How fortunate

I have found a new mantra.  It came to me on a Saturday morning when after going to the Farmers’ Market, loading up the car with goodies, my husband heard a noise while we were backing up the car.  Dutifully, I got out and started to look around the car but I could not see anything that we might be backing over.  So happily we went on our way to our house, five minutes away to drop off some of the produce, plums, yellow and white kernel corn, little orange cherry tomatoes, green beans, dark purple grapes and melons.  When we got home, I prepared a box of the vegetables and fruits for my husband’s mom and we were off again without a worry.

Once at her house another five minutes away, we unloaded the vegetables and fruits, loaded ourselves into our white Toyota and headed away from her house to go grocery shopping which is our weekly routine on Saturday.  Not today. Just a block away, there was a thumping, a bumping and we stopped the car to see that we had a right front tire flatted by a large silver screw.

We called the repair shop and decided that my husband would put what he calls the donut tire on and that I would walk his ninety-two year old mother back to her house.  After I walked back to the car, I watched my husband changed the tire, using my body and hat to try and keep the sun off of him while he worked. After a bit of thinking, we decided that we would go grocery shopping after church on Sunday as the prospect of getting the tire repaired might take some time. I told my husband how fortunate we were that we were so close to his mother’s house and how fortunate for us that it was not raining and how fortunate we were not driving on Highway 101 with all of the summer traffic. 

We limped down the hill when there was more bumping and my sweet husband explained that he didn’t think that he had tightened the lug nuts on the wheel for the final time after he had taken the car off of the jack to lower the wheel back on the road.  He checked and sure enough, the lug nuts holding the tire were easing themselves off.  Once again, I thought how fortunate we were that we had not driven further and lost the nuts, the tire and ruined the new front brakes on the car.

My husband limped the Toyota on the back roads to our local tire shop after dropping me at home on the way and after waiting a couple hours, they told him that the tire could not be repaired and replaced it with a brand-new tire free of charge.  When he returned home and told me, once again we thought how fortunate that the flat tire was one of the older tires and not of the brand-new tires that he had put on the car two weeks earlier.

How fortunate, just two words but what a wonderful way to whisk your thinking quickly, painlessly into a moment of thoughtfulness, a spot of unexpected tranquility, a held breath of satisfaction.  How often, something unexpected happens to us without warning, a broken heel on a pair of favorite black shoes, a jar that cannot be opened so you have to change what you are planning for dinner, a favorite blouse that you cannot lay your hands on while getting ready for work so you reach for something else.  These are small things, the circumstances of my broken tooth over a month ago for me was a big, big thing but how fortunate that it broke off and fell into the sink while I was home, brushing and flossing in the comfort of my home.  How fortunate that my dentist was able to cemented back in on a Saturday.

After having experienced oral surgery this week, I can say once again how fortunate I am to have a doctor and his staff so well trained to take care of me, how fortunate that I was so well-drugged that I don’t remember a bit of the long drive home. As I sit here, typing waiting for myself to heal, I think again how fortunate I am in so many ways.  How fortunate, just two words but they might be just the ones you need today. 

Behind the Doors

Months ago while I was visiting a cousin in Idaho and was wandering about there with her, we went to a house to pick up a quilt that had been quilted by the woman that lived there.  It was a quilt made by my cousin’s mom for my cousin’s daughter who was getting married.  Due to the great size of quilt and time left for the project, the wedding quilt was taken to a quilting artist to do her magic.  My cousin’s mom who made the quilt would be finishing the edges.

I was surprised, delighted with the lovely quilts that were here and there on the backs of chairs, heaped upon the table which might have served as a dining table if the surface could be found beneath the swatches of fabric, threads and the various quilts.

I admired the various cotton colored fabrics that had been wrapped on a paper roll with the vast quantity of their companions now made into quilting art pieces. Ah, heart, slow your wild thumping in my chest and excuse me while I drool. Space and time to do all that you want to do, dream on, dream on.  

As an artist, I stink, as a quilter, I am a babe in the woods and the quilts I have made are simple log cabin patterns, simple blocks of color which I have made into warm articles to cover our beds.  I made a quilt for my son when he was quite young, I think that he was five or six years old at the time. I took him with me to select the fabric, explaining the need for a red color for the heart of the pattern. He was very solemn when he picked out the colors for his quilt.

I was quite surprised when my little son kept coming into the room where I worked on sewing his quilt in his grandmother’s house before going back out to play checkers with his grandfather or to read with his grandmother. I complained to my husband about his lack of interest and enthusiasm in what I was doing while working on the quilt for our son; meanwhile his son was checking on his mamma quite frequently. Thinking back on it, my son was continually asking when the quilt would be done whenever he came into the room as he was at the age of asking us frequently, ”Are we there?” Or, “Can we go a different way?” during our driving around town on errands or on long trips. I wondered if he still has the quilt as it went to New York with him so many years ago along with a blue knitted afghan made by his grandmother for his bed.

 

I started this little blog in September 2015 and today it is the beginning of August 2016.  Where has all of the time gone? I can look in my mirror for one of the answers, it went to getting more gray in my hair (I have stopped coloring it, though I only just started about two years ago coloring just for the novelty of it), I am getting closer to retirement and I have a great sense that maybe just maybe, I should adjust to allowing myself more time to relax, to breathe, to mediate, write and simply be.

  

Which is precisely what I am doing today.  I am taking vacation time off to spend the afternoon at home to do whatever my mind might choose to do.  Apparently, working on this blog is one of the items on the unpublished list in my cerebellum. As well as cooking up some garden peas and pasta for dinner. Ah, but back to this blog and the title “Behind the Doors”.  Curiosity is a gift and wondering about the world is part of that gift.  Behind every door is a wonderful or dreadful existence that so few of us can have a glimpse, a notion or a grasp of.

I have often thought about writing about the stories behind the doors or my idea of the life behind the stained glass door, the stark red door in the side of a blue house, the door hanging on one hinge banging in the wind. So many souls coming and going in this day upon day.  I know that when I was younger, I felt closer to the infinite divine presence which seems for the most part lost in my present day to day living.

Here is the story behind my door, I exist. I walk out the door, open another door into my car, drive away to still another door which I open with a wave of my badge to open yet other doors to walk into my office to greet other door openers who exist.

I can talk about the doors in my mind that open and close to reflect my mood, to contemplate what is going on around me but the other doors that are constantly opening and closing as well around me, I can never imagine.  But what a glorious spectacle is unfolding, what a miracle it is to be part of it.  Yes, most of the time I forget that part,that behind the doors is a miracle and I am still part of that miracle.