A YEAR THAT HAS NEVER BEEN

As this year becomes the next, My first feeling is gratitude. 

All 2024 I've stewed over politics and now it's done and will be worse next year.  For two years now we've grieved over the same wars and the misery of hostages, Gazans, Ukrainians, Syrians and more.  For decades we've fought for gun safety and yet our children are calling 911 to report shooters in their schools.  Forever, we face our own or another's chronic or unexpected illnesses. . . .  

but for a time, as this year becomes next, we put these cares aside.  We have to.  We cannot live always on high alert for suffering.  We need times to look for joy.  We need to quietly watch the Cardinal at the feeder, admire the earth and sky, and re-count our blessings.  

So we put on our party clothes and toast the New Year.  The gunshots we hear are celebratory.  The greetings are happy.  late or early, we climb into our beds to embrace each other and bid the old year goodbye.  Or if we'd rather, we ignore it all and have a lovely night off, knowing we wake to a shiny new year.

Maybe that's why at Christmas we sing, "Joy to the world."  Not just to prepare Christians for the birth of a Savior, but to remind us all that we ourselves were born to be joyous.  We have a built-in need for happiness.  Babies know this.  They wiggle and smile and reach for us.  They teach us to love them.  Just days ago Christ came as such a one, tender and mild.

Each year the greatest gifts are life and love.  Never a year goes by that we do not give and receive love.  We keep old photos of those who nurtured our own babyhoods.  We receive phone calls and texts and gifts and visits.  The odds and ends we keep because of love are scattered about. On holidays I get out a three-tiered serving plate made by my daughter.  I wear a circle pin picked out by my son.  I hunt in my closet for something vintage for my granddaughter.  

It could be that some of us lost someone this year, expected and timely or grievously not.  Either way, we mourn.  Yet each of us is here in this irresistible world of beauty and longing to carry on in their memory.  So, yes, as the earth turns, the moon wanes and the sun rises, we can look forward to more good things, more challenges to be sure, but blessings just as surely.  

Have you noticed that whatever our age we feel we've lived long?  Forty-year-olds think they are old, thirty-year-olds the same. Only at the end might we feel that we haven't had time enough to love this earth and all its bounty.  We want another season.  

So here it is for us, 2025, a year that has never been.  We are its first inhabitants.  Welcome, new year.  We are grateful to meet you.  

                Nina Naomi

 

 

 

IT'S ALL A SURPRISE

4th of July Sunset

Every new month is a surprise.  The 4th of July came and went, and we had one of our best ever.  We were at the beach with grandsons.  Fishing and softshell crabs and watermelon and a week of hot nights and hotter days.  That's North Carolina.  A grandson is spending the summer with us.  I asked him how he saw retirement.  "Seems like a lot of admin to me," he joked.  I admit, it does have its share.  Home repairs, scheduling, here and there a health issue.  But it's also a wonderful time of life. 

A teacher friend was debating whether she should retire.  How much would your pension pay, I asked.  Take that number and subtract it from your monthly take-home pay.  That's the amount you're working for.  She retired at the end of the school year and took a celebratory trip to Iceland with their daughter and family.  

When I was hesitating about retiring from a litigation law practice, I went to a workshop.  There I learned to reframe the issue.  Not how long do I want to work, but how long of a healthy retirement do I want.  Reframing made all the difference.  It took me three more years to windup my practice.

Every stage of life has its challenges, and every stage has its blessings.  As we grow older, we worry about those we love who have so much yet to face.  We've lost our naivete.  When my husband and I were newlyweds, we had a saying:  "Everything works out right for us."  We can't even laugh about that now, it's so untrue.  Everything doesn't work out right for anyone.  We were just so happily in love that we simply leaped to this conclusion.  Can anyone reading this imagine thinking that now?  

Our son had Tourette's syndrome, an involuntary movement disorder.  Our niece's boy has it too.  I know his parents' fears.  They were mine. This disorder causes pain and suffering.  But the wonder and beauty and bravery of the boy and his miraculous stamina and heart will surmount the disorder.  Our son became a district attorney.  While we can't predict our heartbreaks, neither do we foresee our triumphs. 

So what happens when your summers add up?  What does it mean to be old?  (I just read that "elderly" refers to those over 55!)  Social scientists tend to define the elderly by their disabilities, but young or old, people don't define themselves that way.  We self-identify by our strengths.  As we age, we recognize patterns.  We have lived long enough to see the effects of our decisions.  It's not that wisdom necessarily increases, but it does become more central and compensates for other losses.   

When we're young we may be raising children or nurturing friendships, making a home and saving money, all aimed toward future payoffs.  We make sacrifices for our children's futures and our own--a college or pension fund. . . . When we're older we may take more satisfaction in the moment-at-hand.  

My parents' retirement prepared me for the surprise of aging.  While I didn't envy them, I could see that they didn't envy me either.  They were harvesting the growth that their productive years had seeded.   

Experts say that levels of gratitude, forgiveness, calm and appreciation all rise through midlife to a peak in old age.  I must say, this 4th of July I felt that.  My gratitude for the sun and moon and waves, for the fish caught, for the games played, even for the momentary thrill of fireworks lighting the dark night, was deeper than I expected.  Has that happened to you?  An overwhelming thankfulness?  

I wonder now what surprise August will bring.  I think I'll keep my eyes sharp.  How about you? 

