over the weekend, we framed & hung several prints by Jay Ryan. we finally feel like grown-ups, with real artwork.

the undersea theme inspired snoop, who responded with her own quite lovely image.

i love everything about it, from the seahorse family to the jellyfish.

when i was a little girl, i went through a phase where i cried every day when i went to school, and pretended illnesses so i could go back home to my mom where i felt safe. i don’t remember what felt so sad and scary, other than just being out in the world alone, i suppose. every day when i went out the door, i felt that something terrible could happen and i may never come back, i could be lost out there with no way to get home, spinning alone in a dark universe with nothing to hold me safe.

so my mom made me a star chart, and every day i went to school without crying, every day where i managed my fears, i got a little foil star to lick and stick on my chart, and at the end of the week, if there was a nice row of shiny stars, we would walk downtown in a blue friday night dusk and i could pick something out at the dime store, or there would be a special treat for me and my brother. it was never about the plastic baby doll, or the little golden book, or the actual thing that i picked. it was the promise that at the end of that row of stars, i knew i would be home, and i would be with people who would always love me, and i would be safe, and i would have made it through another week of growing up.

it seems funny and unfair that at almost forty years old, i remember that star chart, and think only half-joking that i could still really use one.

maybe everyone feels like this sometimes.

all week, i thought about stars, and when i was pretty sure that i had earned it, i took myself to teavana and treated myself to some tea. i think sometimes it is just your own self who has to keep those little lights shining in the big dark universe, and most of the time, even when i think i can’t, i can close my eyes and see them and feel them. i just have to try.

and a lovely hot drink and a pretty tea tin certainly help.

it’s been a cold miserable spring but as doctor suess says, no wind ever blows forever. sometimes the big challenges of life can feel overwhelming, there’s no doubt. but the future is not ours to see or to know, it doesn’t belong to us.

what does belong to us, if we choose to own it, is the ability to feel intense gratitude for what we have. it’s an odd challenge, to narrow my focus from the whole huge picture to just one tiny beautiful detail of my life at any given point in time, and feel grateful for that.

the funny thing is, once i start doing that, i start seeing other tiny beautiful details, then others, like beads on a necklace, and soon the whole picture of my life is completely different.

so this spring there have been good books and new blogs full of beautiful words and images and ideas and optimism. there has been thrifting, and lots of baking with the little one as a helper – cookies and muffins and special saturday night dinners. there has been lavender laundry soap for the sheets, and plans being laid for the not-so-distant summertime: gardens, a house rental on the beach, long training runs, summer dresses and skirts. there was opening day for detroit baseball, and there have been many blustery visits to the woods to feed the birds and watch the swans building their nests. there’s been coffee with cream, and public radio, and knitting (well, thinking about knitting, anyway.)

my motto for this year is taken from the words of albert einstein.

‘there are only two ways to live your life. one is as though nothing is a miracle. the other is as though everything is a miracle.’

we actually saw the sun for awhile today, after such a sheer drudgery of a freezing, grey, & windblown march as i can’t recall. spring is not normally my favorite season but this year I can’t wait for the mud & buds & balm.

until then, another week of space heaters, wool coats, & chapped hands.

first, though, a weekend of books & playdates & maybe some knitting & cooking in between all of the normal chores that keep our lives ticking along.

I hope you enjoy yours, all the simplest nice things of beauty & peace.

sometimes, when you’re cleaning out a very old closet, you find something that still might fit if you give it a good airing out, and wear it in a new way.