And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings – Meister Eckhart
Dear Readers,
I do not think I have expressed the following in some time. And. Because I am blessed with some of you more recently connecting to things I write and share, I know I have been remiss in expressing this to you.
I am grateful for YOU
You matter to me.
If you have been following my blogs for some time now, you know I am passionate about inspiring hope, sharing the awe-filling ways Nature speaks, and encouraging transforming journeys. I am also a very empathetic person; translation I think deeply, I hear deeply, and I feel deeply. Case in point, I have had a tag line on various social media platforms that includes shifting the planet’s grief to hope one life story at a time. I feel the action of those words like someone else would look at their list of to-do’s that include pack the family lunches or take the dog for a run. (smile, grin).
I love communicating through writing. I know, obviously! (grin) Because even more than writing, I love teaching. I never realized just how much until the most recent steps up the spiral staircase journey I am currently on. I reflect on how impactful teachers have been in my life, in many forms. School. Work. Mentors. Friends, family, classmates, strangers, dogs, nature. Words from other authors and motivational speakers.
Yep, pretty much everyone and everything in life! (smile, grin)
And just as I have been blessed to experience many diverse teachers in my life, I am listening to the Universe as it whispers for me to bring variety to my teaching I love to do. This week’s blueprint is going to offer just that. Different blueprint designs than what you have been receiving. I will be honored if you are willing to be a student who likes an assortment.
The Universe has been whispering to me that in the dance of grace between opposites, there is a place in which the opposites can collide and the distinction between the two can become blurred. As it is said, energy flows where attention goes and sometimes, in an effort to shift the planet’s grief to hope, I fear I have kept grief in the lead. Now it is time for me to pivot and be a teacher for us all (including myself!) how we can dance with imagination, playfulness, exploration, curiosity, anticipation, and what I hope is also joyfulness. While also acknowledging that suffering and grief are also real to life, and that it is only in looking into the eyes of these that we can truly transform into the beautiful, hope-full, joy-filled life that IT IS.
I am introducing a poem. Though my published books are written in prose, with a very rhythmic poetic style, I have not historically written poems. Play. Exploration. (smile)
I am also introducing a fictional life story, with various characters you will meet in the future. The Creases Now Speak. Let me give this backdrop. A few weeks ago, the story you will read below emerged in a writing class. My attempt to step out of my comfort zone of non-fiction writing and explore fiction. When the next class began, though I knew I wanted to experiment with fiction, I didn’t plan that a second character connected to this story would emerge on paper, but she did. (You will meet her in the future.) Then, a third character appeared. Then a fourth and fifth.
I don’t have a chapter outline or a character plan. What has been coming to paper appears in the week I sit down to write. I suppose one could say a channeling of sorts. In whom the characters become and in the interwoven stories that are of “real life.” Translation, what the characters experience could be a true life story. Once you read the first five posts of The Creases Now Speak, you and I will discover together who else appears for future posts.
Again, I am grateful for YOU and all of you matter to me. You are giving me a great honor subscribing to receive blog postings from me. With only so many hours in your day/ week, it is a privilege that I am part of what flows into your already large amount of information, tasks, requests, etc. that all need / want your valuable time.
Thank you for learning with me as we shift and evolve, dancing together on this dance floor we call life.
And now for
The Art of the Pinch
Beware! the outcries
As the world
Leaps back
If they pause to see you
At all
Unless curiosity prevails
Like Ginger’s
As she turns to my pause
Careful! the perception
As the world
Sees with anxious eyes
And heart
As you raise up
Ready to defend
While you prepare
To also reveal your acceptance
Of diversity
If Ginger respects
Your boundaries
Ugly! the judgment
As the world
Silences their listening
And closes their eyes
To your soul
But I hear you
As I saw you in
The vast space surrounding us both
Trust my instincts
As Ginger and I turn
And run forward
The Creases Now Speak
Behind Edward’s closed eyes, her silhouette walks to the table as he fervently writes. Though he is at the café for something to drink, he is more focused on reporting the latest events. He knows his editor will be pleased to receive Edward’s newest story.
She is patiently waiting for him to look up and place his coffee order with her.
He learns her name is Mỹ, pronounced MEE. Later, he will look up that MEE means “beautiful.”
And she was. Breathtakingly so with her deep brown eyes that reminded him of perfect skipping stones found in the creek bottom behind his childhood home. He spent hours at the creek. There wasn’t much else to do in Cordova, Illinois, population 364 in the late 1940’s, early 50’s.
