Dressed in White

There is something magical about waking up to a world dressed in white. Our first big snow arrived late last night and left a thick blanket of clean, white powder over the city. I woke up like a child breathlessly excited to bundle up and explore the winter laced wonderland outside. I love listening to the muted sound of my feet hitting the unshoveled sidewalks and watching my footsteps mysteriously appear. I even secretly get excited to unearth my Sorrel snow boots and shovel the walks on those quiet, snow dusted mornings before work.

Outside the sugar light flakes keep falling making me want to curl up on my couch and nurse a good cup of tea while finishing up a my latest book. Unfortunately, duty calls and though I found myself braving the luge like freeway this morning and trudging through an ankle deep covered parking lot to school, I couldn't help singing that old Christmas classic under my breath.... let it snow, let is snow let, let it snow!!!

Love and the Hokey Pokey

So I've decided that looking for love is a bit like the Hokey Pokey...

You put your right leg in, you put your right leg out.

You put your right leg in and you shake it all about.

You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around.

That's what it's all about.

And then there is love...

You put yourself in one relationship. You take yourself out. You put yourself there again and shake it all about. You turn yourself around and continue to do this over and over again, just like that good old Hokey Pokey. At times you feel silly or you are tired. Sometimes you just want to stop having to shake it all about. You may even want to turn yourself around and entirely abandoned the Hokey Pokey.

But eventually, or so I am told, you reach that magical Hokey Pokey moment where you put your whole self in and you put your whole self out. You put your whole self in and you shake it all about. You stop and forget the Hokey Pokey and turn yourself around to finally find a relationship where you can keep your whole self in and don't want to leave any part out.

And, that my friends is what it's all about.

Give Me Freedom to Choose My Chair

Yes it is 1 am Thanksgiving morning. Instead of sleeping to visions of turkeys dancing through my head, I am tapping away on my keyboard to express my extreme distaste for seating charts or table place cards. For many people, this doesn't seem to be such an issue but for my fabulous family we suffer from a case of table organizing tyranny. Since I was a child, we have been discovering ways to sabotage the seating chart. Re-arranging the table cards to seat yourself next to your favorite cousin worked occasionally but if you were caught you get could a case of capital punishment (dish duty for eternity, knuckle wraps with the end of knife or banishment to the adults table). Even after years of the moaning and complaining the seating cards still appear at every significant meal and my reasons for hating them have further solidified.

Reason #1: Forced conversation... the organizer figures that you somehow need to reconnect over turkey and gravy so they sit you together and try to make you talk.

Reason #2: Worrying about everyone's feelings. This one can really keep you up at night. I mean what happens if Uncle Gary is upset about sitting next to Sue because of what she said about his mustache at last year's Christmas party? Seriously, the stress can be unnerving.

Reason #3: Lefties. Ok, this one might be valid. I a mean who likes to get an elbow as you are biting into your first piece of pumpkin pie. But, I say that we should forget the seating chart and let those with this genetic defect fend for themselves... I mean who cares about equality when you've got stuffing and mashed potatoes on your mind?

Reason #4: The popular table. Oh, you know what I mean. There is always the popular table where all the cool cousins end up sitting. If you don't gain a place for your place mat there, you end up wasting your meal lusting after their table decorations and dinner conversations.

In the end, I'm really just advocating for a basic right, dinner table democracy. Forget the seating charts and let us be free. Along with a good meal, all I want is one thing... give me freedom to choose my chair.

The Collectors

I've been carrying these stories around with me. So many people and places, so many moments that play upon the edges of my memory. I've decided to send them out into the vast and unknown universe of the blogosphere to be intercepted perhaps by no one. Nevertheless, just in typing them I feel relieved as if they have not been forgotten and their memory at least imprinted somewhere.

I've always been fascinated by collectors. There all sorts, collectors of dolls, coins, stamps or the high roller collectors of art, cigars, and wine. Maybe there is something innate within us that feels this need to accumulate. I've come across some interesting collectors and been amazed by the randomness of some collections. Yet one collector who made quite an impression upon me was Soeur Durant a collector of all things cat. I would dub her a true felineophile.

