A Liquid Promise

I stood at Nordstrom make up counter and politely requested a free sample of wrinkle repair cream, the promotional item a friend urged me to collect. Having just purchased tube of favorite lipstick, I seized an opportunity to address aging skin. Lately, reflection in mirror appears more like my own grandma than twenty-year-old newly-wed who craved sunshine on youthful flesh. All lathered in baby oil, unsurfaced meditations on the virtue of skin protection chilling in back of mind as I listened to the Beatles and perused Seventeen magazine. Reigning thoughts back to present, a quick nod to sales lady, securing future appointment two weeks out, another free sample of magic serum on the horizon. A promise of visibly reduced wrinkles and lines, improved radiance and texture, oh a litany for this mature complexion, cart-wheels for heart. Today I noticed the back of the appointment card, words causing body to still, thoughts tracking back to forever past. To the teenage girl who sun bathed underneath beaming happy face in sky, to the wife who spoke harsh words and faltered with truth. To yesterday, unkind ruminations that swept through mind like dust storm in hot desert. The gritty past, coated like sandpaper with failures, regrets and mistakes, I stared at the folded card, and a gust of grateful breath expelled into merciful atmosphere. "A second chance to forgive the past," it read and I knew then that wrinkles are prizes hard won. Trophies of graces collected along the journey like opaque shells on sparkling sand. The more times I forgive, the more shells I cradle in upturned palm, and I practice daily, this forgiveness that plugs the soul holes and unlocks dark cells of fear and regret. C.S. Lewis penned: "Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive." Studying reflection in mirror, layers of forgiveness already shed from skin, I thought about calling the marketing team for this serum. Maybe they truly don't understand the plethora of chances we're given, that forgiveness is daily discipline, a beautiful eternal gift and it begins with me. Slathering on the liquid promise, I stared back at reflection, humming a tune from pardoning past: "With a love like that you know you should be glad. With a love like that you know you should be glad."

True Grit

Two years ago, preparing for my new role in life, becoming a grandmother, the wondering started, doubting if I had the true grit for this next leg in the adventure. In a short span of time, six weeks to be exact, our family expanded by three. Three new souls to nurture, to pamper, romp and wrestle with. It didn't take long for me to let go of preconceived notion of what a grandmother should be. Abandoning perception of perfection, I pinned my sight on how much love could be draped around tiny shoulders. This I practice, this unfailing act of vintage love, a valentine for my own heart. In his book, Tuesdays With Morrie, Mitch Albom quoted Morrie: "As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on--in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here." Years ago, I underlined that paragraph, along with many gems in this beloved book. Closing eyes, I hear my grandma's high-pitched voice instructing me how to roll a perfect pie crust. Grandpa, teaching us city kids the art of milking a cow. Squirt, squirt, pinging metal bucket in barn. In their own way, in their being, a brush stroke of immeasurable time and experience, they left behind cherished memories. Ancestral imprints, wisps of time designated as reservoirs, a supply of unending wealth. Like a love bank it is, interest accruing over time, withdrawals made with each photograph, each recipe and sound of cow's low "mooo" in grass green pasture. Maybe the elementary act of being there is the formula, the instruction, in believing that crazy yes, I absolutely do have the true grit after all.

 

And if apprehension muddles the mind, threatens security deposit made generations ago, I steer gaze to riches and wealth...

 

 

 

 where being there forever is singularly, the motivation I need to passionately believe.

How To Maintain In The Mundane

An old photograph and burgeoning tulips, two of the gifts I received this week. A picture it came, delivered by mail, a snapshot from the past, a comforting gift in the present. Housed in paper envelope, not digital and all the better, my fingertips stroked cherished memory, fanning into flame a burning desire to behold this loved one who passed many years ago. The photograph, her laughing smile and big wide glasses, hands wrapped around daughter of mine, these photos are few and she's been gone so long her voice a weak timbre in my ears.  I looked at the scene again from 1988. My mother, she's pressing my daughter close, this daughter who planted tulips around our Dogwood tree and our son stands smiling sweetly, cousins dressed smartly for the special occasion. Oh, how the past weaves itself into present, scrap booking memories together. A divine implant. And when life presses in hard, the next step seems ominous, maybe the best thing to do, is to "wait" for the unexpected. Take a step, wait, take another step. When trials in life threaten to unravel inner peace, old habits hang around like a bad boyfriend, and the Kardashian's appear in nightly dreams, the unexpected surprises in life glove the heart, warming it back up again. Supernatural CPR. My daughter asked me the other night if the tulips had shown their green tips yet. If they had surfaced through the wintry dirt and stretched their virgin stems. She ventured out into dark evening to investigate. Returning, she announced with great pleasure, an emphatic "Yes!" This was my second gift. The bulbs my daughter planted around base of Dogwood tree last year, a tender reminder of my own mother's bulbs I planted in same spot of earth those long years ago. They are springing to life, same as revived pumping of heart, past and present colliding together, wrapped as unforeseen gifts. F.B. Meyer said: "If God maintains sun and planets in bright and ordered beauty, He can keep us." I like that. In the "waiting" room, where nothing seems to happen, I scan the day with eyes searching for the presents, for ordinary to morph into extraordinary. Oswald Chambers says it well: "We will see God reaching out to us in every wind that blows, every sunrise and sunset, every cloud in the sky, every flower that blooms, and every leaf that fades, if we will only begin to use our starved imagination to visualize it." An old photograph, a maiden bed of tulips, light, light, light up my eyes to see ever more luminously, Him that maintains it all.