything–WordPress tells me I published this on July 17th. Three days before my birthday!  Now the Universe is belly-laughing.

The medicine way

The lupine grand finale?

On June 10th the lupine theater played for a full house.  They perfumed, awed, and colored the landscape extraordinarily.  We onlookers gushed at their purple, pink and white symphony and deeply inhaled their essence.  Their lupine-ness shined superb; never were the nature theater-goers more charmed. We silently applauded their beauty.

By July 3rd the producer shuttered the doors and declared the lupine show ended for the year.  But did the lupine show really end?  Or was it just beginning?

Unplugged

Plugged

Three hours and twenty minutes ago a poplar tree smashed against electrical wires on our road, ousting electricity for everyone.

The mothers, fathers and teenagers could no longer utilize their computers.  The kids lost access to iPads.  Toilets no longer flushed.  Water no longer ran freely and joyfully out the faucet.  The gas stove no longer lit without a match. Most of the telephones refused to ring, unless they remained hooked up to an old-fashioned rotary line.  The refrigerator ceased humming.  The dehumidifier?  Kaput.  The lights?  What lights? (Who needs ’em anyway, on this first day of summer, the longest day of the year?)

I sat cheerfully for the first hour or so, reading a book.  Then dusted and cleaned a shelf. Called my mom on the rotary phone to see what’s happenin’ down in Yale.  Lit the stove with a match and drank a cup of tea.  Went outside and watched the grass grow and the wind blow.

And then I felt that familiar nervousness…oh no…what the heck do I do NOW?

Oh my, oh my, that experience of becoming unplugged!  It showed me, once again, how dependent and sometimes addicted we can get to our modern technology.  We love our running water, our cold food, our flushing toilets, our blogs, our email, our Facebook, our telephones, our connection to the world, don’t we?

Benediction of sunlight and lupines

The magic of sunlight

Sunlight hummed its June song this morning, leaping up through branch after branch, attempting to climb higher and higher above the tallest poplar and maple and spruce trees.

Sunshine illuminates old Studebaker in woods

Sunlight beckoned me, too, c’mon lazybones, sleepyhead, upsy daisy, how about a walk down the road to the lake?

Barbecue sauce, cousins, and maybe a sideways grin

Checkered. Sideways. Random photo from Nicaragua.

OK, pals, this is one of those blogs that I sometimes write with nothing to say.  It’s kind of a stream-of-consciousness blog, so stay away if you want something congruent and logical. (Although, who knows, perhaps that may happen!  I cannot predict.)

Memorial Day weekend hath come and gone.  It’s been memorable.  My first cousin Tanzylee and her husband Marty came visitin’.  This is memorable simply by the fact that they built a cabin in our neck of the woods eleven years ago–and we’ve never visited with them yet!  (This had something to do with the fact that we had three cats for years and Marty is terribly allergic to cats.)

We decided It was Time and invited them over and spent almost four hours–four hours, mind you–talking and laughing and drinking and eating and sharing, and all the things one does when one knows someone since childhood.  Tanz was actually in my wedding, back in the 70’s, no kidding.

What’s odd is that we spent almost four hours talking.  As my friend, Ruth, can attest–I have trouble talking beyond the two hour range.  After that my thoughts go fuzzy and the eyes cross and it’s just challenging.  So how this happened–well, it can only be labeled in the miracle category.

Marty remembers EVERYTHING from childhood.  His folks were business owners in my hometown and we both talked about the challenges of growing up when you’re expected to behave or else.  It sounds like neither of us behaved admirably at times, but it looks like we survived to adulthood to laugh about it.

We’ve made a pact in blood–no, no, just in promises–to meet again at their cabin in the near future.  I’m holding them to it.  It was just too much fun.

If I should die before I wake

Angel

When I was a little girl, my mom sat on the edge of my bed and taught me this prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the Lord my soul to keep

If I should die before I wake

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

My mama leaned down, kissed my cheek, tucked in the covers real good up to my neck, and whispered, “Good night, Kathy, sleep tight,” and off she went back into the adult world, gently shutting the door behind her.

This particular prayer comes from the 18th century, so they say, and hundreds of thousands of children over the centuries have folded their sweet chubby hands and fervently added this addendum:  Oh dear Lord, Oh dear Lord, please do not let me die before I wake.