Category Archives: musings

Finding little pieces of myself along the way

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I lose time.  I don’t mean I have dissociative fugues and the inability to recall past events.  Time simply rushes by me at such a fast pace that I seem to lose little pieces of myself along the way, pieces caught in the vortex of the life I am living that is whirling by at a great speed.

Those missing bits seem to fragment during my busy work days and I don’t always recognize their absence until I inch closer to my day off.  I feel like a part of me has been eclipsed, hidden in a shadow, waiting to be rediscovered.

Today I had the benefit of finding some of those remnants of myself and putting them back where they belong.  Today I came home from work, knowing that tomorrow is a day free from structure, and allowed myself that moment to finally relax and let those misplaced segments of my life re-establish themselves.  Today I put my feet into the wading pool, bought for my dog, and let the water wash away the lingering moments of my work day.  Today I put together the puzzle that is me with the pieces I had lost during the week.  Today I made myself feel like the garden AND the rose.

It is important to take that quiet moment to collect all of the pieces of ourselves that are essential to us and recreate the whole picture of ourselves.  Segments of us will get lost along the way but the significant substance of who we are will always find its way back.  And in the moments that I was gathering the scraps of me that I had left behind, I came across this picture and it all made sense.

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I followed the crumbs back home

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“A party without cake is just a meeting.” ~  Julia Child

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 I’m not sure how old I was or what passing birthday had just eclipsed my dream of being a child forever but I remember the birthday cake my mom had made.  It was a chocolate cake with homemade buttercream frosting and a bittersweet chocolate ganache.  It was decadent.  It was made with love.  And to a child still in single digits, it was crack cocaine.

Every special occasion I demanded politely requested that my mother painstakingly recreate that masterpiece.  Throughout my childhood, I never deviated from that cake.  It is one of the favorite memories I have of my mother.  I cannot recall whose smile was more prominent when the cake was delivered to the table, hers or mine, but I do know that cake was our moment to share.

Over the years, I lost track of the myriad number of times that cake graced our dining room table but I never lost my love of that cake.  I saw how much effort my mom put into that special treat and, perhaps through osmosis, I garnered the same conviction that cake made people happy.

After being absent for some time, due to unforeseen construction on the path of my life, I am back on the road that leads straight to my oven and my decorating tools.  I missed cakes.  I missed the escape from reality that decorating affords me and I missed the joy in people’s eyes when they had seen what I created for their special occasion.

The piping bags are ready, the cupboards are stocked and the fondant is ready to roll.   Let them eat cake!

Or sometimes more than a thousand words

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When I first saw it, I was captivated by it.  A simple photo of a friend on Facebook grabbed and held my attention but it was no ordinary photograph.  I had hoped there was more of an explanation to it than mere Photoshop and I was thrilled to hear her tell the story behind the picture.

She had agreed to have her portrait done by her friend who is fascinated by the origin of photography.  He posed her and painstakingly went through the process that photographers went through back in the late 1800’s.  His camera was an antique with the accordion-style lens and the black hood that covered the head of the photographer.

He waited until the precise moment that he thought he had captured her true essence and he let his finger plunge the button that would acquire every detail of her spirit.  The result of his effort was remarkable.  He printed her face on tin to truly encapsulate the original process of printing a photograph.

I stared at her photo for a long time.  There was so much more to it than just a picture of her face.  There was a story in her eyes.  His diligent process captured much more than just who she is now.  This snapshot seemed to hold the story of generations, perhaps lifetimes of moments that led up to her being in his studio and posing for this shot.

It wasn’t a selfie or a picture as a second thought.  There weren’t 100 takes in a minute because that is all we have time for nowadays.  He paused, he let the camera do what it was meant to do and he took a thousand stories, captured them in one single photo and printed them on a piece of tin.

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Look at the artwork in this photo and hopefully you can now understand why I was so drawn to my friend’s picture.  Without the use of any computer tricks, this photograph projects so much more than just a face on a piece of paper or a computer screen.  This picture has depth, emotion and a lifetime of moments that led to her presence in our present reality.

If I ever have the chance to do this, I will jump at it.  I would love to see what kind of story my face has to tell and what ghosts from my past linger in the background, searching for recognition.

The Moment

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The solid ground beneath my feet

holds me where I am.

But I feel the pull of gravity,

I’m afraid of sinking in the sand.

