Niece

I walked her around at the restaurant last night, because she was fussy and tired and in need of distraction, and both her mom and her nana—her regular, more familiar walking companions—looked like they could use a break. She does not know me as well, doesn’t remember me from six months ago. But we walked around and looked at things together, and got to know each other a little bit, exploring.

We started with the shapes on a tall carved screen, painted bright white. Circle, square. White. She put her finger inside the circle. We looked up, touched the whiteness. We wondered together. Probably about different things, but together, nonetheless.

Not quite eighteen months old, and teething, and tired. I kept moving, kept pointing, kept talking. Look at this Christmas tree! See the lights? They’re so bright! So many shiny things!

We moved on. I pointed out more lights. Chandeliers and shades—red, green, yellow, orange—look, purple, even! Had I noticed that before?

A red velvet couch. Oooh, it’s soft. Soft red. Touch the soft red! I stroked it myself, and held her hand to it so she could feel, too. Soft, soft. She smiled. Back to the tree, and a shiny metal ornament. Hard—we touched that, too. Everything I pointed to, she looked at, all amazement. Look here! A green velvet couch! Touch the soft green! And here—maroon! Touch the soft maroon velvet!

And this is something I love about being with a very young child. Everything is amazement, and at the same time nothing is a surprise. Because it’s all a surprise. The amazement is a perpetual state—taken in stride—it is all new, all amazing, all wonder-ful. No line between fantasy and reality, because every last bit of it is fantasy. And when you come alongside and see things their way for a moment? The world expands. You realize, or maybe resolve anew, that you want to make no time for jadedness. No allowance for cynicism. No room for anything but wow—okay, sure!

Show me more.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

One Reason I Love Winter:

Strip away the green (and I love the green—both when it is young and new and when it is older and glossy and abundant; I love, too, when the colors change—the leaves blazing out with everything they’ve got,) but strip away the green and you have dark lace, delicate and chaotic, and room to see new colors—all the shades of opal and pearl and light that are so easy to miss when the green is prevalent.

That line of white just above the center of the picture? Birds, many of them. I wish you could have seen them the way I saw them this afternoon, catching the light and glowing like pearls.

I am always happy for the shift of seasons. For the in-between and deep-within of each of them, and the chance to see and hear and feel differently.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Gold I Bring

A recent weekday morning. Downstairs in the kitchen there is butter out on the counter, softening, lying in wait beside a cookbook opened to a recipe for Anise Kringle. I am imagining mixing the ingredients, twisting soft dough into pretzels, the smell of sugar and butter and flour and anise seed filling the house while the cookies bake. Chances are this is wishful thinking, at least for today. There are other things more pressing today, all of them good, and I’m trying to stay focused, trying to remember that I am in fact a responsible adult.

I wish I were baking cookies. I wish there were more time in the day. I wish I could drown myself in good and beauty and not think anymore, about the rest.

*       *      *

I just started reading a book, a fitting book for the time of year I think, in which there is a character who loves color. Except love is not a strong enough word for its pull on him. Color gravity is what he calls it. He is completely drawn in by color, stops in his tracks to witness a sunrise or watch a house being painted. He steals paintings to get it. He wants not only to have it but to dwell inside of it.

Something in my mind is telling me I’m supposed to think he's strange, but the truth is, I get it. That’s kind of where I want to live, too.

I wish I had gold.

You know that longing, too, don’t you? For gold, for color, for beauty? That longing to inhabit only the precious places? To shut out everything else?

*       *       *

Yes, I long for gold. I suspect that this time of year brings out that longing even more. You go to the store and think maybe you can buy it for yourself or the ones you love. Collectively we surround ourselves with light and beauty and hope. We work hard to dwell in those places. To assure each other that this fallen world does not in fact have the power to eat us or our loved ones alive, even when the evidence seems to suggest otherwise. We give gifts, in imitation of ancient wise men—things that shine, that scent the air around us, that speak of costliness—that try to get at what is really precious to us.

