Tag Archives: sprinklednotes blog

Memories Are Made Of This

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Most of my readers are aware of the huge downsizing I’ve had to go through this year. It wasn’t exactly my choice, though I’d been saying for years it had to happen.

If you recall last March I struggled with packing up our four-bedroom home and reducing my stuff to a two-bedroom apartment. Then I forced myself to part with more for a move to a one- bedroom apartment. My heart had to take a few more jolts to let go of my storage space conglomeration, and because I was moving again to smaller one-bedroom I had to eagle eye what I had left.

I think Marie Condo, the organizer guru,was on to something when she said, “Keep only things that speak to your heart.” The first move I found too many things that spoke to my heart such as my first doll, my first teddy bear, and mementoes from my children. With gritted teeth and help from a friend I let many of them go.

By the third move I was so tired I let things walk out the door with friends and strangers.

Yesterday I needed a large vase and tore through my cupboards looking for my favorite blue vase my husband and I received for a wedding present all those years ago. I realized it was one of the items that probably ended up in a thrift shop somewhere.

As much as I miss some of my “stuff” , and at times feel sad about it, I believe I feel freer now. I don’t spend my time rearranging or looking or taking care of endless objects that I thought meant a great deal to me. In reality they were just objects, some left from an era of family that had no meaning to me, but yet guilt wouldn’t let me part with them because they were family relics. Relics kept because they had meaning to past family members but escaped my adoration.

It’s exciting to fill my space with fun eclectic finds all new to me which speak to my heart as Marie Kondo advised. Yet, I find the few things I have kept from the past, whether I realized it or not, speak to my heart too.

From the pictures on my walls to the knickknacks gracing my tables when I see them they each have a memory of someone special in my life.

One memory may be strange but unique. The time of Lent and Easter is a reminder of not only the season for me, but of my mom. Every Easter season, on Palm Sunday we received palms. They were the tall, willowy ones. My mom would keep hers and braid it. She was very good at the art, and then she would put it n a vase where we could see it. I never asked why, or if I did, in my young age, I never paid attention to the answer. Doing my research I found the palms symbolize the warding off of evil and are supposed to be burned the following year on Ash Wednesday. The Palms having been blessed, should only be burned and buried, and it also is an old tradition to burn the blessed branches before natural disasters asking God to avert or lessen the coming disaster.

I found a braided palm when I packed up my mom’s house over twenty years ago. I remember the final years she lived in her home, it sitting in a vase in the window. I may not be Catholic anymore but the roots run deep,and I knew you didn’t throw the palm away. There was something about it that touched my heart knowing my mom’s love of her religion, and what the palm symbolized to her. I could see her braiding it with care. I kept it. It sat on my windowsill in a vase reminding me of her.

Fast forward to all of these moves. I took a little heat from people that I wouldn’t let go of that braided palm. They didn’t understand my stubbornness. I carefully packed it and unpacked it all three times. It’s brittleness making it a challenge to move so it didn’t disintegrate in the packing. Today it sits in another vase in my bedroom reminding me this Easter Season of the journey to the cross and also of the past, and the faith my mom had. And…of course her talent weaving and braiding those palms.

We pare down, let go of our past lives symbolized by the stuff we have saved, hoarded, hid only to bring out to see what was in the box and always feel guilty because our family chides us about all we keep. Yet, somewhere in the muddle of the junk and the regrets of keeping so much are the memories that are attached, because there are mementos which melt our hearts each time we look at them. They help us remember who we are, where we came from and what matters. Those are the items we need to keep to help us stay attached to our roots. The ones we have to ponder deeply, hold to our hearts and ask ourselves how deeply they speak to our heart and why.

Someday I will burn the braided palm. Or perhaps my family will in my last days. Maybe I’ll be surprised and it will be passed on down the family for as long as it will hold together to remind them of God’s love, His sacrifice of His son and the roots that are deep into our life called family.

The Constant Battle For Comfort

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Cats are connoisseurs of comfort. ~James Herriot

My Sunday thoughts this morning are on comfort. Not on the kind of comfort you might think I am referring to on a Sunday morning. Yes, I already read my devotions, said my prayers and then…I wiggled and tried to get comfortable in the chair I am sitting in. I wished I had an ottoman to rest my feet at the end of my easy chair.

Do you have those battles in your household on what is comfortable to each of you, the people you live with not understanding because what doesn’t fit you, fits them perfectly?

