WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PLACE? WHERE IS YOUR JOY?

   

Pine Knoll Shores, NC

    We are at the beach again, which having been born and raised in the land-locked Midwest, might be our favorite place.  How does that work for you?  Is your favorite place where you were born and raised, or someplace else?  Maybe you live in your favorite place now.  How nice is that?  In a way I do too.  My home in the woods with the hawks and geese, lizards and frogs, deer and coyote, certainly could be the best place for me to wake up to.  

    I read the most interesting article in my favorite magazine, The Simple Things, a UK publication.  In an feature called Rare and Magical Sights, the writer noted her joy in spying a lizard.  I love lizards too, and box turtles, but  especially this time of year lizards are almost as common as pairs of Cardinals, nothing rare about them.  On any deck, patio or rock lizards lie in any spot of sunshine, necks outstretched toward the warmth.  If they show up indoors, we gently catch them to relocate outside.  Blue-tailed lizards, anole lizards that change from vibrant green to brown, male broadhead skinks with orange-red heads.  We see these sunning or skittering every day as soon as the weather grows warm.  

    That so interests me about the UK:  I had no idea that lizards were rare there.  But then, our friends from Santa Barbara, California, were taken with our squirrels.  That's not a thing with us; there are far too many squirrels where we live.  Yes they're playful and fun, but they also dig up my pot plants looking for the hickory nut they just buried yesterday.  

Home

     

Still, I love it all, don't you?  Never ever would I have a complaint about living in a woods.  Trees fall, creeks flood and the morning sun in the bedroom windows is still a gift.  But here too, here at the coast.  

    The North Carolina beaches are not crowded.  Some days  in July the sand is hot as coals, but yet the water buoys and lifts, literally, with waves to ride and hollows to float in.  May through October, volunteers walk the early morning sand looking for sea turtle crawls that indicate a nest has been laid.  The nests are then marked with yellow tape to protect these endangered reptiles.  We are careful to turn off lights at dark so as not to confuse them.  Volunteers continue to keep watch over the nests in case the hatchlings need help to make their way to the water.  Most of our hatchlings are loggerheads.  

    This is what we must all do, isn't it--find joy.  Here in America there is all kinds of hell going on.  In response, my blue-collar town holds demonstrations, occupies bridges, cares for our immigrant community members, supports public television and National Public Radio.  Duke University is our biggest employer and we support free speech on campus and medical research.   And elsewhere in the world.  Maybe like me, you are grieved each day when Palestinians in Gaza are killed as they wait for their food donations to arrive.  Children there are starving, grown-ups too.  We've almost forgotten about Ukraine, which I do not want to do.  People suffering at least deserve to be seen.  The Ukrainians are fighting for all  of western civilization.  

    All of this makes finding joy in our day-to-day more important.  We know the terms lifespan and time-span, but joy-span is a concept too, the concept of living your life, however long or short, with joy.  It's not something to put on your To-Do list, but it is something to recognize and accept when it comes our way.  City parks, forest-bathing, vacations at the beach or in the mountains, staycations, reading a book or taking a trip, calling a friend, rescuing a turtle or lizard or friend-in-need or stranger-at-risk . . . .   

    It's all God-pleasing I think.  To take care of endangered loggerhead turtles, to help our fellow humans who are without homes or even country.   I'd like to be able to answer the question "What are you doing?" with, "I'm doing the best that I can." 

                                     In peace and joy, Nina Naomi

 

 

 

MORE ORDINARY DAYS PLEASE

    Just when I was thinking about glimmers and planning a swim, Tropical Storm Chantal hit North Carolina.  With no warning, the afternoon sky turned black and rain poured down in sheets, all evening, all night and all the next day.  Power went out and we could barely see the creek in our side yard turning into a river as it does when it floods.  Since we live in the woods, trees began tossing their dead branches here and there.  One live branch cracked just over our boardwalk and now (still) blocks access to the front door and, more importantly for the birds, their feeder. No tragedies at our house, just darkness, close air and mud rolling down the hill onto every surface.  Water sloshed against the patio doors and the old '70s pool overflowed its coping and turned brown from debris.  