My reality keeps me sensible,

holds me to the earth.

And like the blossoms in the springtime,

I stand, waiting for rebirth.

The promise of you comes in whispers,

floating lightly on a breeze,

cascading down a mountainside

hiding, lingering in the trees.

I feel the magnetic pull of you,

I foster a hope that grows.

Yours are the eyes I long to see,

yours is the heart my heart knows.

I feared the path to you impossible,

the roads too hard to pass,

but knowing you are out there

only makes my tenacity last.

Loving couple holdind on the hands and sunset

This solid ground will hold me

until our moment is etched in time,

the moment no distance stretches between us,

the moment you are finally mine.

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My wrinkles are my map

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I don’t often stand and look in the mirror for great lengths of time.  Since I cut my hair short and I don’t wear much make-up there is really no need to linger at my reflection.  But this morning I did.  I made the usual faces one makes while looking at themselves and I really studied my face, each crease, each unique spot that has gradually appeared on my skin over the years.

I followed the lines of wrinkles starting to appear around my eyes and, although those fissures are permanent lines in what was once smooth skin, those lines created a map of places I had been in my life.  They are carved from life experiences that made me the person I am today.  Each of those lines tells a story and remembering some of those stories caused me to smile which only pronounced those lines even more.

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I like to think I earned each and every one of those laugh lines because I took the time to truly enjoy the good moments I’ve had.   The small lines on my furrowed brow help remind me of the difficult and sad times, but times I undoubtedly learned a lesson or a coping skill.  Those wrinkles belong to me.  I choose to own them because I know the emotions they embody.  They are imprinted in my psyche as much as they are etched on my skin.

My wrinkles are my map.  They have led me from my past and, with the myriad of directions I may follow,  they will help guide me into my future.

Finding the beauty in exhaustion

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I absolutely love what I do for a living but the long hours and the physical demands of the job can take a toll on the state of my well-being.  I have just organized and worked a wedding and dynamic conference back-to-back.  If you asked me to spell my name right now I would have difficulty providing that information with any sort of accuracy but the reward I have reaped far outweighs the strenuousness I have endured.

At the end of my arduous days, I feel content in the fact that I have given 110% to, not only give great service to each of these functions but, help create a memory for each of my guests.

Where I feel I should lose energy in the many hours I work, I gain strength from the energy of those around me.   This strength does not come from knowing what I am capable of.  This strength comes from my perseverance to give my best effort and make sure I represent all of myself and not just part of myself, not only in work but in every aspect of my life.

That is the beauty of my exhaustion.  I can sit back and relax knowing that I have given everything I have.  I can take solace in the fact that I do my job well.  And I can absolutely appreciate when I receive praise for my efforts because I truly feel like I have earned it.

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Although my weariness does come at a price, the satisfaction I get from knowing that my efforts positively affected so many others makes that extreme fatigue all that much more bearable and makes me want to do it all over again.

 

You only live once

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It is not often (or ever) that I have put a load of pure crap into a subject line but there is a first for everything.  Let’s dispel a myth.  The truth really is you only die once, you live every day.  And there are those, like me, who believe you live more than one lifetime.

Living is done on per diem basis and can only be defined by how much life you put into your life.   We all think that life is about spending countless  hours finding ourselves but, really, life is about creating ourselves.  Each day we wake up and we yawn.  We pull ourselves from the cocoon of covers we have created during the night and we stretch.  We take a deep breath to start a fresh day with a fresh outlook.  This is not our one shot to live.  This is our chance to wipe clean the slate of the previous day and draw a unique plan for a new day.  It is our constant do-over.   The thought of only living once is a complete fallacy.

Life is an amazing gift.  To look at it as a one shot deal is sad. We are afforded countless days to live.  We are given a blank canvas to create our own masterpiece and, as we tread through our days, we add the colors in which we find true happiness.  We paint the shapes that give us structure.  We create the lines that separate the things we wish to keep at a distance and we pencil in the shades to mask the things we wish to avoid.  We also have the ability to erase the things that we thought would fit into our portrait but those things just didn’t seem to blend into the bigger picture.

The beauty of our life’s canvas is that it can be recreated.  An intrinsic piece of art can always be remastered and designed to portray the life that we want it to convey.  The Mona Lisa, had anyone wanted her to, could have had a completely different smile.  Our opus is our own. No other person has the power to tell us that our life must follow a set trajectory.