I am short, very short. Many chairs are not built for short people. One of my recliners hits my head at the wrong place and so the angle is always uncomfortable because it is hard to look up. The contour of the chair has my head crooked down. Most of the time I can’t rest my feet on the floor when sitting on certain chairs and sofa’s because I can’t touch the ground. Case in point, I never can touch the floor sitting on the church pews in church.

The same goes for the seats in a vehicle and the head rests. I always wondered at the wisdom of my grandchildren not being able to ride in the front seat with me because they weren’t tall enough. Their driver, me, was shorter than they were. I think I should invent a flamboyant booster chair for adult drivers that are short.

I like a soft bed, my spouse likes a hard mattress. I like an old dining room chair I bought at a sale and not the ones that sit by my dining table. The old chair keeps me at the level where the table is not above my chest. I keep replacing one chair with my old chair and my spouse keeps putting the matching dining room chair back up to the table.

Our stackable washer and dryer are gone and I am ecstatic. I could never reach to the back of the dryer without a little boost at my feet. I still have a bit of a fear of falling into my washing machine when I have to jump a little when reaching in to get my wet clothes out. It was a battle to get my spouse to understand what we had was not working for me because it was perfect for him.

My list could on and on. Can you relate? Small cars are not comfortable to tall people. Small chairs are not comfortable to large people. It’s irritating to them to always have to change the driver’s seat when sharing a car with a short person.

Don’t ever look at the top of my refrigerator or anything higher than my height. There is probably years of dust because I am the duster in the family and what I don’t see I don’t dust. I know its there but it’s easier to ignore.

It’s hard for us to understand what is uncomfortable for those around us if we have our comfort needs met. We dismiss the concerns and our lack of understanding on what works for others causes problems in relationships and friendships. We don’t want to give up our comfort or we secretly seethe with anger if we do.

I hope there are many that have found the art of compromise. Yet, we appear to living in an angry world. I can’t help but wonder if the anger stems from a need not being met or a concern not being heard. We seethe inside until we erupt like a volcano.

It might just take someone saying, “I hear you. We should work on seeing what might help.” Or it might take us not expecting others to meet our needs but seeing what we can do to make ourselves more comfortable. I bought the old dining room chair. Yes, it gets moved elsewhere but I can always put it back when I need it.

God made us all different. We have tastes and likes and needs that are unique to us. We are not like our neighbor. My neighbor likes a weed free lawn. I don’t really care about weeds. Some of them are pretty. However, what I do with my lawn affects his because my weeds infect his life. He puts up with my weed yard even if it causes more work for him. This year I sprayed my weeds. It’s a compromise. It’ll make life easier for him. He makes life easier for us by doing things for us that we can’t do anymore. We are both more comfortable in our lives because of it.

Yesterday a wise friend and I had a conversation about relationship dynamics. They pointed out to me our words, and I know mine are, get peppered with, “They won’t let me do that.” This person was right. We stop ourselves from living parts of our lives because of the lack of understanding of someone else of what we need for comfort for our body or our soul. I have to ask myself where I learned that. Do those people really stop us or are we stopping ourselves and using it for an excuse? Our life doesn’t need to fit someone else. It needs to fit us and only then can we be comfortable with others.

This is my Sunday morning rambling. I have no answers. I have a challenge for you. What are you going to do this week to allow yourself to have those moments of comfort that you need?

I’m going to get an ottoman so I can put my feet up in this chair that doesn’t quite fit me and relax. It can be moved when someone taller sits here. A small compromise for a big chair so we both can have our comfort.

“I know there is strength in the differences between us. I know there is comfort where we overlap.”

Ani DiFranco

I’m A Weed!

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I am a weed and I match all the weeds in my yard. Yes, my yard has weeds. I am also a flower. Weeds are an imperfect popup in the midst of the flowers. There is room in our yards and gardens for both, letting them balance each other out. If there isn’t a balance to the weeds growth they choke the life out of the living plants and the same thing can be said in our lives. If we let ourselves be overtaken by the weeds, society changes.

I suspect lately we have more weeds that don’t have that flower to balance them out in our society, popping up to remind us of our imperfections.

