Thunder In the Snow ~ Welcome 2022

Back in the blogging day, I'd fall into an antique house of menagerie, put an upside down hat over my face and call it a day - silliness and revelation all in one adventure. Now it's masks and Omicron and vaccine status checks and Booster debates before even thinking about roaming about unsupervised - which even on a good day is  perilous for me. But oh.so.much.fun.

I used to take my camera out-and-about writing "news pieces" in laundromats, interviewing unsuspecting suspects witnesses and covering the storm of the century in red hats and boots. I don't know how CBS has managed without me since the pandemic began.
Since it's supposed to get cold next week and I heard thunder today while I was out on my walk (in 70 degree weather!) I'm going to assume that snow will follow exactly ten days after the sound of thunder in winter. That's the old wives tale, anyway....usually on point. Better find my boots and wash my red hat, just in case. 
I think I may have a fever.It's the blogging bug. I've been bitten. And smitten. Again!I've suddenly acquired a taste for wordiness and wailing inside a blogger box of blankness. I've missed the mojo moving through the intrawebs. And the sexy sound of alliteration. Have you noticed? 
Lockdown was otherworldly and weird, like I'd been thrown back in time for a full two years of do-overs - make that three-overs. Four? The planet jolted to a screeching halt.  The Universe said "Start here, Mimi. Start all over. Again. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. Start here." And so I did. The do-overs I did were doozies. It was a doozy of a dance. On so.many.levels.you.have.no.idea. And then I got to use the word doozy in a blog post just as my dizzy spell ended at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve.

However, I'm heartened by the feeling I had about three minutes past the vertigo on January 1, 2022. Just as I heard and saw folks kissing and laughing and trying not to fall down happy-struck on the dance floor, as I waved bye-bye to 2021 with nothing but a passing ultra-confusing glance, I felt something more profound...a gigantic earth-shattering sigh of relief
Like thunder before snow
 The pandemic years created a population of people who became a menagerie. Weren't we just that? The dictionary explains the word Menagerie as: A collection of wild animals kept in captivity for exhibition; a strange or diverse collection of people or things. I don't know about you, but some of my longest days were wild and strange!
Dr. Sanjay Gupta (my secret crush) is declaring new variants are clinging to the old variants which are stuck-like-glue to the original strains who have the NERVE to bypass any and all antibodies despite the dreaded vaccinations we've endured ad nauseam to be the next challenge we face in this crazy battle. Aren't you glad I'm NOT a medical doctor after that layman's explanation??? But 'til March, maybe???  Say it ain't so! Since I am in cyber-love with the good doctor (those eyes...) I'll take his word for it that there may be trouble ahead, but more flu-like than the end-of-the-world news we're used to hearing.
 For two years we've lived in an invisible cage fighting an unseen enemy all around us, in us, over us, under us, through us.  Aren't you weary of doomsday? And yet, if you are reading this you can say that you lived through the apocalypse. Thus far. I'll take that as a good sign for 2022.  

"Dampteurin in "Kreutzbergs Menagerie" public domain
aka Bloggingham Palace

After all, the issue lies with the virus's ability to change and morph into some menacing unpredictable behavior at the drop of a sneeze. 
That sounds a lot like me.
It's who I am.It's what I do.
I can adapt. And so can you. If it brings the beautiful snow, I'm ready for the thunder. 
ACHOO!
Images: Mimi Lenox, Pixabay, Public Domain
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Pre-Pandemic Plot Twists

Before the pandemic I did some crazy mirror shopping (no, my legs are not shaped like that......much) and took a lot of pictures of myself taking pictures of myself. All true bloggers know this affliction. I wish I had paid more attention to what the outdoor crystal ball was trying to tell me. It was just before I landed in my own personal mini-pandemic-before-the-pandemic (vile, it was, so vile) and then the whole planet got sick. You've heard of mini strokes? I had a mini-pandemic-before-the-pandemic. Global virus? Pffffft! Please. I dealt with a whole slew of severely malfunctioning people before the first cough coughed. I called it The Plague of Severely Malfunctioning People. It's the underlying cause for all the rest of the plagues in the Holy Bible and on planet Earth as we speak.  People! 

