Things that are happy - small but significant.

THE GREAT WAVE-HOKUSAI - image

So it's been quite a week. or quite a number of weeks. i was talking to a friend recently and saying how i felt like i had been hit by a particularly grueling wave set, recently. Like in the ocean (yeah yeah, california girl... making ocean metaphors...) the waves come in sets... three, six, ten at a time, and then there's a period of calm. 

and i feel like i've been ducking waves for the past month, coming up for a quick breath and then heading back down to avoid getting thrown... but i'm hoping that the set has passed, and that i'll have some time to ... maybe just tread water and try to remember where i was headed before all of this... 

and there are certainly some things to be glad about. excellent times with family, i gained a beautiful new sister-in-law :), long talks with good friends. and all the little things that can somehow both lift and quiet your spirit. things like 

the fact that there are mustaches in my pencil jar:

Laughing like this:

Going on Nature Walks and making collections:

These sunny jonquils:

Good buddies:

Sunset Picnics:

These awesome faces:

and all the lovely things bursting into bloom outdoors. in the spring i always want to be out. the house is always messier and the yard always cleaner... mostly because outside looks like this:

my neighbor's frog :) anni calls him whiskers.. for some inscrutable reason. 

little bird

and because there is, finally, GRASS!! 

living in the high desert... grass is a big deal. the kids plopped down and rolled around in it for a good long while. long enough to get all itchy and happy. 

What about you? what are the things that lift and fill you when you're hollowed-out by life?

slow and easy,

-shawnacy

A Post for my Grandpa.

Today was my grandpa's funeral. I was blessed to sit, surrounded by family and friends, (and only the occasional inappropriate question from my offspring) and remember the man who was the cornerstone of our family for so many years. The sky was a grateful blue, scattered across with clouds like faithful friends, the breeze blew soft and kind... and goodbyes, though difficult, were said with love.




And so, for him, and for all my beautiful family, are these thoughts:




What words are there to speak at the end of a life?
What words for the empty place at our side, at the table, at the golf game... in our hearts.


We would speak words of comfort, to ease the ache and sadness of these our troubled days.


We would speak words of love and kindness - the kind that is quick to offer help with no strings attached, that sees a need and is always the first to reach in and fill it...the kind my grandpa had.

We would speak words of life and joy and hope. Words that would recall to us his smile - that grin so bright and flashing it could light things on fire; or his laughter, that to me was always and only a laugh of pure delight - at being right there, where he was. In that moment.

We would speak words of adventure and daring. Words that would call us to go farther; to push beyond the things we know and to see and do and be more... as he always did.

And so - as words are such small things, and weak - let us speak these words not with our mouths, but with our lives. Let the way we see each other, and the way we keep and care for and defend the ones we love say it for us. As my grandpa did. He was a man who lived all of these words eloquently.


I find that now it falls to us to shoulder the mantle he has worn for so long. That of love, of enterprise and fearless undertaking, of compassion, and of the sheer, blazing joy of walking around for all our days on this darkly spinning earth.




Let us hold each other dear. Let us recall the things that are important, minute by minute. Let us be swift to tend to those we love, swift to laugh, and swift to dare.


His legacy is ours. To be grateful for. To internalize, and to pass on, as he did. The silent, singing words of a life well-lived.

the best of memories,

-shawnacy

Sad days

It's been a quiet week here at the ranch. My grandfather suffered what appear to be dual brain aneurysms last Friday, and this week has been plowing through the long, drawn-out aftermath of that. 


I will spare you the heartbreaking details. 


I've been making the six-hour round trip drive the past few days and spending time with him and with family that I don't see nearly enough. 


So many things stand out to me as important from these past few days. 


Watching my grandmother, and the care she takes of him. Such exquisite tenderness. It's breathtaking. It's what nearly 65 years of marriage looks like. Like devotion. Like love. 

Hearing the stories. The ones that shape our thoughts. The fragments of life that we use like bricks to build our monuments. The fragile threads that hold our hearts together. I was looking around the room, at each person there. Each individual, and thinking of all the stories that make up our individual lives. And wondering a little which ones people will tell of me, in hushed, smiling tones, standing in hallways. 


The unthinking sacrifices of family. The way everyone has been looking for ways to care; for whatever small office they might perform; for any possible place that might need filling. We are blessed to be surrounded by such generosity of spirit.  

And, too, the laborious work of death. It is never a pleasant thing to think on, or ... battle through, but it is as big a reality as our living. The way the body clings to life, when everything has narrowed to the pinpoint focus of the growing immensity of the task of drawing breath. Thinking, of it all - of the weight of years, the accumulation of days and moments and words and thoughts that make up a life. Golden appreciation for all the times I was able to share any small part of that with him. 


The funeral will be sometime next week. And now is the time for arrangements and the signing of papers and the adjusting of the world to the absence of a remarkable man. 


So I spent some time today with the girls, sitting in the park. Watching Annika do wheelies on her tricycle. Pushing Naomi in the swing. Soaking my worn-down self in sunshine and the marvel of the blue sky. 


Hold your loved ones close today. Breathe in, and remember the way the world feels with them in it. Take pictures. Make memories. Tell stories. Make your lives rich with the lives of the ones you love. 

Love and Gratitude,

- shawnacy