i am grateful for…
1) hand-knitted blankets under which to cozy.
2) crazy cactii that look like yosemite sam is just around the bend.
3) a love that feels natural and grand and ordinary and special all at once.
4) the recipe for chocolate cream pie i am excited to try next week. oh, the hope that it will be as good, or near as good, as hope & olive’s in greenfield…
5) reading: “raising children, raising ourselves,” by naomi aldort. this book is rocking my world. it’s a map not just to raising kids, but indeed working with ourselves and the people we love. basically: validate, release control, offer your loving presence again and again and again, no matter the storms that come. it’s filling some hold swiss cheesy holes in me, pockets of unlove, with possibility. with love for me. lovely.
6) holiday shopping–all done! is it weird that i don’t want to say “christmas shopping”? i may be the rare half-jew who doesn’t want to be thought of as too unjewish. i love mary, especially in her guadalupe form, but i don’t want to ever exclude my jew-roots, even though i am not actually buying anyone a hanukkah present. and maybe haven’t, ever. but my jewish grandparents did buy me hanukkah presents, eight of them, and i recall that as being a big deal, along with the chocolate gelt. gelt and guilt–that must be the name of someone’s memoir, yes?
7) purple. finding it soothing these days. it’s a color that reminds me of a bigger, richer, more complex picture somehow.
8) dara. it’s so hard. she’s so sick. and so amazing. i see her in the center of this crazy storm that’s taking over, and though it is unfathomably terrible, she is in it, present as pain allows. i wish i could heal the tumors with my hands, send them all away to feed on something else, like clouds, something unhurtable. an abstract host and not my dear friend. i don’t want to hate them though, even though i think they are little bastards. because, well, they are part of her. and therefore command love, even though they are unwanted life-suckers. does that make sense? you can’t heal with hate. but i guess i’m not sure how to heal what i hate that seems to be unlovable, e.g., tumors growing in my friend. i’m not sure how that works. my strategy is to imagine light through it all. light in every cell, hers and not-hers. light, light, light everywhere.
9) tennis balls. they are all over the house, for therapeutic reasons, and keep popping out unexpectedly from corners where my honey has been. my honey, the golden retriever.
10) living in a country without active war, with relative peace.
11) “UNDER CONTROL!!!!” – animal, in the new muppets movies, who is in anger management classes. working on that as my new mantra, especially when shopping or eating or doing anything else compulsively. UNDER CONTROL. it just reminds me i’m on autopilot and brings me back. heart animal.
