Gratitude

Each time November rolls around, I begin to remember more strongly than other times in the year, how grateful I really am for the people whose lives have brushed mine.

When I was younger, growing up in a small beach town in San Diego, there were so many kindnesses towards me, my friends and family that you could liken it to the amount of grains of sand on that very beach.   Life was not perfect, far from it.  You see, we were a military family.  That is lots of good, right there.  A lot of life's responsibilities are taken care of; you'll never starve, have to buy healthcare and you probably won't experience your father being laid off.  But there were other situations that, while military life did not cause them, it probably added to the likelihood of them happening.  The big one in my family was alcoholism.  For both of my parents.  Ouch.

I could be really depressing and list all of the awfuls that were a part of my life while growing up in that little town.  But that would not do justice to the goodness of life itself.  You see, I believe that when it is all added up, the good will forevermore outweigh the bad.  Those scales may be tipped pretty far to the dark side of things for a long time while you are young.  But eventually, in the end they lean the other way.

I remember a couple of  AHA! moments that radically changed my life.  The first one was when my best friend and fellow Mar Vista High cheerleader, Jenny, died.  Whe was 19 years old and didn't deserve it.  Who ever does?  She was sick with leukemia, got well, and underwent a bone marrow transplant that did not work.  What I took from that - sorry, there are no words to convey the experience even now, 32 years later - is that we are here for just a couple of reasons.  First up is to help each other along our paths.  However that is expressed, from being a good parent or spouse, to reaching out to someone who is hurting with kind words, to praying for something that is too far away for you to put your hands into action, doesn't matter.  What matters is that you do the action to make the difference.  The second thing I learned from Jenny's dying is that you will not be kept out of heaven for any kind of failure, as long as you were trying to do the first thing, help others along the path.  Period.  I don't know if this makes sense, but think about it.  What stops us from truly living a unique, loving, freshly-baked-with-lots-of-butter kind of life?  Certainly, it is what was intended for us all.  The reason is, we are afraid of having a failure on our record.  "What if I'm a failure at school/business/marriage?"  "What if someone doesn't like what I think/do/create?"  I'm here to tell you, get out that shop vac and suck out the foggy smoke!  Behind all of that nonsense is life itself.  Yours. Perfect. Happy. Loved. The only one.  And with it comes Gratitude.   More later....

Love,

TM

My area of the world

Our family lives in the eastern area of San Diego.  Out here, there are lots of beautiful rolling hills and creek-fed arroyos filled with these amazing native oaks.  The oaks were the reason I decided to buy a house out here some 25 years ago.  I thought it would be like living at 6th grade camp.  It is. :)



This painting was done sometime between 1950-1969 by a woman named Harriet Hurd.  The mountain in this painting is one of several which make up the valley in which we live.  This style of painting is called "plein air".  Thats fancy French for "in the open air".   (I promise to limit my use of quotation marks from now on.  Those and exclamation points.  Eeesh.)  I could stare at it forever, wondering just what the people in the little houses are doing.  Or, in reality, I could just take a hike, knock on their doors and ask.

When driving off our property, I often think it's like being in a living plein air painting.  The light is so beautiful, the colors of the hills and the shape of the trees in all of their imperfection really make me grateful that there is a place in our world that has been left alone.  For a few years now, at least.

Before the past decade or so, our area was farmed and ranched.  In fact, there were cows at the entrance to our neighborhood and cucumbers in the open fields when we moved in.  Now, it all seems like it has been frozen in time.  Nobody farming the area, no more cows.  There are many different views on this type of situation.  I used to be in the camp of YEAH MORE OPEN SPACE! (sorry about the !, I was really feeling it, but you can thank me for not using quotation marks later).  Then the reality of living next to a designated wildlife corridor/open space/fish & game preserve set in.  Evidently there are lots of animals, plants and artifacts that need to be counted, so no one is allowed in.  For about the next 25 years, according to one state employee.  Now I just wish it was beautiful productive land again with cucumbers and cows on it.  Now that would be really cool to come home to.

In the beginning.......

God made a lot of stuff.  The light, water, air, birds, land, fish and...plants.  Even before He made man, there were lots and lots of plants.  Which brings me to the reason for this blog.  Where I live, we have an empty area just begging for something to be grown on it.  I have hesitated to plant anything, because with my domestic career in full swing, I just can't allow myself to entertain the foolhardy idea of being responsible for one. more. living. thing.  Today, I found the answer in a hardy bunch of agaves that I was fortuitously weeding while the kids were busy Marco-Poloing in the pool.  You heard it here first, I am starting a Tequila farm!