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Yesterday, my dear friend Kathleen Peterson (we’ve known one another since we were three) and I drove past my childhood home and elementary school in San Jose, California. As my parents no longer live there, and I haven’t spent much time in the area for two decades, one could quip that I no longer know the way to San Jose. It is true that many of the landmarks I remember have vanished, the map in my mind a ghost of a map. And yet, everything was comfortably familiar.
In recent years, I’ve been surprised that images of rolling California hills have evoked longing. My heart, after all, has been happily housed on the East Coast since graduation from college. Perhaps, however, because I was reared in San Jose, there is a location-based imprinting that can’t be undone. This would explain why nowhere in the world has the same gravitational pull as San Jose. Two possible exceptions are the Gila Valley in southeastern Arizona, where I have both ancestral and religious roots, and Madrid, where I was born.
Source: istockphoto
Until yesterday, I thought of belonging solely within the context of finding our place within a community of people, not a physical location. I new know and feel differently: my hometown and yours is a place that belongs to us, and we to it.
Feeling more grounded than usual.
Grateful.
Where is your hometown?
How can re-connecting with our hometown, or ancestral homes, point us toward our dreams? And/or buoy us in the pursuit of our dreams?
Last night I attended Fusion, a salon-style discussion group started by Margaret Busse, Becky Lloyd, and Jen Thomas in 2007.
It's not easy to start and maintain this purely-elective kind of group. Of the women in attendance last night, each has two to six children, most still at home, and a dizzying number of commitments, between, home, community, church and work. Often we'll want to attend, and then we don't because we have so many competing priorities. So when we do show up, something special happens. I undoubtedly experienced systergy more keenly last night because it was my turn to lead the discussion. But I felt it two months ago when Leslie Graff on her domestic art series, just like I always do.
Source: istockphoto
Were our other priorities to take precedence, this moment in time we share at Fusion could vanish. And on snowy days, I especially acknowledge this possibility. But it's not a bet I'm willing to take. When I'm with this group of women, some of whom I know well, others less so, we learn together and from one another, we comfortably trot out our minds and our hearts, and we feel a sense of community.
And I always arrive home happier.
Grateful.
Do you have a group of women with whom you can engage with several levels, both mind and heart?
Yesterday, after school, Mr. Hadly, the science/music teacher at St. Peters, spent two hours rehearsing with my children and dozens of others for the spring production of Les Miserables; I know he's paid to stage this production, but when I consider what he is giving to our children, he will never get paid what's he's worth. That's true for all of their teachers, at school and at church.
Source: istockphoto
When David becomes an Eagle Scout, it will in large part be thanks to dozens of men/women like Brandt Hendrickson, Ann Bach and Rich Baker. When Miranda wanted to learn to sew, Danalee Abernethy helped with her first sewing project; Macy Robison helped prep her for the school play auditions; Kathleen Stone taught both kids how to ski. Rachael Hutchins has cared for Miranda as if she were her own.
Further, there are dozens of adults who, when they see our children, smile at them, call them by name, reinforcing that they have a place in the world.
My children are loved.
Profoundly grateful.
Who are the people that influence and help you raise your children?
I can taste tacos, strawberries, hot fudge; quench my thirst with icy-cold water.
I can see the glistening snow-covered trees, watch TV, work at my computer, read books.
I can play the piano, type out this blog, sign my name.
I can feel the splash of water, the wind and sun on my face.
I can hear the Brand New Heavies, Diana Krall.
I can talk, sing, laugh and cry.
I can ski, climb, ride a bike, run, walk.
I conceived (with a lot of help from my husband!) and bore two wonderful children.
I can kiss and hug those I love.
All, courtesy my body.
Source: istockphoto
When I need to slow down, or change course, my body kindly gets sick. I have surgery. It heals.
I have abused my body by eating poorly, sleeping too little, and by telling it that it is fat and unattractive.
And yet, my body continues to suit up and show up, so that I can see, hear, taste, touch.
Breathtaking.
How has your body served you?
My least favorite season is winter.
I'm more a springtime/summer gal -- when the days are long and getting longer, warm and getting warmer. Not really an ideal outlook given that I live in Massachusetts -- and winter comes every year. So, today I'm going to jot down what about winter I do like.
I'm grateful for skiing. I've loved to ski since I was a child, to race down a hill, feel the wind in my face, and I can only do this in the wintertime.
Source: Sarah Jane Studios, Etsy
But there's a more universal aspect of winter in the Northeast. Snow days, for instance, when we are tucked in our homes by a white down comforter, we shovel snow, and dive into the comfort of corn chowder and homemade bread. Life is on pause. And though the days are shorter and darker, and sometimes things feel more difficult as a consequence, I am learning to appreciate this quiescent season; to recognize the value of letting things lie fallow.
And that is a good thing.
As I've recovered from surgery, we've had dinners brought in, desserts dropped off, clothes laundered, offers to tend our children, flowers and fruit delivered, and our sidewalk plowed.
Given that many of these kindnesses were rendered by women I don't know well yet, I suppose I should have been surprised.
But I wasn't.
No matter where I've lived, I can count on the women in the Relief Society. So much so, I'm quite certain that I take them for granted. I'm realizing, however, that if the nearly invisible threads of this safety net were ever to wear thin, there would be a gaping, quite possibly, irreparable hole in my heart.
Grateful.
Do you have a support network that is so everpresent that you can't imagine life without it?
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