Laughter

Tonight was book group.  The group of 7 ladies meets once a month or so for dinner and a book discussion.  We alternate choosing the book and cooking the dinner.  This month the book was Happiness by Aminita Forna.  It was a tender story with wonderful characters.  It made for a lively discussion of such wide ranging topics as happiness, suffering, trauma and relationships.  When we finished saying our pieces, the cardamom ice cream came out with dark chocolate to accompany it and the laughter began.  I don’t even remember what was so funny, but the laughter was contagious and healing and bonding.  We all laughed and laughed until tears came out our eyes.  There is something very special being together with a group of women that can laugh so freely.  My soul feels lighter and happier.

Recognizing Beauty and Kindness

I know that what we pay attention to becomes our reality.  In these Trump dominated days of political and business corruption, it is easy to feel discouraged.  I learned this from my mother.  In her last years, she suffered from several kinds of cancer.  At one doctor’s appointment, the doctor asked her how she was and she answered “just fine.”  He asked her then if she knew she had cancer.  “Yes, I know that, but I don’t give it the energy of my attention.”  For me, it takes mental and emotional discipline to notice kindness and beauty.   In the last week, I experienced some great acts of kindness and generosity and they were beautiful.  Last week, we attended a Donor’s reception before a Concert at the Crowden School.  It’s a little middle school focused on music that Arne attended and is one of the places I like to support.  In recent years, I wondered if my donation made much difference.  In conversation with one of the Board Members we’ve known for going on 30 years, I heard a story that deeply affected me.  She told of 3 students from one family who are tremendously musically talented and on total scholarship at the school.  She pulled out her phone and looked up the various local and regional competitions they have recently won and said it is a challenge to support them.  Every dollar given makes a difference to people like them.  I thought generosity is a beautiful thing.  The next night I went to hear Emmanuel Ax play with the Oakland Symphony.  Arne asked me why he would play with this lowly regional orchestra when he was so famous?  I learned that each year he chooses one regional orchestra that has a youth program and comes for a week giving free master classes to the youth, playing at Elementary schools in town and supporting the orchestra by playing with it in a concert at the end of the week all his gift to the community.  His incredibly beautiful playing rose up and pulled the orchestra along.  I can still hear his music in my head. The last piece, Beethoven’s Choral Fanatsy, had nearly 200 musicians on stage including a number of youth playing beside their teachers in the Orchestra.  Such a generous kindness on Ax’s part is a thing of beauty.  Yesterday, there was a Luncheon for the Volunteer Propagator’s at the Botanical Garden to honor the beloved staff person for the Propagators who has taken another job.  As the staff and volunteers sat down and ate together, the noise of joy rose up in the room.  When Bryan spoke of the propagators as “my people” he choked up and we all did because we knew of his kindness and concern for our wellbeing.  It was a moment of truth and beauty.  How fortunate I am to see so much beauty and kindness around me.  We just have to keep our eyes open to notice it.  It transforms the world  to a place of kindness and beauty.

Doris

My fellow docents are an amazing group of people.  They’re all very well educated and had good jobs doing all sorts of interesting things.  They all love the natural world, especially the nature in the Botanical Garden.  They love interpreting it to children and adults so it’s easy to feel a sense of kinship with all the docents.  Given that, it’s hard to really get to know each other.  After our training was over, we only see each other as we’re waiting to give tours.  In my early days as a docent, I was dispatched to follow along and observe Doris giving a tour to First Graders.  She is a “Kid Whisperer.”  I was awed watching her excitement flow to the kids and ignite their curiosity and excitement.  She listened carefully to them and responded.  She crouched down to their level when they were looking at flowers or spotted a bug.  She laughed with delight at their discoveries.  She was a docent that understood a first grader’s mind or the mind of whatever level she was leading.  In every other interaction I had with her, she was gracious, attentive and so so positive.  Doris must be in her 80’s though I don’t know.  She has a beautiful head full of white hair and always a big smile on her face.  We just learned that she has withdrawn from leading tours because she can’t be sure on any certain day she’ll be up to it.  Her health is failing.  I’m so sad, sadder than I probably should be considering I don’t know her well.  But she has been my inspiration.  And now one day she’s not there any more.  That’s how it is at our age.  Life must be lived fully and enjoyed.  I am grateful for the strength, mobility and mental acuity such as I have.  One never knows when it won’t be there.  I’ll miss Doris and even though she’s not around, she’ll still be my inspiration.  I will write her a note wishing her well, telling her how much I’ll miss her and that she has been my inspiration.

Rainbows

There was a spectacular rainbow outside our west facing picture window the other morning.  I watched it move closer to us until it felt like it was right outside the window.   I used to think of rainbows as a sign of hope or of promise, something one sees at the end of a storm.  But this rainbow was at the front edge of a cold front bringing rain and serious cold to the Bay Area.  Yesterday morning there were four inches of snow reported on Mt. Diablo and Mt. Hamilton.   In the Hebrew Bible, the rainbow is a sign of God’s covenant with Israel to not destroy the people any more.  It was a sign of hope in the future.  Here, rainbows don’t bring me any hope, though their beauty always catches me unaware and transports me to a place of wonder.  We are dependent on the natural world for our food, for our water, for our weather which can disrupt our lives in major ways.  Last week our Michigan family had four “snow days” because of a Polar Vortex that brought frigid temperatures there, colder than at Antarctica.  Scientists tell us the climate is warming and predictions of what that means keep changing.  No one exactly knows, but it isn’t for the good.  The glaciers are melting, the ocean is warming.  Our way of life is in a kind of slow motion peril.  I now see a rainbow as a sign of change, beautiful, wondrous, but threatening and I hope we, humans, soon

wake up and begin to change our ways before it is too late.