so, i love the smell of horses. i love the proud way they hold their heads and the sometimes-wild forelock that dances between their ears. i love watching them cavort in fields together, free to gallop and play. i love the warmth on my hand as i stroke under its mane. i love the sound of leather creaking underneath me when riding. i love the clip-clop of hooves. i love the feeling i get up-close-and-personal talking softly to a horse, looking deeply into its eyes, pools of wisdom taking it all in. it is no surprise to most of my people that i love really everything about them.
with the snowy quiet punctuated by the clip-clop of horses’ hooves and laughter, we rode the sleigh through the woods. the sun was out and, with snowpants on and under a blanket, it was toasty. perfect. ace and bill carried us through the trails to a spot for a bonfire and cocoa and then back. i didn’t want it to end.
there are people in your life who just know what you need. we are lucky enough to have a bunch of these people close by and paying attention. our little trip up north was perfectly timed. a chance to just enjoy each other and the frozen-but-not-really-freezing outdoors. the sleigh ride was wondrous. the time together restorative.
the peaceful time in the woods and on the snow-covered frozen lake brought me out of storms i was withstanding. the laughter, good food, conversation, pjs and coffee and games with glasses of wine helped transport my spirit and rejuvenated me. i am grateful. for a few days it didn’t matter that my wrists were broken. my ernie straw was with me and i was surrounded by people who loved me.
and the horses. ahh. icing on the cake.
so now, i will wait till the next time…the next time i am near horses. as someone who has had a lifelong wish for a horse of my own, those times feed me. i imagine that maybe somehow one day sometime i might have a horse-of-my-own. i imagine i won’t show this horse or ride around in a paddock practicing dressage. i will ride my friend in the woods and in the fields, manes flying, both of us gleefully breathing the air and listening to each other. i imagine silent conversations about love and respect and sweet moments of just being close by each other. i imagine walking away, blowing a kiss backwards to this horse – my horse – the wind catching the scent on my hands and my clothes, and smiling.
it doesn’t matter. anything could be happening. any fire. any storm. and then, like glitter, the tiny miracles show up. the mica. and for a moment or two we are standing still, our focus re-directed.
this quote – “life is a series of thousands of tiny miracles…” (mike greenberg) – appeared in my facebook feed, re-posting from a decade ago. a gentle tap, a hey-remember-this.
the post below (#TheMicaList) is from not-quite-a-year ago, published on my 60th birthday. as i rapidly approach 61, i find that re-reading it reminds me. to everything there is a season. and a time to see mica.
dear Life,
my sweet momma would often call me just as the time i was born would pass on my birthday. at the end of her life she didn’t do this anymore but i always remembered anyway. mid-morning i would know that this was the moment i arrived at this place, this was the beginning of my passing through, the time of my visiting.
today, this very morning, it was 60 years ago that i joined the rest of this good earth on its journey around the sun. spinning, spinning. every day.
it wasn’t long till i realized – as an adult – that we spin our wheels constantly to get to some unknown place we can’t necessarily define or find. we search and spin faster, out of mission, out of passion, out of frustration, loss, a feeling of no value or a sense of lostness. we spin. we seek. we try to accomplish. we try to make our mark. we try to finish. we try to start. we leave scarred rubber skids of emotions on the road behind us; we burn out with abrupt, unexpected turns, we break, wearing out. spinning. spinning. from one thing to another, our schedules full of busy things to do. often, days a repetition of the previous day. every day full. full of spinning. but we are still seeking. life is sometimes what we expected. life is sometimes not what we expected. and that makes us spin faster, our core dizzying with exhaustion.
the simplest gifts – the air, clear cool water to drink, the mountaintop exhilaration of parenthood, hand-holding love, the ephemeral seconds of self-actualizing accomplishment, the sun on our faces…we have images stored in our mind’s eye like photographs in an old-fashioned slide show, at any time ready for us to ponder. but often-times we fail to linger in these exquisite simplicities. the next thing calls.
this morning, as i stare at 60 – which, as i have mentioned, is kind of a significant number for me – i realize that everything i write about or compose about or talk about or hold close in my heart is about these simplest things, the pared-down stuff, the old boots on the trail – not fancy but steadfast, not brand new but muddied up with real. in our day-to-day-ness i/we don’t always see IT. the one thing. there is something -truly- that stands out each day in those sedimentary layers of our lives. it is the thing that makes the rest of the day pale in comparison. in all its simple glory, the one true moment that makes us realize that we are living, breathing, ever-full in our spinning world. the thing that connects us to the world. the shiny thing. the mica. that tiny irregular piece of glittering mica in the layers and veneers of life. the thing to hold onto with all our might.
