Mommer and Me

  This time of year is very emotional for many people and I am no different.  (In fact, to be perfectly honest, I teared up at a Folgers commercial on Thursday.)  There are people in my life who are grieving this Christmas season for loved ones lost recently and for those lost long ago.  Holiday traditions that are different now by necessity not choice can be difficult to establish and maintain when the heart longs for past traditions.
   Yesterday, while baking cookies with my kids, I missed my grandmother, Mommer,  so much that my heart physically hurt.  She has been gone a lot more than a decade now, but in the moments of the batter flying, I could hear her singing very clearly and I missed her profusely. I remembered the days in her kitchen decorating sugar cookies and making a mess; her happy face accented with flour smudges.  My Mommer was more than a grandmother to me, she was the constant in my chaotic and often drama filled childhood.  She taught me to rollerskate and iron shirts. She taught me how to move through tough situations with a song in my head. She taught me to snap green beans and mow grass.  She taught me how to hold my head high when people said terrible things about my family and I. She gave me the best parenting advice I have ever received when my kids were babies.  She loved me unconditionally and specially even though I was one of thirteen grandkids.  She loved each of us that way.  Throughout the years, I have often woke up thinking, I have to ask Mommer about this only to remember when I was fully awake that I could only do that in my dreams.
  Last night, as I was cleaning up my own cookie mess in my own kitchen, I worked to reframe my missing her and also to come to grips with the enormity of the struggle for those working to reframe larger and more recent losses.  I wish my reframe would have ended in some profound miracle salve for the heart that I could hand out in little boxes with big bows. But it didn't.
   Here is the everyday miracle that I finally landed on.  The everyday miracle is that I was blessed to have Mommer in my life. She made me a better person, mother and friend. I see her influence in my life everyday. I got to hold her hand and now I hold that memory tight. 

  Sending a little box with a big bow to those who need it this Christmas season.  Trying to live as a blessing in the lives of those around me. Everyday miracles in cookie batter and chocolate chips.
 

The smell of thankful

  I am one of those people; those people with sensitive sniffers.  Smell to me is a base sense, connected to memories, people and emotions. In fact, I am so weird about it, I try to live in a bubble of Happy, the perfume.  Ask those around me. They can bear witness to my perfume bubble.
  I remember scents more than faces or words.  I smelled a slightly off apricot last summer and was transported to a summer when I was young and my great aunt thought I should drink apricot brandy to calm my stomach pains. I remember the smell of my hospital rooms when I had my kids, the smell of the floor wax on the first day of school, and the smell of my first boyfriend's cologne in middle school mixed with the smell of sweat from those around us at the school dance. (Wait, maybe that was the smell of his sweat but bear with me.)
   So lately, in the rush that is everyday,  I have not smelled anything exceptional.  I have rushed through each day doing the best I can,  being the best I can and collapsing in bed each night, never once having breathed deeply.

 Until yesterday.
   Yesterday I smelled thankful in big deep gulps of scent with my daughter walking hand in hand through the conservatory at Long Wood Gardens.  We walked into the orchid room and the smell was  sweet and heavy but the moment was light and lovely.
  "Oh, hello sniffer!" my brain thought.  "Are you cataloging this moment?  Are you memorizing the tones of orchid? The look on your daughter's face as she takes that picture? The peace that comes on the waves of fragrance?  Connect these moments.  Be connected to these moments." My brain and my nose are very good friends.

  Thankful may smell different to everyone and that is how it should be.  Thankful can also smell differently at different times- the smell of a baby's head, rain in the spring, that first shovel full of dirt turned over in the garden, your child's cereal breath in the morning, cinnamon on a cold day, and the list goes on and on. ( I, for example, love when my husband has been working outside and comes in smelling of campfire smoke and hard work.)

  Thankful to me this week smelled like orchids, ripe and rich and blooming in December.  Ripe and rich and very special- blooming like it was their job for my daughter and I as we strolled through their midst; deep in conversation about life, love, and education.

A plethora of thankful in intricate blooms of tropical color forever linked in my mind. An everyday miracle thankfully linked in my heart.