Found, Day 46

My parents found each other so quickly—

7 weeks from meeting to married

and over Winter Break at that—
that there was confusion afterwards.
When my mother wrote her new name on the
chalkboard for the Freshman Comp class

the students wanted to know

what happened to the teacher listed in the catalog.

“She got married,” was the reply,

and when they thought that was too bad

she told them “Not at all—it’s me!”

A friend who hadn’t seen my father

for a while wanted to set him up:

“There’s this girl you have to meet.

You would like her a lot.”

“That’s funny,” Dad replied

after hearing her name,

“I married her last week.”

And sometimes this is proof to me

that there’s no such thing as a wrong turn—

that no matter which direction you choose

you will find yourself

in the right place for your story.

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Found, Day 45

“Mom—the moon is in an envelope of pink.”

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Found, Day 44

his morning we had windows open. I enjoyed deep breaths of air heavy with near-rain, and found it had been months since I had breathed exactly this kind. Did the time flash by or crawl? The feeling and scent of it is joyful.

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Found, Day 43

It seems like more than one branch can handle—too much—ready to burst. But if the weather keeps up like this, it will happen. Think of how easy it is to take it personally, this explosion of buds and flowers and leaves. Think of how ordinary (magical) it is, the fact that at any point you might turn and catch something breaking open, spilling out into the world.

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Found, Day 42

One woman

carried a set of wind chimes

through the big box store

from the far corner

where she found them,

carried them through

aisles of fluorescence

and plastic

and too much of everything

(all cheap,)

and the air around her

turned delicate,

fragile.

It turns out

the sound of cheap

acrylic and aluminum

is anything but cheap

and the thing she carried

in her hands

was exactly the magic

she’d thought it was

and as she consulted

with the pharmacist

about the medicine

that made her little boy

feel worse not better

the air around her was charged

with light and color unseeable,

with the sound of fragile hopes

scattering outward,
spreading bright all over the place.

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Found, Day 41

1. This picture is several weeks old. Last time I looked at it I saw what I didn’t capture, and it was worthless to me. Tonight I looked again and saw what I captured.

2. I know a girl, who, when she was very young, had trouble with her speech. Actually, her vowels, and the pitch and rhythm of her words, were perfect. The problem was consonants—many of them gave her trouble. She became good at substituting easier for harder: ds for js, for example. But she also learned to substitute whole words in order to avoid the ones she had trouble saying clearly. You could see her working, sometimes, around what she knew she couldn’t pronounce. Her language was richer for it. I miss it, sometimes, even while I’m thankful for how clearly and easily she now speaks.

These are forms of found I have fallen in love with.

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Found, Day 40

I love the colors in this window so much—not just the colors, though, but the way they work together, the way they gather light and seep into a kind of unity. And bear with me—I couldn’t get a good picture, so I distorted my blurry picture even more to make it match, roughly, what the colors seem to do in real life. And do you see the six pink squares at the bottom? There is no other pink anywhere else in the window, and I wonder about this. The color does something, I just haven’t decided what. For now, it speaks of mystery, and surprise, and something tender. Which fits.

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Found, Day 39

So it was one of those days spent running from one thing to the next. And so much stuff I intended to take care of that got nowhere near touched. It was both frustrating and full of small graces. Which makes it kind of a normal day, I guess.

There must be thousands of ways, every day, to find your own heart. And lose it, and find it again. Mostly in small ways, and hidden, even while they are the points upon which entire worlds turn. 

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Found, Day 38

This morning the sound of a robin going crazy broke through the dark, through the morning blear, and found me. Oh, new day. Tired, but still—

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Found, Day 37

They file out onto the risers, settle into their spots, and immediately search the audience for their people. That is the most important moment of the night, you know—when she finds you in the crowd, and waves and waves, and smiles and smiles. The second most important moment is every other time that she finds you, locks eyes, smiles like she’ll never stop.

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Found, Day 36

Many years ago, before he learned to walk, a young young boy refused to crawl. His mother tried to teach him. Concerned people, after all, had promised her that if he did not learn to crawl he was sure to have learning disabilities. As often as she could, she set him carefully down on the floor on hands and knees. She tried to show him how his arms and legs could move. But like a Weeble he had to be upright. No sooner than she had him properly arranged, he would right himself and scoot across the room on his rear, propelled by one leg and one arm, face pure joy and open, upright to the world where it belonged. She finally resigned herself. He might just have to have a learning disability.

