Monday:
A week off and a chance to regroup. New paint in the bathroom (“Valley Mist,” a blue-green-gray hue that reminds me of water and glass and all things transparent.) Burned-out light bulbs get replaced by new ones. I get the haircut I’ve wanted to schedule since August. A small thing, but I feel refreshed.
Tuesday:
I go running in a light rain. It sounds like Pop Rocks. At home I do laundry and sort through clean clothes. We have been richly blessed in hand-me-downs, and I want to pass along the things that have been outgrown. Stacks of fabric, clean and colorful and still-warm from the dryer, grow and teeter all around me. My husband helps the children clean their rooms. I meet a friend for coffee.
Wednesday:
Today while running I notice the wind chimes. At one point, one particular set pings out notes from “Swan Lake” (see the moment here--particularly at 1:50--but then make sure you stick around for the sunrise at the end.) I wonder if the chimes do this accidentally or by design. More laundry. More room-cleaning. I commit to making a pumpkin-chocolate tart to add to tomorrow’s desserts. I make cranberry sauce and pour it gleaming into a crystal bowl. Every year the brightness of the red strikes me as surreal.
Thursday:
Family. My parents arrive from Minneapolis with baked goods and other lovely things. My mother-in-law brings the turkey and sweet potato casserole. My children have been thinking all month about the fact that Thanksgiving is at our house for a second year in a row, instead of in Lincoln with my grandma. It doesn’t seem right to them to stay home. I miss her, too. I have celebrated Thanksgiving in many different places and ways through the years, though. Some of them just couldn’t feel right, didn’t seem real. A year ago we celebrated in the midst of what I will probably always think of as a year of loss, but it felt very real. This year was different again, but also real. No doubt being with people I love is the key.
Friday:
A full day with my family. Also Black Friday. I have been thinking all week about this video. “Everybody wants to live a life of meaning. And today we live in a money economy, where we don’t really depend on the gifts of anybody, but we buy everything. Therefore we don’t really need anybody, because whoever grew my food or made my clothes or built my house, well, if they died or if I alienate them...that's okay, because I can just pay someone else to do it.” I first saw it here. I encourage you to listen, even if you don’t think you agree with everything you’ve heard about the movement.
Saturday:
I take part in a 5K run/walk sponsored by our local YMCA. It is cold and raining, but I so enjoy the sense of community, my family cheering me on, the act of making myself move forward when I want to quit. I had no illusions about being particularly fast, but am pleasantly surprised that I wasn’t quite as slow as I thought I would be. I hope I never stop setting goals for myself, never stop stretching.
Sunday:
Quiet days are good. Rest is good. Tomorrow I will jump back in to a schedule, and I know how easy it is to forget what I’m trying to be about. Doing, creating, giving, loving—being in the middle of all of it doesn’t mean I always keep my focus. It is good to step back. To give thanks. Happy Thanksgiving, my friends. May we all carry that—the giving and the thanks—along with us as we move on through the coming weeks.
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