A Fine Christmas Tea

     
                                    "Enjoy life sip by sip, not gulp by gulp." ~ Author Unknown~


    My mother knows that a fine Christmas tea is best after the tree has been decorated and "smack dab" in the middle of hectic December on a Saturday afternoon. It's an intimate affair for my sisters, daughters, nieces and my small granddaughter. The invitation is by phone, to one person, spread like gossip because she thinks she has told everyone, maybe it's a queen's way. She is our queen and the promise of chicken salad in puffed pastry, tea cakes, chocolate truffles and berries commands all to a halt. For one day there will be no laundry, emails won't be answered, unfinished projects will remain unfinished.
   Over the potholes and through the traffic we drove to grandmother's house we went. Some were in heels, some  were in flats and one in the back was wearing her new pink boots, a good day for a fine Christmas tea until I was rear ended from the back! The woman behind us was laughing with her passenger, I felt rage taking over. Who drives that fast without paying attention? I have a baby girl in the back seat! There wasn't any damage, we were all fine but I couldn't release the uninvited anger towards this stranger. A stranger wearing chains and feathers around her neck with furry boots and burgundy painted hair who had a hard time talking without laughing. Our lives weren't a joke and tiny Kaitlyn said, "Wham! We got hit. I am so glad I was wearing a seat belt grandma!"

     Tea parties! I would be home safe without them, cleaning house and getting things done but we were dressed up so onward we drove. The warm sweet tea calmed my emotions and my sisters' conversation melted the memory of our wreck. Thinking back on that day, I remember my daughter commenting on the woman's excessive amount of necklaces and Kaitlyn asking in a most angelic voice, "is she going to our tea party?" to which her accessorized aunt said, "oooh, no!" This little four year old child, living as a zen master, free from judgement and purely in the moment, able to forget the wrong. I learned much from the tea of 2011.

           "tea parties were invented by little girls who one day became great grandmothers."
    1. Allow yourself one day to play without work or worry.
    2.  Invite your closest companions for conversation.
    3.  Sip your tea, never gulp, take life slowly.
    4.  A tea pot has its neck in hot water and manages to sing.
    5.  Try not to count other people's necklaces.
    6.  Laugh, laugh out loud.
    7.  Forget the past.
    
  


  

Flu Season

     Safe behind a wall of glass sat Ermyl, the lady who manned the fort at the local community center and  all the old men loved her. An eighty plus year old hottie is what she was, born and raised on a farm where work was her only friend. Her hair was dark and she didn't care that it should be gray because it made her feel pretty when it was colored besides that's how it was when her father was alive. She lived with her son and man was he lazy, how would he take care of her now that her eyes were going. Neither one of them drove much but they liked to cook and I always knew what she was fixing for dinner. Ermyl was afraid of catching the flu, so much that her bottle of hand sanitizer remained behind the wall of glass.
    After a long winded conversation with Ermyl, she would grumble, "Card! Slide your card under the window," where she would slather protective germ killer lotion on her wrinkled hands. This was prime timing to mention something about myself such as what I was cooking for dinner or how the tree in the front was loaded with apples, perfect for a Thanksgiving cobbler to which she'd reply, "uh huh, yea, ok now, goodbye~!"
   My old community center was torn down and replaced with a park. I don't think Ermyl is alive any more but we laugh often thinking about her. Thanksgiving is one day away, wash your hands, it's cold and flu season. Be kind to the relatives and your friends, don't throw up on anyone and remember to take turns telling tales.
   

Farmer's Market Detour

 "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms~to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." ~ Viktor Frankl


    The plan was all about going to the farmer's market, buying pumpkins, heirloom tomatoes and dancing outside with the local musicians. The surprise was an empty parking lot much to the horror of the back seat passenger who was head strong about buying a pumpkin. We blamed it on October, decided to have lunch at another place. Our little back seat passenger requested a window seat with pumpkins, lots of pumpkins and a chocolate shake. There weren't any detour signs so we cranked up the music and drove to wherever. Lucky for us, the new plan landed us in a small vegan restaurant in an old neighborhood oozing with a patina of brick, flowering vines and oodles of vintage.

  What to our wandering eyes should appear, but a window seat of pillows in oranges and reds with 

pumpkins, lots of pumpkins! The back seat passenger had trouble hiding her smile.

     Healthy chocolate shake with almond milk so big it takes two to drink...$6, faux mac and cheese with cashew butter...$4, rainbow veggie taco wrapped in a collard green...$10, letting go of the plan, PRICELESS!

Happy Birthday Jim!