Use the spectrum of color and live your life.  Live it every day and live it to the fullest, but live that way because you want to.  Believe that your life is your canvas and change the lines whenever you feel the need.  Erase the colors and start with a new palette and, while you are splashing those pigments to create a new spectral portrait, laugh in the face of those who think you only live once.

Drawing from the things that matter

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A couple of weeks ago, my friend Mike wrote this post about creating his family seal.  It originated from a homework assignment that was given to his son but it really sparked something in my mind.  My need to create went into overdrive and I spent many days thinking about the things that are most important to me and the things that would warrant space on my family shield.

What I thought would be a daunting task became relatively simple once I stripped away the trivial matters and whittled my thoughts down to the basics, getting in touch with the things that are at the core of my life, and coming up with this.

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My family and friends will always be first.  They are the anchor that hold me in my place.  They keep me honest and that truth allows me to enjoy all of the other aspects of my day-to-day living.

My home, albeit small and in need of updating, is my castle, my sanctuary.  Its walls are my defense shield and its roof, my shelter.  In this home I allow the chef hidden inside to come out and create tasty and aesthetically pleasing meals, even though most days I cook for one.

After the kitchen has been cleaned of any signs of being inhabited, I sit down for a quiet evening filled with words.  Whether I am ingesting words written by someone else or spewing forth words of my own, language envelops me and keeps me company in the waning hours of daylight.

During those evening hours I become lost in language, my puppy is ever-present.  Her eyes watch my every move and if she falls behind in her duty, the owls and butterflies that frequent my landscapes remind me that my mother and father are still making sure that their past exists in my present and my future.  And if life ever begins to get my down, I remember my dad always saying “Where there’s a will, there’s a way”.

I am thankful that I took the challenge to strip my life down to the basics, to really look inside myself and understand what are the most important things in my life.

If you were to take the same challenge, what would your family shield hold in its strong embrace?

 

 

 

And the Heavens opened when I realized it had pockets

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I have mentioned before that I am not the most delicate of females.  I have always been, and most likely always will be, a tomboy.  It is me in the truest form of myself and how I feel most comfortable.  I am capable of donning a dress and feeling pretty but yesterday upped that ante by about 90 percent.

I went dress shopping for the dress that I will wear to walk down the aisle as maid of honor for my best friends’ wedding in September.  I began to sweat as soon as I walked through the door of the shop.  For those of you who have not experienced a bridal shop, it is a sea of chiffon, satin and lace and had I not controlled my breathing to calm myself I may have broken out in hives.

It is a daunting task to find a place to begin, especially when my fashion sense is based on jeans, hoodies and a baseball cap.  The first dress I picked was lovely.  I locked myself in the change room and, as soon as I tried the dress on, the metamorphosis had begun.

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The dresses kept coming but I kept looking back at that first dress.  All the other dresses paled in comparison and made me more self-conscious about wearing a dress than I already was.  I put the first dress back on again and I thought, for perhaps the first time, this dress could reflect my true personality without the baseball cap, the jeans and the hoodie.  This dress brought out a part of me that I have ignored.  For the first time in a long time, looking in a mirror, I felt beautiful.

Maybe it took finding the right dress to recognize that long-lost piece of myself.  Perhaps this was the a-ha moment Oprah always talks about.  And just perhaps a certain friend of mine may have been right when he said, “just find a little black dress, put it on and get over it”.

It’s not black and it has pockets but, I get it now.  Maybe there is that one dress that can be the sum of all of  your parts while making you feel better than you thought possible.  I think I found mine today.

 

 

 

You breathe in while I exhale

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You breathe in while I exhale.

Every molecule of our existence

is suspended in a moment of time.

Energy,  moving in an undulating wave,

 is passing between us. 

Intensity burns.

Your breath invades every part of my being.

The air is charged with electricity

and my breath is caught for a moment.

Your eyes reflect mine,

and you see the piece of the puzzle

that has been missing.

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Our eyes close,

but we see each other more clearly

than we ever have before.

Your touch only confirms what I believe.

Our love existed before we met,

in a time long ago, destined to happen again.

We knew we would meet once more,

we didn’t know when,

but our souls will meet over and over.

You breathe in while I exhale,

because this breath will always belong to us.

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