Love

I might have titled this post Apprehension  or Anxiety, but then, I'm not in love with those things.  I have anticipated and dreaded this day for a long time.  And here it is  . . . the last post.  Really, what else could I title it but Love?  I am in love with love.

Now to be honest, I had two fantasies about this blog, neither of which became reality.  I imagined that maybe, just maybe, by the end of the year, I would actually be in love with a real, live man!  I mean, c'mon, wouldn't that have made a great ending?  Didn't happen.  I also fantasized that somewhere out in the blogosphere there would be a publisher who would stumble upon this and contact me about publication.  I always imagined it as a page-a-day calendar.  Well, that didn't happen either.  So what did happen?

For one thing, the blog forced me to be more observant.  Every day for the past year, I had to pay attention to what the Universe was offering to me.  There were times when those gifts were easy to find, like animal tracks in the snow, the Northern Lights, dragonflies, the Lost Coast Highway, or half a dead baby bunny.  And there were times when I had to look hard to find the gifts, like candlewax, windows, mirrors, or sitting still.  I hope that I continue to look for the gifts, even though I won't necessarily be writing about them.

The blog opened me up to finding beauty in the ordinary.  A simple walk in the woods became full of wonders, because I looked for them.  Food tasted better after I thought about its growth from tiny seeds.  The weather offered contemplation of the diversity of nature.  And daily chores took on a mindfulness that made them less tedious.  I have always been moved by the Louis Armstrong song What a Wonderful World (especially the Joey Ramone version!) and I don't ever want to lose that awareness.  I do believe that writing this blog has allowed me to focus more on the beauty than on the dysfunction in this often polarized world.

Let me take you back to the beginning.  This was how I began the blog:  It was a bitterly cold late-January morning.  I was teetering on the edge of Winter Depression, a place I am prone to visit when I cannot be outside in the garden.  Depression.  Because of this blog, I suffer less depression.  It's true.  As far as I'm concerned, this blog is better than Paxil.  I'm not saying that I don't sink from time to time.  But I recognize that fall into darkness as a temporary departure, and I seem to be able to climb back out fairly quickly.  I think, too, that I have become more open.  Life isn't going to be the dream I once had, but there are places to go, people to meet, new things to try, and I am a willing adventurer, more than I was one year ago.

The Beatles said it best:  All You Need Is Love.  It's not an abstraction for me anymore.  Writing this blog has taught me to find love everywhere I can.  It is with that spirit that I close this chapter, this year-long journey to fall in love again.  To those of you who have traveled with me, I hope that you, too, look at the world a little differently now.  Above all, I wish you love.

So long for now!

The Penultimate

We are all birds, hungry for something, but willing to surrender habit for change when it's time to do so. I wrote that yesterday, even surprising myself with the revelation.  On this, my penultimate post, I want to take advantage of an opportunity to offer a change to my loyal readers.  You may be few in number, but you have been 95% responsible for my having nearly completed this challenge to fall in love with something every day for a year.  Admittedly, there were times when I just wanted to bag the whole thing.  It was fear of disappointing you that kept me going.  I will be forever grateful for your presence in my life, your supportive comments, and your friendship.

So here's what I'm thinking.  I've kind of gotten into a habit of writing everyday, and after the blog ends tomorrow, there will be a void to fill.  Perhaps you will feel that void, too.  Some of you have asked that I continue, but after finding 364 things to fall in love with, I'm kind of running out of ideas.  I don't mean to suggest that there aren't a gazillion more things with which to fall in love, but rather, that I am weary of leafing through my previous posts every day to make sure that I haven't already written about a particular thing!  That actually happened a couple of times over the year, and I had to scramble to revise before anyone caught on!  So, no, I am not going to continue this blog.  I committed to a year, and after tomorrow's post, I will have met that commitment.  So that will be that.

I have never written fiction.  As a writer, I studied poetry.  This blog was neither, but I think there's a chance that it has prepared me to attempt fiction-writing.  With the encouragement of a few of you, I think I might be ready to give it a try.  (Note my language here:  think, might, try . . . clearly, I am not convinced of this idea!)  Anyway, I have enjoyed having an audience throughout this blog, and I have been thinking about how I could continue that.  So here is my germ of an idea:  I would like to attempt writing a novel, but I would like that attempt to be an interactive one.  In other words, I would like your input, your ideas, your critiques, your encouragement.  If you think you might be interested in this collaborative effort, keep reading.

