“Every moment is as precious as you recognize that it is.” Matthew Hepburn
(Matthew is one of my favorite meditation teachers on my 10% Happier app.)
How precious is that?!
Breathing In This Moment
Category: Encouragement
We Need
Sunday Evening Snow. At Least a Little Bit.
Grandson Daniel, along with his mom, are up in New York this weekend for more musical theater auditions for college next year.
After auditioning for NYU, Juilliard and Pace, their flight back to Savannah got canceled tonight because of winter weather.
So what to do?
Run outside and try to grab a snowflake or two, of course.
Sitting Well 2025
I love this pewter plate Robert and I found in our Baltimore Airbnb.
Come closer.
Closer.
May 2025 bring us all …
HEALTH LOVE AND WEALTH
AND TIME TO ENJOY THEM
Now that proclamation SITS WELL with me.
“Almost Everything”
As I mentioned in a previous post, HR and I are up in Baltimore for his aunt’s funeral. It has been an extraordinarily busy couple of days, and we are both worn out.
So this afternoon, the last day of 2024, I found us a little independent bookstore/coffeeshop/winery, Backwater Books, in Ellicott City, a beautiful little hamlet about thirty minutes west of Baltimore.
From the moment we parked in Ellicott City’s parking area by the bubbling Patapsco River, we began to slow down.
Stepping into the shop, holiday bookishness (can that be a word?) greeted us …
We looked around at the inviting stacks …
Robert got us got a dram of wine and we settled down …
For calm and quiet for the first time in days.
Nothing Gold
Robert and I live in an old 1800’s apartment building in Historic District Savannah, so we don’t have much garden space. But we do what we can. (Correction: HR manages most of the “doing.”)
Here’s our little Japanese maple as she decided to “seasonally change” her outerwear recently.
Isn’t she gorgeous?!
I told her, EXCITEDLY, that she was simply LOVELY in her shimmering gold, thinking she would receive the compliment graciously.
And she did. Sort of. The she smiled, as wise sentient beings often do and said with patience (which wise sentient beings often have): “Neal” (I was thrilled she knew my name), “seasonal change, as you call it, is a part of life. We all go through it.”
“And sometimes it strips you bare.”
My smile drooped a bit. I wasn’t really keen on that part of our convo.
“It’s a part of life,” she said with no trepidation in her voice.
Maple got me to thinking, and I know I have probably used this poem far too often in my blog, but it SO resonates with me, especially as I’m getting … older and “seasonally changing.”
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
— Robert Frost
Here are a few of Robert’s photos of Maple and her “seasonal change.”
May we all “seasonally change” so gracefully.
So For …
So for this Sunday evening before Thanksgiving, I was thinking about what the holiday is actually all about and ran across this little meditation on giving thanks and embracing gratitude …
A Major Woman’s Race and a Minor Old Man
Today my beautiful Savannah hosted the inaugural Every Woman’s Marathon, with over 7000 female runners and about 140 males (well, they wanted to be inclusive).
The finish line, after the 26.2 miles, ended just outside our front door.
Looking out my second-floor window, I saw women of every ethnicity, age, body type and physical ability running, running, running toward the finish line.
Toward the finish line of equality.
Toward the finish line of a woman’s marathon being just as significant (more?) as a male-dominated marathon.
For some reason, I became obsessed with this race. Every now and then walking down my stairs out onto East Broad Street to see the goings-on.
A few hours into the marathon, Robert and I walked over to the finish line and added our voices to the incredibly loud “You-Did-It!” for a multitude of women (and a few men) from all 50 states and 12 countries pushing toward a physically difficult finish.
Later, after the race, young volunteers from the Every Woman’s Marathon team were walking around picking up trash and putting them in garbage bags. Outside our place, directly in front of HR’s little tree garden, a young man’s bag burst, and all the trash spilled out!
I saw this, looking (nosily) out the window. Robert suggested that I run down and give him one of our trash bags. I did. He was so very grateful, thanking me profusely.
I walked back into our hallway, and heard the young man say to his buddy, “That nice old man really helped me, giving me that trash bag.”
I’m fine with that, just helping empty the trash.
Because we have certainly created a whole bunch of trash over the eons.
But Truth still runs
This Dirt
Each Monday morning I find a poem in my email from a former colleague at Georgia Southern University, where I taught for a zillion years. Eric calls his service Carpe Monday/Seize the Poem.
Yesterday’s was particularly insightful.
NealEnJoy 