Did I mention people? (not any of you, mind you) Just people. It gave me PPSS (Pre-Pandemic-Stress-Syndrome) and THEN I came down with PPSD (Post-Pandemic-Stress-Disorder) for which there is no cure!  Why? Because people. 

I'm so tired of people. Aren't you tired of people? 

 Still...... I could have used a warning: "Hey Lady! Your reality is about to be distorted!" 

And it was.

 In so many ways.  You can relate, yes?

But adversity makes for good plot-building and great midnight reading. My writing is beginning to gush out of me like a well in the middle of the Sahara AND in the middle of the night. A whole new chapter (maybe a whole new series!) has been practically writing itself in Bloggingham Tales. 

Coming to a bookstore near you...

If you need me, I'll just be here untwisting my legs (no, I haven't had the Covid vaccination yet....that's next week....my legs are fine!...sort of...stop looking, will ya?) If all goes well at the neurologist - who just wants to look at my pencil brain for a minute or two and ask me a few nosy nerdy questions like 'what day is it' and why are you up at 2am writing a blog post? and tap on my temple to see if anybody's home - we'll get that nasty little jab and be done with it. I know. I know... Some of you are hoping it will change my personality back to whatever-NORMAL-is. Pfffftttt!!! A wise man once said to me, "Who wants normal?"  I bought chicken soup and a new box of Tylenol today just for the lobotomy-inducing-vaccine occasion. You're all invited to the after party. Fun times, no? 

Call for a good whine

I'd better write all this turmoil down. Pre and post. 

She's going to want to know why my legs are twisted. 

It's a long story.

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It's Been a Minute

Hello again from the blog that took a pause. 

Writing has been personal for me since the pandemic began last year. It's been a bit like the ancient days of unlocking the mystical teenage diary and scribbling in screams instead of peace, love, and blue jeans. 

Words come in spurts and fits. No cohesion or unity. 

And then I lock it back down again with my little gold key.

But perhaps that is perfection in a pandemic world.

The ride has been jolting, hasn't it? Instead of a roller-coaster it's been more like sudden stops and emergency braking for deaths and miracles all in the span of a day - except the day never ends.

 Emotional whiplash. Physical inertia.

 Soul-searching salvation.

Yes, that too.

I won't say that I now see that light at the end of the tunnel - it's such a tired phrase. 

The Light has always been there. We tend to forget that the light made its way through the darkness to the end before we even entered the tunnel. We're not supposed to reach for and steal its strength: we're supposed to find our own along the way. I see remaining slivers of illumination cascading from crevices in the tunnel wall. That is what I reach for. They stop me in my tracks - reminding me that the end game is never the peace we seek at the conclusion of our journey. It's all the places and spaces we've seen on the road that matter as much. 

It's how much light of our own we left in the tunnel. 

How much peace we leave for others determines how much peace we find.

That's why the Light at the end is so brilliant.

I hope you and your loved ones are doing well. 

Let me hear from you. I want to know how you're doing. 

Much love from Bloggingham

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Dona Nobis Pacem ~ The Fedora in the Window

Welcome to the 15th year of BlogBlast For Peace aka Dona nobis pacem in the Blogosphere. 

Our theme this year is Peace in the Time of Quarantine. Your words are powerful and never more important than they are in this global moment. Please sign the Mr. Linky at the end of this post so that others may visit you and see the beautiful peace globes. Remember to tag me on Facebook or wherever you are on social media. Thank you for being part of this community of peace bloggers. May we lift and encourage in our quest for peace in the world - even in the middle of a pandemic.

Our motto has always been: If words are powerful...then this matters.