that tiny glitter of mica. mica nestles itself within a bigger rock, a somewhat plain rock – igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary ordinariness. not pinnacle, it is found within the bigger context. sometimes harder to find, harder to notice, but there. and it makes the day our day, different than any other. it is the reason we have learned or grown that day. it is the reason we have laughed that day. it is the reason we have picked ourselves up off the floor that day. it is the reason we have breathed that day.
and now, at 60, i resolve to see, to collect those pieces of glitter. not in an old wooden box or a beat-up vintage suitcase, but, simply, since they are moments in time, in a tiny notebook or on my calendar. join me in #TheMicaList if you wish. as we wander and wonder through it is our job, in our very best interest, to notice the finest shimmering dust, the mica in the rock, the glitter in our world.
with all the reminders around us to remember-remember-remember that every day counts, we get lost in our own spinning stories, narratives of many strata. i know that in the midnight of the days i look back on the hours of light and darkness in which i moved about and remember one moment – one moment – be it a fleetingly brief, elusive, often evanescent moment of purity, the tiniest snippet of conversation, belly-laugh humor, raw learning, naked truth, intense love – those are the days i know – i remember – i am alive.
my visit to this physical place is not limitless. but each glitter of mica is a star in a limitless sky of glitter, a milky way of the times that make me uniquely me and you uniquely you, a stockpile of priceless relics. my time stretches back and stretches ahead, a floating silken thread of shiny. it’s all a mysterious journey.
there is a screen door that i am lusting over. it sits outside an antique shoppe, subject to the rain and snow, sun and wind. one of these days we will take big red over there and purchase it; the test is that i am still thinking about it. we have no idea where we will put it. but there is something about it; it has a story and that story will always be a mystery to us. giving that door a home again will add to its journey, its history.
last night i had a dream. it was, as dreams are, fraught with inconsistencies and unlikelinesses, but i remember one thing about it in particular. in my dream, david handed me a check he had received from someone. someone, presumably the person who wrote the check, had scratched out the address and, all along the top of the check, had written in a different address: my growing-up-on-long-island address. i was delightedly startled and pressed david to tell me about the person who clearly now lived in this cherished house, but, in the way that dreams make both little sense and all the sense in the world, he was unable to give me any more information. what i know is that it left me with a reassurance of the feeling from that house. it was a reminder of a time gone by, a time woven deeply into who i am and, for that house, the fabric of about two decades of our family.
houses remember. and you can feel it. the moment i walked into our house i knew. this was the place i wanted to live; this was the place i wanted to have the next part of my life. this house had all good things to offer; i wanted to sustain its story. i suspect it would have been easier to have purchased a brand new home way back then, something pristine and customized to our needs. something that had a sparkling new kitchen or an attached garage, central air conditioning or an open floor plan.
but this house said, “wait. don’t go. give me a chance. i can offer you a lifetime of sturdy foundation. i can tell you i have been there in the light and in the dark times. i can be a safe place for you. i can hold you and celebrate you and listen to the laughter of your children. you can walk on my old wood floors and keep food in my old pantry. you can have dogs and cats and they can run circles through my rooms and children can push or ride plastic wheeled toys round and round hall-kitchen-dining room-living room. you can use my rooms as you need. a nursery with a singing-to-sleep-rocking-chair can later be a studio with a big piano; i can rejoice in listening. you can sit in my south-facing living room and delight in the sun streaming in the windows. i know it will need a little tuck-pointing down the road, but you can burn all the torn-off-the-packages-christmas-wrappings in the old fireplace. you can paint and redecorate and remodel as you wish for it won’t change how i feel. i can be your house. and i, even someday when you have moved on to somewhere else, will always remember you.”
we really need to go get that old screen door and add it to the story of our house.
it beckons. the moon, no matter, will seek you out. it has no agenda but to light your way. it has no preconceived notion, no prejudice. it is out there for all, for anyone who looks up. it offers stability to this good earth’s axis, regularity to the tide, illumination to the inky sky.
