A Perfect Day to be married

February 29, 2016

Your wedding day.  We saw you just before you went to meet your future husband to exchange your vows and you looked radiant and happy and beautiful.  We could feel your excitement and joy.  It was palpable.

It is auspicious that you are being married on a day that only comes around once every four years.  It is a unique day, as you are unique, as your husband is unique.  As your love is unique.

I don't have any wise words.  I suppose a mother should.  No words other than to treat each other with respect and love the moments you have together  and not to take each other for granted.

I will share with you the words that we chose to be spoken at our wedding, almost 39 years ago. They have served us well.


Listen!  I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes. 

These are the days that must happen to you:
You small not heap up what is called riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve. 

Come, we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores,
However convenient this dwelling, 
However sheltered this port and however calm these waters.

We must not anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us
We are permitted to receive it but a little while. 

Come, I give you my hand:
I give you my love, more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law:

Will you give me yourself?
Well you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?


(excerpts from (Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman)

Blessings on your marriage.  Blessings on this day.

BE - Your initials together says all that needs to be said.

Monkey Mind

Yesterday was the first day in a while that I had 'off'.  I didn't have to be anywhere, or do anything.

So of course I had to DO something.  So I went to this great Button store, and surprisingly I was in and out with the perfect buttons in ten minutes.

It was a beautful sunny day so I suggested to my husband that we head to the beach to have lunch at this lovely restaurant that overlooks the water.

We got a window seat, and we had a delicious lunch.  I was the designated driver (so my hubby could have a cider with his fish and chips) and so we headed back home around four with me in the driver's seat.

I kept feeling that I should be somewhere.  I kept telling myself, that, no, I had a free day.

I sat on the couch, caught up on a couple of episodic firehouse dramas, and worked on the test knit I am knitting.

Still, my mind was relentless.

I know what you are thinking.  That I had indeed forgotten something I was to do, or somewhere I was to be.

But no.  It truly was a free day.

Today I had an appointment at 8 am, and afterwards i decided what I really needed was a couple of hours at my favourite Korean Spa.  I am fighting a cold, and figured all the sweating would be a great idea.

I first went into the Earth room, which is a warm room heated with infrared.  I lay there, happy to be warm and decided to breathe deep, mediate and let the warmth build in me to sweat this damn cold out.

Breathe In.  Breathe Out.  Think of nothing but your breath.....

Hmmm.  I wonder what time it is?

Breathe.

Am I lying too close to the next person?

Breathe.

I am going to stay here at least five minutes.

No I am going to leave when the person beside me leaves.

Breathe.

F It.  I am going to go to the charcoal room, it is too hot in here.

The Charcoal room is a cooler room with Charcoal on the walls and buckets of charcoal set on tables.

Ok, here I go, meditate in this cool room for fifteen minutes.

I wonder why they put the charcoal in that design?

Breathe.  Focus.

I wonder what those women are whispering about?

Ahem.  Ok, monkey mind.....back on track.

I should have brought water with me.

What?

Now I have to go to the bathroom.  I always have to go to the bathroom after I have been in the charcoal room.

Ok,  maybe lying on my side would be better.  No, I know....the Salt room.  Yes I need to go lie on the blankets that are atop the hot rock salt.

Ahhhh..   this is perfect.  I could stay in here forever.

Man, it is so hot in here.  Maybe I could wiggle my sore elbow down into the salt.

Nope.  Too hot.

Ok, clearly time for the hot tub.

Yes the hot tub - I will set the timer for ten minutes, then I will have a scrub.

Wow, my breasts sure look odd the way they float up to the surface.  Really odd - like balloons or something.

At least the jet feels good on my low back.

Ok, I am done - must be almost ten minutes (more like five).

Clearly I need to shower and scrub away all this dead skin with the loofa.

Ya that is good.  Then I will go into the steam room.  That should help my cold.

Lying in the steam room I thought about all the steam room scenes in movies and how you can't see anything except steam.  This room isn't like that.  I wonder why?

