Peace and Wind

This time of year everything is dragged down. The weight on my chest returns, the familiar feeling of anxiety mixed with depression. Signs of the season, without a doubt, the anniversary of my sister's death is almost here. (This picture is one of my favorites of Ria and me taken many, many years ago, only a stone's throw from my house.)

I don't know if my grief will ever heal, maybe once sorrow sits in your heart it remains a soft spot, an area that is neither scarred, nor healed, just there. Maybe it is what happens to our love.

On Wednesday we'll fly kites at the cemetery and raise our hearts to heaven. We'll gather together and fill the sky. 

I'm praying for peace and wind.

It's been snowing here for a week straight.  The boys have been playing board games. Lots and lots of board games.  It's funny, for the first time ever, I noticed that most games, Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, Trouble have an out-of-blue, random setback.  All of the sudden you're going along, gaining momentum and then bang! through no fault of your own, you're last,  sent home, back to the start, to begin again.

Solomon and his friend accept the inevitable pitfalls, but Henry who is just three, wimpers when he's sent back.  He holds in his disappointment bravely, letting bits of frustration and sadness escape  in small sobs as he bites his lip and listens to his brother and friend talk him back. "It's all right," they say. "You'll make it up.  It's okay. This is how it works.  All of us get sent back now and then, but you have to keep going. You have to."

I've always known games were good at teaching things - teamwork, sore winning and losing, counting, but I never thought about the implicit life lessons. So often we're on the path going along and then through no fault of our own, a job is gone, an opportunity lost, something we love disappears and we've got to begin again. It's no accident games call the beginning, home, because this is our starting place, where we retreat to gain strength and support from love and prayer.  It's our family and friends, our faith that get us through hard times, that say to us, It's okay. You can do it. You can start over.

Our local library is having a book sale.  The entire third floor is transformed by aisles and aisles of books organized into subjects. I walk around the piles like a traveler selecting a journey.  Used book sales are without a doubt, my most favorite kind of sale. So many treasures. Even better that the books are used, loved, that hands, eyes and minds have touched and been touched by the pages.

Cookbooks, religion, philsophy, fiction. I touch the spines, pick them up. Laugh at myself because most of the ones I'm attracted to I recognize as ones I've already read. The words, the stories, the characters, wave like old friends as I flip through the pages. The smell, oh, the smell of an old favorite book is heavenly!

I don't have a kindle or an electronic book reader. I don't want one. I like the weight in my hands, the turning of the page.

Some days I wonder if books as I know them will ever be obsolete and people like me that roam the third floors of library sales excitedly piling our findings are a dying breed.

I've tried to pass on my love of books to my sons. Their room has stacks and stacks of my old favorites and new shiny ones that held promise of a good tale. Yet with video games and wii, books it seems have become work to my oldest. He prefers to watch someone else's imagination.

We have a rule in our house, one hour of wii or video games and then you have to read a book. I wish it were the other way around that instead of yelling, "Okay, that's enough of that, it's book time," I could say, "would you close that book and go play a video game!"

I have hope though. The other night, as we took turns reading Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Solomon said, "This is different than the movie, why is it different?"

"Because the book came first," I explained. "Close your eyes and see it in your head."

Solomon closed his eyes and scrunched them tight.

"I'm not seeing anything."

"Just relax, you'll see."

"Like in a dream?" he asked.

"Uh-huh Listen." I read a few sentences.

"Like dreaming someone else's dream but with my eyes," Solomon said.

"Exactly!"

I suppose it started years ago. We were having a terrible cold spell and Mom began filling pails with water, putting them outside to freeze and inverting them.  I remember she shrugged  her shoulders and said something along the lines of, "If it's going to be so cold, well at least we'll find a way to enjoy it."

Solomon had a grand time making ice with her. He was about Henry's age then and together they would add food coloring to the buckets.  A few hours later, ta-da! another block would be on the icehenge sculpture.

A few summers ago, Mom bought a pail of wooden blocks at our local thriftstore. The pail was unique,  heart-shaped and perfect for more than holding blocks.

It's not surprising Mom came up with a way to enjoy the freezing weather, to make the unbearable cold bear fruit.  Sometimes when she watches Solomon or Henry she'll have a whole village created from cardboard boxes, paper towel rolls, you name it - and for them it's more fun than any toy you can buy in a store.

It's a beautiful gift to be able to make something from nothing, to make ice hearts when life gives you bitter cold.

Happy Valentine's!

This past few mornings the light has been beautiful.  I grabbed my camera so that as we  waited for the school bus, I could snap some pictures.

Light is everything. I remember that was our first lesson in high school Photography 101. Back then, I focused the phrase on taking pictures, but now I realize, it's pretty much true of everything in life.

Years ago when I first walked into the old abandoned house,  I jerked the drawn pull shades of the south windows. Some of the old blinds hadn't been touched in so long, they crinkled and broke in my hands. Light flooded the room and in that transition it became home. "What light!" we said.

Now that it's restored and we live here, I must think that a dozen times a day.

Our cats love the light in our house.  There is barely a scrap of sun they haven't discovered, haven't fallen asleep in.

Of course, people have light, too.  "She had such a light about her."  That's how so many describe my sister.  And she did.  She still does.

Back when I was pregnant, I read that the Italian phrase to give birth is "dare a la luce" or to give to the light.  Isnt' that possibly the most beautiful translation you've ever heard? And then after my son was born I repeated it in my head as I looked at him. I understood.

January can be a depressing month. Just about everyone I talk to wants it to rush by. Get over winter, move on to spring. But there is light here if you're patient and look. There is always light.