812 cat statues decorated her wall and she knew the history of each one. Cats from around the world that various friends had sent her. Cat statues given at times of trial to console or encourage and cats bought on a whim to add to the collection. This woman was crazy for cats and they were slowly taking over her living space. Yet, she didn't seem to mind that her collection was starting to control her. Rather she was more concerned about finding additional shelving for the cats. I wondered if the collection could ever be complete or what she was ultimately trying to capture and if she ever could catch it. In the end, Soeur Durant will continue collect her cats and if there is meaning, purpose or use it doesn't matter. Her collection was her kingdom and her way to gather up the good things in life and store it on shelf. It was her simple way to love, appreciate and celebrate life one feline figurine at a time.

Sunsets from the Kitchen Window

I had to stop and watch the electric sky shift the swirls of pink and purple across the horizon. I grabbed a chair and scooted up close to the window, pressing my hands against the chilled pane of a November evening. I sat and watched the sun disappear as I listened to the spin cycle of my washer and left the dirty dishes in the sink. There was something so luxurious and yet simple about sitting down to watch a sunset amidst the flurry of daily demands. A few minutes set aside to notice and realize a moment.

The colors slowly seeped away and the dishes remained undone. Yet, I continued to sit and marvel at how quickly life passes and how fast our feet must move to keep up. And sadly, how if we don't stop and sit, even for a few stolen seconds, life's pale blushing sunsets happening just outside the kitchen window quickly fade away unnoticed.

Au Revoirs and Effigies...

Sometimes life gets rough. You've got let things go but it's hard. At moments like these the best thing you can do is light a match, throw it on your pile of problems and watch them burn. There is something liberating about watching the flames blaze through your impossible obstacle and seeing the remnants blown away in the wisps of smoke.
Mix in fine dining, French food, fabulous friends and your favorite new dress and you've got one incredible effigy. Saying au revoir never felt so good. Don't let the load continue to weigh you down. Instead grab a match, bundle up your troubles for the torching and throw yourself one wild bonfire.

Cardoman Seeds and Hair Like Dawn

We sat around the table chewing cardoman seeds and digesting Shazia's mother's Pakistani cooking. Dal, jasmine rice, lentils, curry still covered the table in various eaten forms and laughter spilled out of our full bellies. I have learned a great lesson on friendship from these women. It comes in all forms and at any moment when we open our hearts. Their company has been an unexpected field of electric orange poppies on a otherwise gray day.
Billie is tall and willowy with ruffled golden hair. She is the kind and quiet type raised by eccentric and well educated parents. Being named after Billie Holliday with a ginger haired sister named Poppy were the first hints but her plans to travel to Pakistan and preference for French cinema confirmed my suspicions. Caroline is curvy with unruly brown hair and a sense of humor that matches her locks. She laughs loud, lives unabashedly and loves her 77 year old father by carrying around on her phone silly videos of him on in a birthday hat blowing out his candles. Shazia is from Pakistan and is everything I imagined from a good fiction novel character. Upper class and well educated in the West but living obediently to her Eastern religion and culture, she lives between two worlds. She carries herself like a queen and works as University professor of English Literature but was forced to London to live with her daughter due to the dangers of bombings in her city.
Our friendship was simple. It formed in the stress of lesson preparations and the fears of receiving below standard marks on our teaching evaluation. But it has moved beyond the chatter of the classroom to become something much more substantial to sharing moments of sadness and inadequacy to being alone and away from the worlds we want. I hardly anticipated to find such a treasure nestled in a teacher training course. Yet I am sure it is one of the most valuable things I will carry forward.
Before we go Shazia clips off a lock of my hair for her daughter who wants to show her friends the girl with the hair like dawn. I smile and can't help but marvel a bit at how quickly lives can intertwine and how much we have to gain from it.