Dona nobis pacem ~ Grant us peace

The Fedora in the Window

In a small and sterile room that looked out onto a concrete rooftop, my body knew sickness, fever and pain. The year was 1978. I'd been in the hospital a couple of days when I watched a medical team of nurses descend upon my ginger-ale world with the precision of Ninja warriors; stripping bedsheets, unplugging oxygen machines, pulling curtains with lightning speed around the bed of my roommate - an international traveler who'd brought some mysterious illness from a faraway land to MY hospital room. No one could figure out what was wrong with her. Before I knew it, in a whoosh of sterile gowns and nauseating sanitizing sprays from ceiling to floor, her exotic germs were swiftly escorted out - bed and all - to leave me alone in petrified peace.  Hmmmphh! I thought. That was a close one. The kind sickly lady from a desert-rich continent was gone and I was left with a group of worried mumbling people still mulling about like a tactical team of strategic warriors. 

"Why are you running? Why is everyone in such a hurry? And whyyyy are you wearing masks?"  I asked. Strange whispers and strange looks. 

"It's the fever," I heard them say. "She's talking out of her head."

 "Ohhhhh. You must have found out what disease she has...and you don't want me to catch it, right?" 

"Actually, we're not protecting you from her. We're protecting her from YOU."

Then the anemic hysteria started

What??!! What is wrong with me??! 

"You have no hemoglobin to speak of." 

"Seriously? I've lost my hemoglobin?" 

Only I could lose a hemoglobin.  I've lost nails and cars and husbands and shoes, but never in my experienced age of twenty-one years had I lost a hemoglobin. 

Yet, there I was in

I.S.O.L.A.T.I.O.N

with a life-threatening case of viral enteritis

(aka a really bad case of the flu with complications)

facing transfusions, IVs and cranky people who were tired of cleaning the dust off the dust off the dust to keep me alive.

For nine days I had no visitors and a lot of green jello. Quarantined with no one to talk to. Shut off from the rest of humanity wondering if I've ever again see the light of day.  Oh, the drama! Who can rest with crossbones and skulls on the door? No one to hold my hand. No familiar face. Only masked nurses in sterile gowns right down to their covered shoes and gloves that smelled like inexpensive rubber. Uncertainty. Loneliness. 

To know that I was a contagious risk to everyone else and they were a risk to me, made me feel like an outcast. It was the worst kind of alone I'd ever known. Just when I thought it was safe to jump out the window and steal away home, I noticed something moving in the high horizontal window at the top of the hallway door. 

It was the hat that gave him away.

 

He wore it with such precision.

 I was familiar with the tip and the swagger, you see....the way it dipped and bobbed in conversation, dancing in a silent movie script outside my door. Why is it, when you're sick, everyone "discusses" you without your permission? It wasn't long before he'd developed a system to get my attention through the high glass. I could turn my head a certain angle and see his worried face staring at me. He wore a gray hat, sterile gloves, and a whitish-gray surgical mask. Standing and standing and standing, loving me with his eyes, only to stand longer. When I fell asleep he was still there when I woke up, winking and waving, darting eyelashes back and forth behind the mask and readjusting the familiar hat to steal a glimpse of the ninety-pound girl he guarded so closely.

 "How long has he been there?" I asked.

"Every day this week," said my saviors in white. 

"He won't let us in until we tell him how you are."

No one could hold sway over that hat, I thought, you might as well give up the ghost. It was the same hat he wore out and about in the town where we lived. The same hat he removed every day precisely four steps inside the house when he came home for chicken and biscuit gravy lunches.

The same hat he let me wear when I sat on his lap

Oh, it wasn't the wearing of the hat that caused such a stir

It was the removing. 

