I’m thinking of a woman I passed on my way into the grocery store with an aggressively bad side shave – I’ve seen the look before, it’s usually a kind of buzzed or shaved rectangle over one ear with the rest of the hair left long.
Any week, I could begin to tell you how I’m doing by saying I’ve been striving, and each week it would be no less true than the one before.
Today, many times, my eighteen year old son flew past the house on his motorized scooter wearing slides and no helmet, doing wheelies in the rain. I debated internally whether to call out to him to put a helmet on, and maybe proper shoes. He is of age, and he knows how I feel about safety.
I didn’t say anything.
Most people have heard the line from the Bible about loving your neighbor as yourself. If you don’t know the rest of the story, in the biblical context, everyone is your neighbor.
Here are three good books unified around a theme of neighbors and how we treat ours. These books contain big T truth – the Truth that comes through in any medium where there is space for it to dwell.
Grief is the furniture you inherited from your maternal grandmother living on your enclosed front porch for over a year because you didn’t want a daily reminder that she is gone inside your house.
Grief is slowly moving those items, one by one into your house, when it felt right.
Grief is the frame of the bed that you slept on when you spent two precious weekends caring for your Grandma when she was on hospice. It wasn’t too comfortable. The head of the bed was raised up on blocks to help with Grandma’s reflux.
Last week was really terrible. My response to almost every situation was tears. I was miserable. One day, I went for a walk alone to the library and passed a house that had been decorated for Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras! The green, yellow, and purple decorations were festive and beautiful. Seeing it made me happy.
Over the weekend, things got better gradually. On Sunday night, I went out and bought supplies for Carnival masks. I thought to myself, that was it. I’m over (or through?) the pandemic wall. I’ve done enough grieving about not traveling this year. There’s no school this week. Things are going to be great. I’ll make a short to-do list and be kind to myself about it. I’ll be less stressed because I won’t be doing school with the kids in addition to feeding, supervising, and managing my household. Maybe I’ll want to craft again!
