Ciao!
Happy new everything to you. New year. New month. Three and a half weeks into a new season. Happy to focus on this moment as I come back to Kaffeeklatsch-The Blog after several months since my last writing. As the blog tagline says, Alone or together, there’s always coffee. I’ve had plenty of kaffeeklatsch time with me, myself and one of my coffee cups of which my family believes I have too many. I never underestimate how the stillness of a coffee cup, its pattern and shape can boost or comfort a mood. And for the coffee cup record, a person can never have too many or too few.
Life is full of opposites, isn’t it? Where hate resides, there is also love. Where greed resides, there is also generosity. Where injustice resides, there is also kindness. Where hypocrisy resides, there is also integrity. Where corruption resides, there is also honesty. Where indifference resides, there is also compassion. Where rejection resides, there is also acceptance. Where apathy resides, there is also empathy. Where gossip resides, there is also truth. Where estrangement resides, there is also warmth. Where grief resides, there is also joy. Where wickedness resides, there is also good. Where a half-empty cup resides, there is also a full cup.
Yes, I did see Wicked: For Good, didn’t compare it to the first movie and enjoyed it very much. Though, the movie isn’t what has kept me away from writing here. I spent the last several months walking a road paved with joy and grief. For the eight weeks leading up to my daughter’s August wedding, I also helped my sister-in-law (my deceased brother’s wife) face a dismal diagnosis and quickly lost the battle. I waited for a wedding and a death. The events happened one day apart. The wedding day was glorious and full of the great happiness embedded in a wedding day. Though I had seen my sister-in-law a few days before, she died the eve of the wedding. Which was the same day my mother died six years ago. Which is somewhat beautiful. Somewhat haunting. Loaded with mystery, nonetheless.
It was a lot to balance. For a while I thought I was derailed after experiencing another death in my family. Even when you try to focus on the positives, loss is hard. So, I took it easy for a while. That while has continued. I stopped setting my morning alarm. Most days I rise slowly, choose and fill a coffee cup to the brim with a dark roast to set my day in the direction of good. I look out the window and watch squirrels leap over the top of the fence and backyard swallows swoop and dive from tree to tree. I continue to physically move, mostly running these days. Because in June, when joy and grief collided, when I tried to think straight and make a rational decision, I committed to run a marathon. (My decision is somewhat rational, and I’ll fill you in next time.) I take note of the crumbs of joy I encounter scattered in the world around me. The gentleman sharing his cigarette pack with another using a wheelchair on the corner of Jackson and Plymouth. The businesswoman who frequently stops to chat, lingers as if she has nowhere else to be, with the gentleman in the wheelchair. The woman I met in the checkout line of World Market who told me she and her seven siblings are peacefully working together to take care of their mother who wants to remain in her home. The barista who notices every person who walks through the door at Cafe Deko and greets them while she’s frothing milk. The Starbucks barista who I watch pick up the Sharpie pen to write Thank You or Take Care! and draws a heart or fedora on each to-go cup of Josie. The winter coat drives. The food collections. The neighbor who snow blows the sidewalk of the whole block. The gentleman who slid multiple twenty-dollar bills from his wallet to hand to a young man near the corner of Michigan and Madison and wished him a Merry Christmas. The saxophonist who plays in front of the CTA stop at this same corner and wears a cardboard sign that reads I play for joy. The Metra conductor who shares his lighthearted spirit over the intercom with his passengers to add a little spark to their day, to life, and how Metra still has its holiday cars decked out with bright tinsel, strings of colored lights, stockings hung on decorated garland and cheerful window stickers as a reminder that generosity shouldn’t end in December.
Lately, each new morning wakes me to the idea that I am being rerouted. Slow living is showing me speed is secondary, kindness is more popular than gossip girls and road ragers and tranquility doesn’t mean inaction.
To carry on, I hope you read Diane’s Book Reviews here in The Birch Chronicle. With so many book choices new and old, I am not the first nor will be the last person to write that some of the best books are tucked deep in bookstores. If you are a caregiver, please check out the Dear Eudora page or deareudora.org! Oof, this is the real deal. Eudora keeps the light on as she advocates for primary caregivers and the quality of life of our elders.
I’ll be back soon. Until then, I leave here three crumbs of joy: a message, a line from a prayer and a poem.
From the fun and cheerful cafe, The Goddess and The Baker, the hopeful message on its napkin: TODAY WILL BE Awesome.
From The Prayer of Saint Francis: Where there is despair, hope.
From the poet Mary Oliver: her poem, “Don’t Hesitate”
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case.
Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.
The pulse of good is not dead. Joy is alive. Gather, gather the crumbs.
Rush slowly, love and live.
Marie
The Birch Chronicle 