I read a timely reflection about breaking through blocks.
Hmmmmm….interesting.
It was written by a person who was leisurely walking and found herself – one day – spontaneously running. She didn’t remember deciding to run – she was suddenly just running. One stretch, then two, then further on to her confounded delight and disbelief. When it was over, she had run a whole mile. She didn’t know how or why it happened, but it did. Having never run more than a quarter of a block her whole life, this was a big deal. The next day, she went out for a walk, tentative that the whole thing had been a fluke. Or was this something she could actually do?
She did it again.
She had never taken particular care of herself and due to childhood illness had never considered herself an athlete. But that day, she ran. And the next day, and the next.
Now she runs most days, incredible as that may seem.
This has me take pause.
I wonder – Am I blocked from thinking about new possibilities for myself? I do think about myself in a certain way. It’s comfortable, I’m comfortable, we’re comfortable. It’s what I know. It’s how it is. But maybe I am so blocked, I can’t even see my blocks.
I didn’t know I could write a daily blog until my colleague Suzanne invited me to try it last year.
“Me – write a blog?”
“Why not? You might be good at it.”
“I’ve never done that.”
“Most people haven’t. I think you might like it.”
So I did, and I do.
I found a part of me I didn’t know was there.
I remember someone ruminating about going for her Master’s degree.
“Oh, I don’t know if I should start something like that now….It will take four years and by then I’ll be 54…”
“In four years do you want to be 54 with a Master’s degree, or 54 years old without one?”
Hmmmmmm…
These days, many of us find ourselves in a new, strange way of being. We are apart from work and colleagues, away from crowds and gatherings, at home with expanses of time that were not ours to fill a few weeks ago.
In that space I would like to offer an invitation to go out on a bit of a limb.
Might you think of yourself differently?
What might you that you’ve not done before?
Follow a recipe.
Doodle.
Plant a seed.
Rearrange a room.
Sew on a button.
Do a puzzle.
Start a language.
Play an instrument.
Make something.
Fix something.
Call somebody.
Stretch.
Read.
Paint.
Walk.
Write.
Maybe something unknown is in there. Could there be more than you know?
It was a project she had commissioned that was delayed in the making and never got to me when it should have – while she could have known about it.
Months after her funeral, I received a curious cardboard box – oblong in shape. My dad brought it when he came over one day, telling me that someone had dropped it off at the house. He had no idea what it was.
I opened the box on the front porch – right where the sign would eventually go.
Bending back the layers of cardboard and peeling away the bubble wrap – we peeked in.
Gold Street Cafe.
It was a sign for our front porch, from Mom.
Sometime during the years of birthday, holiday, and sacramental celebrations, family and neighborly gatherings and numberless coffee chats, the forward extension of our home and familial life became The Gold Street Cafe. It’s just our front porch, but that’s what we call it. We are of two houses on the street with one and somehow it seemed fitting to name it – so it’s been that way ever since.
This past weekend, I swept off little red maple buds, wiped down the two tables and assorted chairs, re-stacked the remnant firewood in the corner, and dusted off the sign – leaning it against the front window where it’s been for the better part of seven years now.
That happy ritual is a soft opening of sorts.
From the earliest hint of warm in the spring until the frosty breath of late fall you’ll find us out there – her quiet nod making it official year after year, in print on that old sign.
It’s not a real cafe, but it’s our best place. It’s our waiting-for-someone-to-come-home place and our waving-until-the-tail-lights-are-gone place.
It’s our foyer to the world and our vestibule to home.
Four times a year we pay homage to life-sustaining predictability by lauding the new season en masse. Our neighbors host the equinox celebrations and we the solstices. Each event requires a festive gathering replete with food, drink, and some sort of primordial fire, be it a host of candles on the table, or a bonfire out back. For our solstice tributes, we convene around the fire pit.
Last summer’s pinnacle had us grilling branzino on the coals then sitting around the groaning board until late evening, savoring fading rays of the longest day. The more recent winter solstice found us huddled in early dark of winter, closer to the flames than six months prior, not for food this time but for warmth. A couple of raucous toasts for good measure, a genial cheer to the coming of the light and then back inside for blessed warmth. Yesterday, we ushered in the first two minutes of spring with a virtual face time toast, mindful of social distances, but heartily refusing to let our quarterly tradition lapse for these vexing circumstances.
As the fates of equilibrium would have it, two of us prefer winter, and the other two – summer. No matter what the season, someone is always delighted to be upon a chosen one, or at least headed in that direction. Two of us celebrate mums, waning light, and falling mercury, and the other two exalt courageous crocuses, dinnertime daylight, and peeling parkas in relief of too many layers.
It is a gift of uncommon grace to share life with those who help you notice hidden beauty in unpleasantries such as an annoying outside temperature or too much precipitation or the wrong kind. The accidental joy in discovering a silver lining there makes drudgery bearable, and even downright fun.
Yesterday we toasted to coming around again – marking time with seasons of delight and seasons of – well, not so much. To that and to the rhythm of life.
General George Washington stood right here and scanned the valley below.
From here, I see the expanse that he saw, too. My view is dotted with glinty lights of neighborhoods and blips of movement on the main road. His was blackness, save the glow of lanterns from the not-so- far-away British camp, set for the night but undoubtedly plotting plunder for the colonists come daybreak.
I am atop Washington Rock, in my town.
“The Mountain.”
From this vantage point I see spectacular sunrises, full moons of all monikers, and to the east – the skyline of lower Manhattan.
This mountain provides our town with valley and mountain neighborhoods all within one close- knit community.
This mountain offers us two weather zones: rain in the valley and snow on the mountaintop. On other days – pea soup fog on the mountain, and clear sailing down below, in town.
This mountain – and the two roads that narrowly traverse it up and down – deliver their fair share of school closings for the passengers in the stalwart yellow buses that inch their way up and down it with their priceless cargo.
This mountain is soft red – dotted with the buds of a thousand trees – in the spring, covers itself with a swaying leafy canopy in summer, fiery flames in autumn, and then proffers up a brilliant star on its crown each winter – a singular light in the darkness.
Steeped in history, resplendent with beauty, it is the backdrop of our lives.
We gifted him a pair of Red Wing’s when he started as a plumbing journeyman. Five-and-a-half years and three soles later, he retired them for a new pair of the exact same boots. Well-worn slippers in disguise, they more than earned semi-retirement status, scaling back to part-time duty – usually on the driveway at the end of a pair of legs sticking out from under the chassis of the current car project. My son stepped into those workers as a day-old high school graduate and stepped out of them nearly a Master Plumber, with but a half year of classes left to go. A lot happened in those boots over the years: driving, crawling, wading, climbing, creeping, slithering, bending, sloshing, shimmying, mucking, scuffing, and just plain living.
Good boots are friends that withstand the toughest of times. They let you wear them out and bear the scars proudly, wrapping you in soft kindness all the while.
Can’t say enough about that – it’s all there in the picture.
Just Sifting 