And I don’t want to get lost in that. I want to lose myself in the real gold, not the physical-thing-that-really-serves-best-as-a-metaphor.

*      *      *

Because we do have gold. Sometimes lots of it, sometimes very little. Sometimes you have to look very hard for it, but oh when you see that glimmer you can’t take your eyes off it.

After Oldest was born—an unplanned, last-minute c-section—I found myself lying alone in a recovery room that reminded me of some dark hidden basement, shaking with cold under a pile of heated blankets. All I wanted in the world at that moment was to hold my baby for the first time, but what I had was a Polaroid of him in his father’s arms, somewhere else in the hospital. And I could not take my eyes off that picture—I held it with my eyes and with every cell in my body and it was pure gold.

*      *       *

I read these words yesterday, in an essay about music education. The author after making the statement, "I have also been musing about the impact of spending so many hours of growing up dedicated to, and inside the creation of, beauty" says this:

“Beauty lives paradoxically in two time frames, the immediate and the eternal; and experiencing this paradoxical reality provides essential nourishment for the challenges and aspirations of the human condition.”

Eric Booth, “El Sistema’s Open Secrets”

This thought takes my breath away.

Dwelling in those places, surrounding ourselves in gold, giving it away to those who are more precious to us than gold itself—it’s good.

What I keep coming back to is that when I feel like there’s not enough, when sickness and sadness and violence and all the rest close in, I will look harder for the gold. I will point it out to others. I will make it, give it, share it, dwell in it as much as I am able, because the alternative is just too bleak.

The anise kringle eventually got made. They are good—delicate and rich and sweet. Do they make up for the fact that I gave up sending Christmas cards two or three years ago, or that it is December 20th and my Christmas shopping is nowhere near done and I am completely overwhelmed by my to-do list? Probably not. But what needs to get done will somehow get done, and I am learning to let the rest fall by the wayside.

There is unending gold to bring.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Today's Offering

A completed project—part escape, yes, but also an act of praise, a meditation, an attempt to contribute something beautiful. With fresh determination that this is a good way to live.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

'Tis the Season

Forgive me if you are tired of this music. I am not. Many Decembers of my childhood meant a chance to see “The Nutcracker,” and if I was lucky, “Hansel and Gretel,” as well. So far in my adult life I’ve had the chance to play in the pit for each of them only once, and I loved every moment. Maybe if I’d played them more I would be bored with them, but maybe not. Like grilled cheese sandwiches and butterscotch malts, I suspect some things are just good forever. In my world, at least.

This still slays me.

As does this.

(I checked.)

Duke Ellington’s version of the Nutcracker Suite was new to me (fun vintage promotional video here), but I enjoyed that immensely, as well. And look—an accompanying picture book with CD:

More Nutcracker resources here and here.



Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Tangible

What a nice chewy word. How perfect that it is so physical to say, so enjoyable in the mouth.

It is a word that came up a few times in the comments on last Thursday’s post, along with a fair amount of talk about knitting and a general agreement that keeping one’s hands busy is a very good thing.

And oh, how I love words, and the intangible in general, and oh, how I love tangible.

I keep trying to get at this thought. At the airiness of words, and the desire to take life and substance and turn them into things that travel through time and space. I want so much for them to take hold and become something of substance again on the other side. It is easy to believe, sometimes, that they get to within a breath of something you can touch. And they fill—they really do. You start to believe you could live off them. Yet sometimes they make you yearn for tangible all the more.

And then there’s this—I am certain that if I had the chance to stand right in front of you, look you in the eye, touch your shoulder, maybe (there—tangible!) my instinct would be to speak words, to tell you what I’m thinking.

Because the physical realm is not enough.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Quiet Moment

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Sometimes You Just Have to Make Stuff

It was just about this time of year during my freshman year of college—after the worst ear infection of my life, with my left eardrum still adding a kazoo-like sound to everything I heard, after Thanksgiving but before finals—that I started making paper snowflakes.