 Happy birthday Jim. I wonder what you're doing now that your days are being spent in the after life? We know you came around on occasion, it's been a while, but we knew you were there. You had a short life making us laugh, giving wedgies and smoking. It was a little scary to smell cigarette smoke in the house after you had died and nobody smoked. You almost gave your nephew a heart attack when you appeared at the foot of his bed the day of your funeral. He may have been less afraid if his bedroom wasn't in the basement. I enjoyed the time you interrupted the sermon at the new spiritualist church I was checking out with your other nephew the skeptic. The look on his face was worth a million bucks. "I have a Jim present. Sorry to interrupt the sermon but he says to tell a gentleman by the name of Charlie that he loves him.", I remember a woman behind us say. Priceless! Your
appearances to your mom, my mother-in-law helped her open her mind. She won't talk about it but we saw her tears and heard her trembling voice. She no longer makes fun of people who can see the diseased.
 We loved you much. Coincidentally, your old girl friend called me tonight out of the blue. I haven't heard from her in months, she forgot it was your birthday. Well, it's late and I'm tired, thanks for the memories.

  Your sister in law

Hawa, My Gratitude Reminder

     Yesterday on the way to the grocery store, it was hard for me to make a right at the four way stop because of the woman who was jogging slowly in the street. Our eyes met and I thought to myself for a second about how dangerous it was for her to be so close to my car. I knew her ! She was the little girl who used to walk past my car when I was the carpool mom at middle school. There was something different about her back then. The other kids would walk in droves, talking over each other, yelling, some cussed and some flirted, all this to my observing eyes.This girl seldom had a friend. She was so black, like a crayola black. Her walk was purposeful as if she treasured the way each step felt to her feet and when she walked past my car, she wasn't afraid to look me in the eyes and smile. I looked forward to our daily exchange and wondered who was the white lady in the red station wagon that gave her a ride. Sometimes I felt mad at the woman because she was always on a cell phone laughing and from my view, it didn't seem like she paid any attention to the girl.

     I usually wore my old paint clothes to pick up my kids because I was a faux painter while they were in school. My nails were dirty and sometimes paint was still on my face in spots. This embarrassed me and I probably spent way too much time dwelling on the negative. It was my most complaining day when I found out about the black girl. Her name was Hawa. She was living in the United States with a foster family. The muddled story was that when she was nine years old, she was playing outside with her friends while her mother washed clothes in the river. All of a sudden, they were brutally attacked by men who ambushed them with machetes, slashing their tiny bodies into pieces. Hawa pretended to be dead so the men left but she was alone in the outdoors next to her friends and mother for a week before anyone rescued her.
     Nobody talked about this at school. All of her fingers were gone on both hands. She was made to fit in, become a student at Mission Valley middle school and on my complainiest day is when she told her classmates in a delicate whisper, "I am so thankful to have a thumb! It lets me hold my paint brush because some day, I am going to be an artist!"
     Needless to say, I learned to keep my mouth shut about stupid things that do not matter.

             ....Loving what is, ends suffering~ Dov Fishman


     I heard she's married and has small children of her own. Probably a very good artist too, the kind of artist who knows gratitude.

Gone

I want to go outside
with incense and dream
a poet's dream.
Summer packed her
bags last week and
left me here alone.
The blinking yellow lights
are gone and darkness
hides the moon.
Smoke swirls and sways
as if to say
"it's all a poet's dream."

Angel Eyes

"Grace, Mercy and Forgiveness will help a man walk tall. Walk tall!" ~ John Mellencamp


   To the human eye, that man doesn't have his s**t together. What is he thinking? Or not thinking? Lady at the office said he parked on a busy road once to help her dog that had been hit by a car when other drivers honked at him. He struggled to pick the wounded dog off the road she said, because of his own hip pain but went ahead and put the dog in the back of his truck and delivered her dog to the house. They had to put down the dog because its back had been broken. He risked his life on that curve and the dog died anyway, what was he thinking asked the human eye.
  Why doesn't that man have a job asks the human eye? Nobody makes it in the woods. If only that man would leave his awful woman, his life would change for the better. D*mn! What is he thinking?

  And then the angelic eye took over. Look beyond! Pause, breathe, observe. It saw his gentle smile, his sense of humor and depth of compassion. The language of the trees became audible. "We give oxygen" they whispered, "we are the healers." To the angelic eye, the man is in his perfect place. Listen, the awful woman tells her story and the angelic eye sees a wounded animal. Her pain is at a depth that a human ear would want to quiet but the angelic eye is stronger and sees the bigger picture. He is the kindest man she has ever known and the angelic eye understands their soul connection. All is well in the big woods on the outskirts of town.