    We sweltered for two days, which given what has happened elsewhere, is nothing to complain about.  As our well runs by an electric pump we had not a drop of water to flush or brush.  Just two hot sweaty days worrying about what was spoiling in our refrigerator.  It made me think about people with less and what it's like to summer without air-conditioning or fresh water.  

    I remember as a child in the Midwest relying on fans and sprinklers.  My mom would pull the shades against the afternoon sun and make cold suppers.  We didn't use the stove or oven for weeks on end.  We had a below-ground basement that must have been 10 degrees cooler and we would move games and chores down there with the skimpiest of clothes on.  The unforgiving concrete floor left bruises, but we played away.  My father hung a swing from the floor joists and made me a foldable walk-in playhouse with real glass windows.  He set up a plywood table on a couple of sawhorses for our Lincoln Logs and toy cars.  My mother would hose down the floor which made it slippery as well as hard, but never mind.  Anything to cool off.

    Now the power is back and yard cleanup has begun.  Collections are being taken at church for the parishioners whose houses flooded and cars floated away down the Eno River.  A lot of Durham is low-lying.  The sun is out and my outdoor plants seem happy.  Yesterday a deer came right up on the back patio not 2 feet from the glass and I couldn't figure out why; there's plenty to eat in the forest and meadow.  Just now a lizard was pumping and peeking in, but that's no problem.  Someone took advantage of the chaos and robbed a neighbor's car, she just called and told me.  They had forgotten to lock it.  But otherwise, back to normal.

    I love ordinary days, don't you?   Just days when you do what needs to be done without working in the shadow of tragedy.   That may be setting the bar low, but I think not.  In Texas the flooding killed hundreds, including girls at a riverside camp.  Everywhere someone is at death's door waiting for news.  If it's not us this time, that's a blessing to be counted.  

So this sunny afternoon with power and nothing on my schedule counts as good news and a day to be savored.   I hope you have one of these, if not today, in your near future.  A time to reminisce--as I've been doing about those sweltering St. Louis childhood summers--to read or write or play, a time for one of those glimmers I wrote about the other day.            

From me to you in peace, Nina Naomi

 

 

 

 

    

     

 

   

A VERY GOOD DAY

  

Farmers' Market Bounty

I wish everyone who reads this would tell me about their good summer day.  This week my stats show readers in Brazil, Argentina, Vietnam, the US and Ecuador.   I have no idea what a summer day in Brazil is like.  My only experience is that my niece and her mom went to Rio for a Taylor Swift concert.  Two New Jersey residents of Chinese-American-Hawaiian heritage had the time of their lives. Now my niece begins her sophomore year at NC State.  She will be only 20 minutes down the road.  How wonderful life is.  She and my North Carolina granddaughter are besties.  

    Argentina I know because one of my good friends is from there; some years ago she decided that I would be her "auntie."  I've been loving that role.  It means, she says, that I am always glad to see her.  Well, how easy is that?  I love her.  Vietnam is another story.  I lived through the Vietnam war.  My daughter's best friend, a Vietnamese refugee, was Miss Teen South Carolina.  It's a small world.  

     So if you are reading this and are from the US, where most readers are, please tell us about your summer day.  If from somewhere else, please tell us too.  My day was both ordinary and extraordinary.  Ordinary because we went to the Farmer's Market and got beautiful tomatoes for gazpacho.  Then went swimming.  Extraordinary because how good everything felt.  I've been so worried about our country.  But I've also decided that the felon at it's helm will not ruin my year.  I will do what I can, contribute, march, recruit.  But my mind remains my own.  It is free to roam and enjoy all there that makes life good.  A summer promise to myself.  

    Sending everyone good wishes.  Nina Naomi  

 

 

GLIMMER TIME

   

     I wrote about glimmers before, back in November of 2023.  But the thought came back today, when I was swimming laps.  Glimmers are those wonderful things that are the opposite of triggers.  Triggers bring up bad thoughts, glimmers bring up good thoughts. Swimming on these hot July days does that for me, floating on my back looking at the treetops and clouds, oh my, I'm thinking how good this day is.  I'm feeling both energized and calm, the best combination ever.  Another glimmer for me is a bike ride, smooth sailing on level streets at our North Carolina beach, sea level, no hills for miles.  Not all beaches are like that, but ours is.  I can coast and peddle a bit and think about how much I am enjoying a lovely warm day.  These are my go-to summer glimmers.

