A House of Welcome

"May you have the eyes to see
That no visitor arrives without a gift
And no guest leaves without a blessing" - John O'Donohue

I present you with more evidence that I am the luckiest person on Earth...

On Saturday we hosted our Annual Winter Solstice Holiday Open House and the peeps flowed in and out of our home for 8 hrs straight. And I made my famous crock of vegetarian chili and guests brought treats of every variety and fires were toasty, and the friendships were too, and the children delightfully boisterous. I was so exhausted from the whole shebang that I did not have the energy to bring up the sun the following morn.

Here I must take you back in time in order to reveal the magic that is my life....

There was this extremely handsome teacher in my middle school whom I was smitten with. His name was David Hildreth and he had crazy curly hair. We were kindreds - we had that genius hair connection. David taught math in the classroom where I studied Spanish and that is how we met...passing each other in the doorway as his class left and my class entered. He was never one of my teachers. Anyway, David began leaving me messages in the classroom, always funny and often hidden. It was a dalliance that spanned an entire school year...until I switched schools.

One day David left me a cryptic message on graph paper and it was in the form of a math equation. Math is NOT my language. I carried it with me everywhere trying to decipher the code. I took it with me to a basket ball game - teachers vs teachers, I think. I sat in the bleachers trying to decode the message. My school chum Jeff sat beside me and helped.

I have known Jeff since childhood. He used to tie my shoes for me because I broke my right arm in two places when an unstable wall in my tree fort fell on me. I had a cast up to my shoulder. The only way I could tie my laces was to sit on the floor and bring my knees to my chest which was no small task in the crowded hallways of our school. So when Jeff would find me huddled trying to tie my sneakers, he would always lend a hand.

So there we were, not paying attention to the basketball game, but instead, trying to decode my message from David Hildreth. Eventually, we figured out that the equation was telling me where to place lines on the graph paper (brilliant) and by placing the lines in the right place, it spelled out a message...

T U R K E Y L E G S

I have no memory of this but Jeff swears that when we cracked the code I stood up in the bleachers and screamed

T U R K E Y L E G S ! ! !

and no one knew what was going on except for me, Jeff and David who at that precise moment looked up into the bleachers and smiled.

Flash forward to the present... Sunday morning:

Bleary eyed and with extreme genius bed head, I made some hot cocoa. Having just missed the sunrise, I headed for the computer to check my mail and visit my pals on facebook. And THAT is when I discovered that my old school chum Jeff went outside in his pajamas to photograph the sunrise in NY and posted it to my facebook page. I suppose he must have guessed that I would be too exhausted after my annual Winter Solstice party to bring up the sun proper. You can imagine my surprise and delight when I saw the sunrise on my screen.

And if you ever doubted that I am the luckiest person on Earth, this is further proof.

May you smile big for the knowing of this and may you feel as blessed as I do.