Our pace took sudden awe.

When we came to visit last night you gave us your bed to sleep in because it is the firmest mattress in the house. I did not want to take it but you insisted, so eventually we conceded.

As I prepared for sleep I couldn't help but notice that Dad still uses the Avon brush you bought for us decades ago. It sits on the vanity counter. I cannot remember how long ago I threw mine away. It must have been right after we moved from the Dakotas. Yet there his stills lies, a small reminder of the night you came home and surprised us with those hard-bristled brushes. It immediately transports me to the green downstairs bathroom in our old house, where your three children gathered together each evening to brush our hair, clean our teeth, and prepare for bed.

You still hold many relics that comprise the background of things that were my childhood: the shallow pink glass dish with fish feet and a shell lid, the large ceramic bunny whose hollow body has always carried Q-Tips, the wicker clothes basket I used in my room.

Last night I was enjoying being reminded of that simpler life. I did not want the moment to end and so I went and stood in your closet long enough to see my poetry you've hung on its walls, the photos of your three children in frames. I noticed the miniature jewelry box atop your dresser and before I could stop myself I opened its small doors. The three wooden drawers are in tact and still house those olive-colored hoops in the first one. I found pins I have not seen in twenty years, ones you adorned on jean jumpers when you taught pre-K in Valley City.

Thank you for keeping the memorabilia, Mom. Perhaps you've known what you were doing all along, but in case you haven't, just know that these small pieces you've held on to are tangible memories that remind me that the past is still within us. That we are not too far gone from those long and happy days.

Marguerite Annie Johnson, or Maya

You wrote a book entitled "Hallelujah! The Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories with Recipes". On the cover you smile, wearing a black head scarf as you look at someone in the background or perhaps a memory in the distance.

Why did I think you were a writer-turned-cook-part-time poet? How did I not explore you long before now?

It happens this way often; someone noteworthy passes and the world collects favorite reminders to speak of what you meant to a culture, a people, and as a person. We enunciate your legacy because we know that by speaking it we won't forget too soon. That by saying your words we might be able to carry along your spirit a bit longer and hopefully, always.

But how did I reduce you by not really knowing your story? Because of your death I found a breath of life in your writings and became enamored and humbled and stunned at what you present in them - the little bit I know!

I did not know you had a son by age 16,
became a "shaker dancer in a nightclub to support him",
cooked hamburgers,
was a madam for lesbian hookers,
and unsuccessfully tried prostituting yourself.
(mashable.com)

I did not know that you took that dark time which augmented your life and refused to hide those experiences, that you entitled a work "Come Together in My Name" so that, "[a]ll those grown people, all those adults, all those parents and grandparents and teachers and preachers and rabbis and priests who lie to the children can gather together in my name and I will tell them the truth. Wherever you are, you have got to admit it and set about to make a change. That's why [you] wrote the book. It's the most painful book [you've] ever written" (teentalkingcircles.org).

You invited people to gather under your stories in your name and stare at your life so that we could know a little bit of truth in part of you. So that we could know perfection is not innate, like so many of us are led to believe.

That we can rest and know there is still a time to get up. All is not lost.

You brave woman. You invited your written words against your own reputation to care for those of us who needed to walk alongside someone, someone who knows that life is messy and confusing at times. Who knows that you can stand up and walk away from a thing. You are a person whose words have the power to help lift a soul from soot.

I hope you are dancing.

Roses

Tonight I remember the fake wood on the walls of my childhood bedroom. The off-white wrought iron bed frame stood against them in the corner. Opposite were pink walls brushed with white as though to look like roses.

How do I explain the smell of my room when the windows stayed open all night, without bringing you along to the past?

The air was never sticky or humid and the temperatures dropped low without the sun, even in the summer. Cows parading below the second-story window each morning and I would lay in bed and watch them as I awoke.

The pastures,
The grass, the dirt, and my clean sheets.
The wooden floors of a house built in 1906, stained and varnished over and over again. The grainy feel they had from a lack of sanding.

The lacy bed cover atop my pink blanket on my bed and cool, crisp sheets underneath.

Long hours into the night when I could not sleep; this is when the gold-plated light on my stand would keep me and my books company as we ventured along trails and traveled miles together.

Tonight I am here, writing these words and hoping to travel long miles backwards, to remember a time when sights and smells and touch were all that comprised life. There were no harsh feelings, there were no burdens too heavy, there were only moments to capture and hide away.

