Category Archives: Gratitude

Gray Day Gratitude (43)

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Thursday morning there is the barest touch of chill to the air. I change my T-shirt for the long-sleeved pink top Mami bought me, the one with the psychedelic swirl of words on the front that she and Auntie Gardi have, too. Mine has big holes at the wrists, and I know I will have to take it off again in less than an hour. But I slide my arms into it, loving its soft suppleness, the pleasure of the fabric covering me against the momentary cold. I am guessing this may be the last time I get to wear it. It is an odd thing, this living in the desert, this craving for cold when the rest of our hemisphere is yearning after warmth. But I am not ready for this to be the last time yet, the last time I pull on a long-sleeved top, the beginning of half a year or more of heat. I count on my fingers, eight months of it if this is truly the last cool morning. (Banish the thought.) I want to stave off summer as long as I can. I relish the cool air through the open sliding glass door. There are big dark polka dots on the pavement, evidence of an attempt to rain before I woke. I sit propped up in bed to write, cozy now in my soft pink shirt. I can smell that first rain smell, moist dirt and concrete. Black clouds hug the San Jacintos, and I hear mockingbirds in the distance, a scattered quartet. I breathe in the new rain smell and smile at our good fortune. Maybe today will be a rare gray day.

Shortlisted (42)

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shows my name and story titles from the Fish shortlist

I make a point of entering my work in writing contests. I’ve been doing it for about four years now. One of my pieces won a small local contest, and most of them have now been finalists here and there. Each time, it heartens me, makes me hopeful. At first I entered almost every contest I came across. Over the years I have narrowed things down some. I tend to not enter the very expensive ones, for instance. And I try to re-enter the ones where people have liked my work in the past. Some contests seem more far fetched than others, but for some reason they appeal to me, so I keep entering them. Fish is one I’d put in that category. I think maybe once a good bit of time ago one of my pieces made it to their longlist, but I don’t remember the details. I don’t remember feeling encouraged by that. (I think it was a very long longlist.) The other day when I was looking over something contest-related, I wondered if I should stop submitting to them. After searching through their lists for my name so many times and not finding it, I was discouraged. And they always had a gazillion entries. I think without admitting it to myself I was wondering if the competition was too stiff, if maybe my work wasn’t good enough. Yesterday when I got their email announcing the winners of their 2014/15 Fish Short Story Prize, I started scrolling through their shortlist with zero expectations of finding my name. (They present the lists in alphabetical order by the writers’ first names.) But I got to the Rs, and there I was–not only listed, but listed twice. Both of the short stories I entered made the shortlist. Out of 1575 submissions, my two pieces were among 103 that were shortlisted. I can’t believe they both made it there. It still makes me grin, remembering what a sweet surprise it was to see my name and the two titles. I just wanted to let you know, my faithful readers. I am feeling encouraged now. And grateful, too. If Fish has shortlisted them, then who knows what might happen next.

Adrienne (39)

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In more recent months, I stumbled upon a healer who practices the laying on of stones combined with her own version of energy. She names it quantum healing. It was the same experience I had with Lisa, the angel intuitive. I remember standing in the back room of the store, the art gallery where the healers often work, getting a feel for the three women working there that late September day. They were each working on someone, and again it was Adrienne’s energy that drew me. I chose her. And I was never sorry. It is a vulnerable act, an act of faith, to put yourself on the table in another’s hands. But I trusted her. She helped to bring me back from the last terrible summer months. She told me I had a chance to heal now at a deeper level, and being me, I felt like she was saying I should be doing something I wasn’t. She was patient with me, with my weird defensiveness. “Well, if you’re driving, and you get to an intersection in the road, it’s only then that you can turn left or right,” she said. “You can’t do it before you get there.” I believe it was my work with her that helped me find that full moon healing in December, the shedding of that old, heavy cloak. I went back to see her later that month, eager to hear what kind of progress she might see in me after having had that experience. But she was gone. And I know I have to trust the universe in this. I have to believe those three visits are what I was meant to have with her, and now they’re over. But I can’t help but wonder why. Could I not have kept Adrienne and Lisa a bit longer in my life, companions on this journey? Is it selfish of me to wish I could be buoyed longer than these brief bits of time? I can’t help but ask, is it something in me that makes this happen, that makes them go away? And the thought that comes is this. Maybe it is only to prevent me from becoming too dependent on them. Maybe it is the universe telling me to trust myself.