I closed my eyes and kept trying to tame the monkey - when I opened my eyes the room was so full of steam I couldn't find the door.  And I forgot I was on the top tier and almost fell as I stepped onto what I thought was the floor but was actually nothing.

Hm?  That isn't safe.

Ok.  Back to the cold shower and then I will air dry in the sauna..

Nice....except now I am sweating, and I just showered, so I should go back to the charcoal room to cool off.

I lay in the charcoal room and started to recite the 23rd Psalm (which I never get in the right order) and so I switched to the Lord's Prayer.  I went back and forth a few times between the two prayers which made me think of a group called New Hope that used to sing a version of the 23rd psalm back in the 70s
.
I hummed it to myself a few times but then my monkey mind headed in a whole other direction so I decided it was time to get dressed and head home.

I had been there trying to relax for ninety minutes.

Now I am home.  I am going to watch some mindless television.

It is called mindless, because it is, but it also fools my monkey mind and allows me a break.

And even if the meditation was a fail, the spa experience wasn't.  My cold feels a bit better, and the heat and salt and charcoal made me feel better inside and out.

And now I can knit.

There is always knitting.

Because counting stitches, and reciting the pattern as I knit calms the monkey mind.

Until it doesn't.

And then my monkey mind convinces me to cast on something else, despite all the unfinished projects still on needles.

What?

I have to finish this post.  The dishes need doing.

After I finish this last row.....

An old friend is gone

This image is all that is left of this driftwood.  It has been a stalwart monument on our little beach for as long as I can remember.  Certainly for the past twenty-seven years. 

It sat above the tide line on a grassy point of a beach where we swam, watched sunsets, collected rocks, skipped stones, swam in the phosphorescence, watched meteor showers, threw sticks for our border collie and shepherd, laughed at the antics of little puppies and watched our families grow. 

It watched over us through it all. 

Last year a storm finally was its undoing. 

I didn't know it then, but I know now it was a harbinger of things to come. 

But here is what I know. 

The monument is gone.  The memories are not.  Its etheric imprint is still on that beach.  I still see it in my mind's eye, even though when I visited that beach earlier this week it was not physically there, but I saw it.  Through the rain and my tears I saw it. 

One lonely stick stood against the sky holding the place of that tree I had assumed would always be there.

But nothing lasts forever I was told once not long ago.

That was wrong.

Love lasts forever.

True love of a sibling, a child, a pet, an aunt, an uncle, a mother, a father, an in-law, a grandparent, a friend will last forever.

I believe that.

I have to.

No regrets

I am working on a little sweater for my honourary grand-daughter.  I had knit six rows yesterday and kept discovering the stitch count was off so I was fudging along trying to make it all work

Last night, right before dinner, I decided to rip the whole thing out and start again.  I believe the F word was uttered, rather loudly just before I started to pull out the rows.

Calmer heads prevailed, as my Uncle John would say, and after ripping out four rows I picked up the stitches and then tinked back two more rows.

I kept hearing a friend's voice "Knitter's never regret ripping back or tinking back.  They always regret NOT ripping back.

So now I am making forward progress again, and very happy I spent the couple of hours backing up before moving forward.

There is a metaphor for life here.

Obviously.

Rosehips and daffodils

Spring will come.  I have proof because my sister and I saw two daffodils yesterday and one today.

And then there was the field of rosehips we walked beside this morning.  There they were swollen, hanging onto the bare branches of last year's roses.

Someone may gather them for tea, or medicine.  But mostly they will eventually fall to the earth and become the roses of another generation.

Life goes on, I am learning. It doesn't go on reluctantly, or hesitantly.  That is my interpretation.  Life just goes on.  Whether I am willing to go along with it is my own decision.  How I am willing to go along with it is my choice.

Sometimes I can allow the rhythm of the seasons to pull me along.  Sometimes I can ride the wave, sometimes I notice the changes have occurred while I was otherwise engaged.

But the seasons change regardless.

They don't need my permission.

But I need their constancy.

Hope is found in the changing seasons, promising me that life goes on.