What Helps in February

Sometimes this time of year can feel a little trenchy to me. I use this word in a cavalier way, and don't really have any idea what it means to compare my life to actual combat conditions from 100 years ago. But the word trench always comes back in winter right about now. You see the sky but you feel even closer that you are standing in the mud.   It's more about perspective than anything else.

I generally tend to think that beautiful and interesting things are right in front of you.  They go stale if you don't fight to get back the good. And I really felt that last week. My mind and body were not in sync at all (I can't type that word - ever - without thinking of the 90s boy band that spelled it wrong and made it such a cultural reference) and I was going through motions on the outside and living far away in a disorganized way. And that's about all I was doing.

What helped: I saw wonderful people in my family and spent good time with them. I met with a friend who always ends up clearing my mind in light of big things like humanity, why people have egos, staying classy in difficult situations, etc. The conversations are always good. And then I went shopping and looked for new art to put in my home. I had the wall space and needed the inspiration.   What I came home with is a faraway looking picture, in muted colors on canvas, of the sea.

I think that secretly I really do want to live along a coastline someday, or at least have a stretch of coastline that feels like it's all my own. Sometimes I long for the sea, and I have no idea why. I stood there studying it and my college roommate from senior year walked up to the same picture. She had come back to actually tkae the plunge and buy it after looking at it too.

We both got the picture, and then spent the afternoon drinking tea and eating banana bread in her newly purchased home a mile down the road - a little Cape Cod house on the corner of a street reminiscent of a place I always imagined she and her husband might live.

The good thing about this friend is that she is so real.  She was delightfully unapologetic about its quirks, and told interesting stories about what she imagined had happened before they were there, the moment her husband said in a very quiet voice, "I want to live here", and what it feels like to suddenly, out of nowhere, want to live somewhere forever.  She is a storyteller, and a good one.  "So this is what we affectionately call the bomb shelter..." And no joke, suddenly we are standing in what is probably a bomb shelter and we are both laughing.   

At her Cape Cod house, while discussing what life has been lately, I decided that I want to go to Sanibel Island in Florida.  She goes there with her family, and described it, this time in enough detail to really make me think.  I hear about this place, and it always intrigues me.  There's the glimmering idea of going there, but this weekend I decided.  I'm going there.  I'm going to bike all over the island and spend the mornings on the beach with the famous shells and learn to sail and read and see the world from that coastline. 

The whole thing...seeing an old friend, finding art I was so drawn to, taking time to sit with a friend....it was beautiful and unexpected.  Just what I love best. Her house has the charm of Anne at Four Winds or, as she put it, Patty's Place for Anne at college. My friend, ever true to this same charm, is looking for Gog and Magog for the mantle. And that's what reading about Anne Shirley will do to you.

It is always helpful this time of year for me to call to mind again some best loved quotes. There are some that align with my heartbeat everyday.  I remember them and know them and they always seem a part of the life I like to live. Others are newer. I never met the words until tonight.

All of it helps.

So. The new...

Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance, and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen." - Leonardo da Vinci

"There is no royal road to anything; one thing at a time, all things in succession. That which grows fast, withers as rapidly. That which grows slowly, endures." - Josiah Gilbert Holland

"When we take time to notice the simple things in life, we never lack for encouragement. We discover that we are surrounded by limitless hope that's just wearing everyday clothes."

"There is so much in the world for us all if we only have the eyes to see it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves--so much in men and women, so much in art and literature, so much everywhere in which to delight, and for which to be thankful."
— Lucy Maud Montgomery

. 'I like people to have a little nonsense about them."
— Lucy Maud Montgomery

"Life is short, and we never have enough time for gladdening the hearts of those who travel th eway with us. Oh, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind." - Henri-Frederic Amiel

And the old ones I have known that I always love....

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many; not your past misfortunes, of which all men have some." - Charles Dickens

"The great opportunity is where you are." - John Burroughs

"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn." - Harriet Beecher Stowe

"We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"One day I would like to teach a few people many wonderful and beautiful things that will help them when they will one day teach a few people."

"More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." - Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake." - Victor Hugo

Good night.