recently, while perusing facebook (which i actually don’t do all that often) i came across a post by My Boy. he had made homemade ravioli for dinner. wait! what?? homemade ravioli??? now, this requires making pasta from scratch as well as stuffing it with a delicious tuscan sausage mix. just sayin! this is the same person who, long ago now, used to be able to live on honey buns and swedish fish. he has amazed me time and again with his creative cooking and the photographs he has sent of yummy meals. one day he grilled shrimp out on his deck for dan and me and d. just as thoughtful as the birthday he made me mac and cheese after a long evening i had spent volunteering, but, i have to admit, much tastier.
the first time My Girl made us dinner we had gnocchi and an excellent sausage sauce. i hadn’t had gnocchi in years – since i had it with the hot chics in montana – and her recipe immediately made it onto our ‘what-should-we-have-for-dinner’ list of possibilities.
these are the same two human beings who would ask, ” what’s for dinner?” now i find myself asking them. funny how cooking creativity blossoms in each next generation.
over and over and over we are reminded. every second counts. it even gets trite sometimes. but then, once again, something makes time come crashing to a halt, where everything moves in slow motion and we are crushed with the inevitability of a change we didn’t anticipate, plan for, dream of or, even, want.
i wrote this song when heidi told me about waiting for the results of her mammogram, ultrasound, biopsy. she spoke of the moment her doctor called; she asked him to hold on and she walked to the mirror to look at herself before her whole life changed. THOSE WORDS impacted me enormously. i couldn’t get the vision out of my mind and wrote this for her. we went on to use this song when we performed (heidi – breast cancer survivor and inspirational speaker, me – writing songs and music to wrap through and around the events) as part of cancer survivor celebrations, walks, runs, hospital and pharmaceutical recognitions, susan g komen foundation, y-me breast cancer organization, american cancer society, gilda radner’s gilda club, young survival coalition, the san antonio breast cancer symposium, bristol-myers squibb tour of hope, living beyond breast cancer…
but this song goes beyond cancer survivorship. time can change and our lives can turn in more ways than we care to think about. there are many challenges, in many categories. the older i get, the more i see it.
on our roadtrip through the i-can’t-get-enough-of-it rocky mountains and intensely beautiful southwest, we talked about one second moving into the next. (don’t worry – lots of time we talk about things like twizzlers or our obsession with mission chips or we talk the scion into going up steep mountains.) and we talked about how, no matter what happens in a moment, it would be in our very best interest to linger in each one and then move into the next moment without carrying the stuff of the previous one. “it’s all new,” we agreed.
each individual moment counts. each one is different. yes, each one…each moment…trite as it sounds…is a gift.
download IN A SPLIT SECOND – track 11 on AS SURE AS THE SUN on iTUNES and CDBaby
“i want what you have,” she said. in the wee hours of the night, my sweet almost-94 momma, in intense pain from falling, was talking to her emergency room nurse, a young woman who was clearly exhausted and who couldn’t reach the energy she needed to smile. the nurse looked intently at my momma. “what?” she countered. “your beautiful smile,” momma said, with light-transcending-pain in her eyes. “you have a beautiful smile.” and yes, in the moments that followed, that was so obvious as we witnessed a huge eye-sparkling smile come to the nurse’s tired face. tears came to my eyes (because i am a geeky mush like that) as i watched my mom gently and brilliantly gift this hardworking nurse with something she already had inside herself.
how did momma do it? every where she went she gifted people….with things they already had.
yesterday i was at a garden party. it was really lovely. the flowers were stunning and the community of people who gathered were from different walks of the hosts’ lives. i was wearing a pair of clunky dr scholl clogs that i bought on a bringing-my-daughter-to-college-in-minneapolis trip in the fall many years ago. i still have them because 1. they are super comfortable and 2. they remind me of this trip to minnesota with my daughter, my son and his best friend (because i am a geeky mush like that.) a woman complimented me on them at the party, asked where i got them. i was able to tell her that there is a boutique near here where she can still purchase them (and of course, there is always the internet.) the fact of the matter is – most of the people at the party had on newer shoes than i did, newer styles, cooler stuff. but -and this is simple- this woman complimented me on mine and that made me look at what i had.
how many times have you looked at someone’s outfit, shoes, car, house, garden, work, relationship, life and wanted it?
a couple days ago my dear friend and i were talking about resentment. he asked, “what do you do with resentment? how do you combat it?” i have no easy answer. geez, i barely have an answer at all. but i remember that i had to memorize a reading in high school and i chose ‘desiderata’ (because i am a geeky mush like that.) the (not-verbatim) line that stands out in my mind is – “do not compare yourself with others, or you will become vain and bitter. for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.” my friend and i talked about that. at length. we cited examples and promised to hold hands -even virtually-through all the challenges ahead (because i am a geeky mush like that.)
it can become insidious – resentment. it eats away at people and families and workplaces and towns and nations. what if we all took a moment to look at someone and remind them – gently and brilliantly, with light in our eyes – of what they already had. maybe there would be a little less resentment going around. and maybe a little more momma.
reverse threading 