It always began the same way, "Dear Gracious Heavenly Father..." That hat heard more unspoken petitions over the top of it than it had a mind to tell you. But I remember...and to this day I can feel the hush in the room when he said those words. Four steps to the kitchen. Four words to Heaven. It didn't matter what came after, those four words opened portals. Pine-railed altars, kitchen tables, or hospital hallways - it mattered not. His voice was low and reverent, but the presence of God was instantaneous. I knew what wars he waged out in the hallway of freedom. They had no idea who they were dealing with.

Papa could only get as close to me as the hallway, 

but that Presence came all the way in.

And that's how I knew that I knew that I knew that I knew

that the only reason he would wear his gentleman's hat inside a building to the quarantine ward

was just so he could remove it

It was his greatest weapon. 

And that is why, in this time of corona, when worlds are fragile and time yearns to be redeemed, that we are going to have to call on our better angels to remember us to peace. Until we can hold our loved ones and touch their faces without cloths and barriers, we're going to have to conjure up a memory, an emotion, a touch.

And maybe a hat....

One night not long ago, as I was quietly finishing up a nightly ritual with my grandson (four drops of lavender oil behind both ears) he happily and sleepily whispered,

"Say the words." 

"You need more lavender?"

"No. Say the words."

"The words?"

"Yeah. Say the words, Mimi."

I never realized he was listening to the words. 

Blessings and prayers for a good night's peaceful sleep deliberately wielded with precision. And he smiled himself to sleep.

It is my greatest weapon.

Papa taught me well. If you believe that objects are alive with molecular energy, 

then toss Papa's hat in the ring.  

It was brimming with memory.

The girl eventually healed and found herself walking in a quarantine world some forty-two years later, with all of you. How are we sane in this world of no touch?

 I submit that what lies within us is much more tangible than what we can actually see and touch.  When I remember the fedora and the four thundering whispered words (Dear Gracious Heavenly Father) I feel my grandfather's touch, swiftly moving through time and space, held in a memory of a room with no view, heard in the footsteps of one-two-three-four and seen in the graceful donning of felt.  

Because I walked in that presence under Papa's tweed jacket in the space of our lives, I can still feel safe under the crook of his arm. He only needed four words to reach a place so real its essence travels eons through my memory from quarantine to quarantine.  It was the presence, you see, the presence. A place where no separation exists. A place where love can wield peace through barricaded windows.

 He taught me how to find it by his example, so that when he couldn't be with me, I could find it myself. 

That is how we teach our children to live in a pandemic.

 It may be our first, but it won't be their last. 

 Because I remember so vividly the feel and the faithfulness of felt,

I am not alone.  I want my grandson to remember the smell of lavender all his life.

I want him to remember the words.

 How do you love people through a pandemic when you can't touch them?

You stand at the door.

Don't worry. Love will walk right in.

Four steps

Four words

Four drops

Feel free to continue to post the peace into the coming week. There's an election I heard of that's grabbed our attention.  We will keep sending out that powerful vibe. 

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The Doll Box

It is tradition to re-post The Doll Box during peace week. 

Some kind of magic comes over Bloggingham this time of year. We need to remember...

The Doll Box

“Put them in the pot, Mimi, just that way.”
I planted the last black-eyed Susan in the clay pot on the deck, richly purple and staring at me with an eye in the center of royalty's colored fall beauty.I dug and rearranged and poured in fertilizer. Watered. Played in the dirt."Plant one more in the pot, Mimi. She'd like it that way.""They remind me of her," I said out loud. "The dark ones she loved best. The black-eyed ones I don't care for, but I plant them anyway because she loved them so. I think they look disheveled and untidy - if a flower can be that way - and as she could be in the morning times. Her hair a mess and a cigarette over coffee, frying bacon at 5am so you'd have a great start to your day, wrinkled robe and a smelly kitchen. One bright spot of colorful charm – like my black eyed susan - was you, Papa."I stopped planting.I looked up.
My Papa stood looming over me with that jovial smile of his, a burst of sunlight behind his balding head and a brightly gleaming twinkle in the midst of the smile I adored. I was still unbalanced with a trowel in one hand and a pile of dirt in the other which prevented me from jumping immediately into his arms, but it didn't seem to matter; a warm wind blew straight through the curl hanging down the front of my right shoulder and moved it behind me to rest on the back of my sweater. I was sure of it. My Papa was always telling me to get my hair out of my face. No surprise to me now.
“I've been watching you, Mimi."I laughed.
"Well you know she had to have things just right. Two purple here, one pink there, large petaled, small-petaled and a very straight row or you had to start all over."He laughed."I remember."