Hello winter. You are lovely and magical and cold. I am tired and stressed and the best thing I can think of to do with my world right now is to pour some extra beauty over it because it is otherwise rather hard. Sort of the way you’ve coated everything with glittering fresh snow. Underneath you are pretty grimy.

I cut out a lot of snowflakes. From plain white paper, as intricately as possible. I learned to cut big holes rather than little snips, and to let the lines swoop and dive across the paper. I worked when I took breaks from reading or studying, and my hand ached from cutting before I was done. By the end of finals week there were quite a few snowflakes hanging from my dorm room ceiling. My grades didn’t seem to suffer, and I think the project actually helped me get through that first semester. And I loved being in a room dripping with paper snow.

Very often, this time of year, you can find me making things.

This season—paper cranes. Made in odd moments. I have specific plans for them, so I tell myself what I’m doing is practical. Extremely practical. Mixed in with healthy doses of avoidance and coping. It is unbelievably soothing to have your hands moving, and to see something taking shape beneath them. To lose yourself in motion and color and pattern. To allow your mind to think and process freely, far beyond the neat folds and bright bits of paper you are working with.

Hello winter. You are lovely and magical and cold—except right now you are rather warm and drab. I'm waiting. I long for your snow.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Grab Hold

Friday I touched a sea anemone. Between the cold water and the softness of the creature it was hard to tell I was touching it at first. But then—yes—I felt mass under my touch, something that gave way, and pale green—can I call them tentacles?—moved toward my finger, reached for and surrounded it. When I pulled back a bit it was like pulling a burr off clothing. Suction cups the size of pin heads had latched on to my skin. Its grip surprised me. The whole interchange was delicate, but the fact that it reached for me was delight, a blessing.

Hello stranger/hello friend. Worlds met briefly, held on for a moment.

*         *        *

The sea anemone is easy to write about. It was a special moment—one of those things, standing on its own, that I love. What is harder to write about is what I want you to see under that story, or maybe threaded through it. What is so much more important.

*        *        *

Saturday we went to An Extremely Large Shopping Mall. And all I really want to say about that place is that it tends to put me into something of a panic. Partly because there are so many people in one place and I can only take that in small doses, but mostly because I hate wanting so much. For myself or for my kids.

Getting through the better part of a day there felt like a feat of strength.

I thought a lot about the little brown catalpa seed in the pocket of my jeans. Middle gave it to me in the parking lot after breakfast out (cachapa venezolano with cotija cheese and maple syrup—goodness, my only regret is that I did not eat it more slowly.) She bent down to pick up one of the catalpa pods scattered on the ground and tore it open. “Look Mom—I love these big beans!” and we both admired how pretty it was, so smooth and such a nice rich color.

I thought about the sea anemone and how when I reached out it touched back.

I thought about how glad I was that Oldest wanted company when he went on the roller coaster (twice!) How good it felt to be nervous and excited together, and to give in to the ride and enjoy the sensation of rising out of your seat just a little. How sometimes he will still hold my hand.

I survived the ELSM. Sunday we all said goodbye to Nana and Grandpa and left my home state. We weathered a sick child, and extra stops on the way home, and driving with the windows open in November. I spent a lot of time reaching into the back seat to keep my hand on the leg of a certain sick, miserable child as much as possible. I still have my catalpa seed, and pictures of my friend the sea anemone, although I can’t get the colors just right.

*      *      *

Funny, sometimes, the things a person can choose to hold on to. In the face of Other Things they might seem small. In reality, though, they are enormous.

I’m glad to know that.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Thankful, Day 22: Pie

I’m fighting the urge to try to write something all-encompassing and deciding instead to talk about dessert. About how essential it is to start eating from the crust end of things in order to finish with the tenderest part. About how whipped cream is nothing but a distraction from what is really good about dessert and I’ve never wanted to waste my time with it. About what a blessing it is to finish off sweetly, and how good it is that even with everything else, life has those things in it that are so sweet you want them to never stop.

Happy Thanksgiving, my friends.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email