Lisa (38)

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A couple of years ago I happened upon a woman doing readings at our local “new age” store. I looked around the room, and she was the one who drew me. She was an angel intuitive. I’m not sure I’d ever heard that expression before. But what she had to tell me was simple and direct. I don’t remember most of it now. I know she talked about my writing, my book. But there was no moment when I felt as though she was just telling me things she said to everyone. It all felt personal and accurate, a validation of things I felt or knew already, as the best readings tend to be for me. When the information resonates inside me, that’s when it carries weight. I was delighted to have “found” her, to know I now had someone I could go to like this. And she even taught a class about angels. I was all ready to attend. But I called the next week, and she was gone. Her husband had died, and she never came back. I still think about her, hope she was able to be as kind to herself during that hard time as she was to me the day we met. I hope her angels and her human companions saw her through it, and she has come out on the other side. And if I am honest, I have not given up hope that one day she’ll come back, and I can sit across from her again, feel her deep sweetness, hear the news she has to bring over for me from that other realm. But all selfishness aside, may she be well loved, happy, thriving. Vayas con diosa, Lisa. Que te vayas bien.

Surprised (37)

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I’ve never lived before in a place where there are so many citrus trees. Here there are grapefruit, oranges, lemons, tangerines, tangelos. One grower at the farmer’s market even has a cross between a Mandarin orange and a kumquat, the size of a slender plum tomato, sweet skin and tart fruit. People pile up mounds of grapefruit on their lawns for passers by. They send home friends with bags of lemons. I am blessed with a kind man from my old neighborhood who still brings me grapefruit and Meyer lemons even though I’ve moved away. The trees are everywhere, but unless they are bulging with unpicked fruit I don’t tend to notice them. I do wonder who started the tradition. I notice people are quick to complain about all the golf courses but never mention this hidden forest of citrus trees we seem determined to grow here in the desert. But in February I can’t imagine being without them. In February, their fragrance finds you everywhere. It catches you in odd places, not a citrus in sight, the ambrosia wafting on some secret current of air. And every year I am surprised, again and again, breathing deep, as though the scent alone might sustain me. I look around. Is it that little neglected lemon tree beside the empty home? I’m never sure I really want to find the source. There is an added delight in the mystery, I think, knowing the sweetness has traveled unseen and who knows how far across the neighborhood to find you.

Coming Home (33)

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It feels good to have my notebook propped against my thighs again, my bare feet on the curved edge of the footstool. Yesterday I felt awkward, clumsy with the pen in my hand. Today it feels familiar, comforting, like finding an old sweater at the bottom of the drawer. I thought I’d given it to Revivals, I think, and pull it on against the chill of a late evening. It has been too long, it seems, too long since I felt like who I am inside it, the old friend who brings you back to center. It hasn’t been that many days since I’ve written, but the days have been long and full. Even when I wanted to write—and I wanted to, bringing my notebook out to the patio table in the mornings, moving it to the edge of the couch in the late afternoons thinking maybe I can write that evening—I didn’t find a place to fit it in. The days have been so busy it feels like months have passed instead of weeks. But I am writing now, and I realize I love the act of writing itself, moving the pen across the page. I like pausing, looking up in the middle of my dreamy thoughts. Two doves and one house finch in the big tray feeder, wary I might decide to stand up again at any moment (human that I am). Sable disappearing beneath the honeysuckle. I love the way writing makes me feel, as if putting words on the page is bringing me more fully into the world again, more a part of life in our courtyard garden. We have smog today. I can see it from where I sit, a thick veil across the mountains. I hear the noise of traffic, too. But there is the quiet pecking of the birds, the scratch of my pen, the soft sound my hand makes moving on the page. It feels good to be here writing, good to be back.

Let the Good Times Roll (31)

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This is quite a week we are in. I’d done my own marveling over it, staring at the wall calendar Auntie Gardi gave me for Christmas. Then one of my favorite astrologers pointed it out, too. Valentine’s Day, Margi Gras (Fat Tuesday), Ash Wednesday (the beginning of Lent), the Chinese New Year (The Year of the Goat) and the new moon, all within just six days. How can it be anything but auspicious to have all these happenings coinciding like this? It makes me glad I am almost through my crazy hectic stretch of work. I may be too tired to appreciate these alignments with the proper fervor, but I can feel the forward movement in them, the hope and the promise of them. Harbingers, I believe, of good things coming.