I fixed my eyes upon the face of the man who held the key to my heart ever since the day I took my first breath. I put the trowel down, the dirt fell from my fingers and I found myself sitting in the fall sunlight, listening to leaves drop playfully from the trees that surrounded me. I watched them fall almost on command at his huge overgrown feet that were firmly planted in front of me. Steel-toed shoes, huge shoes, painful shoes, important shoes.
It would take him forty-five minutes in the mornings before work to lace them up. Rheumatoid arthritis claimed his quality of life, pain a constant companion, everyday tasks a monumental chore - and yet he rarely missed work (thirty-three years in a furniture plant) and most days he tilled the garden out back in the evenings. For today, I was content to sit at his feet and plant flowers. He was there to give me a warm breezy hug. Of course, I knew he wasn't really there.
Was he?
Resigned to never again help him unlace the knotted shoestrings that strangled too tightly across his tender feet, I turned away to wipe a tear.I miss him still."I've been watching you - you and the peace globes" he said.I smiled and stood up. He was right.Pansies could wait.

"I know, Papa. I've known for some time. You always give me courage when I need it, inspiration when I've lost it, and the biggest laughs....I get the most joy from your far-flung sense of humor. It is with me still." He roared a belly laugh I thought I'd never hear again this side of Heaven. It nearly rocked me off balance, causing me to drop the flat of pansies on the deck, so deep it was, so rich. So Papa.
"I need to ask you! Papa! I have so much to ask you. I don't know what to do about.....Will you stay?"
"Mimi," he said with that tsk tsk expression, "I need to ask you a question."
I sat back down, wondering somehow if I'd done something wrong. Had I gotten it all wrong? Does he want to talk about the marbles? Yes, that must be it. The marbles. He wants to tell me how he made them. He'll tell me and I'll tell my readers and they'll tell people and he'll explain it all.
I waited.His eyes to me looked young, as young as he must have been the day he married my pansy-stricken grandmother. They were in the prime of their lives and so in love, both prepared to begin a new life. And now, they were both gone. I had her pansy pots and her azalea bush and her quirkiness. He had memories not to be shared with a granddaughter but memories I saw playing behind the youthful grin. I did not let on. But I knew there were stories he must - he surely must - somewhere - somehow - still share with her."Ask, Papa. I'll tell you anything you want to know,” digging a new opening in the dirt for one more yellow pansy.
"Why? Why, Mimi?..........why do you need so many?"
"Because she said if you planted enough of them really close together it would make the bouquet brighter and....."

