Down Time

I am in my post-Christmas peace time, doing nothing all day. We are visiting family who take such complete care of us, I don't have to do anything. It is like taking Christmas afternoon when everyone sits around reading new books or instructions for figuring out new toys, periodically picking at the ham in the kitchen or popping sugar cookies, and extending it out for days. That has been the picture. Doing nothing but zoning out, hanging out and spacing out. I knit a scarf for no one in particular and read a National Geographic cover to cover. Other than that, I have eaten and slept.

Today we drove out to Point Reyes and looked at the mighty Pacific. The sky was gray but the hills were florescent green all the way out. There were stands of Coastal Cypress trees all tall, dark and handsome, and lots and lots of the little coastal deer lazing around as if they've never had any reason to run. Big hawks were hanging out on phone lines, fence posts and tree branches, outnumbering the buzzards. We drove to the end and Grace and I got out of the car and climbed up the little road to the light house. From there you can look down on unadulterated coastline that stretches for miles. It is a gorgeous flat sandy beach with nothing on it, and cliffs along the edge with nothing but rolling green above. There was huge surf making long white lines of foam that floated back out to sea and broke up to look like pods of whales might be making them from below. We didn't see whales but they were out there.

I didn't bring my camera or a sketch pad or notebook. I just soaked it up. There was nothing to do. The endless view of gray on gray with the lighthouse's lonely fog horn and the crashing of waves on rocks far below was enough.

How to find Holiday Spirit

I heard people singing in the distance as I was checking my email tonight. After the kids are asleep it’s my time to catch up on everything and I was in my world of blogging and emailing as it slowly dawned on me that carolers were approaching. My first instinct was strange: I wanted to hide. Huh? When I opened the curtain I saw people in hats and sweaters holding candles in a loose grouping that was half standing, half wandering down the street, singing. I got up and got Dave and we stepped onto the front porch to watch as this large group of dark figures with candles asked if we had any requests. I couldn’t think of anything because anything was what I wanted to hear. I just wanted to hear them sing some more. It was such a gift and such a shift to be invited out of my head and into the night, the cool air, under the stars to stand among these strangers, my neighbors, and watch their slow meandering down the street as they spread wide swaths of musical cheer. What a difference to be out of my room where I sit on my computer supposedly communicating with the entire world by watching youtube videos of snowball fights in NY and reading blurbs of old acquaintances on facebook, and face to face with these beautiful people singing to us. I think the attention of all those voices, all those hearts on us and our house was what made my first impulse to run. I am not used to receiving that much sweet wholesome plain goodness from people. My people. Not old classmates in Connecticut, but my neighbors who hand my children candy on Halloween and sing to us tonight. The flesh and blood that sleeps and eats and breathes in the houses around my house. The people who surround me this day. This moment.

Here’s to my neighbors. Here’s to singing and the way it so easily opens my heart. Here’s to all that this season is meant to remind us about:
Love, peace, generosity, gratitude and joy.

water flow

The sound of water dripping off the trees and the smell of wet mud takes me far from this huge city where I live. It lands me in these other places. Ranches. Lake cabins. Tent camping. Small towns I know as well as my hands. Pictures I've lived a thousand times. The way the air feels on my skin is enough to make my suburban backyard remind me of a jungle I visited only once but which stayed lodged in my chest somewhere as vivid as the places I grew up in. Why is the rain so potent now?

For two days it has rained. The southern California ground is so dehydrated it barely understands how to absorb all the water. It rolls away, down cement waterways filled with trash and trees. I live in a strange place that I love dearly and that changes faster than any place I've ever known. It pushes me to move away and pulls me back to stay. It has little patience for my nostalgia, but romanticizes its own short history. It is a city of contrast and contradiction and when it rains it practically turns upside down. The sky is so blue I don't recognize it and for a minute I think I live somewhere wild and free.

rainbow

In her homework Grace writes:
Did you know rainbows are made of light and water? Did you know they only happen when it rains and the sun is shining? Well it's true!

It is raining now and it is dark.

And our roof is leaking.

And the dripping into bowls is fascinating to the cats.

Living here in So Cal rain becomes more like a rainbow. Rare and beautiful. We live without it mostly and some years we hardly get a drop. So when it comes and its more than a trickle or a light little mist, when it's real and heavy and fills up bowls on the floor and buckets outside, I say hallelujah.

I say thank you.

the m word

Some little birds have been bugging me lately that I have something to say about money. (Who me?) I have never been very good with it, in my opinion, but according to my sister I have always had a healthy attitude toward it. When we were kids and we started getting an allowance, she opened a savings account and started depositing weekly. I saved my 50 cents all week to buy something for a dollar the second week. That is about as good as I have ever been at saving.

But with that tendency to spend I also had a certain trust that there would always be more coming. I have never been a reckless shopper and I don't enjoy excess, but I have no qualms spending it in order to live the life I want. Of course nowadays money is a lot tighter so I am being forced to carefully consider every choice I make and really ask myself, is this important to my life or is this just something I've grown accustomed to having?

To me there is a kind of magic in money. When I lived on a tight budget in the past, money felt like something I had to fight for. I had to work a job that didn't pay enough and the money stream felt more like a trickle out of a rusty pipe. Years later as I expanded into a wife and mother and the financial organizer for the household, I started to see that money would show up when and where we needed it to. There was synchronicity in the way it would appear just at the right time and in the right amount for what we needed. Those were the days of the bubble and it seemed like so many things were growing value, especially real estate where people were making a killing flipping houses in no time. Money felt easy and I started to feel like we were joining the ranks of those who didn't have to worry about it anymore.

I still think that the way it flows or doesn't has everything to do with how I am feeling about it. But I have also learned that having more money does not free you from worrying about it. As the entire world has frozen up around spending and many are struggling to survive, I too have been feeling fearful and worried. And wouldn't you know, money has gotten quite scarce. People aren't buying the way they were and we are feeling it. But I know that it is all just the magic of money showing me how to live, yet again. Responsibly above all. But also with faith that I will always be supported just as I have always been. And even if major changes are in store for us, we will not change the way we live or stop doing what is important to us.

I had to call my sister today. I was telling her how I've been feeling a little nervous about money and debt and the future. She was very reassuring. She said, "Worrying is not the answer. Just stay on top of it, and you'll be fine. You always have been!"