Wearing my heart on my sleeve: An ongoing project

If you have read more than one or two posts here, you know as well as anyone in my face-to-face life this important fact about me: I wear my heart on my sleeve.

I fight it sometimes, I do. But I just can't help it. I put my whole self out there, into the world, just because I feel I have to. You'll not be surprised to learn that I do not have a poker face among my repertoire of facial expressions.

Being this way brings its complications. I'm overwhelming to some people with my puppy-like eagerness. Because I'm not good at pretending ennui, I probably lack a certain mystery; I don't do aloof. 

I love meeting new people and getting to know them. I think most people are interesting, and I love learning about new friends, getting to know the details of their life.   And equally so, I love connecting with people whom I've cared about in my past.   


For years I have been a little ashamed of this kind of enthusiasm.  But now, instead of working against it, I have decided to embrace opening my heart to people. I am wearing my heart on my sleeve, proudly.

Tomorrow I will post the first in a long series of posts I'm calling "Open Heart Letters." These are open notes to people in my life--both currently or from my past--who have made some sort of impression on me. For the people in my life now--well, I am writing these because it's so good to know that someone cares for you and thinks of you, isn't it?

And for those people I knew long ago-- I realize that many of them won't even see these "love letters" I feel compelled to write.  Regardless, I think it's a worthwhile exercise to reflect on the people I have known at formative times in my life, even those I knew for just a short while. They stay in my memory. From time to time my thoughts will land on such a person, and I am reminded how amazing the wide world is, filled with good people who make positive impressions on you just by crossing your path.

This is an ambitious project, and potentially endless--there are so many people I've admired and cared for over the years.  Some notes will be long letters, others distilled into a few lines or a poem.   I invite you to come along on the journey, and consider your own connections as we go...

Taking a moment

I'm a master at stating the obvious--I've been away for a few days.  So much of the past week has been fun--making treats for the tea party, preparing for Christmas, and getting ready for a visit from my parents.  And yet all of it has been tainted with a deep sorrow for my friend, Kim, and her family.   It hasn't felt right to just prattle on about all the trivial joys of my day.

It's a time of year for this sort of juxtaposition--endings and beginnings, happiness and great emptiness, togetherness and loneliness.    Even the religious celebration of Christmas is actually celebrating not just the birth of Jesus, but also his ultimate gift: his death.   

And so it is that I am feeling those contrasts vividly.  I feel compelled to take a moment from the fun and cutesy photos and writing to acknowledge it.   I feel that sticky mixture of happiness and loss, and I embrace it as part of being human. I will breathe. And be. And be awash in the morass of feelings for just a moment... 

Tuesday treasure

I've been on a treasure hunt lately, looking to find the treasures I already have, but don't use.   Our house, I'm discovering, is full of treasure, but not the stuff pirates vie for.  Rather, the stuff I'm finding are the sorts of things that I would love to find in a catalog, or a little shop.  And guess what? It's already here.  

So this is part of the cutting back, making use of what you have, preparing for tough times...but really it's more about following our family's second rule, which is "be where you are."   

Like so many other people, I get spun up about all the great things that are out there that we could see, or get, or do.  The reality of it is that there is not time or money or energy for doing everything.  That's no big revelation, I know, but regardless of what I may know, what I've been practicing is different.  I do often ooh and ahh over all the great things I could get.   Sometimes I even do get a thing I "love," and then put it away for safekeeping, for later, for the right time.

I'm treasure hunting because I am starting to realize that the right time is really now, and that I have lots of great things or experiences that I'm putting off.  No longer.   I'm seeing the world with new eyes, I'm revising my take on the daily things around me, just a little.   I'm going to post more treasure Tuesdays in the future--I'm eager to see what I'll find, and how I'll use it.

In keeping with that, I've found a treasure for today:  my notebooks.  Some have been well loved, but many of these beauties are waiting for me to decide that what I have to say is good enough for their pages.  Look at this one:   

I bought it for the tree design; the quote was an afterthought.  Pretty telling, hmm.  Even more so, I haven't used it!!   Until now.  This book is going to be filled with words--imperfect, shifting, indulgent, irrelevant--so what.  This little treasure is mine, and this time is mine too.   So I'm staking my claim.

What treasure do you already have that you're not using?

Interrupting the routine

Today I forced an interruption.  It's necessary to do so every once in awhile, and this day, being one of the last warm days for some time to come, seemed the perfect time to do it.   

I took a bike ride down to the beach.

At this point, if you have even read this far, you may be thinking, "Who the #$&>@ cares about that?"  

You're right.  Who cares?  Me.  And that's the whole point.  I'm pretty sure that I'm not alone in that there are not too many things I don't do for just me.   It's a problem not limited to moms, either.   So much of our life is, as Wordsworth so sagely puts it, "getting and spending," that we don't spend too much time on the now.  And the now is really the only thing we truly have.   

To be clear, I'm not talking about that "me-time," a derogatory term used to denote selfishness, and usually leveled at women(those with and without children, I might add).  Instead, I'm talking about time that is simply spent without aim for future gain, without creating pleasure for someone else, without furthering the illusion that our time is endless.   If I had to classify it, I'd think of it as "now."

I squander my now all the time, and to be truthful, I actually don't mind all the daily things I do.  I live a life that's home-centered, and that means daily effort on mundane tasks.  From laundry to dishes to cooking to picking up stuff,  it's time consuming.  And if I feel chained to it, it's sometimes irritating, too.  

But when I'm present in these tasks, with attention, I notice how nice it is to be able to do these things and have the home, and be with the people in it, making my own days.  It's a real luxury.  And I realize my "tasks" aren't tasks at all.  They are just part of being.

The problem is that I often forget that.  I get lost in the repetition, and I need to force an interruption.   Despite the poets' exhortations, despite the advice of a dying friend, it is so difficult to be present and enjoy being here.   A forced interruption can recharge me and make it possible to regain my "now."  For awhile.

This morning I did it. I tugged myself away from the pull of folding towels, mending teddy bears, stacking dishes, and chopping vegetables to do something entirely for me, entirely in the present.

Today's now included feeling the warm air whistle past my ears, pedaling up hills until I was out of breath, walking on the beach at low tide, listening to the fog horn as the last of the morning mist burned off past the bridge, watching the variegated trees whip past my bike, and finding a ridged clamshell.

  

What is your now today?