the moon’s romantic presence is the stuff of wishes and the pronouncement of love all the way to it and back. its moonline will find you, wherever you roam. always, always, it appears to light a path directly to you. each of us must be equally as important, then, for the moon shines for and to each of us. a gleaming line, luminous, brilliantly reaching to us. reminding us that no matter, on this big beautiful earth, we are all under the same dark sky, the same unlimited galaxy of stars, the same moon. we are closer to each other than we think and we all have even – at very least – these few things in common. how reassuring to know that we all, despite where we are, stand on different ground but gaze at the very same moon.
were the divine-in-all-the-universe to have a living room and be gazing out the window, i suspect the divine-in-all-the-universe would say, “i see the full moon out my window and in it, you.”
it doesn’t matter that they aren’t now attached to doors. a display of doorknobs, all lined up at an antique shoppe, beg you to wonder what doors they opened. what old house was it that had all its doorknobs changed? are the doors still there? these knobs removed; knobs that likely welcomed sticky toddler fingers, trembling arthritic hands, dutifully, solidly a part of history. what new hardware has replaced these knobs that had countless hands turning, opening, passing through?
the joy of having an old house is just that – the history of what has gone before you. how many times was this closet door opened? how many people passed through the front door? how many times did someone come home and walk in, close the back door and sigh?
we cannot think of doorknobs without thinking of doors. we have 22 doors in our old house, a few less than when we bought it, and not counting cabinetry. we have extra doors in the basement. beautiful solid six panel doors, some sporting their knobs, some knob-naked.
i think about the rooms of this home that they all have led to, these doors, the conversations that took place in those rooms. the babies, the plans, the family elders. the hugs and cherished moments, the arguments, the worry, the celebrations, each room a time capsule of lives lived in this very place. doors in, doors out. how much did a hand hesitate to open or close the door?
the metaphor is obvious – doorknobs and doors. the old and wise adage – “when one door closes, another opens.” the words sometimes seem like hollow reassurance. and i look up the adage and realize that there is more to this and is quoted by alexander graham bell, “when one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”
the patina of the knobs shows wear. hands, hands, grasping and turning, opening. each door an invitation to the next moment, whatever that moment might be. choosing a door, choosing to walk in. standing. waiting. hesitating. we often wonder about the doors. maybe paralyzed with indecision, with grief, with confusion, we often pine after a door. we are often blind.
those doorknobs. if only they could speak. the stories they could tell, the lessons we could learn.
“i shall pass this way but once. any good that i can do, any kindness i can show to any human being, let me do it now, let me not defer nor neglect, for i shall not pass this way again.” (etienne de grellet)
this saying is tucked into my wallet. it hangs in our kitchen. it was my sweet momma’s favorite and she lived by it like a mantra. she did not procrastinate kindness until it was convenient; she lived it.
we pass the deer tracks at bristol woods. often we are first after the deer. i wonder what they are like as they pass each other, as their paths converge and diverge.
we were watching out the window. a balmy 35 degree chicago late afternoon and we were waiting for The Boy to get home from work. the bus went by touting an ad for one of the universities. “you be you,” it read.
i personally cannot think of two people more dedicated to being themselves than my children so this post is in honor of their fierce ‘being you-ness’. it is celebrating their ever-continuing search for who that is and their ability to both stand in and walk through the fire of growth. it is lifting up their spirits of adventure and knowledge of what’s important. it is acknowledging that they often walk outside what would be comfortable or secure for others, confident that they are finding their way in the space beyond the edges. it is reveling in their zeal. i am infinitely proud of them. my beloved children.
i’m sure the tree held on for dear life. perched among the big boulders on the shore of lake michigan, these trees have held on through many a storm, waves crashing past them, wind howling. only this time it was too much. it didn’t have a chance.
we could hear the lake from our house. the winter storm was raging and the intermittent crashes and booms were clearly devastation-in-the-making. when we drove big red over to see, it was astounding. the wind, the waves, ice had torn up and thrown entire chunks of sidewalk. boulders were thrown twenty feet. waves pelted the gazebo that sat back from the lake’s edge. trees were uprooted, glazed in thick shrouds of ice. the storm came and the storm left and the lakefront was forever changed.
in the littlehouse on island we watched the shoreline fade – many feet – over the course of a few months. waves from the south pounded the shore, eating away at earth and trees, demolishing the new dock. what it looked like when we first lived there is not what it looks like now, merely six months later. it is forever changed.
