I collect. I am not crazy-freaky and have display cases of Pez characters or anything like that. (I will admit, I love Pez and find them somewhat difficult to resist at checkout lanes, however.) But, I do collect.
I am picky. I don’t just collect items because they fall into a category. I edit and curate. I don’t seek the perfect, re-saleable or considered “collectible” items. I simply collect items for my own pleasure.
I returned yesterday from a summer trip where I was able to go “shelling”, which soothes me. It’s a form of meditation.
My finds will not be getting to me in Kansas City until mid-August and when they arrive I will get to discover their natural beauty – again.
I am on vacation. It is day two on the beach. And my incredible little girl presented me with the gift of a lifetime. I was hanging out in the waves and she was running, playing and creating in the sand. I often find her lost in her imagination, talking with herself, and building elaborate stories. So, today I assumed she was scripting a play all her own. An hour later, she came to the water’s edge and said, “Mom, come see what I made.”
This is what she presented to me.
There is no greater gift than knowing your child is happy.
I just got back to work from a luncheon for the Women’s Employment Network. And, I don’t want to work. I just want to walk around in the sunshine aimlessly and dream. About what you ask?
Everything. The world, my daughter, my life, the coast at dusk, falling in love again, the taste of homemade fried chicken, skinny dipping after dark, driving across the country, walking across Europe, a first kiss, a giant hug, laughing until I snort, renting an over-the-water cottage in Fiji, the smell of kids covered in Coppertone in the summer…you know just dreaming.
Some days I don’t think to dream. It just doesn’t occur to me. (One of the big disappointments of being an adult.) But today, thanks to a room full of inspiration, I want dream.
I am spending the week on a beach with my daughter, my father and my step-mom. It is bliss. After the winter Kansas City experienced I need a break. And my daughter does too.
Today I went for a long walk. My “baby girl” stayed behind with her Grammie and I enjoyed a very long walk. As I walked my mind roamed. And it landed in Japan. A great sadness came over me. I started to feel guilty. I felt like I should go home. How could I be so brash to enjoy a beach vacation with the devastation in Japan?
My body grew heavier with each step. My legs started to fail me.
I then thought of the book Eat, Pray, Love. There is a part of the book that chronicles her experience with meditation. I often think of meditation in a romantic way. I keep thinking I could one day learn to meditate. I am not there yet.
But today I tried. I tried to not think. I walked. I walked. I walked.
And this is what my walking meditation brought to me. Mother Earth is not a God. She does not reward or punish her children. She does not pick one country over another. She is just living and trying to thrive. She is random, beautiful, powerful, devastating and glorious.
I realize that trying to suffer for the people of Japan will not ease their suffering. That my daughter’s screams of delight in the waves is okay. It does not mean I am entitled, that somehow being in America makes me special and that I have somehow earned this pleasure.
It just means my joy was here – now – and I need to soak it in completely. I ran back to my family. I laughed, I played, I read, I napped, and I thanked Mother Earth for this peaceful day on the shore.
And I keep silently chanting – “you are here, you are here, you are here”.
I dream BIG (day and night). One of the challenges of my work is “downsizing” my ideas. So it doesn’t surprise me that sculptor Richard Serra‘s work has me distracted this week. I watched a segment of art: 21 about him a couple of nights ago and I can’t get his work out of my head. Last night I dreamt that this piece was “dropped” in the ocean – just below the surface – and I was swimming around it.
I swam on Monday in a deep blue pool and realized, like I do every summer, that I was home. It was my first time in deep blue this year, and I was in heaven. I splashed with my niece and tossed a ball with my son in waist deep water. Then I dried off on a lounger next to my best man. I could tell that my husband had to have gotten a wee bit tired of me mentioning all the ways that I was happy – a happiness I hold deep all winter long.
I have been escaping to pools since I was a pre-teen. I’m sure I dove into our pool at home thinking I was under great stress at 14. Whatever. Our family, like most, has had our fair share of challenges, troubles and loss since those easy summer days. The summer after my youngest sister died, my son was only a year old. It’s little wonder he’s such a greater swimmer now, because I gave him no choices as we loaded into the car almost every day that summer and made the trek to our public pool. Some days we were there for only an hour, and some days we were there for much longer while he napped for several hours. I spent those hours healing myself with quick dips in the water when the heat of my memories and the sun became too intense. I watched him sleep in the stroller, and I got lost in the din of other people’s children and their splashes.
This was all during the first several years of stuff. Casey was working her butt off every day of the week, except Sunday, when I was in charge. In addition, I worked during the week when my son was sleeping – or when he was peaceful enough to work “with” me in a retail environment, which wasn’t much. And I was in charge of all errands and chores that could be accomplished at 30 miles an hour with the little dear strapped into a car seat.
Casey and I had decided at that point to continue the corporate consulting that we had brought with us to stuff from our previous careers. Over the first six summers of stuff‘s life, the trade-off, in my book, for Casey working 6 days a week at stuff was me working the four summer months with the United Autoworkers and the Ford Motor Company. I was the lead developer and implementer for their joint special events and projects at the Claycomo Auto Plant here in Kansas City. It was exciting, fun and exhausting. We were building our dream business, I was building a family, and we were continuing to hone our consulting skills.
This painting by Lori Buntin is a prominent part of the new window we installed at STUFF this week. There is one detail of the window that will make you smile after you read this blog. Come and see it.
Most days were a blur during those summer months with my baby/ toddler/ little man – those months were crucial to our new business, but I nevertheless escaped to the pool and cooled off mentally and physically. It was then that I realized for the first time that stress can’t swim. It runs screaming from the hot concrete and waits in the nether regions. Upon further research, I found out stress can’t even float. This form of dedicated scientific research involved me floating on my back with my ears under the water and my eyes looking skyward. It is a divine was to spend a few minutes, and is something I do every summer when the sky is truly blue enough. I can swim by myself for hours and be happy, but put my teenage son in the mix and I’m beyond contented.
As our son’s love of the water has increased, so has mine. I thought it would be impossible for me to love it more. But I guess there is a kernel of truth in those old sayings about how much the human heart can hold.
Mine can hold the Pacific Ocean. And maybe the Atlantic, too.
