Vitamin Gold

Aspen Grove in Autum


Gold
in high-altitude hues
scatters its abundance across the sky

Leaves,
full and round as moons, as coins,
fall brightly from aloft
to become the currency of change.

Without this harvest
of season's shift
spring would tire and dim
and green become a thing
less-longed for;
sought
only as the prize for those now living

and unappreciated as the
resurrection
of those who passed before.

Vitamin Choose

I like to hike. No, I love to hike. The thrill of the journey almost (but not quite) outweighs the glory of attaining the summit, breathless and sore, and surveying the panorama that greets me from the top. And so, as I lay in bed the other morning and attempted to muster up the gumption to enjoy a day ahead that would be fraught with obstacles, hiking provided a natural analogy for my mental dialog.

When I hike, I'm undertaking an inherently difficult task. Plodding uphill, mile after mile, on short rations of water and dry, starchy measures of food is nobody's idea of luxury. But it's my idea of adventure, and so I enjoy every part of the trail.

The low, boggy parts.

The moderate, sunny slopes.

The merciless hills.

And yes, even the boulders.

You see, this is where my deep thought began. As I hike, I encounter large obstacles in the form of stationary rocks. I scramble over some of them. I bushwhack my way around others. And still others have an actual trail built over or around them for ease of movement. But regardless of how I approach them, I understand that they're a part of my journey. These obstacles are really the joy of my adventure - and also the substance that makes up the bulk of the mountains I climb. Rocks and boulders serve a noble purpose in this hiker's mind, and I wouldn't trade them for anything.

Similarly, I'm understanding the new concept that approaching my life in this matter will prove helpful as well. Choosing to see each of the hurdles throughout my day -- screaming children, poopy diapers (or undies), a phone that rings off the hook, or simple setbacks to my day have all had the power to discourage me. But no longer! These things are what give character, focus, to my adventure! Shunning or complaining about them would be rejecting the very substance of my life. Instead, as my husband reminded me, I can choose to enjoy these moments rather than dread them. In fact, this choice is the easier of the two options, because it makes the rest of my life so much happier, too. A grumpy hiker travels twice the distance in twice the time because her attitude makes the journey unbearable, but a cheerful hiker loves every moment of her adventure-filled trek.

So today, right now, I'm choosing to be that cheerful hiker. It's corny, I know - but it helps me. I'm choosing my own adventure - and it's going to be filled with joy.

Vitamin Laundry

Yesterday morning, the hum of the dryer and the rythmic chug of the washer started my jam-packed morning. I felt a little overwhelmed to begin with - I haven't done laundry in a while, and it piles up pretty fast with three kids, most of whom have bed-wetting issues. But as the morning progressed, I began to remember all that I adore about laundry.

The smell of it (clean, of course)

The feel of it, warm and fresh against my face when it's fresh from the dryer.

The hominess of it - such a loving thing to do for one's family!

All the deeper connections one can draw, while pondering life in general and fresh starts in particular, while one removes stains, sorts colors, and loads and unloads the laundry in various stages of cleanliness.

The memories laundry inspires: I recall standing with my mom or brother and folding the family's laundry, which we always piled in a heap on my parents' bed, and carrying on conversations while we made order out of not only our collective stacks of socks and undies, but our unfolding (ha!) lives as well.

The rythm of it. Aside from family meals and, for some people, church, laundry's one of the few things that must go on even if all else falls apart.

The joyous privilege of having been able to make sense of something. When all the socks have been accounted for, every last little shirt and pajama bottom tucked in its respective and appropriate nest, when I place the laundry basket back on its perch over the dryer ... I experience a moment of womanly Zen. Very little can be sorted out in only an afternoon - but laundry is one of those things. How much sweeter would the world be if we all did laundry instead of turning to our other habits when the going got tough? I know I'd have saved a few hundred Twinkies from consumption, not to mention chocolate bars and ice cream!

But the real glory of laundry didn't hit me until sometime last evening. My family drove in around dinner-time, and I still hadn't finished my chore. My parents' guest bed lay under a semi-sorted kaleidoscope of Jared's socks, my jeans, washrags, and pool towels ... and still, the dryer hummed merrily on.

And so, just before bedtime, I found myself standing with my dad (who wouln't make eye contact with any of the undies in the pile) and my husband (who tried to pretend like he was afraid, too) -- sorting and folding the last still-warm load. We chatted a bit -we made small talk. But as we stood working, I realized that the thing I love most about laundry is the togetherness that it brings. All our various clothing items - stained, ugly, unmentionable, and mundane - get thrown together in a big soup pot, banged around a whole lot, rinsed and washed a few times, and then banged around some more 'til they're fresh and clean. Sometimes they get all twisted togetether in awkward embraces - a bedsheet with some work khakis, a sock inside some sweats - but in the end, it's the pressing closeness that makes them all clean. They soak together, wash together, probably scrape and pull and yank on each other ... and in the end ... they are beautiful once again.