I envision this:  I set up a restricted blog site.  You would need a code to have access.  As I develop various components (setting, characters, voice, etc.), I would post them and request your input.  Your ideas will help me hone these elements of the story.  And once I actually begin writing the chapters, I would look for your reactions and suggestions.  Together, we will write The Great American Novel!  Or, more realistically, we'll just have some fun.

So what do you think?  If you would like to join me in this effort, comment here or send me an email or a Facebook message.  (Please include your email address.)  If and when I am ready to begin, I will contact you with the particulars.  That will not be tomorrow; I am going to take a little break before I dive in again.

And please do not feel obligated!  Maybe you are ready to put this year of falling in love to rest, too.  I understand.  Take your time thinking it over.

Today I am in love with this penultimate post, because it postpones the end one more day.  See you tomorrow.

Surrender

I surrender.  The bears won.  I know those cubs were cute, and I know that Mama Bear was just doing what she had to do to care for her babies.  But they returned under cover of darkness to destroy, once and for all, my birdfeeder.

So that's the end of that.  I cannot continue feeding the birds as it would encourage the bears to return day after day for their free lunch.  The birds were noticeably distressed today, flying into the windows as if asking me for more birdseed.  I have to trust that they, both the bears and the birds (and the squirrels) will, in time, find other sources of food.

Surrender.  Is it giving up?  In a sense it is.  But "giving up" sounds so negative.  Maybe surrender is just another word for acceptance.  If I travel backwards on this journey of mine, I see that I have surrendered many times.  Certainly, I've surrendered to the wisdom of the Universe when people I loved were taken away.  But I have also surrendered to great love, most notably at the births of my children, when I learned at first sight that I would give my right arm and more to protect these persons that I presented to the world.

I have surrendered to aging, and I have tried to do it gracefully.  I have surrendered to free will, understanding that it is up to me to make wise decisions.  I have surrendered to heartache, knowing that it is the price of having loved.

I have surrendered to late blight and grubs and Japanese beetles.  I have surrendered to the changing seasons.  I have surrendered to ice storms and the blazing sun and evening breezes.

I have surrendered to wine and I have surrendered to gelato.  I have surrendered to dust and cobwebs.  I have surrendered to dreams.

In two days, I will surrender this blog.  But I will trust that I (and my readers) will find other sources of reflection and contemplation and maybe inspiration.  We are all birds, hungry for something, but willing to surrender habit for change when it's time to do so.

It's time.

Jeggings

With only four more posts to go, I don't really care anymore if you judge me.  Today I fell in love with jeggings.  Go ahead, judge away.

Do you remember Mom jeans?  According to Wikipedia, Mom jeans is "a humorously pejorative term for a specific type of fit of women's jeans, considered to be both unfashionable and unflattering to the wearer's figure."  Back in the day, Mom jeans had waistbands above the belly button, considered a mortal sin by fashionistas at the time.  It is interesting to note that today, high-waisted pants are back in fashion.  Some of us have lived long enough to see the same fashions recycle themselves once or twice, so this is no surprise to us.  Skinny, straight-leg, boot-leg, wide-bottom, flare, bell-bottom . . . how do you like your jeans?  Whatever the current style is, invest your money into purchasing several pair in that style, and I guarantee you, the style will change long before you have gotten your money's worth out of those jeans.  (I should note here that I still have my hip-hugger bell-bottom jeans from 1969, frayed and patched and ready to go.)

But I did not fall in love with the questionable fashion cred of jeggings.  I fell in love with the comfort! I was shopping with a friend yesterday, and she purchased a pair of Vera Wang Simply Vera Denim Jeggings.  She'd tried them on, she said, and they looked and felt great!

Well, I slept on it.  And I woke up this morning thinking what the hell, I want to look and feel great, too!  So back to the store I went.  What I don't think my friend realized was that there was a sale:  buy one, get one half off.  So I bought two pair of Vera Wang Simply Vera Denim Jeggings, one light, one dark. 

It's all about comfort.  I am far too old to give a flying fig whether or not I am fashionable.  I just want to breathe.  Jeggings let me do that.  Comfortably.

And just to be clear, those are not my long legs in that picture.  (I wish.)

