Birthday Letters: Eight

Dear Satchel,

Today marks your 8th ride around the sun and you awoke before the sun to begin celebrating!   You decided that this year you would like to celebrate with "fishing party", so you've invited a gaggle of friends on a hike to the lake to learn how to catch and release.  It seems that your year long interest in fishing has you hooked.

"I want Jeremy Wade's job, Mama, I want to be a marine biologist and have my own show about catching fish", you explain.

Last summer we moved to the little house at Big Woods, an ideal nest for a nature boy like you.  We've seen fox, and deer, skinks and turtles and many MANY toads.  You've always wanted a stream in your backyard and now you have one...catching crayfish is one of your favorite things to do.  You like playing spies with the neighborhood kids and forming rock bands, transforming the front porch into a stage.

Your imagination is boundless and your lego creations are mind boggling wonders!

You've had quite a growth spurt this year and are now up to my shoulder - I can hardly believe it.

You have grown in other ways too.  This year you've adapted to weekends in your own bed instead of the family bed - AND - you've hosted your first sleep-over with friends.  You are a LOT of fun and a loyal, generous friend, that is evident by the circles you create around you.  

You have a new level of maturity and confidence about you.  This year marks the first time we've ever been apart, while I attended a weekend workshop in NY, and you took it in stride.

"The first day was hard because I missed you", you said, "but it was good to spend time alone with my dad".


While you still don't like to hug your friends, I feel blessed by the bounty of hugs and kisses that you give to me.  You are very expressive and I admire that about you. 

Happy 8th ride around the sun, Satchel.  You are my greatest gift in this world.  You are my joy and the box it comes in.  I celebrate you on this day and every day!!!

Thank you for being my son!

All my love,
Mama

(posted at the time of your birth)

I Am That

It’s morning, and again 
I am that lucky person who is in it. - Mary Oliver

He said, "Never in my life have I ever found a four leaf clover."

"Really", I said, "I find them all the time".

"ALL the time?", he asked dubiously.

"Well, not all time as in every day, but all the time as in at least once a year", I said.

A few days later, I was walking back from the mailbox when something caught my attention near the front stoop.  I looked down and at my feet I saw a GIANT four leaf clover!  I picked it, took a photo of it, then sent it to his phone before pressing it into a book.

Intimate With the Dust

Last week S ran to me with an injured toad.  Its foot was bleeding.  He handed the toad to me and I found a safe place in the garden where it could rest and recover.  Then a few days ago he appeared on the patio, its foot healed.



I was walking by. He was sitting there.

It was full morning, so the heat was heavy on his sand-colored
head and his webbed feet. I squatted beside him, at the edge
of the path. He didn’t move.

I began to talk. I talked about summer, and about time. The
pleasures of eating, the terrors of the night. About this cup
we call a life. About happiness. And how good it feels, the
heat of the sun between the shoulder blades.

He looked neither up nor down, which didn’t necessarily
mean he was either afraid or asleep. I felt his energy, stored
under his tongue perhaps, and behind his bulging eyes.

I talked about how the world seems to me, five feet tall, the
blue sky all around my head. I said, I wondered how it seemed
to him, down there, intimate with the dust.

He might have been Buddha— did not move, blink, or frown,
not a tear fell from those gold-rimmed eyes as the refined
anguish of language passed over him.

— Mary Oliver, “Toad”

Mother's Day: Peace of Wild Things

I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.  I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.  For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. — Wendell Berry

For Mother's Day we took a trail ride in the mountains on horseback. I've missed the rush of it, the dust on my skin, the scent of horse breath - and most of all - the language that has no words but is every bit as real and true...and of course, the peace of wild things.

Deep Trees

Joy 
 is a taste before

it’s anything else, and the body

can lounge for hours devouring
the important moments. Listen,

the only way
to tempt happiness into your mind is by taking it

into the body first, like small
wild plums.  - Mary Oliver

When I watched you climb
to the top of that plum tree,
my mind flooded with memories
of my grandmother
standing beside her beloved plum tree
in a bright yellow spring dress and gloves.
I imagined her standing beside me
 watching you climb to the top,
petals falling like confetti,
sticking to our hair.

His Great Grandmother, Mary Cook, in the late 60s.

And the Winner IS....

Whatever you have wanted,
you've been given,
now go and live in that kindness. - Rumi

Comment 15, Paula JK!  Thank you all for playing with me.

*If you have left an anonymous comment without an email to reach you regarding a win, you must contact me to provide your shipping address by the end of the week. Unclaimed prizes will be donated to charity a/o given away locally via random acts of kindness.

I'll Remember This

A year,
ten years from now,
I'll remember this;
not why,
only that we were here
like this, together.  - Adrienne Rich

Visual diary of my trip to NY for the Embodying Conscious Femininity Workshop.

 
When Words Fail Her (Journal completed after Embodying the Conscious Feminine Workshop 2013.)