My mom had a green thumb. Our yard was full of flowers and our garden was a proliferation of planted vegetables, flowers, strawberries and yes, we had weeds. Our yard had the pretty weeds such as dandelions, violets and other things I would pick as a bouquet for my mom. My mom did not believe in pesticides so she let the weeds grow. The flowers weren’t planted in perfect flower beds but would pop up all over the yard wherever she decided she needed a pop of color. She loved the butterflies, bunnies and birds plus the squirrels that played in our yard. So did my cats, I might add. I remember sitting on the steps or looking out the window and loving the way the yard looked, flowers mixed with weeds. The imperfect lawn. I was naive. I thought that was the way yards were supposed to look, a mixture of flowers and weeds. I have no idea what everyone thought of our yard but I don’t remember my friends yards being much different. We had bare spots in our yard too. So did my friends. We played hard in those yards and the bare spots became bases for our ball games. We accepted all the imperfections of our gardens and our yards.

I have tried not to be a weed . I have tried not to have a yard with weeds and I found both very unsatisfying. Trying to live up to expectations of others wears one out. It is a cruel world out there and if you don’t measure up you are plucked and stripped very fast by a human weed killer. Those weed killers don’t understand there is room for both if both are responsible to not trample on each other.

I have found a balance in my yard. My friend who is a perfectionist gave me one flower bed that is well planned and neatly arranged. I love that she did that for me and I love that flower bed. But thinking back to my childhood I knew I wanted a yard also of random flowering wildflowers and weeds and so I took a page out of my mother’s book of planting, without the green thumb unfortunately. I threw wildflower seeds in one flower bed and I love the surprises popping up. There are weeds but I can’t tell what is what right now until they are up and blooming

I have sunflowers growing by my bird feeder and my yard is full of birds, rabbits and yes, squirrels. My shysters love the squirrels that climb our bird feeder in search of food. They turn around and there is a stare down between the squirrel and my cats. I suspect they both find it fun.

Some prefer manicured yards and make sure the bunnies and the squirrels stay away. I respect that if the manicured yard reflects their personality and values. There is room for both the manicured and the throw it together yard.

There is a fine line though while I am in weed mode. If it isn’t hurting anyone or breaking any laws while I am being a weed I can enjoy the feeling. Yet, if my weeds hurt my neighbors then I need to compromise. In fact we did that last year. We took down some bushes that caused too many shooters in my neighbors lawn. Our neighbors didn’t complain and were very nice about it but…it made me feel uncomfortable that my bushes were ruining their yard and causing them more work. Taking the bushes down was the right thing to do.

I am very lucky I to not live in a neighborhood with a covenant that tells me what I can or cannot do in my yard. Would that infringe on my right to be a weed? Yes it would, but I would have chose to live there and to compromise. Compromise is a hard word for some. Though I am a weed much of the time, I like to compromise with the flower as we need both to live.

Is my right as a weed more important than the right of my friend that is more flower than weed? Lately I’ve been trying to decide.

I don’t mind wearing a mask. Is it uncomfortable? Sometimes it is. I like to also think of it as a fashion statement. Some colorful masks rock. I could complain that it is violating my weed rights, but it is a given we have to wear clothes in public too. Doesn’t that violate our rights that we need to wear clothes in public or in stores? No one seems to be taking a stand on that? How is that different? Now remember that is the weed thinking, popping up and causing trouble.. I wear clothes to protect others. My skin wrinkles and rolls. Just as clothes protect you from seeing my wrinkles and my rolls, a mask protects you from seeing my jowls, my wrinkles and the puckery lined lips and possibly will keep you well.

There is a mixture of flowers and weeds in most of us. We learn to live with one another but in living with one another there has to be compassion, caring and compromise. If as a weed we don’t have the softness of a flower to balance us out we can become cruel, judgmental, unbending and destructive. Yes, I can be all of that.

The flower part of me says I need to compromise and think of my neighbor and how what I do may benefit or hurt them. The flower part of me says along with the right to be free comes the responsibility to see that others are free too and my choices might take their freedom away.

The weed part says it is my lawn and I can do what I want no matter who it harms. The weed part of me says I don’t need to worry if my neighbor has enough food, I worry only about my household. The weed part of me says I don’t have to wear a mask. As long as I’m not sick it doesn’t matter. The weed part of me says laws are for everyone else and not for me because I have the right to not follow the law. Throw that speed limit out.

Both parts of me fight all the time because I have so much selfishness inside of me, but I hope the flower in me isn’t choked out by my weeds so caring about others overrides the want or the need inside of myself to only think of how something benefits me. These past few weeks I have been surprised by the reactions of some I know both online and in person. I came to the conclusion we really don’t know who someone is until we are tested by diverse circumstances. True character sometimes is well hidden until it isn’t and it comes out in selfishness, hatred or racial divisiveness.

What is winning in your life, the flowers or the weeds or are you a perfect mix. allowing for a balance?