The Wild Side

This is what I fell in love with this morning!  This is (was) the birdfeeder that sits about ten feet from my side door.  There's Mama Bear supervising the kids who are feasting on birdseed and a big fat suet cake.  I took the picture from inside the house, then opened the sliding door and stepped onto the porch.  Within seconds, the timid family took off for the trees.

That's Mama and one of the cubs.  The other cub was up another tree, further down the property.  I scolded them for eating the birdseed, and they trundled off behind the house, heads down and tails between their legs.  And this is what they left behind:

So I went outside, Philips head screwdriver in hand, and set about repairing the damage.  One of the suet cakes was gone, but also gone was the wire cage into which I put the suet cake!  I looked all over the ground for it with no success.  Did one of those cubs swallow the wire cage along with the suet cake?  Please say no!

I went back inside to upload my pictures.  Pflunk!  Perhaps confused by the ursine invaders, a little chickadee flew into the patio door.  There she sat next to the welcome mat, feeling anything but welcome.  Clearly, she was stunned, but she turned her head from side to side, so I knew she was conscious.

Isn't she sweet?  Another reason to fall in love!  She seemed stuck in her position, so I picked her up.  She let me hold her for a few minutes, and then she flapped her wings and took off.  She didn't go far.

There she is, on the top log of the porch, right below the ceiling.  She stayed there for several minutes, and then, I am happy to say, she flew away.

Two days ago, I watched two coyote pups wander through the woods on the other side of my property.  It was too icy out for me to get a picture, but trust me, they were pretty darn cute.

And this is where I live:  on the wild side.  Although I could do without the stinkbugs and the bats and the mice who want to share my home with me, I would not trade this wild life for anything.  I love it.

Winter Birthdays

Anyone born in a winter month who lives in the north country knows that celebrating a birthday is never a sure thing.  Last year, for instance, a nor'easter kept me housebound on my February birthday.  Tired of being unable to celebrate one another's birthdays, a group of my friends decided that we could certainly find one weather-friendly evening to toast all of us for turning another year older.  And that was the birth of Winter Birthdays, a tradition that we have upheld for several years now.

This evening, the six of us met at a casual restaurant for our celebration.  It happened to be Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and the general mood of peace and tolerance and goodwill seemed to further enhance our appreciation for one another.  We had a wealth of catching up to do, as our busy lives do not offer many opportunities for a gathering such as this.

We are mothers, gardeners, teachers, artists, judges, bakers, tax assessors, zumba dancers, travelers, decorators, historians, writers, runners, homemakers.  We are friends.

And we laugh a lot.  The company of women, a friend of mine used to say, is good for the soul.  Our souls were enriched beyond measure this evening.  At our age, life has thrown any number of challenges our way, but we are resilient.  We can still laugh.

Colleen, Margaret, Bonnie, Kathy, Allyn . . . I love you all.

Fireplace

It's a fireplace kind of day.  Nothing but rain and freezing rain outside.  If the reports on social media are to be believed, it is quite treacherous out there.  I am grateful that I have no place I need to go and hopeful that the ice doesn't knock out the power.  But if it does, I have a fireplace.

Okay, so it's a fake electric fireplace.  But before you think that it will do me no good in a power outage, let me assure you that the electric insert can be taken out, making room for a real wood fire.

For most of my life, I have lived in a house that had a fireplace.  In one of those houses, the fireplace was the only source of heat.  I stacked a lot of wood in those years.  When Pete and I built this house, we installed a woodstove, a more efficient way to heat the house.  For many years, I put up with the wood chips and debris, the sooty ash, the sometimes smoky atmosphere.  But I always missed being able to watch the wood burning, so we finally removed the old Grizzly woodstove and enjoyed real mood-enhancing fires on winter evenings and weekends.  By that time, we were able to afford the oil deliveries necessary to heat our home, and the fireplace became an occasional pleasure.  Until the power went out, and then we worked full time to keep our family warm.

A few years ago, I got weary of hauling in wood every time I craved the ambiance of a fire.  So I paid a lot of money for an electric fireplace insert.  At first, it was hard to adjust to something that was clearly less than a real fire, but I've gotten used to it.  With a handy remote control, I can have instant ambiance!  The heater isn't enough to allow me to turn down the thermostat, but it's nice when I sit in front of the fake fire to read.  And there's a stack of wood at the ready on the front porch in case I lose power.

I've poured a glass of red wine, the music is on, and a novel awaits.  Time for me to fall in love with fire.  And pretend that it's real.