"No, Mimi. Why do you need so many peace globes?"
I stopped digging, puzzled.
"I don't need them, Papa, they just keep coming. Through my mail and in the back way. In the middle of the night. In the morning. In the evenings. All colors, all creeds, all walks of life. All species, all reasons, some frivolously made, some seriously woven and others with a single signature. Those I like, too."He sighed.
Had I disappointed him? Was that the wrong answer? What does he want me to say?
If there's one thing about my Papa that was always the best thing - it was his deliberate ability to cut through my facade and get to the truth -usually without a word, never with a scold, and any "serious conversation" he made with me always came on the palpable presence of one who loved me so unconditionally I could never have doubted his intent for my good or his wish for my clear understanding. Laden with well-worn common sense wisdom, I soaked it up often, playing carefully at his painfully laced shoes which criss-crossed in front on me in the living room floor at the bottom of the old leather recliner he loved.And today, I felt much like that seven-year-old.
Papa had one more story to tell.
"Do you remember the dolls, Mimi? The 100 Dolls?"
"Oh yes, Papa. I still have them. I keep them in the box for safekeeping. They are in perfect condition though the box is yellowed now and torn on the edge. I still see your address, your name, the paid postage stamp and the tape."
He suddenly got a serious look. "I remember the day you asked me for them. We were thumbing through a catalog and you squealed with delight. "One hundred dolls!! How could 100 dolls come in one box?" you asked.
“I remember,” I said. "They costs one dollar and we had to send away for them all the way to New Jersey and add our postage fee. I was so excited and couldn't wait to get them in the mail. I think I was seven? Yes, just about that age."
"Open them, Mimi. They hold a secret. Open the box."
I'm writing this story at my usual perch at the table but of course, in my mind's eye I am there, on the porch with my Papa and we are planting pansies and the sun is hot and the leaves are falling and I don't want to leave. We are having such a lovely day. All is right and he has chosen to visit me now. I don't want to break the spell. I don't want to open the box.....but it is there. It is there in front of me, on the table.I picked it up, put my reading glasses on, trying to make out the fine print. I reach for a magnifying glass to help but for some reason, I put it down. I couldn't. I couldn't look. I just couldn't.
And when have you ever been able to disobey him? Never. And when have you ever disappointed him? Sometimes. And will you do that today? No.I picked it up again.
Bulk Rate. US Postage Paid. Newark, N.J. Permit No.4396.100 Dolls Dept R285 Market StreetNewark, N.J

What's so special about this old box of dolls? They're plastic and probably a few are missing. Pink. Flimsy. Tiny little things. Not at all like I.....
"Right," said Papa, " you were disappointed. You were disappointed when they arrived a few weeks later. I could see it in your face. I never forgot how cute it was when you said, "NOW I know how they got so many dolls in one box. They don't look like the picture in the magazine at all. They are very small and I think I might even break them." "So you sat at the kitchen table night after night and lined them up. Trying to figure out which was a cook and which was a nurse and which was a girl and which was a boy. I told you that they all have a face and they all have a voice, even if they are on the small side. You made up stories to go with them and then, once you'd brought them to life, there was a sadness about the way you stored them away. Back in the box. Back in the box. Always back in the box."He shook his head.
This was not going to be easy. What does he want me to see? There won't be an obvious blue world globe-like marble sitting there this time, we're talking about prissy dolls for a prissy girl who turned into a prissy woman who has no idea why she's crying at her keyboard in the middle of this unfinished story.Until......
I decided to open the box.

And there it was. Something I'd forgotten about. On top of my dolls in the lower right corner was a matchbox size toy. He'd sent away for that too. It came with my dolls. "Tricky Dogs" They were magnets. One white dog. One black dog. When you start to play with them, they always gravitate toward each other. After forty years the magnet is still strong. I turned them over in my hands I read the back of the box.
Directions: Place one Tricky Dog on a surface (polished wood or glass) Push the other Tricky Dog up to it from behind, or sweep the second Tricky Dog in a half circle around the first one. Watch them twirl!

