TODAY’S FEATURED PRINT FOR HUMANS
Tag Archives: kerrisherwood
be kind.
TODAY’S FEATURED PRINT FOR HUMANS
be relentless.
TODAY’S FEATURED PRINT FOR HUMANS
FOR TODAY’S FEATURED PRINT FOR HUMANS, GO HERE
shine
TODAY’S FEATURED PRINT FOR HUMANS
sweet momma’s iced tea
i can taste it. momma’s iced tea. it was the best iced tea i think i have ever had. somehow she brewed this perfectlylemonysweetishbutnottoosweet iced tea every time. now i wish i had the exact recipe, although i suspect that it still wouldn’t taste the same. i wonder if she is making iced tea in heaven. do they even drink iced tea in heaven?
yesterday i could think of nothing i wanted more than to talk with her. just tell her life stuff and hear what she had to say. one morsel of momma would have gone a long way to make me feel better. or make me feel balanced. or make me feel something that i have trouble wrapping words around. but i’m betting you know what i mean.
laurie walked into ukulele band rehearsal wearing estee lauder’s pleasures perfume. i was instantly drawn back into my memory bank of memories with momma. that was her favorite perfume. my sister gave me the last bottle our sweet momma had so that i might -every now and then- take a whiff and get a glimpse of her.
today – as kumbaya-ish as this sounds – please call your mom, hug your mom, send your mom a card, acknowledge all your mom has done for you and for others, ask your mom for advice, teach your mom something new, sing to your mom, play the piano for your mom, send your mom flowers, bring your mom dandelions, tell your mom a joke and laugh with your mom, cook with your mom, reminisce with your mom, ask your mom how she is, ask your mom about when she was little, ask your mom what she wishes for, sit with your mom, tell your mom you love her. she is – so often – the person who takes the brunt of everything you can dish out, sitting in the fire with you and adoring you unconditionally. just love your mom.
yes, this is a hard process – this grief thing. some days i am –at already56– ok. i walk through the world surrounded by amazing people who, somehow by design, are there with me, loving me and me them. other days, well, i wish i could sit down and drink my sweet momma’s iced tea.
yes, my sweet momma, i will hold you forever and ever
(from the album AND GOODNIGHT~A LULLABY ALBUM)
holding on, letting go
it’s that time of year. the school supplies are out en masse. i wander through the store, the office-supply-lover in me fondling the new blackandwhitespeckled composition books (wide rule), spiral notebooks (college rule), mechanical pencils, sharpies, highlighters, sticky notes…. we are surrounded by signs for college necessities: futons and storage containers, bins for the shower and three-drawer chests made of every color plastic can achieve. and it suddenly occurs to me:
this is the first year i will not be buying school supplies.
what?? no colored pencils, no erasers, no pencil sharpeners, no index cards for cramming late-night-factoids into too-tired brains? no. none of it.
for the last twenty years i have religiously gone to a variety of stores and bought a plethora of supplies. i was always shocked by how picked-over the choices were when i went, even weeks before school started. some moms are just overzealous, eh? nonetheless, i would love shopping, with or without my children, for everything on the list the school provided, the list they provided, and my own list. every year a box of kleenex was on the list from the schools. every year dry erase markers were on the list. and somewhere along the line, it occurred to me that i could actually put the 6783 colored pencils we had accumulated over the years into one bin and they could choose from those, rather than buying yet another brandspankingnew box.
but this year? this year is different. the girl graduated from college three years ago and is well into her life-minus-index-cards-and-futons. the boy is almost done with college. just a few short weeks and he will no longer require paper or pencils or pens or post-it notes from me.
and this is taking my breath away.
i stood in target today wondering where the time went. my yearning to buy a new lunch box or bag is unfulfilled. my mom instinct to find the coolestfoldersthatmatchtheirpersonalities is untapped. i wandered – still touching the 50 cent composition books and in awe of the sharpie highlighter display – and i realize that in my holding on, i am also letting go.
maybe i should buy a few composition books and that box of kleenex. for me.
live life, my sweet potato (the reprise)
trust where you’re going
nurselog (nurs lawg, log) noun: each of us
we were silently canoeing in a quiet lake. very few other people were out. it was almost still. the sun was warm on our faces. and there is a certain rustling sound that birch trees make in a gentle breeze. as we drifted around a bend, there was an old, old tree, its broken, jagged end angled a foot above the water. from a distance, and then closer, we could see what looked like a tiny garden growing in the tree’s jagged end.
“it’s a nurselog,” he said. as the fallen tree disintegrated, the organic matter became the perfect soil for new growth. small plants were stretching out of their new home, this welcoming space they had found.
(later i looked it up. on asknature.org i read, “tall, wide trees in the forests of the pacific northwest serve as nurse logs to their seedlings after they fall, providing decades of water and nutrients as they slowly decay.”)
nurse log. nurselog. (i like it as one word.) i thought about it as we paddled. my sweet momma was a nurselog. everyone she encountered she gave space to, nurtured, made at home. she was the perfect soil for others’ new growth, whoever they were.
isn’t that our job?
one of my favorite children’s books is called ‘the carrot seed’ by ruth krauss. the copy i have of it is one of those hard cardboard books that get all goobery on the edges after hundreds of readings. in the book a little boy wants to plant carrots but is cautioned by his mother, his father and his big brother that the carrots won’t grow. regardless, he diligently continues to water and tend the little spot where he planted the carrot seed. and then one day, a carrot came up. my favorite line from the book is “just as the little boy had known it would.” there is an illustration by crockett Johnson that depicts the little boy with a wheelbarrow that has in it the biggest carrot you’ve ever seen.
the power of nurturing.
anne lamott (in ‘grace, eventually’) wrote, “all of us lurch and fall, sit in the dirt, are helped to our feet, keep moving, feel like idiots, lose our balance, gain it, help others get back on their feet, and keep going.”
what’s more important?
what are we REALLY here for?
how can we help each other grow?
what does it all mean?
“…provide decades of water and nutrients…”
we kept canoeing, our paddles gliding in and out of the calm water, the lake answering our unspoken questions.
nurture me
is one of my earliest tracks.
recorded on ‘released from the heart’
THE CARROT SEED inspired this piece.
welcome, barney!
barney is in our backyard. he is holding clay pots with our herb garden and some beautiful white impatiens. there are a few
candles in glass jars. and he is perfect.
i’m not sure i ever thought that someday i would have a piano in my backyard. barney is a very old upright. about a hundred years old, he is tired and worn from long years, decades even, spent in a basement boiler room, but i can see the life in him as the sun hits him. never ever would i have imagined the idea of wild geranium growing up around a piano tucked into a bed of day lilies, just a few feet away from our little pond. never would i have imagined the idea of water getting on a piano, without dashing to wipe it off. it rained yesterday and i had to fight the urge to run outside and wrap my arms around him. barney’s new life is to feel loved and not ignored, appreciated and smiled at and not relegated to a dark, piano-inappropriate place. he was slated for the scrap dealer.
each morning since his arrival i have gone outside and thanked him for all his good work in the world. i am grateful to have a spot for him to rest. he looks proud. and he truly looks happy.
i really am an acoustic girl. my big yamaha grand has a studio of its own. my growing-up-spinet has a spot in our basement (not an easy place to move it to in this old house.) barney has a place in the backyard.
and all have big places in my heart.
www.kerrisherwood.com
itunes: kerri sherwood
reverse threading 