It's times like these that make me appreciate my life so very much. Sure, it's awkward to fold my G-string panties with my dad standing right there. But I'd rather have him there, working uncomfortably close to me, than off elsewhere and not sharing his goodness and life and wisdom with me. The same goes for my brother, my husband, my kids (who do indeed fold laundry AT LAST!), my mom, and any other person who happens into my life. I need them. They need me. Together, in the end and if we do well, we will have created a much more beautiful version of ourselves than we could have done without help.

And that's what I love about laundry.

Vitamin Sun

Yesterday, I awoke to see the sun tinging the pink skeins of clouds that decorated the sky outside my bedroom window. I watched as it fell in layers across the mountains during the busy morning. I thought of its disinfecting capabilities as I changed child after child into fresh, un-wet outfis. And I blessed its ability to remove sickness as I made up the guest bed my parents will enjoy, using the down comfortor with which I have been sleeping.

Sun gets a bad rap, after all: It causes cancer and age spots and freckles and moles. It brings sunburn and heat stroke and drought and radiation. But doesn't it bring good things, as well? Things like warmth after rain, and that steam that rises from the earth the next day. Things like rainbows, and the blush coloring on certain apples, and those beautiful shafts of light that look like megaphones straight from heaven. For me, the sun yesterday was a reminder of life, of hope, and of the outside world. It felt good to drive around town, running errands, and step out of the van into a mellow, warm-feeling world. For so long I've felt blank and cold - probably because I've been sick. And so it was pure joy to soak up the sunshine on an otherwise typical Saturday.

Thank You, God, for Vitamin Sun. I'll enjoy it each day it shines all through the winter and fall.

Vitamin Give

This was going to be entitled "Vitamin Love" - but really, in so many ways, they're one and the same - don't you think?

As mentioned earlier, I'm ill. But I'm not so ill as to miss some of the finer moments of living ... such as the few listed below.

* My also-ill friend Melanie attempting to care for me instead of herself when she hears of my sickness;
* A birthday card (including cash!) from one of my least wealthy relatives;
* Friend Katie, overworked and overtired, preparing flowers and a love letter to send to a woman whose husband just left her;
* The beauty of allowing my five-year-old son, who rarely naps, a chance to catch up on his sleep just now (which is really a gift for the both of us);
* The words I just read from my favorite book - the words of a Lover enthralled with His beloved (me! you!) and anxious to give her (us!) rest, renewal, comfort, and peace -

I have loved you with an everlasting love;

I have drawn you with loving-kindness.
I will build you up again

and you will be rebuilt, O Virgin Israel.

Again you will take up your tambourines

and go out to dance with the joyful."

Therefore I am now going to allure her;

I will lead her into the desert

and speak tenderly to her.
There I will give her back her vineyards,

and will make the Valley of Achor (trouble) a door of hope.

There she will sing as in the days of her youth,

as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

Jeremiah 31:3-4, Hosea 2:14,15

It is true. "Vitamin Love" would be an equally appropriate name for the gestures and words of kindness that I've caught sight of today. But what's struck me most about these gestures is their self-less-ness, their other-focused nature - and that's what I'd like to take with me. True giving not only enriches the one who happens to receive it, it also inspires that person to giving in like manner, to others.

Today, I have been a bountiful recipient.

Today, I will become a bountiful giver.

Vitamin Oy

Yesterday, the day I should have written this post, was filled with oy. It's along the lines of oofta in my book, but a little more wry. How I survived, I'll never know - because yesterday's oy has already been drowned in today's. I'll tell you this, though: Three doctor's offices, two X-Rays, one fast-food breakfast, and one fast-food dinner later, somehow everything settled down into a lull as my husband read to me until I dozed off. The oy faded away ... to be overtaken by the next day's woes, to be sure - but in the night - the long, fitful, night - my memory of the day's angst grew mercifully dim. It's like that magical amnesia that takes over the moment a baby leaves one's womb and fully enters the outside world.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" I have asked my husband, in so many words, after the birth of each child. And each time, his widened eyes, heightened pulse, and clench-marked hands scream out YES! You were a WRECK!

Which is precisely what I want to avoid on days like yesterday and today - oy days in the extreme. While my memory of the offending circumstances may dim (today, for example, we could catalog a bloody nose, a poop accident, many meltdowns on everyone first day at Homeschool Co-Op, and my own personal bout with The Throat From Hell) -- others may remember my oy day much longer.

