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Feb
4
Big Spoons
Filed Under Blisses Me Off
PREAMBLE: In her book, One Continuous Mistake, Gail Sher says: “Revisiting the same subject day after day will force you to exhaust stale, inauthentic, spurious thought patterns and dare you to enter places of subtler, more “fringe” knowing.” Working with that thought and a craving for dropping down deeply into areas that interest me, February (the month of love and calendar home to my birthday) (my birthday being on the very day that gives February its theme of love, no less) revolves around a theme of things I love, a.k.a. things that just bliss me off.
BIG SPOONS
My father-in-law liked big spoons. It was something I didn’t know about him until hubbie and I visited him once in Florida and I stupidly gave him a “little spoon” for his cereal one morning at breakfast. He was a man of few words, our Mr. C., but when he didn’t like something, he was not bashful about letting us know it - and he did not like me setting his place with a small spoon. (Disclaimer and explanation for my social ineptitude: I never attended etiquette school. In our house, we use the standard flatware set that comes with 2 spoons, one larger than the other. We use the smaller spoon for things like cereal and the larger spoons, well we rarely use them at all except as serving pieces.) Before the barking became any louder, I quickly fetched Mr. C his big spoon, and all was well.
In fact, it was better than well, because I also fetched a bigger spoon for myself and bless goodness, I discovered that I like using a bigger spoon. It feels more comfortable, more substantial.
Mr. C was an out-and-out engineer, linear-thinking type. He believed that studying literature and philosophy and poetry and such was an out-and-out waste of time. If you believe in the left brain/right brain theory, he was definitely a left-brain dweller. But he did like his daily rituals (even if he didn’t call them that), and having a big spoon at breakfast was one of those little daily rituals.
Visiting Mr. C was quite comfortable, really. There was a definite pattern to his days, a pattern in which daily tasks as well as small acts of extravagance were conducted with great deliberation. He got up, had a glass of orange juice, read the paper, did the crossword puzzle, and only then did he get his grapefruit, cereal, glass of water, pills, and - you guessed it - a big spoon. In other words, he just sort of eased into - or snuck up on as I like to say - the day.
Not only have I grown quite comfortable with using a bigger spoon since that fateful morning meal, I’ve also come to like my little daily rituals and creature comforts. Several years ago when I was writing my thesis for graduate school, my daughter Alison gave me a candle for writing. There was something so calming, so deliberate about lighting that candle when I sat down to write. That burning candle kept all else at bay while I created. Candles are now a part of my daily existence.
Having always been an accomplishment-oriented girl, things like lighting candles seemed a frivolous waste of time and money. But I am now delighted to be a place in my life when quality trumps quantity. I’m now much more interested in doing things and surrounding myself with things that bring me enjoyment, contentment, stillness. That’s much more important than how many things I’ve managed to check off my daily to do list.
Yesterday I sat here, trying to come up with a list of 100 things I love. After the first two (family and friends), I was ready to get up and move on. But encouraged by Gail Sher’s quote, I sat here - butt to leather - and kept going. I found it really, really, really hard to think of things - friends and family excluded - that I do seriously love. My life has become that totally erased by the To Do items.
So I hung the bell my brother-and-sister-in-law gave me for Christmas. They bought it on one of their trips, and they told me I was going to like it, but they were wrong. I don’t like it . . . I adore it. There’s something about this bell that, well, rings my cockles. Perhaps it’s the patina that smacks of nature’s reclamations (one of my 2 favorite themes). Perhaps it’s the paradox of hard, heavy, metal objects coming together to make the most pleasant, delicate sound. Perhaps it’s the contrast of the rounded curves of the bell supported by severely angular arms. Perhaps it’s the surprise of the tiny-by-comparison hook that is, though you’d never know it just by looking, strong enough to hold the bell in place. The bell now hangs at the entrance to J’Underneath (my space in the scrumptuous mountains of western NC), and I will ring it to say hello to the space, to say “I am here now. Let’s begin.” When my attention wanders off, I will ring it to say “I’m back now. Let’s continue.” It will become my ritual when I go down to write and create.
Ringing the bell, lighting the candle: two “big spoons” that add meaningful deliberateness to my days.
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creativity, life, ritual, writing
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