Category: Gratitude

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Chair Yogurt

Open Siggi's yogurt cup with spoon on wooden chair in kitchen

When my children were little and I attended a yoga session each week with a friend in my more flexible days, they called it my yogurt class. My grandfather, an old-school Southern Baptist preacher, believed that anyone who “does that yoga” was a devout Hindu. His son, my father, was also a Southern Baptist minister whose views were far more progressive and embracing of other people and cultures without threat that we would lose sight of our own roots.

I’m not over here spooning up yogurt in a chair, and I’m not abandoning my Christian beliefs. I can embrace the health and wellness offerings of a yogini who shows me the way to stretch and reach to improve my flexibility and mobility without jumping with both feet into another spiritual realm. I am simply a new retiree seeking new routines and ways of staying active, and as I’m regaining the time to enjoy the pleasure of morning stretching and getting my heart rate up, I’m trying to find my groove. I have already capsized my canoe once trying to do floor yoga, so after my morning mile on the treadmill, I tried chair yoga, and BAM! I feel like I’ve found a way to ease into the day with exercise that does not break my neck (or my spirit).

My older daughter recommended Yoga with Adriene on YouTube, and where I made it only halfway (11 minutes) through the floor stretching video, I made it all 17 minutes through the chair yoga video. I feel the blood pumping. Maybe it’s more mental than anything, and that’s just as fine with me if it is – – we all need that part of our health, too. But my skin feels alive, and I’m pretty sure I feel some synapses awakening in my head, re-igniting like those Fourth of July sparklers, celebrating the universe for helping them find life again from the far reaches of dusty closet corners where they’ve been forgotten for a long time. I feel the rush of energy to face the day, and I secretly hope my face will find the radiant glow so many retirees seem to find.

Here’s a 27-syllable title and poem to celebrate the day ~ one for each of my years in public education!

Namaste

I’m seeking

I’m searching

I’m stretching ~

exercise

on a quest

palms touching

elbows out

hands to heart

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Rag Quilting in Retirement

Whenever a new grandchild is born, I dust off their great grandmother’s Bernina sewing machine and start cutting rag quilt squares to welcome the baby in style. My mother left me her treasured Swiss machine from the company named for the Piz Bernina peak in the Alps. It’s the same one she taught me to sew on, and while I’m not the excellent seamstress that she was (nor will I ever be), I feel a deep inner joy knowing that the same machine she used to make our clothes for decades is still being used to make quilts for her great grandchildren. I hope she’s smiling with pride as she gazes down from Heaven!

A lot of times, it’s hard deciding on a rag quilt theme and colors, but this idea came easily. Since Oakley Finn and I share a birthday (July 8), I chose stars and stripes for America’s 250th. There are also narwhals on one of the square designs, and one with waves too, because these grandchildren live in coastal South Carolina and love ocean and sea creatures. Even though there are not any narwhals making the trip from arctic waters down to the Lowcountry waters, I think they fit into the scheme of things just fine.

Retirement time allows for visiting family and sewing rag quilts, and I’m loving every minute of being able to do the things I truly enjoy! I feel blessed!

Rag Quilting

generations stitched

together, transcending time

where love knows no bounds

Our 8th grandchild, born on July 8th, weighing 8 lbs, 8 oz. – the 8th member of his family!

Today is the first day back for students in our school system in Georgia. When I started feeling the tug to retire throughout last school year, I said to a few friends, “If the stars align, I’m thinking about retiring.” Isn’t it ironic that on this first day for students, my sister-in-law Bethany sent me a reminder that this very morning there will be a planetary parade of lined-up planets! It’s as if we have moved out of the realm of the stars and into the planetary universe with someone upstairs nodding a big YES on this first day that I will not be in all the school traffic trying to get to work. I’m home – – living a more relaxed pace and loving it.

Screenshot
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Night-Blooming Cereus

Several years ago, I was at the Saturday Market on the Square when I bumped into some friends selling a table full of plants. For ten dollars, I bought a well-established Night-Blooming Cereus, also called a Queen of the Night. It has long, waxy leaves and blooms only at night.

My husband reacted with humor and raised his eyebrows a little at me, wondering if I’d lost my mind. A flower that blooms at night? Who wants to stay up all night to wait for a flower to bloom in the dark?

Me. I want to see them bloom, that’s who. And more than a few times now, I have watched the petals unfurl in the dark, opening to reveal a miraculous work of natural art. After spending a day in the early part of retirement repotting all my plants that needed some TLC, I was amazed to step out onto the front porch to see that one plant (I’ve propagated the mother plant several times over the years) had six blooms. Six!

