Timing

Who am I to write about time that Grand Marshall of our Lives? Not even Einstein could master time or its delicate nature, tick tock, but I figure, time runs me and maybe you too, so why not go for it? Sometimes you just gotta go for it!

I had my first migraine headache on Friday, didn't know it was coming. Might have asked it to let me know it was coming, but I didn't have time in all the doings of a life. Spent the day in bed not that I minded that, just didn't know how to handle the pain except handle it. Get through it, feel it and let it in since it was there to be had.

I am of the belief that things happen when they need to and on time at that. Try baking without timing right. Try jogging for the first time for hours. Try staying too long in a sauna or sitting too long in meditation, you might go loopy. Things have their time and we need to be attentive.

This morning I found the blog I needed called Slow Love Life. Amazing how the author writes with flow and kindness, attention to detail and light examples. I love her! And gorgeous photos. And gorgeous thoughts. And just gorgeousness all over the page. It's akin to the slow food movement, where we attend to love in our lives with slow care, with feeling gratitude, with loving kindness. Slow love life: at first I thought it was going to be about finding love late in life (;-) but then what it really is is just as good! S l o w i n g down certainly makes for having more time. Try it: slow down.

Calling my Dad, I need to attend to time. There's a tacit agreement: Do not call after 8 pm. I do not call after 8 pm. No one does who knows him! And we sort of love this about him, though we might mock it once every two or three years.

When I was younger, I played the "I'm won't read that book" game. That is any book that everyone was talking about I would poo-poo. Taking a superior stance I thought any book that everyone is reading can't be literature and so I won't read it. Well, I've changed. Or at least I picked up one of those books recently and I can't put it down. Ann Patchet's Bel Canto has already taken my breath away and I'm only on page 14. How is it that we get what we get when it's time?

Don't know but it's late now and I've decided to get upstairs to read.

Winter's Om

Yoga and baking and sitting and reading and loving it. Snow in Asheville, incredible walks with Scout and a new book's ideas about how to stay well. I recommend it below.

There's been a lot visiting Barnes and Noble lately: And this book is convincing though I didn't buy it. I've just read it in the store!

The 25 practices include plant-based diet; adequate sleep; exercise; yoga; satisfying relationships; positive attitude, taking cold showers, eating dirt, and dousing in hydrogen peroxide, brewer's yeast, probiotics, alkalizing diets, and detoxification + the placebo effect!

If you like the goodies, contact me on etsy.

Hide & Seek and Other Games on Earth

Cozy Earth, surrounded by several other planets, is one of our Homes. And gravity is our friend. Without it, we'd never fall, swing high or low. Imagine your childhood without a swing, or without falling. Would it be your childhood?

Recently I spent some time with family, the holidays and all. Young and old, my grandmother the eldest, perhaps so the wisest, and my niece, the youngest, perhaps so the purest, these people I come from encapsulated my days.

New Orleans is an interesting city. Only some of it is really familiar, Magazine Street, particularly PJ's coffee shop, other uptown streets, Whole Foods, Audubon Park, Metairie Road and several streets around Louisville Street, but most of it is a foreign place to me. Home is wider and more mysterious than I admit. And when I go home to New Orleans, instead of exploring new areas, we play the familiar games and talk about things that we are comfortable with, not straying too far into the absurd or metaphysical or base. And I love this about family, knowing what you can count on and getting wiser and more grown up about it all in the process.

And speaking of growing up, "Where's Chapman?" is a new game Tina and I started playing with our nephew, Chapman. Hiding behind his arms laying on the sofa, head down, resting perhaps, Chapman is our focus. And I'll say to Tina, within steps of him, "Tina? Where's Chapman? Have you seen Chapman?" Tina plays along, "Chapman? No, I don't know where he is?" "That's funny, I thought he was right here; he was a minute ago." And eventually he'll giggle and giggle, bust out a child's scream but he doesn't yet look up. He's hiding. And we pretend we can't see him, that we don't really know where he is. We keep up the charade, Tina and me, for long enough that eventually he'll look up and we say, "There he is!!!" He slides off the sofa and runs to one of us or to play around again, elated and pleased, winning the game.

