A Windy Day

He lives alone, just like her, and their houses sit side by side. She keeps an eye on him much to his chagrin, but by watching him she learns how to keep her own life in order. She asked him once, “How do you know so much about everything?”, and he replied, “I’ve just been here longer”. He believes everything can be fixed with duct tape and if it’s not fixed you need more duct tape. She supports his duct tape philosophy, but frowns upon it being visible. She walks next-door to borrow a broom from him, and it was held together by duct tape, but he hands it to her with the disclaimer, “It’s not pretty”, because he knows she adores pretty and she replies, “That’s okay, this is where practical works best.”

In his backyard there’s a rectangular outdoor table with chairs and the table has a huge umbrella for shade even though most of his yard is shaded by trees, like hers. It’s one of those umbrellas that the pole goes through the middle of the table and sits in a weighted base underneath. The woman stands at her window overlooking his backyard, wanting to know the story of the umbrella within view. It looked as if it’d been through hell and back and she could relate. It had faded from years of withstanding the elements and was being held together by duct tape. The next day, she walked by the window to notice the tattered umbrella had disappeared and a few days later was magically replaced with a new one. This one was khaki colored and looked almost majestic standing in his backyard. The woman was so excited that she ran next-door to share in the delight over the new umbrella.

He explains, “I forgot to close the other one and last night’s wind destroyed it. You must be careful with an umbrella this size when it’s windy. I’ve had one take flight and land in someone else’s yard before!”, and he chuckled at the memory.

The weather is unpredictable in this little lake town, but the woman checks the position of the outdoor umbrella each day. When it’s open and upright the weather will be clear, but when she sees it pulled down and wrapped tight, it’s going to be windy. In 2022 a hailstorm came through without any warning and catapulted the khaki-colored umbrella filling it with holes, but he covered the holes with duct tape inside and out. She’s never seen him replace one of these umbrellas and can’t imagine how he lifts it and manages to insert it through the hole in the middle of the table by himself, but he says, ‘It’s the power of leverage.’

The duct tape was a temporary fix, and the woman knew he would eventually replace the umbrella, but keep the duct taped one for back up. One morning she walked through the house and glanced out the window into his backyard and there was a brand-new umbrella in the shade of red. It was huge and her favorite color, but it remains a mystery how and when he installed it by himself. She squealed with delight and ran next-door to tell him how much she loved the new umbrella and he shrugged and said, “I buy the best one on sale at the time.”

The red one is well made, so this will be the second summer of it shading the table in his backyard, but when she walks by the window and sees the umbrella pulled into a closed position and tightly wrapped, her body shivers. The red umbrella is letting her know, it’s going to be a windy day.

Feature Photo by Galina Kondratenko on Unsplash

Click here to meet this woman for the first time.

An Unsupervised Life

My daughter secretly worries a little bit about my living alone and she has good reason. Recently, she sent me a TikTok and said, “I’m crying because this is you!” It was a young woman my daughters age talking about her Mom getting banned from the app Next-door for being a little too honest.

My daughter knows I banned myself from the app Next-door because it was too tempting to say what I really wanted to say instead of what’s acceptable in today’s world, so I had to stop going there for everyone’s safety. One of my top goals in life is to never have to call my daughter to bail me out of jail especially over an app. Offending someone in Target over the last Magnolia wreath might be a different story, but you choose your battles carefully while living an unsupervised life.

When you’re single with an empty nest, the freedom of an unsupervised life can be a hindrance. Over time we can slip off track and forget it’s easy to forget our purpose, or what we’re called to accomplish in a day. There’s a handful of people who hold me personally accountable each day and my work requires a daily check-in of tasks complete, so there’s structure in my life, but no hard rules. It’s not easy being held accountable, but it helps me focus on what’s meaningful.

I know God is watching every minute, but having actual people who care enough to hold you accountable to fulfilling your purpose is golden. I take the weekends off from accountability to let my body relax and my mind wander. The soul needs a couple of days to believe it’s possible to live an unsupervised life.

Feature Photo by Mohammad Metri on Unsplash

Calloused

When I was a kid, the men in my family had calloused hands and Daddy had a row of callouses on the palms of each hand from continually gripping things, especially a shovel, or axe. Back then, callouses were evidence of hard work.