My tabletop is made of glass. I took the black one and put him up front, made a sneak attack by the white one and voila! the black dog began to spin in a circle - in an energetic frenzy - and aligned itself with the other one smashing into him, wagging their magnetic tails and gravitating together: smooching, the way only magnets can. Most of the time I played with the dolls, but Papa......he would rather I lay aside the Barbie doll brain and chase my dream around the glass top. He was like that. Always dropping life lessons in my lap, at inopportune times like today, when I'd rather be planting pansies.
I laughed. I'd forgotten the hours of entertainment we'd had trying to make the dogs do something else. I tried to separate them so many times - so like me to want to even argue with electrons and atoms - but they always ended up smacking into each other no matter what I did and the twirling little dance always ended with a dog collision. Inevitable. Worked every time. Without fail.The globes, Papa. They all spin their own way and yet they eventually make their way towards one another spinning together and with one purpose. Is that right?
Now my grownup mind understands such things. I know there really is no "trick" - I know they're just heavily plastered metal toys with magnet skates on the bottom - but I'm not a grownup today. I'm a seven year old on the floor with my Papa and we are playing from the box he mail ordered for me in the 1960's. And I am laughing. The dogs still make me laugh.
I sighed. This observation is just too obvious. Magnets. Globes. Spinning earth balls. Earth Science. I get it. I get it. I turned to him and said, “I know all about this little analogy. I went to college and got a degree since you've been gone ya know. And anyway, I need to finish planting these pansies and get them all in a straight line the way she would....the way she would.....Papa?”
Papa?
He was gone.
And I was left with a tabletop full of little pink dolls piled on top of each other, delighted to be free of the box, crisscrossing on top of one another and laid crosswise in the jumbled life of another doll, too many for a seven year old to count, too tiny for a middle aged woman to see in great detail and yet.....somehow I knew they'd been waiting for just this hour to make their second debut into my life. Pink. Plastic. Fragile. Soft spoken. And yet....when I put them all together they make an enormous pile.
Like my globes.
“Why? Mimi why? Why do you need so many?”
I never answered his question. That must be why he left. I suppose he is angry with me. I'll have to tell him another time about the blogger from Hong Kong and the man from Singapore and Idaho met Japan and tomorrow Italy promised to email Turkey....Israel and Poland and Tennessee and Michigan is helping Ireland make a globe and it doesn't matter how small their blogs may be, they all have a face and all have a voice and they just want to speak their ....oh never mind.Hmmm.....It's been forty years and I still haven't played with all those dolls. No time like the present.

So, I took them out of the box. One by one. 
A nurse, a dancer, an Indian man, two clowns, Spanish people, a ballerina, a little girl, a man speaking, a roping cowboy, a smiling cowgirl, a Buddhist monk, a Chinese man, a Mexican hat dancer, a Gypsy girl playing a tambourine, Bolero dancers, Little Bo Peep, all nationalities, all creeds, all expressions, all costumes of origin and a world of imagination at my fingertips that now played alone without the fumbling arthritic hand of the man who gave them to me so long ago.......a Peruvian girl, a small child playing ball, a colonial doll with a full skirt taking a bow (My favorite. She bowed a lot in those pre-pencil skirt days). I remembered how his hands were so large and gnarled, fumbling with the small creatures as they fell in his lap. I would laugh and we would start the dance again. The Buddha man would twirl with the Peruvian woman while the little boy with the ball - perhaps it was a jack-in-the-box - sat quietly in the middle of it all. They all got along in my peaceful box universe. The dolls in my box lived in one world, dancing and spinning around. "I'll get that for you, Papa,” I said, “ the lady from Spain would like to dance with the Russian ballerina now if you don't mind........Papa!?”

I looked up from the land of pink twirling peace and saw a tear roll down his cheek and land on his steel-toed shoe. I could tell he longed for our pink doll world of friendly global dancers and I so wanted to never see him sad again. “My life went sailing by," he said, "like a thin silk pansy leaf falling on the wisp of a breeze. I blinked and it was gone. Not much older than you are today. So much left to do. So much left to say. Many more flowers to plant. Many more stars to catch. More dances to dance. My work was not done...... But you knew that, didn't you, Mimi?
I did?
“All I know, Papa, is that I wasn't there that day. I canceled our outing and you left without me. You and grandmother went to the doctor and after that day, I never saw you again. Not ever again. I was angry because you did not say goodbye. I was angry that I did not say goodbye. And I longed to tell you all my tales and all my stories. I've waited for you to tell me what to do. “
I put down the dolls and looked at his wisdom worn face, anxious for the answers that I needed. But he had a way of making me figure it out for myself. This day was no different.
“You do not need me to tell you what to do. I am proud of you and you are doing just fine. Just remember one thing: It takes all the dolls in the box to make the world a beautiful place, Mimi. . They can't hear what the other one has to say unless you introduce them to one another and set their feet to dancing. Take them out of the box.”