Looking into Mỹ’s eyes was like looking into the glistening water of that creek, never wanting to leave.
His grandson Joshua always thinks Edward is sleeping when he enters the assisted living room that is now Edward’s home. Every Thursday. 4:00 p.m. Like clockwork.
Edward likes being able to rely on the rhythm and ritual of Joshua’s visits. Something to look forward to besides the daily predictable in-room breakfast at 8:00 a.m., physical therapy at 9:30, a shower at 11:00, lunch with the other residents at noon, then free time until dinner at 5:30 p.m. with everyone again.
Except Thurdays. Thursdays Joshua brings dinner, just the two of them. They look at old photographs and stories from Edward’s journalism career when every day was nothing short of intense unpredictability.
Edward was an international news reporter. He traveled the world, always on the front line of a significant ending. The fall of the Soviet Union in the 90’s, the Berlin Wall in the 80’s, the end of the Vietnam War in the 70’s.
Vietnam is where he met beautiful Mỹ.
And where he left her.
He remembers showing Patricia, his wife – God rest her soul – pictures from his time in Vietnam. One of the pictures included Mỹ looking up from the tea she was pouring. Patricia didn’t wonder about those glistening brown eyes looking back because it wasn’t unusual for Edward to have candid pictures of people in his journalism collection.
Edward is certain Patricia never saw the folded letter tucked in his wallet card pocket. Patricia always respected his wallet was his personal property, just as he never rifled through her purse.
He has unfolded and folded the letter so many times there are small tears at the creases, tiny rips making it hard to read some of the curves and lines of Mỹ’s native Vietnamese language. He had learned a few words, like Mỹ, Xin Chào for hello, Cám ợn for thank you, and Đúng Xin vui lὸng for yes, please.
Mỹ’s communication to him was head nods and smiles in place of English she didn’t know. She did learn how to say his name.
Sometimes, when his eyes are closed when Joshua arrives, Edward is listening to Mỹ’s soft voice slowly saying the foreign letters of his name, E-D-W-A-R-D gently flowing over her tongue and past her lips. Like a creek slowly flowing over rocks and past the feet of a young boy dangling them in the current’s gentle movements.
In the fifty-two years since Edward last saw Mỹ, he has wondered. Did she marry? Did she become a mom and if so, he hopes it was to a daughter. He likes to think she is a grandmother, too, for there is no greater joy than being a grandparent.
He doesn’t have regrets. He met and married Patrica a couple of years after Vietnam. The best forty-six years of his life. He has told Joshua more than once that grandma was a saint. From their home in a suburb of Chicago, his beloved Patricia raised their two daughters largely on her own while he galivanted around the world for the most pressing and latest news the public should know.
Edward stopped traveling the world when he and Patrica finished raising Joshua after their cherished daughter Stephanie passed away from leukemia. Joshua didn’t need much more raising at that point; he was sixteen. His single mom had raised him well to then.
Like Mỹ’s mom had raised her without a father who had been killed in the early years of the war.
Today when Joshua enters the room Edward’s eyes are open.
“Hi Grandpa. You’re awake today! Hey, what’s that you’re holding? It looks like it’s falling apart.”
“It’s a fifty-two-year-old letter. Something I was given when I was reporting the end of the war in Vietnam,” Edward explained.
“What does it say?” Joshua asked looking over Edward’s shoulder. “Grandpa, is that Vietnamese?” he exclaimed astonishingly.
“I wish I knew. I never had a way of translating it.”
“Grandpa, we can translate it with my computer. You can do just about anything on the internet now.” Joshua eagerly said as he hurried to grab his computer from his backpack.
Edward hesitated for a moment, unsure if he was ready for the creases to speak.
Thân mến. “The first word is ‘dear’”. Joshua continues, albeit rather slowly, typing symbolled letters into his computer, asking Edward “Who gave you this letter?”
Edward replies simply, “someone I met at a coffee shop.”
A couple hours later Joshua finished translating the symbols and letters, except for where the creases were torn and slightly ripped rendering the letters illegible. In those spaces Joshua used intuition to piece words together.
Joshua reads the translation.
Dear Edward,
My uncle arranged my mom and I to come to the United States. A city named Chicago. Maybe I see you in a coffee shop one day.
Love,
Mỹ
When Joshua looks up, tears are rolling down Edwards cheek as he closes his eyes. He sees a silhouette walking up to the table, eyes as brown as the skipping rocks glistening in the creek that one wishes to never leave.