To talk about one's thoughts, feelings, or experiences with others

Carve out your story and serve me its lines. Tell me about how your father's grey hair shone in the light those summer nights when he hunched and did dishes at the kitchen sink. Tell me how your mother's hands looked when she held a small needle and sewed patches on your worn jeans,

or how your brother's gums were bright and pink when he lost those teeth.

Tell me how your childhood home smelled, how your spirits rose along with the breeze from the sea through its windows. Or how the linoleum on the bathroom floor cracked and yellowed with the years, how you saw it out of the corner of your eye that year when you turned ten and blew out birthday candles with a group of elementary-school friends.

Tell me. I want to hear. And then listen, because I want to tell.

Synthesis

Hand me that lavender, love. I want to hold its petals and bracts. I want to breathe in its delicious smell from my cupped hand and savor the moment that becomes suspended with its aroma.

Sleep sweetly, sleep soundly. Dream of lemon rinds and cloudless skies.

Do not find complaint, for this life is as the topsoil in a a farmer's hands, rich with decayed organisms and roots and life; his fingerprints become black and stained with velvet dirt that makes up the Earth's chewy crust.  This life is rich. It is messy and dark, it is teaming with rot as it hosts the existence of multitudes.

This life is like the topsoil in a farmers hands, cradled, creviced, and completely dirty.

Rest now. Your lavender grew from this life. Every good thing does.

A yearning, found nearly hopeless but not quite.

The escape is simple: create.

I distinguish myself from the rodents who run amuck in their wire cages by creating. Thoughts, words, ideas, dreams. These fluid graces that permeate the human experience by inviting the mind to escape, or rather, enrich it.

However, it seems that creativity necessitates that thing which our modern lives best thieve from us - our time. My question becomes how does one reconcile these seeming polarities? And that is where I am stuck.

Because I can think for myself as I type and scan, drive and wash and sweep. A lack of daydreaming is not the issue. The issue is that I do not find the time in order to capture these daydreams, nor that to challenge them. They just are. They just exist. So then, to what end? They just...are? I suggest that dreams, thoughts, and ideas are meant to be discussed, encouraged, or provoked. They are meant to be used as fodder for conversations, bricks to lie relationship foundations. Ideas and visions give us something to talk about with one another, whether we agree upon it or not. 

And so a person who does and does without the creating bit, without this showing of one's soul in tangible form, seems to have missed something very important about life at its very core. 

They seemed to have, in fact missed it altogether. That part that makes us distinctly human.

So let's take a secretary (or Administrative Professional, if we like that better) and put her behind a desk for 40 hours a week. Say she's ambitious, she starts a business and does that on top of her full time job. She's married, has a dog, and there are responsibilities to uphold. In order to do all of this she sleep a full eight hours every day. 

Which leaves her an average of 4 hours a day (after accommodating getting ready in morning and cooking dinner at night) with which to create. One can argue driving takes up a quarter of that, which may be fair.

But that still leaves 3, and if cut in half to accommodate errands and the like, 90 minutes. An hour and a half, on average, each day to create. Energy may be lacking but one could argue that the creative process recharges the mind. 

And so. 

A few thoughts on the advantages of an office

Today was an accomplished one. Perhaps it's that type of measure in my mind - whether I feel as though I've "done" something - that I need to stop. But until I can forcibly retract this need to feel productive I will still base the merit of my day upon how much I did.

Once I understood basic loans terms like down payment and PMI, or how significant the "flood zone" was, it doesn't seem that finding a house could be that difficult. But what I have learned is that timing is everything. And so part of my productive day included me driving by the only house in the area we like that is in our price range. Horrified at its obvious lack of curb appeal, I forced myself to drive by it several times. I slowed each time and strained my eyes to see if I was really looking at a half-brick facade behind the car port. Eventually I had to drive away and leave the beast alone because the neighbor was starting to squint her eyes too hard at me. If we're to be neighbors one day, I'd better not appear too eager too soon.

So there was that.

The rest of the day consisted of me smiling and scanning documents at my desk like any good secretary (or is it PC to say Administrative Assistant these days?) would do. The list of tedious projects grew like a plant with just the right amount of sunlight and water until I broke down and went for a walk around the block. I caught my second wind and all was well again as I sat to finish the excel spreadsheet that details contracts signed in appropriate months.

Running my wheels like a small rodent in its cage has become natural to me now. Well, I can't really say natural - perhaps the better word is routine.

And so.