we aren’t big sitcom-watchers. but we are earth-show-watchers. it’s astounding to see how our good earth is mutating – through no fault of its own. profound. fires destroying ecosystems, displacing and killing wildlife, changing the horizon forever. glacial ice melting, challenging the arctic. earthquakes and tornadoes, hurricanes and tsunamis. toxic air forcing the use of face masks, and even of oxygen, the prevention of carbon dioxide in an environment less protected by photosynthesis and more consumed by greenhouse gas emission.
i have lived a couple blocks from the shore of lake michigan now for thirty years. the storms in the last ten years have been fierce. each one erodes the coastline a little more. walking along the water’s edge the-day-after made it all feel apocalyptic, these changes. ‘less is more’ the saying goes. then it alludes that more is even more, perhaps too much.
the tree held on for dear life. and lost. are we holding on for dear life? how are we long-term helping our good earth? how are we long-term hindering it? do we have a chance?
the old planters peanuts can sits on top of our dresser. it is a decor mismatch, so it is not there for its color or what it offers as an artistic statement. it is there because it was my sweet poppo’s. he kept it in the third drawer down of his dresser. in it he would place cash, his money clip, odds and ends from his pockets. “look in the peanut can,” he’d say, if you needed a couple dollars. it was one of the treasures i kept from their house, the peanut can that had made its way from long island to various houses in florida. it brings my dad close and every time i look at it sitting atop our dresser, i feel like we had a little conversation, my daddy and i.
you already know we have a penchant for boxes. not the cardboard kind, but most definitely the wooden kind and the metal kind. old wooden boxes, seemingly value-less, of greater value to me than anyone, things my dad used in the garage, things in which my sweet momma kept her paper clips. each a bitty visit from them. we have old apple crates, old brewery lidded boxes, boxes with slide lids, boxes with hinged covers and hooks to secure them, tiny boxes and big boxes. and old vintage suitcases. all special boxes – places to keep the most precious and the most visually-mundane-but-emotion-permeated items. a place for rocks or stones we couldn’t place-label anymore, a place for my mom’s wooden clothespins, a place for ticket stubs or notes or feathers or cards, a place for colored pencils, ink pens and nibs, rubber bands, a place for our nespresso pods. it’s not likely we need any more boxes, wooden or metal.
but there it was. the somewhat battered green metal carpenter’s chest. its personality taunted us from the floor of the antique shoppe we were trolling with jen and brad. i went back twice to look at it, to touch it. we noted that jen and i touch things when we see them; brad and david stand back and admire them. different processes. venus. mars. “don’t you have to touchhhh it,” we ask? but i digress. anyway, we, david and i, are not big helpers-of-the-retail-world, rarely shopping for new ‘stuff’. but this chest? it was different. it was old. and it was green.
the road from here to there is oft not straight. the way the crow flies is irrelevant. “the only way there is through,” joan told me quite some time ago. we were talking about grief. i had lost my sweet momma and it felt brutal; at any age the loss of a parent is profound. i was talking to joan about it – about getting to the other side of the grief. and she told me that the only way there was through it. a winding trail it was, with switchbacks and no guardrails.
that has happened for me with each encounter with grief. there is nothing easy about it, nothing straight. the grief of loss, the grief of instability, the grief of anxiety, the grief of fear, the grief of insecurity, the grief of aging, the grief of failure, the grief of change, in all its rampant forms.
and yet, out hiking, winding trails are my preference. a hike that takes me past hidden-treasure-vistas, a hike where i cannot see the end from the beginning, a hike that surprises at each turn. these winding trails are gifts in the woods, in the mountains, in between red rock formations high in elevation. there is much to see, much to learn about. they are journeys of not-knowing. they are journeys of wonder, of revelation.
we are not crows; no flightpath in our lives will be straight, no endpoint clear in our sight, no one thing all the way from here to there, no vector traveled without veering a bit off-course. even reverse-threading our lives will not reveal a straight path; instead it will reveal a vast horizon of ping-ponging and circuitous route-making. we will most definitely wind around, through decisions and opportunities, missed marks and challenges at the goal line, defining and re-defining. living.
which winds me back to joan’s wise words of years ago, which i can still hear her saying. the only way from here to there is through. winding trail and all.
reverse threading 