and down the road, around the corner, in the littlefreelibrary just off the sidewalk, the sesame street gang spoke to the wild range of emotions i was feeling.
“happy and sad, grouchy and glad” was facing the glass door of the wooden library box, just waiting to be taken home.
thinking of how many lessons i learned from sesame street and its – clearly woke – characters – even as a parent of young children back in the day – i was tempted. sesame street’s diversity, embrace of differences and handling of difficult topics of injustice was a breath of fresh air….clearly too loving and kind for today’s anti-empathy-anti-free-speech-anti-inclusivity-anti-equality-anti-compassion-anti, well, anti-democracy crowd. it’s exhausting. sad and grouchy don’t even touch it.
i pointed out the book to d as we walked by and we both laughed when i said that it was the perfect book – the understatement of the wild ride of emotions that we have living in this country at this time. i would extract happy and glad to relate only to our personal lives and not the state of the unconscionable insanity of this country.
i didn’t read the book – we didn’t even stop and take it out of the littlefreelibrary. though if we walk past it again today, i might just do that. it might help.
i want to see how elmo and grover and cookie monster deal with the roller coaster of feelings. goodness knows i have some trouble with that these days.
“one of these things is not like the others. one of these things just doesn’t belong.” (sesame street song – joe raposo/jon stone)
we tend to be different. not like the others. it never really surprises us.
we are holey-jeans-wearing-black-shirt-donning-boot-walking-long-hair artist types. so, walking down the streets of most towns, we sort of stand out – we are not wearing corporate clothes, neat-and-tidy clothes, fancy clothes.
there are towns – however – where we fit in a tiny bit better. they are mountain towns on off-days. these are days when the tourist population is down, the sidewalks are not full of louis vuitton and lululemon, the spots next to the curb aren’t proliferated with expensive vehicle logos. they are quieter days. and we stroll on the sidewalks and feel like we fit in.
we looked up the meaning of hippy. i’d like to ignore the “large hips” definition and skip directly to the “hippie/hippy” meaning. and then, i’ll just parse out the relevant stuff – gentle ideology that favors peace and love and personal freedom. yup. that’s the stuff.
it was just after we had been alerted multiple times – in chorus with every other person – in line or seated – who had a cellphone in breckfast, a busy eatery on the north end of this high mountain town – that there was an active shooter less than six minutes up the main road. we were pretty stunned, thinking that this beautiful place – with fresh air and the bluest skies and vistas you can only dream of – would be spared from that kind of violence.
we strolled down the street of breckenridge – our favorite – talking about this world.
we came across this sticker on the back of a street sign. “be hippy” happy face.
and we nodded, glancing at each other, grateful to be different.
the ernie straw. this straw has lived in the kitchen drawer for decades. it served the sesame-street-zeal of My Girl and My Boy when they were little-little and has made various appearances back in the sunlit-world from time to time since then.
this summer when The Girl was here house-sitting i came home and into the kitchen to find her using it to sip her pre-workout drink. she laughingly told me, “it’s a good straw!” i can’t tell you how happy i was that ernie was still in the drawer when she went searching for the perfect sipping-utensil.
in the last week, ernie has become my constant companion. positioned carefully in my coffee hydroflask or perched in my water glass or teetering out of a wine glass, ernie and i have done beverage-life together.
they say necessity is the mother of invention and, particularly, this past week with two broken wrists, i would have to agree. stuck closer to the right side of my brain as a creative thinker (although admittedly there is quite a bit of ny-style-left-side there as well) i have had to sort out how to do things, let’s say, in-a-different-way.
i can proudly say that i can put on my socks, eat my own meal with a fork or a spoon, cut a steak (with the steak knife lodged into my RH cast), put on a little eyeliner and mascara with my LH steadying my right hand (not easy, but some things are just necessary), and type. last night i squeezed (!) the toothpaste out of the tube and surprised d with his toothbrush pre-pasted. in bigger news, i have played my piano four days in a row. i have 9 fingers to use right now; my right thumb is immobilized. but there are a lot of notes you can play with nine fingers, especially at the right angle and taking your time.
ernie and i are trying to keep a good attitude. his curlycue-ness is pretty cute and his smile engaging. he keeps me from feeling too sad, too limited. he reminds me that the constraints i feel right now are exercising my creative juju (he’s a ridiculous optimist). and he, most importantly, ties me to all the years backward, where he, yes, an inanimate object, has been a part of my life and the life of my children.
i couldn’t be more grateful to have found this life-gossamer-thread in our kitchen drawer last monday, the day i was injured. once again, something profound and something simple – and both remind me of what’s important.
i sent My Girl a photo of ernie in my coffee vessel. she quickly replied, “it’s a good straw!” yes.
reverse threading 