For example: Today, try as I might, I just couldn't seem to pull myself out of the misery that is my lack-of-health at the moment. My friend Katie, at Co-Op, asked me time and again if I was all right. Of course I wasn't all right! -- my demeanor and outlook spoke that loud and clear! -- but at some point, I suppose a person just has to deal with her alloted daily portion of oy and stop paying it forward to the next person. Right? Of course right!

But that's far easier said than done - which is why I christen oy to a new connotation in my library of words. Instead of reserving oy for those moments, hours, or days when I'd rather be saying something longer, maybe with four letters for example, I'll turn oy into a chance to smile. It's a silly word, after all. Who could say it and not feel just a little compulsion to chuckle? Oy. And what's even better ... is when my kids pick up the word, and in their little-child lilt utter it at random and inappropriate moments. It brings me a lot of joy to hear those carefree little voices utter something that, for me, usually bespeaks so much anxiety.

Joy: That's it! Instead of an oy day, I wonder how often I can turn these extenuating circumstances into the makings for a joy day. After all - I've still got all the blessings I had on my last super-good hair day. I haven't lost any fingers, toes, or appendages. The sun still shines, my home is intact (though atrociously messy!), and at the moment, my three precious cherubs are peacefully napping.

Oy becomes joy. I'm going to try it!

And so, you may ask, how am I doing right now, in this moment? Fantastic! I'm having a day full of oy.

Vitamin Ill

Today, that special day I've both hidden from and looked forward to, dawned far earlier than I had expected. Sometime in the wee small hours, I awoke to discover I had a high fever. This commenced a brisk morning of tossing and turning, which produced a fair amount of perspiration. I'm wondering if I could qualify those early-morning hours as a workout.

Now, eighteen hours later, I'm headed into another night of the same aerobic activity. My birthday, as so often happens for me (who knows why?) turned out to be rather anticlimactic. I arose. I took my children to the Vortex of Evil, McDonalds. I watched a friend's son, and then she watched my children. Neither one of us felt all that well, however, and so most of the child-watching that took place could more aptly be qualified as semi-conscious supervision. Days like this - when I'm not sick enough to be oblivious to my discomfort, not sick enough to beg my husband to stay home and nurture me, and just sick enough to want to complain, remind me how grateful I am for my health. Thank God sickness strikes me more rarely than most.

Thank God, too, for the blessing-in-disguise that this illness has brought. Illness makes me more ... aware. I'm more likely to tear up at the kind things others do for me - like the two envelopes my oldest son decorated and filled with small bits of his hard-earned chore money, for my birthday. I'm more likely to feel empathy for those who feel ill on a regular basis. And I'm far morely likely to move slower, thereby noticing things I'd otherwise overlook (in this case, the beautiful sunset-stained clouds as we drove home from my birthday bash).

All in all, it's been a sweet day - not despite this sickness, but in some ways, because of it. I got through - I didn't yell at my children. I smiled in spite of the yucky. And I remembered to say Thank You to the God who supplies both life and health, and from Whom each and every day of my existence is an immeasurable and love-filled gift.

Today I am thirty. Today I am ill. Thank You, Lord, for this life.

Vitamin Eve

Tonight is an Eve in my life - not just another day subsiding into the void that separates one set of daylight hours from another - but a true doorway into an event, an era, a new and enchanting time of being. Tonight is the Eve of my entrance into my thirties.

It's hard to believe - not just for me, but doubly so for my mother. Only 109,49 nights ago, I existed as a silent being inside her womb, making my presence known with a sensation, as she puts it, "that felt like really bad gas." Seven hours later that particular Eve ended with the dawn of a new life - my life - a life I feel in many ways that I've barely begun to encounter.

And in truth, encounter is what sets an Eve apart from other moments in time. A cognizant entrance into a particular encounter with life earns the title of Eve. Christmas Eve. New Year's Eve. And, for those of Jewish descent, the weekly Eve of Shabbat.

So why aren't there more of these Eves? They pass me by all the time - the Eve before my son's first day of school. The Eve upon which I discard an old habit. The Eve that I usher in a better level of communication with my husband, my friends, the self I've been hiding. Or maybe just the Eve before I get a new haircut. Who cares? We celebrate a few choice things - birthdays, national holidays, and Christmas. Why not create a calendar that celebrates the personal as well. And then, why not usher in those personal milestones with an Eve celebration, not just a remembrance of the day itself. There's something magical about evening, after all - twilight slants, stars appear, children search for excuses to stay awake. Why not capitalize on this enchantment and light a candle - remember the past or celebrate the future?

Here are a few Eves I'd like to commemorate in the coming year:

Visit-From-My-Family Eve
Debt Free Day Eve
Starting a New Business Eve
Doing-Something-I've-Never-Done-Before Eve
Moving-Day Eve
Anniversary Eve
Fourth of July Eve

Why not add a few of your own?