Non-Closet Gratis

It's Wednesday, the heart of the week.

I was driving back along an ordinary street after dropping my child off at school when I noticed this kind of light slanting through the trees:

Glade light. Fairy Light. Enchanted light.

(did you know that "enchanted" means, literally, wrapped in song? I have Molly Peacock to thank for that).

So this light. It was no small miracle.

And a door opened in my heart (that insistent closet).

Yes it did. And out poured all at once all the remembrance of all my luck so far.

Too much luck for words.

So a funny thing happened on my way back home. I was overwhelmed with gratitude.

You have to know me better to know why this is so funny.

I was grateful for the home I am rebuilding with my husband Stuart, a man not known for his patience but for his passion, a passion for which I married him and which sustains us through the mundane work of daily life.

And I was grateful for my children and his, who are healthy in their limbs and curious in their minds and just delicious to hold and (when they let us) to inhale of their playground-scampering fragrance.

And for my new chosen craft and the old ones that have led to it: for students, for teaching, for writing, for words.

And I was grateful for my family, living and not. For my sister who is the last, dearest kin left to me, the only one who remembers Saturday night tacos and Mary Tyler Moore on the little TV in the kitchen on Meadow Road.

And for my brother who--if he had to leave too soon and with so much left unfinished--at least had the peaceful, nearly oblivious death we might wish for.

I am grateful for Citizen Jane, my best friend for longer than either of us has been alive.

I am grateful for the Schamess clan, in ways too numerous to name (though I will spend my life trying), and for the friends they have brought me, including Joan, Lew, Carol, Alan, Sally, Hy, Mickey, Penina, Rose, Yechaeil (did I slaughter your name? Sorry), Robin, Nancy and M.L., an inherited friend of my heart, too shy to post on my blog, but a splendid writer of blog-worthy email messages to me that he titles simply "Monday," or "Thursday."

I am grateful for new bliends: Rarity, Shawn, Riannan, Karamale (who successfully transitioned from flesh-friend to Internet-friend), and John. I am grateful for the lovely daily faces of Ms. Heidi and Ms. Sarah; Scholiast's music on-line (I have to say, reminiscent of David Byrne's break-out period post-True Stories); and grateful I work at home so my employer doesn't know I am slacking when I read Scholiast's blog.

In other news, the strap finally fell off my purse yesterday.

categories: ayinim life miscellany religion