He has a Quaker Oats bar in his pocket as we leave his house two days after Christmas. It's blustery out. And gray. But we are going for a walk, me and C-man, and there's no delay. Donning his brown street hat and his gloves, big blue coat and his cool blue batman sun glasses, he holds my hand down the seven steps of his home and we are off. A child's pace on this windy and cold-for-New-Orleans-day worried me. My thinking beleaguered, "it's too cold; maybe we shouldn't go out; this isn't good" but Chapman wasn't bothered at all. His pink face, already chilled, smiled, "What's the worry?"

So hand-in-hand we left the house for the park about several + blocks away. 12 minutes of his child's pace; his steps take four for my two. Step step step step step, Chapman. Step step, me. His little body so little off the ground works what looks like to me so hard, so diligently, so willingly. Wind, what wind, he smiles at me. Cold, chilly, brrrr, what cold, chilly, Brrr, his eyes sparkle.

He's personal, everything is possible, and the park was ahead. Nothing could be brighter.

At two and several months young on this cozy planet, this child, and all children of this age and grace, being innocent don't try to reach into my heart and touch us. It's just what they do. Automatic angel, not yet automatic pilot. We can't guard against them.

The swings were within reach. We found one that wasn't damaged or too babyish. It was time to play "Go Away, Come Here". This is a game I started with him the first time we ever played in this park, on these swings. As I pull his feet up and let go, he descends down and starts moving back away from me. So I say excitedly, "come here, come here, come here." And as he starts returning to me, I match its opposite, "Go away, go way, go way" and he laughs because of course he's coming closer and going away at the same time!

But thinking that only one is possible and not the other is the only game going on here on Earth! We come and go and sometimes don't know the difference. So here we are Chapman and I playing this one and only game, "Go Away, Come Here". His head floats through the air, his body along with him, and the fun is all around us!

I stand in front of him for a while and then I move to his side and while he's swinging up I crouch down and disappear and he's flummoxed. But then I jump up as he swings back and we've created a new game of "Where's Chapman?"
He's laughing all the way, and I feel like the best Aunt in the world. His smile is as broad as the swing set.

After ten minutes or so, other kids start milling around and Chapman's attention is over on them. He's studying them, watching, learning. And then he looks at me ready for his snack. His hands start moving toward his pockets as I lift him out of the swing. We pick up his orange juice, the cup that froze my hand on our walk to the park. Onward.

He walks me to the park bench, and as we get there, Chapman turns around and points to the sun just coming out for a peek. His tiny hands reach out for the sun. Will he touch it? Then tumblesaulting onto the bench, he maneuvers his body into a sitting position, using all his energy, all his might. His hands reach into one pocket and then the other pulling out this stiff Quaker Oats bar and a small and chilly clementine. As I peel the orange, two dogs and an owner mosey by and the dogs sniff close to us, and Chapman reaches out lacking the boundaries that dogs don't belong in his treats. With two sections, one in each hand, Chapman can't open his bar. I take it out of the wrapper and try to pull a piece off for his first bite, but it hardly tears. He's put a clementine section down on the bench, boundariless, and picked up the bar and takes a bite. Or attempts a bite. And he bites with drama, biting down, smiling, too, and finally getting through, drool pooled around his teeth and small laughter, success.

Simple enough, being at the park, with a child, swinging, playing, sitting, sharing, watching, snacking, learning, sunshine. These are things that happen on Earth, thanks to gravity. Chapman ate another section of clementine, slowly this boy eats slowly, and the dogs were around again. "Hi, dogs. No, dogs," he says. And the owner has them far enough away again. He glimpses the sun and smiles, his eyes squinting at the sun. He eats another clementine section and holds to his bar in the other hand. His hat is steady on his head, I sense he's warm enough. When he's gotten half the bar eaten, he looks at me, red faced, chilled perhaps but no bother and says, "Slide, T.T."

So we slide for a while and giggle; he tries this one and that one. He moves up the 'rock' wall with ease. And then we're back on the bench, pulling the half eat Quaker Oats bar out of his pocket again and relaxing briefly before he looks at me with worn out eyes, a bit poofy and states with his heart, "Home, Tracey, Home."

Step by step we return to his home and he sees his Momma and his Sadie, little sister and he's Home. His smile becomes more focused as he's pulling off his hat, his glasses, his gloves and coat, alleviating the cold from his body. He gets nestled back into his family, soon to rest to process oh so much of life on Earth.

And for me, it was an hour away, a world in itself, a little boy at the park. Playing games that we play only on Earth.