     The idea with glimmers is that once we recognize them, we need to cultivate them, to seek them out.  We can't avoid our triggers, our intrusive thoughts that come without our bidding.  I had one today when I saw a photo.  It took me in a spiral that I must admit, is hanging on even now.  But the glimmers--they are a wonder.  What are yours?  What always makes you feel good?  What's your therapy?  Reading, cooking, kayaking, goat yoga, snapping nature photos?  Many people's glimmers happen outdoors.  Most of mine do.  Forest bathing, a term somewhat new to me.  But lesser things--a phone call with a friend always lifts my spirits.  My collage journal the same.  Anything creative.  

    Here's my advice, not special, but sincere:  look for your glimmers.  They could be anything, anywhere.  Keep them sacred.  Do them over and again.  Be attuned to what might buoy you.  Pile them up.  And if there aren't enough, create some.  Take a pottery class, listen to music or play an instrument, check on the moon before retiring, be kind to yourself.  

    My glimmer for tonight is good food and a movie.  A movie is too sedentary to be a regular glimmer, but I think it will do for tonight; I do like film noirs.  But tomorrow another swim.  

    Wishing us all a wonderful 4th of July with a glimmer or two.  Thinking of you, Nina Naomi 

 

 

TIDBITS TO HELP US THROUGH HARD TIMES

 

Storm Clouds over Derwenter Lake, UK

SOME TIDBITS TO HELP US THROUGH HARD TIMES

"There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm."  Willa Cather, Pulitzer Prize winning American writer (1873-1947)  Cather wrote about pioneers who were often European immigrants traveling west in this new land under hardship.  We can each do our own extrapolation from this quotation.  But it speaks to me of these days when we're learning how much we love our country and our democracy as it is under threat. We've had threats before but never has our president been against us, against We the People.  Never before has the congressional majority robbed this much and this blatantly from the poor to give to the rich.  We are in a storm and learning, learning what to value, what to fight for and how to protest peacefully.  Voting rights mean more to us than ever before.  We are learning not to normalize cruelty or sane-wash irrationality, and we are learning not to give up.  We are learning in a storm.  

Trust your relationship with the natural world.  Summer heat or not, these are go-outside days, stand in the rain, sit in the shade, mow the grass and water the flowers days.  Hit some golf balls, go to the pool, putter in the garden, pick a tomato or two days.  Tall trees, deep lakes, sand dunes, rocky shores all take us out of ourselves and our problems and give us perspective.  We are learning too how much we value the planet during the storm of climate change.  With us as its stewards, the world abides.

To unite and speak up is the only choice we have now.  If hate is rising, then love must rise higher.  Love is stronger than hate, it lasts longer, carries more power and is not self-destructive.  Love has the strength of God behind it; hate does not. Instead of acting out of hate for the opposition, we can act out of love for our country, or love for the refugee, or love for creation.  We do not need to hate anyone or anything.  Think about how constricted hate makes us feel, how open love.

In my life, and maybe yours, many people are in danger, danger of having to live an experience to the end.  Friends, even young ones, spend time with their oncologists.  Couples, especially old ones, walk side-by-side in fear for the other.  There are times when one can go no further, times of divorce or death or loss or betrayal.  No forward available, only a backward trek to begin anew.  

Funny how we get do-overs every day.  You felt hate but stopped it with love. Repentance intervened, and forgiveness, mine or theirs.  You forgot to do good yesterday, but remembered today. We shared our food with someone, had guests for dinner, worked in the food pantry, donated our coins and dollars. I dreaded the nursing home but went anyway.  Daily we are forgiven, and Sunday forgiven formally.  

July is the month we celebrate our freedom and Independence.  NO KINGS the protestors said.  I worry everyday about our country.  I didn't used to.  But we are learning in this storm, loving in this storm, trusting God and nature in this storm, uniting and speaking up in this storm, surviving and not giving up in this storm.  Thanks be to God.  

Nina Naomi