I’ve spent most of the last two days outside on our little deck because Vinca has Covid and we’re doing the challenging dance of distance and masking inside. I am so thankful for this view, and especially for this tree, that has changed reliably and stunningly with the more-than-I-expected seasons since we landed here after the fire. So many fires. I am so unendingly thankful for trees. For vivid spring green and stark winter brown and autumn orange.
Last night, in order to distance, I slept on our big roomy sofa with the windows wide open and alternately felt like a cozy squirrel in a nest and an aging human woman with creaky neck and achey body. I dreamt I went to a party, comfortable and confident in high heels (feeling surprised at how comfortable and confident I was), holding a luminous rose gold purse. At the party, in a low room, bright and dark in equal measure, someone offered me a choice between two goblets: a smaller, thicker, translucent one, striped with wavy rose gold lines, or a larger, clear, and straightforward one. I laughed and smiled as I gestured towards the smaller one. Then this someone poured rose gold wine into my complicated rose gold glass while people chattered in the background and I felt, for the first time in a while, happy.
I’ve spent a lot of time lately feeling confused and hopeless and alternately cluttered and deeply empty – straight-up blue-gray. When I told my therapist this she noticed I was wearing blue and gray. Last night Vinca sat on the other side of the deck as I hung my laundry and she said, “Mom, all your clothes are blue and gray.” I stepped back and looked; she was right.
But this morning things looked different, cluttered and confusing as they still are.
I was offered two goblets. I chose the smaller, luminous one.
I could have chosen the straightforward life. The plain and ample; the expected. I didn’t.
I chose this: the small, yet crafted, yet surprising, yet radiant, and slightly astonishing. Rose gold wine in a rose gold glass and laughter and good company.
I am so unendingly thankful for my dream life, which sends love notes to my awkward waking one sometimes.
And I am thankful for this blue-gray house around our shoulders and today’s shifting blue-gray sky.
