Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Grateful, again

Hustle and bustle: seven days of travel, planes and trains and cars, lugging along the battered black suitcase. Seven days of precious friends, stories and meals and tea and coffee and babies and love, just love to overflowing, just beauty waterlogging the sponge of my soul.

I walked through warm Chicago afternoons, discovered roses and dahlias still blooming, tree-tunnels over the streets not yet bare, red maples and tremulous brown oak leaves and muddy curbs and patches of green grass. I breathed in and felt alive.

I had conversations with dear ones that just slipped right back into their wonderful grooves. I learned new things about these friends and about myself. I remembered myself.

Today that beauty and love that filled me up to overflowing threatens to spill over into tears at any moment. The border welcomed me back across it, and my life here is so good, and the people so welcoming, and I am grateful. But the stingy daylight and the slippery streets remind me of how far some distances are.

So I am doing laundry, catching up on reading, putting away groceries, cleaning the bathroom, baking crusty brown bread. Simple, concrete things.

And today I am thankful for the trip, the friends, the conference, the privileges, the welcome back.

And I am thankful for the orange number-two pencil, the beets in my refrigerator, the bread dough rising in the kitchen.

1 comment:

  1. oh yes, "how far some distances are."

    On Wednesday when I arrived at my parent's house, Lucy found a little envelope in my room. I caught her chewing on the wax that had sealed it and took it from her. On the front in a miniscule script it said "Miss Laura Davis" and inside was a tea-bag shaped and adorned invitation, on the pages of an old book, to come to your house for tea. How grateful I am for that invitation. It truly changed my life. Keep up the good work. XOXO.

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