If I were curating a list of porch plants and taking all my friends plant shopping for the plants they never knew they needed until today, this plant would be at the top of the list. It never gets old watching these beauties bloom to take center stage in a world that rarely sees them.

Queen of the Night

a queen of the night

unfurls her beautiful soul

for all to admire

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Where I’m Not

I’m always thrilled when my writing community members send me poetry prompt resources. I could sip coffee and read the prompts all day long. Audrey Gidman (audreygidman@substack.com) provided a poem for this prompt for inspiration for today’s poem: Read “I Am Not I” by Juan Ramon Jimenez (tr. Robert Bly). Write a short poem about/for the “I” who is not you but is walking beside you. A version of yourself, perhaps, or a separate self. Special thanks to Denise Krebs for sharing Audrey’s August calendar with me.

Where I’m Not

I’m not there

I’m not at that desk

in that cubicle

in that office

I’m not in that email thread

in that chain of reply all

in that blind cc secrecy

I’m not in that document

in those tangled thought-weeds

in that kudzu-strangled chaos

I’m not in that calendar

in that life-choking schedule

in that insane-paced rat race

I’m not in that meeting

in that half-charged screen energy

in that work-awaiting timewarp

I’m not in that webinar

in that can you hear me???

I’m not in that workshop

in that pen and paper jungle

in that wrinkled, wadded wastebasket

I’m not in that task

in that tsk-tsk-tsk

in that Wednesday-Thursday-Friday!!??

I’m not in that agenda

in that checked box

in that never-finished-never-enough-always-more place

I’m not there.

I’m over here in Retirement !

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A Pitcher of Zinnias

a salt pottery

pitcher of home-grown zinnias

sister-in-law’s gift

These days of early retirement have been filled with such sweet wishes from others. My sister in law from across the farm called last night to ask if she could bring some of her zinnias over. She’s been growing them, and they are stunning. I placed them into one of my mother’s salt pottery pitchers and sat them on the childhood dinner table, and they feel like a smile from beyond – – my parents loved growing zinnias, too! There is nothing like fresh flowers to bring the warmth of love.

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The Big Texan Steakhouse – Amarillo, Texas

Another great stop on our Route 66 trip was The Big Texan Steakhouse in Amarillo, Texas. It’s one of those places where you can get a free meal if you can eat a ton of food in a certain amount of time. We didn’t attempt that, but I can testify to the delicious food and the western atmosphere of the place. Plus, their gift shop has some of the best Route 66 souvenirs we found between Chicago and Albuquerque!

The Big Texan

Big Texan Steakhouse

don’t overstuff yourself, though,

on a long car ride!

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Remembering Fitz

Fitz was a camping dog. I think he liked camping so much because the space was more confined, always keeping him closer to me. We had to say goodbye when CUPS disease and an enlarged liver got in the way of his quality of life, so I held him in my arms as he crossed the rainbow bridge. I held him in my arms every day we had together, and although he is gone from the physical realm, I still hold him in my heart. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss my Fitz.

Life hasn’t been the same since. I hope the good Lord has a space in heaven so I can see him again someday.

Missing Fitzie

I miss him so much

this Soul Schnoodle, my Fitzie

world’s lovingest dog!

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Priorities….or Polarities?

Today, I am writing from a prompt in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. This card asks us to make a list of our priorities – – what pulls us in different directions, and what is our strength and our weakness. And thenI reread it….wait, no, the card says polarities. I first read it as priorities. Let’s give a rhyming hashtag poem a whirl today!

Polarities

#firstthisway

#thenthat

#theydon’tneedme

#…..untiltheydo

#pusheast

#pullwest

#nottheleast

#notthebest

#shove left

#shuffleright

#workallday

#dreamallnight

…..and turn off the alarm and keep dreaming

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Traveling the Journey


Looking in the Mirror

I look in the mirror

see the gray hair

see the neck wrinkles

see the crow’s feet

see the lazy thyroid laying down on the job

and thank God I’m here to show the wear

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Saguaro Cactus

In February, we traveled out west to visit one of our daughters in Nevada. We saw beautiful deserts with sunset skies in violet purples, tangerine oranges, buttery and vibrant yellows, and deep rose reds. Many of the cactus plants looked as if they were singing praise to their maker. I painted a watercolor picture, but it did not turn out at all, so here is a photo I did not take that shows better what I had tried to capture in color.

Silhouette of a tall cactus with two arms in a desert at sunset with colorful clouds

Holy Hands

Saguaro Cactus

praising purple sunset skies

raising holy hands