reverse threading

the path back is the path forward

Tag Archives: adulting


by 1 Comment

up on the roof. [merely-a-thought monday]

adulting is hard.

this is not a new revelation.

it’s just a reinforcement of the obvious.

i’m caught in the onslaught of wistful; fall is here. and the on-and-on thoughts in the middle of the night include a zillion questions, all unanswered.

we took a walk in charlotte, on the way to a pedicure with my girl. i wanted to run to the door of the house-with-this-fence and hug the person who painted it.

where else can we be but where we are? marcel reminds us, “the real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

today is our anniversary. it’s been seven years since we had seven days in a row of parties, were surrounded by family and friends for seven whole days. oh, to relish something like that again! daisies and food truck burgers, heaping plates of pasta and sweet potato fries, cupcakes and gluten-free brownies, bottles of wine from ann’s corner store. we picked pumpkins and danced on the patio and bonfired on the beach. it was a giant celebration and we reveled in it all.

in the middle of middle age we somehow found each other – across the country from each other. we both had been married before – to extraordinary people who have also found a beloved with whom to share life. we often ponder together the “had we been smarter, more capable, wiser” questions, but the “réview” mirror is not where we are going and here – in our 60s – it’s full-steam ahead. we feel fortunate. we are able to share our time together, our growing-old, our foibles and messes and the successes that brought us to now. this time hasn’t been a cakewalk. it sure hasn’t been fancy. coming together in middle age has its challenges and we have had a few extras tossed our way through these years. we sort through the weirds and stand in the wonder. and we know we are where we are supposed to be. maybe there is some sort of design in this universe.

20 gave us a card. like most of his cards, he made it for us. it reads, “love isn’t something that happens to us. it’s something we’re making together.”

tonight we are going to bring happy hour up on the roof. because the very first day of making-this-story-together-the-day-we-met-in-person, that’s where we sipped wine under blankets as the sun went down on a cool may day.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY


by 1 Comment

quaking aspen dreams. [two artists tuesday]

we have our own personally-funded go-fund-me for this dream. it buys time for the bigger dream.

the tiny stand of quaking aspen trees beckoned to us. it was instant love. at first sight, no less. tall, willowy, silvery-white bark, the stand transported us to high mountain forests, to trails in breckenridge, to the first ahhh moments coming over the pass.

we took a breath and asked the price.

the nursery is an oasis. in the middle of our town, we sank into it for a few hours, just strolling about and imagining. these trees brought us to center.

our real landscaping need, right now, is for tall grasses along our new fence. we studied each variety and its characteristics – upright and erect or billowing and rounded, low to the ground or reaching to the sky with plumes, feathery in the light. i visited again during the week, asking questions and spending an inordinate amount of time staring at the aspen trees, photographing from different angles and surprised, soaking, by a full-on sprinkler. we’ll go back and purchase a few grasses.

we’ve run the numbers and the stand of aspen must wait. our tiny aspen tree, delicately brought home from the high mountains, aptly named “breck”, is in our backyard and would love the mentoring of a taller, more established stand. with us five years now, we don’t want breck to feel lonely. but, numbers don’t lie and a stand of aspen, along with planting it, is a little bit expensive. the immediate-gratification toddlers in us want it now, but the adults know it needs to wait. there are other priorities. sigh.

we’ll visit the aspen again. and i’ll visit it while david is working, again. and we’ll save up and keep on designing what we want the next phase of our backyard, our sanctuary, to look like.

in future days, our – still-imagined – tiniest “pando” (latin: i spread) of aspen in our yard will grow and remind us of the interconnectivity of all. the canopy-to-come will bring us to places we cherish, dreams beyond the dreams. we will keep saving, a deliberate stand-fund.

we are aspen-dreaming.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY


by Leave a comment

so much tupperware. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

cropped tupperware wall copy

the most important tupperware – the pieces that i will likely save forever and ever – are the sippy cups with lids and the brightly colored small everything-in-a-bowl-bowls that The Girl and The Boy used when they were little.  years into college, The Girl came home, went directly to the cabinet, took out a sippy cup, went to a drawer below, pulled out a lid, poured some juice into the cup, attached the lid and announced, laughing, “i don’t want to adult anymore.”  if it were that easy to avoid, i suspect all of us would be using sippy cups fairly often.  but oh…those sippy cups and those bowls.  a trove of little-kid-memories, a rainbow of cups and bowls waiting for maybe the next generation.

my sister sold tupperware.  well, at least that’s what i remember.  she also sold mary kay products, so i wonder if i am getting confused.  nevertheless, she has more tupperware than anyone i know, so i suspect i am right about her long-ago-sales-effort.  as a result, i have tupperware that spans the years…clearish-white picnic-size salt and pepper shakers, an iceberg lettuce keeper, orange canisters in the closet, tools that zip the peel off oranges, section and core an apple, cut around the pith of a grapefruit, make gravy-making easier, things with lids that store other things.   my hands can still feel working the push-button on the top of the decanter my sweet momma always used for iced tea.

this room – at the school days antique mall – appealed to both of us.  all the tupperware was organized by color.  it made it interesting and easy to be around.  it felt less haphazard and more intentional.  it made us want to look at it.  there is another booth that we both cannot even think about entering; it is a chaos of piled articles, none of which stand out from the mess.  the organization was something that, i’m quite sure, took some time, but it paid off.  the investment in effort to make it appealing, the deliberate intention to be ordered made this booth more worthy of time spent.  i appreciated that.  it wasn’t lost on me that this organizing philosophy of tupperware could apply to most anything.  taking one’s time, baby step by baby step, clean and organized and with a well-intentioned end goal in mind leads to an outcome far better than what any chaos could yield.  hmmm. where else could that apply…..

i’m thinking that anyone who has ever wanted vintage tupperware or needs to replace a piece of their own collection will find it in this place.  and, because of the neat, clean orderliness, they will purchase it, trusting the integrity of the piece in the sale.  it’s much harder to think about purchasing a piece from the piled mess in a far corner of another room in the building.  were i to want something specific to actually be able to use, i would not look for it there.

regardless, i have enough tupperware.  all i really need is those sippy cups and those plastic bowls.

read DAVID’S thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY

we hate to leave paris websitebox croppedcopy