Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all:LOOK.
-Robert Fulghum, All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
A few days ago we were driving back from Asheville and I was reading Brett and Boo some pages from an old journal. After a few minutes of consistent laughter and a few “I can’t believe you wrote that down” comments, Boo said:
“Mommy, when you die I’m going to publish your diaries.”
For a brief moment a flash of horror went through my mind.
But then I thought: I’ll be dead.
And really so much of it will be out of context anyways. Maybe I should start going through journals and diaries and adding in footnotes and thought bubbles. Just for clarification purposes.
Like yesterday’s journal entry was just a random list of thoughts:
I’m 38 today.
Can I buy sea glass online (since I don’t live near the sea)?
The succulents are growing babies. I haven’t killed them.
Call the piano tuner asap before the broken key causes seizures.
Mr. Parton used dowsing rods today in the yard. Like real dowsing rods, well kind of, made from landscaping flags. But they still worked. I should make my own and see if there are any dead bodies or shallow graves nearby. No I shouldn’t.
“Black gold, Texas tea”
“grist for the mill” origin
Yesterday was such a good day but you’d never really get it from what I wrote, even if I had added in more detail, you had to be there really. And some of it could really be taken the wrong way if you didn’t know me.
The one thing I hope my journals will show one day, way off in the future, is that I was aware of wonder. And that I was always looking, always seeing…as much as I could. I share a birthday with my friend Jodi’s young son and yesterday he told me: I can tell you how the world ends, the sun explodes. I forgot to write that down in my journal so I’m writing it down here. (I hope I get some advance notice on the sun explosion so I don’t workout, clean or go to the DMV on that day.) Really, if I just wrote down everything I overheard from kids each day I’d have the most interesting journals in the world.
I am 38 now. Boo wrote this little essay on life last year:
I only have 2 more years until my life gets a little less hard!
From one of my birthday cards:
P.S. In my letter last week I wrote about having to go in order to see. That’s what the hashtag #ifyoudontgoyou dontsee refers to this month on Instagram, use it to share new places, new things. Alright….go!
P.P.S My succulent nursery…mother and babies doing just fine:
I thought the dowsing/dousing rods were only used for finding where one should dig a well ??Because of the location of their house on their farm, one would have to dig a really deep well So my parents wanted to be sure of a successful drill, they hired an old fellow who pinpointed exactly where they should have drillers to go for their water well. He always cut his sticks from the property he was cking since someone elses growth would not know where the water would be on this persons property. It was successful, by the way.