I was grateful for the winter to wear long sleeves, but now that the temperatures are rising my sleeves are thinner and, on some days, shorter. They’ve protected my callouses and I’ve been mindful to keep lotion on them during the winter, but this morning I can feel them coming back. That’s the thing about callouses, they don’t forget where they last resided, nor what caused them. Having calloused skin means having skin made tough and thick through continual wear, so there’s no surprise when I noticed that my elbows have become calloused.

While writing, the elbows are a part of the process. I prop them while thinking and gazing out the window, or they rest on the wooden table while typing. Some days they help hold me up just to get the job done, but I wouldn’t be able to write without them. I remember the flannel shirts with thick elbow patches worn years ago and can see them being worn by writers.

This post is the last of my drafts and I couldn’t decide whether to even publish it, but I promised myself the draft folder would be empty and now it is, all but one, but that’s a story for another time. As I pause from typing to gaze out the window, I see a bird enjoying the birdbath and am propped on my elbows. It’s an automatic position for this writer and I’m at ease with knowing all the words these elbows help spill, so my heart isn’t in any danger of becoming calloused.

Photo by Austin Ban on Unsplash

The One-Eighty

Taking in my surroundings, I note a wisp of dog hair that was missed by yesterday’s vacuuming, or it’s a new one that formed overnight. The mini-blind on the window in front of me is hanging crooked. The right side is lower than the left, so I walked over and straightened it, then did a half rotation of 180 degrees to walk into the kitchen. The Chemex is complete, so I reached up and grabbed a clean mug from the tray of mugs on the shelf above the stove, even though I knew there was a perfectly good cup for coffee sitting in another room that would work fine after a rinse. Each step of the day is new and deserves to be greeted as such.

Last year, I bought a new kitchen scale, mainly to measure coffee grinds, but it will weigh more than that. It’s digital and looks to be made of white glass, but it’s probably acrylic just in case it’s dropped. The glass jar at the base of the coffee grinder weighs around 155 grams when empty. I flip the switch of the grinder and slowly count to five then turn it off and place the jar of grinds on the scale. I stare at the digital read out to register and smile when it reads 180 grams, because that’s the perfect amount of coffee for my Chemex, but it doesn’t happen every day.

Some mornings I’m in a hurry and turn the grinder off too soon and the grinds weigh 178g, but other mornings I count too slowly, or am distracted and it goes over to 185g. I see this as a gauge for my inner energy for the day from doing every step by hand and how much focus is on the task. Little focus amounts to under, or over the desired amount, but being present and paying attention to every step, it’s nailed. The scale reading tells me a lot about where I am in my day and seeing the 180g makes me smile. Balance is important and my energy is on an even keel when the digital scale lights up and reads the one eighty.

You don’t need a scale for this, my darling. At any given moment you can pivot your body, or thoughts with a half rotation and give your day the one eighty. The scale just makes it more visible, and I gravitate toward shiny.

PS. My phone has been left turned off every morning for one week since sharing in this post here. That’s why I’m noticing more of my surroundings.

Counting My Blessings

This week, I heard this song, and it made me want to cry. Not sad tears, just overly grateful for the truth these words hold.

As I write this it’s 10:00 am on Wednesday and I haven’t turned on my phone. The house is so still and quiet that all I hear is the distant beeping of a truck backing up. The sun is shining brightly and looking out the window of where I’m perched to write, a gentle breeze is moving though the branches of my neighbors Chinaberry tree, which is covered in lavender blooms and lush green leaves. I just poured my second cup of freshly ground coffee upon returning from a walk.

There’s a lot of little blessings in the paragraph above. Sometimes we think blessings are supposed to be shiny to truly snag our attention, but they are quietly present waiting to be seen.

Let’s break it down. I woke up to a new day and stuck with the choice of not turning on my phone and actually own a phone. I was able to get out of bed with no aches, or pains. I have a good, solid home to wake up in and a bed with it’s own room. I can hear, see and touch things that feed my soul. The vintage typewriter has a full page written with ideas for what’s next and I wrote a thank you note to Betsy + Iya in response to their thank you note received in yesterday’s mail.

Continuing on with the ritual of morning, I melted some wax beads and poured a puddle on the back of the notecard, pressed in the stamp and let it dry while getting dressed. Dropped the notecard in the mailbox on my way out for a walk. I get to walk freely up and down the streets, except for the occasional neighbor stepping outside to chat, but even that is a blessing.

I get overwhelmed with all the goodness in the tiniest of details, but this type of overwhelm is joyfully embraced. This song says it best with, “I will keep counting my blessings, knowing I can’t count that high”.

