It is Tuesday afternoon and we came back from Arvada after watching our two youngest grandchildren for about 3 days. Exhausted, but grateful and happy. Gratitude is something that I had to learn how to cultivate over the course of my life. It wasn't something I learned as a child, it was something I began to think seriously about thirty years ago.
When my girls were in grade school, a book came out called Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy by Sara Ban Breathnach. It changed my life. I learned that life was to be celebrated every single day in small and sometimes ordinary ways. I repeated all the time to my daughters and most anyone who would listen that "every day is a holiday". And I meant that in two ways, one tongue-in-cheek, and really that every day had a holiness to it. Every day is sacred. Those days when they were in grade school and we had adventures in the summer, and I laid out a blanket in the afternoons in the back yard and read stories to them, those days were so very precious.
I am so very grateful to Sara that she awakened in me the ability to be present and to live each day to the fullest. Things, of course, were not completely perfect, no life lived well is. I became a better mother, I had a focus to make our lives full of meaning, ritual, happy memories. Even before reading the book, I wanted a magical, happy, childhood for my girls, like the kind I never had. I wasn't completely clear how to go about that, but I tried to listen to my heart and be led to joy.
She awakened in me the ability to dream and believe in miracles, magic, and be grateful for all of it. I began to see the potential in myself and find my passion. I took art lessons from Maureen Degnan, I went on adventures by myself sometimes, just for a few hours to find something new close by us. I acknowledged my connection to the Holy and went back to graduate school to get a degree in Theology. Always, at the heart of my life were my girls and their happiness. If I had a different childhood, a more secure childhood, I might have had a different set of priorities, but I have never regretted the central part they were in my life during those years.
I find myself now, at 66, a grandma, an Oma with 8 grandchildren. It brings tears to my eyes to even write this. What an absolute Abundance! They are all lovely, unique, people, some of them 10 years old, all the way down to nineteen months; Elowen, Max, Teddy, Broderick(he likes to be called), Saoirse, Ruthie, Everett, and Liora. If gratitude brings abundance then I must have done something right all those 30 years ago. Their lives bring me so much joy! Watching them grow, getting to see them interact with each other, being there for special and ordinary times in their lives is a privilege and an honor.
Today I was gently reminded again to follow my passion, to have courage, to care for my soul, to seek my Muse, find her, and commune with her. If I am present in my life, if I am present to the people in my life, I hope to do just that.
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