Roses and Godiva Chocolates

The twelve days of Christmas aren't even over and Valentine's stuff is on the shelves!!! AARGH.  The only good thing about this is that it reminds me of roses and candy and...

When I was in college, I was dating a boy who I knew deep down was not the right one for me.  But, I was insecure, I was a mess, and I wanted desperately to get married and create a safe haven for myself.  I thought I had found it with him.  The problem was, though, that the buried knowledge of the unrightness of it all kept popping up and causing rifts in the relationship.  One of those was that I felt he wasn't romantic enough.  Someone who REALLY loved me would do grand romantic gestures.  At the time, I referred to this as "roses and Godiva chocolates".  The right kind of guy would be the one who left roses and Godiva chocolates on your pillow just because he loved you.  Once I told him, he dutifully brought me these, but, of course, they weren't enough because HE wasn't enough.  I just wasn't ready to admit it.

Fast forward a number of years.  It's what a friend calls "damn-it o'clock in the morning" and Spouse and I have just done the last of numerous loads of vomit covered items.  The girls have the flu in tandem and we have spent hours comforting, wiping, washing, and remaking cribs.  We have finally gotten the bug under control and the girls have fallen into an exhausted sleep in one crib while the bedding for the other is whirling its way dry.  Spouse and I have fallen onto our own bed, waiting for the dryer to stop and we drift into sleep.  Then the timer beeps and I am so tired that it makes me want to cry to think of getting up and pulling the stuff out and making the bed.

In a romance novel, this is where the wonderful husband says, "You go to sleep.  I'll finish up," and we all sigh and say, "Awwww, that is SO SWEET."  My reality, though, is that Spouse has a physical disability.  Most of what we humans do on a daily basis is extremely hard for him.  On this particular night, he could have stayed put and let me do all the work because it was really difficult for him to do it.

He didn't, though.  He scraped his share of smelly sheets, and when he couldn't physically do something, he stayed there and kept me company.  When we were finally done, and both girls were in sweet smelling jammies and comfortably in their own beds, and when I had changed into my own clean jammies and we were comfortably in our own bed, he rubbed my aching back until we fell asleep.

When our girls walk down the aisle, I will have him next to me in the church and we will remember all of these times.  We'll remember the Night of Living Vomit, and all those Christmas Eves where we stayed up until all hours making memories for our kids, and first loves, and graduations, and...well, you get the idea.  What I won't remember is whether he ever brought me roses and Godiva chocolates.

Burnt Toast

Okay.  You get up in the morning and you decide to have toast, or a bagel, or something you shove in a toaster. ( If you're like me, you've had, oh, six or so toasters in the 25 years you've been married, none of which lasted more than a couple of years, which is food for another post thought... ) So, you pop your bread in, push the handle down, get out your butter and a knife and a plate...and before you know it, you're smelling that coffee smell...and you grab your toast out...and it's burnt in several places.  Now, it's not completely charcoal, so you can't feel good about throwing the whole thing out.  You take your knife and the kitchen towel, because, of course, burnt toast is HOT...and you start to scrape.

Little bits of the burnt stuff drift down into the sink as you stand there scraping.  You scrape and scrape, trying not to rip the bread, trying to get it down to a warm brown rather than a bitter black...and as you scrape you realize that this can be a metaphor for life.

Life frequently hands me burnt toast.  Pain, tired days, cranky children, more month than money - I know I'm not alone in any of this.  So I do a lot of scraping.  I suppose it's another form of that "attitude of gratitude" I spoke about before.  I scrape away the burnt stuff to find the good stuff underneath.  Behind the pain and tiredness is the knowing that I don't have to go work somewhere despite it - I can stay home and do my stuff, sitting on a pillow and taking ibuprofen.  Behind the cranky children are those nice kids - the ones I do actually see once in awhile! - the ones who bring me a Tab when I don't want to get up and who go to the store when I hurt too much to drive.  Behind the money issues is the fact that we in America have a more prosperous life than nearly anyone else on the planet - even living on one income!

I guess the moral is that I should be grateful that I have toast.  And I am.

Daily Grace

When I was young we lived in Florida.  Every so often we would visit my grandmother who lived in St. Pete, and sometimes, while we were there, we would go to a wonderful used book store called Haslam's.  This is where I got my first introduction to Ideals magazine.  If you're not familiar with this magazine, it was an inspirational assortment of poetry, stories, pictures, and so on.  It began in the '40s and its heyday was the 50's and 60's, and it has all the wonderful, wide eyed optomisim and idealism of that era.  In those days, patriotism and pride were as normal as breathing; we lived in America!  The best place on earth! 

At that visit, I got a Christmas Ideals.  It appealed to me because it was published in the year of my birth, 1960.  Ever since then, this magazine is what I read when I want to invoke Christmas spirit.  I sit by the light of the tree, and reread old, familiar, and beloved poems, and my world is good.  It is "daily grace".  To me, daily grace is finding joy in the simple, the spiritual, the special things that are provided for us each day by a loving Father.  It is, as they say in 12 step groups, "an attitude of gratitude".  Join me, won't you, in a journey towards Daily Grace?

May I, With Each Passing Day
by Dorothy Lousie Thomas
from Ideals Christmas, 1960

I thank Thee first for all the gifts
The old year brought to me -
The dancing spring, a yellow rose
A few days by the sea:

Glad gypsy hours in autumn woods,
And restful nights of snow,
And many, many stirring bouts
With clean, blue winds that blow!

I would keep my New Year free
From carelessness and folly,
From little words that prick and sting,
From sinful melancholy;

Free from idle discontent
Which turns the brightest day
Into a stretch of sullen hours
Beneaath a sky of gray.

Let me keep it clean as grass
Twinkling after rain;
Happy as the bird that cleaves
A morning sky in twain.

I would learn the tolerance
Of the kindly sun
That shines alike on rich and poor,
And heartens everyone.

Give to me the trustfulness
Of the roadside flower,
That neither fears the darkening sky
Nor yet the sudden shower.

Strengthen me to do my work
With joy and hardihood,
And may I, with each passing day,
Know that life is good!

Life IS good.  Never lose sight of that.