But he didn’t. And he did learn to crawl—soon after he got comfortable walking. It was no big deal, at all.

Over and over she saw this about him—when the idea was his, he was pure motivation and energy. But only if the idea was his. She was not sure this was how things were supposed to go, but the truth was they weren’t going to go, any other way. She learned to be a planter of ideas (and a setter of rules) and she tried to remember to step back for the rest. This was anything but a graceful dance. But when she remembered—

She found herself sitting today on someone else’s couch, listening to her boy rehearse with his accompanist for the upcoming contest this weekend. Pretty much every step of this singing thing has been his initiative. She thought about these things, wondering at it all. This boy—

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Found, Day 35

The picture does not do it justice. That window this morning was bright, jeweled with rain. Cold, freezing rain, yes—but that did not make it less beautiful.

If it’s not already, this should be a benediction, a blessing, a toast: May something stop you in your tracks, surprise you, catch you off-guard today. And may you carry that with you as you go.

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Found, Day 34

Middle brought me the tiniest purple flower today while I was tuning violins for the Violin Project. She found it while walking over from the middle school and presented it to me with reverence. I set it down on a shelf nearby where it found good company next to two handmade ceramic figures—a cat with a green collar and a father penguin with a baby on his feet—that needed a safe place to rest before finishing their trek home from school.

Because of the children in my life I have become a Sharer of Treasures. This is a position of honor, and nobody asked if it is deserved. I just one day found myself here. But in this place of honor I hear about the best (funniest, grossest) parts of books, I see the proudest-of pages of homework and artwork and projects. I peruse and contemplate untold riches: new shoes, plastic cupcake rings, agates, stories about baby brothers and sisters, knock-knock jokes. I know these things differently than I did when I was a child. Yes, I see them with adult eyes. Somehow, though, this second glimpse into childhood balances things out, and I see their value increase, not decrease. I see them as they are.

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Found, Day 33

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Found, Day 32

A thought while making dinner:

If age were thought of in terms of things gained, instead of time (youth? chances? beauty?) lost, how rich we might think ourselves the older we get. Measured in food alone—considering the things I once hated and now enjoy, sometimes even giddily: dark chocolate, coffee, brussels sprouts, butter, gravy, salad (dark greens—I didn’t even know) avocado—each birthday that rolls around could feel more like a banquet, an unfurling, an arrival. 

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Found, Day 31

Prone to self-examination as I might be, there are many days I don’t even check. But today—yes, there are my feet solidly on the ground, and there above me is the sky. Blue today, and lovely. Finding you are where you need to be is no small thing.

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Found, Day 30

I have never considered myself a math person, but I was completely taken by the Numbers in Nature exhibit we went through at the Museum of Science and Industry last week. The mathematical patterns that were at the center of the exhibit—spiral, Golden Ratio, fractal branching, and Voronoi Patterns—were fascinating. Especially the fractal branching—the comparison of lungs with red coral and lightning bolts—it was just an example but it was  an example exploding with poetry. And today I discovered that if you do an online image search of “Fractal patterns in nature” you will see beautiful things.

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Found, Day 29

She has been known to stand next to their beds while they sleep at night and whisper I love you, child. Maybe the words will lodge deep in their being, in a way the ones spoken during the day may not. Maybe the words will wait there in the dark until the moment they are most needed, just waiting to be found.

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Found, Day 28

I play sometimes with a not-quite-local community orchestra. On scattered Tuesday nights throughout the year I join Husband for a 180-mile round trip plus 2 ½ hours of rehearsal. It has become part of our routine over the last few years, even though the first year we lived in this Midwestern town I did not play violin at all. That first year I thought I had left music behind me.

That first rehearsal—after such a long break, after thinking my life as a violinist was over—it was like finding a piece of myself I hadn't known was missing. I won't say that reincorporating that piece has been easy, but it seems to be necessary. And it has grown—more than I thought possible.

I have maybe—hopefully—grown with it. These Tuesday nights are tiring but invigorating. The schedule an uneasy thing, but the music more enjoyable than ever before in my life. Because the thing is, the music is still the music no matter what the circumstances, and I get to be a part of it. There was a time I would have viewed my part-time community orchestra member status as a failure, but given what I found getting to this place—what a find.

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Found, Day 27

Made it through the Monday after Spring Break, extra-tired and extra-energized all at once, gobbling up my alone time and gobbling up time with my kids, alike. My brain is a little mushy tonight, but not too mushy for this magic over at thisiscolossal.com. 

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