Seph Schlveter-Counting my Blessings

Ritual for Mornings

Your heart and soul know what you need, and what it wants, but the plan doesn’t deviate. To sum it up in one word, I’d choose ‘water’, and it’s a series of small things that water mine.

Over the weekend, I made a decision to take time for ritual, especially in the morning. I’d noticed some unfavorable habits at night that were wrecking my morning. My phone had entered the bedroom again, which used to be a big no in my world. Taking that as my start, the phone is turned off before bed and left lying in the middle of the house. When I awoke the next morning, out of habit, my feet took me directly to my phone, but I didn’t turn it on. Instead, I moved away and into the day without it.

The earlier I wake up, the more time I have to practice, but last night we had thunderstorms, so I didn’t sleep very well. When that happens, I tend to oversleep and was disappointed to look at the clock and see that I didn’t have as much time today as Monday. A Zoom was scheduled for 11:00 am, so time was limited to practice before preparing for the Zoom. Halfway through my practice I decided to write my daughter a note to mail along with a photo she’d sent. That entailed turning my phone on to use the photo printing app, which was good timing, because a message came in asking to reschedule the Zoom.

This isn’t easy and it’s going to take time to get it right. All I’m doing is allowing time for it and something magical happens when we decide to do just that. If I hadn’t listened to my heart to print the photo, my phone would’ve stayed off until time for the Zoom and the message would’ve been missed.

I knew I needed to unschedule my mornings for this practice but didn’t say anything to my co-worker except to reschedule the Zoom and let me know. Afterwards I wished I’d asked for a later time and thought, “Noon would be perfect”. Later, the email came in showing the time and day had been changed for the Zoom. It was now, Thursday at noon. I smiled at the email and clicked ‘yes’ to accept the invitation, but this confirmed I’m on the right path in returning to ritual for mornings.

Dormant

The young girl with a love for fairytales had matured into a woman. It took decades to become this woman and there was so much more ‘becoming’ left to do. She had grown to love and admire this warrior/woman challenging her reflection in the mirror, flashing that sheepish grin that has others asking, “What is she up to?” The whites of her eyes are not as bright, or clear as years ago, but the blue irises are a deeper blue, filled with what this life has taught her.

When she saw the house for the first time, she was with her daughter and in unison they squealed with delight, foreseeing the simple goodness they knew the house would offer. The woman was now in her 50’s but had made a vow before her 50th birthday to create that life her heart was yearning for. A life there was no escape from because there was no desire to ever leave. Houses were habitats to her, but surveying the outside of this one, she could see the potential of a happy home.

Her gaze fell upon a solidly built, wooden Arbor standing majestically about 6 ft. from the edge of the front yard. Edges fascinated her and she had taken her place upon many, but this house was waiting to be a habitat for healing. “You need that”, she breathed. She walked across the yard and stood in the midst of the Arbor to investigate the vine that had climbed up the side, above her head to rest on top of the wood slats. Someone had planted it there on purpose and she felt bewildered that the vine knew exactly what to do once it took root and settled into this space.

There was a shallow, wood barrel positioned beside the base of the Arbor that the vine must have started out in, but now it had begun to rot from sitting outside in the elements and was falling apart at the seams. The dirt was spilling out and the base of the vine didn’t really need the barrel anymore because it’s roots had pushed through the bottom into the ground. The vine was stable and strong but looked tired. It had been growing for years, but she couldn’t gauge how many. It hadn’t been cared for and most of it looked dead, so whoever took care of the house didn’t know the magic of pruning. There were so many elements surrounding her in this moment that resonated deeply within.

She stepped away from the Arbor and turned to give it one last look. The leaves were black and there were stretches of twig-like branches where no leaves would dare to grow again. The woman made a vow to the Arbor that day. If she moved into this house, she would pick apart the vine to see if any of it was worth salvaging and if not, she’d plant a new one to care for properly as long as she was there. The Arbor covered in trumpet vine would have a renewed purpose and stand tall in all it’s glory once again. That was her promise.

She tugged at the heavy cloak resting across her weary shoulders and pulled it closer toward her neck. It was winter, so maybe the vine wasn’t dead, but dormant. She had read recently that a poppy seed can lie dormant for 50 years before deciding to bloom. She didn’t know if it was true, or not, but she knew all too well what it felt like to go dormant.

Feature Photo by Joshua Woroniecki on Unsplash