Just take them out of the box.That's it? That's the secret? Take them out of the box? But what about the globes? And the marbles? I jumped up to give him a hug the way I always did but he was gone.

In the bottom of the box I found a piece of yellow paper. It had my name on it, folded, in my grandmother's handwriting. I opened it. It was a speech I'd made in church for a Christmas program when I was 3 years old. He'd tucked it away in the bottom of my doll box. I smiled as I remembered that the best part of that day had been running down the church aisle and jumping into his white-sleeved arms for a hug and a kiss. If I ever doubted what my grandfather gave to me, and continues to instill in me even now, it is the simple power of love and a respect for all creatures large and small - pink and Peruvian.
And that, my friends, is all we need.

Join us Wednesday, November 4, 2020 for the 15th year of BlogBlast For Peace.

Our theme is "Peace in the Time of Quarantine

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Need Peace? Try This for Seven Days

Try one step each day for seven days. 

Your mental health will thank you!

Try this for 7 days. Rinse. Repeat

How To Remain More Peaceful In Seven Days 

1. Take 5-10 minutes each day

to stretch, do yoga, meditate, pray, or read. It's a small start which can be increased later. Small steps create lifelong habits. Lifelong habits create health and well-being.

2. Drink more water.Yes, I said H2O! Keeping yourself physically healthy is crucial when dealing with the stressful lives most of us lead.

3. Go to bed early. Adults need 7-9 hours of sleep each night. Awake refreshed and focused. You can't "make it up" later. 4. Laugh...or at least smile broadly! Find something humorous in each day. Even if it's laughing at yourself. Work and life demands are serious enough. Let out a good 'ole belly laugh now and then. It makes people wonder and it triggers those good-feeling endorphins in the brain.

5. Slow down. Walk slower. Take your time. Rushing creates frantic people. Frantic people make mistakes and live in constant stress. Chronic stress causes heart attacks. When you find yourself walking faster and faster to the next appointment or meeting, take a long deep breath and make longer strides down the hallway or across the parking lot. I promise you'll begin to feel more peaceful inside.

6. Unclutter and unplug.I am working on doing this in small chunks in my life. For instance, on the way to work in the car, don't think about work!! Just drive. Or ride the train and notice the scenery. Sit by the river on a park bench and eat lunch. Find a tree, sit under it and have a mini soul break. Or walk to work and listen to music. There are minutes here to sneak in some deep breathing and thankfulness thinking. Take a mini-soul-vacation en route and on the way home. I personally like to unplug from all noise as soon as my day ends. I don't even listen to music on the radio. Don't let thoughts of work and and what you have to do today or tomorrow create a frantic pace in your mind.

7. Practice letting go of what you cannot control.I do this by asking myself the same question each night: Did I do the best I could today? Answer the question and then let it go. This practice keeps me from carrying over resentment and worry into the next day. It forces me to throw away regrets of the day. Most of the time you can answer, "Yes! I did the best I could!" If you can’t answer that way, it’s still OK. Tomorrow is a new day, a clean slate.Give yourself an emotional pat on the back. If you fall short occasionally, briefly vow to do better the next time you're presented with the same set of circumstances and then move on. The other 99% of your day was indeed the best you could do! Now let it go.

Have a lovely week, Peace Bloggers! ~Mimi
P.S. Don’t forget to Blog4peace NOV 4. You don’t have to have a blog. You can do it on social media. Links below and at the top of this blog.  Peace. 
This series brought to you by Mimi Lenox @ blog4peace.com

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