DEEP INTO THE DARKNESS OF WINTER

The heavens proclaim the Glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.  Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.  Psalm 19:1

Bogue Sound, NC

A girl raised in the Midwest with no ocean near.

So happy, here, to see sun on water, gently wavering.

Stars in the morning not just at night, more fluid and just as bright.

Sun rising in the east as it does, 

Laying a sparkling path on its road from narrow shore to vast horizon,

A perfect triangle at sea.

The pale moon sets further west, 

Wisp of a moon doing its own evaporating act

Still high in the sky.  

Turtle doves sit side-by-side on the wire, but one has lost its mate.

Soon chased from the pair without remorse, wings whistling.  

Some mornings the sun pushes its way through the cloudy canopy,

Some days an easy ride.

Last night I saw the very same orb drop into the sea at 5:11 to the minute,

Leaving ribbons red and gold across the span of water meeting sky, 

Deep into the darkness of winter.

How do we deserve these miracles? 

                                                       Nina Naomi

HOW HAVE YOU BEEN SHAPED?

 

So many people shape our lives.  When we ponder why we act in certain ways, what we have learned from others and who influences us, we end up being thankful.  It's a lovely way to spend some stolen minutes.  I'm thanking Bella Grace magazine for this idea.  

Here's the prompt:  Who are you a product of? In what way?  As habitual or meaningful as you like.

I dry my cast iron skillet over the burner because that's what my mother did.   My grilled cheese sandwiches are just a tad burnt because my father made them that way for me.  Grandpa Jake dug worms for fishing.  From watching him, I'm careful of each worm the spade turns up in my garden.  Because Grandma Viola loved jewelry, I have her rings to cherish.  From my mother I inherited the diary her father kept during WWI.  With a friend we traced everywhere he went during his four years in France; my interest in that history grows from the diary.  The cranberry-orange nut bread we eat at Christmas is my Aunt Ruthie's recipe; I'm named for her.  My father took us to the St. Louis Art Museum as children and I enjoy nothing more than a day at a city museum.  My mother's exuberance for life was catching.  Mr McCormick got us 8th graders to sing Faure's Requiem  and inspired an ever-after love for that piece and classical choral music. But for him I would have no idea what a 16th century madrigal or motet is; do children learn that these days?  I found the benefits of expressive writing in Ms Beyer's 9th grade creative writing course.  In college our Milton professor introduced the class to the serious Christianity of Paradise Lost.  I was baptized the semester I took that course.  And this just touches the surface. 

I bet you're thinking of who has influenced you as you read this. Why you love music or fishing or baseball.  Who taught you to knit or kick a soccer ball or repair just about anything that's broken.  Why you value education or treasure our National Parks.  Whose recipes are your favorites?  Who told you Bible stories as a child, or helped you find faith?      

Our responses to the prompt are likely much longer than any reader of a post could bear.  Once begun the writing flows.  But thinking about what we're thankful for, or as a gratitude exercise, or just riffling through the trunk of our past for the good things that have touched us . . . why not take time for that?  

                         In peace, Nina Naomi  

 

 

 

OH HAPPY DAY

I got vaccinated today.  I must share this.  My heart, my mind, my emotions are lighter.  It feels celebratory.  I want this for everyone.  Each of us.  Whatever age, whatever health, whatever country . . . .  For all of us to have the smile that I am wearing.  It doesn't change my behavior.  In 28 days we will get the second shot.  And even then we will continue to mask, to take care.  But the fear of dying imminently from Covid or spreading it or causing someone else's death is diminished.  I have never felt so lucky. 

I had already been thinking about downsizing my New Year's Resolutions/Intentions.  From Lose Weight (an intention every year since I turned 40) to Enjoying my Food in a Mindful Manner.  From exercising  X number of times per week to Going Outdoors for Part of Each Day.  From reducing phone time to Putting Down My Phone When Someone Speaks to Me.  These are all tiny, achievable goals.  They fall under the umbrella of Living in a Way that Makes Life Better.  

But to be able to follow these modest intentions without the fear of infecting myself or someone else?  Somehow I never expected to reach this stage this early in the year.  After all, 2021 is not yet a week old.  

When good things happen we have to savor them.  We have to embrace them and give them as much notice as we do their opposite.  So often we are programmed to dwell on the negative.  But not today.  Today I want to shout my gratitude for the scientists who found a vaccine in record time.  My gratitude for the health care workers who have kept us alive or attended our dying.    For the 78 year-old Joe Biden who could have stayed in retirement mourning the loss of his adult son (as I have lost mine) but instead was willing to tackle the hardest job in the world.  

Today our local vaccine administrators seemed so happy to see us.  They want people to get vaccinated.  They thanked us for coming, when it was they who deserved all the thanks. Wishing this day for each and every one of us.  In gratitude, Nina Naomi

 

 

 

TODAY, A DAY OF NOURISHMENT

Some days I wake up and think no news, just the good stuff.  Admittedly that's easier at the beach.  More good stuff here.  For most of today the sea and sky were the same steely gray.  Nothing wrong with that.  Now it's brighter and there's a horizon in view.  

So what good thing to do on a gray day with an hour or two home alone?  I wrote.  I'm taking part in a clinical study sponsored by Duke Integrative Medicine on the benefits of expressive writing in a time of crisis.   I hadn't before keyed into the idea of expressive writing as writing just for ourselves.  Wide-open, so to speak, about our feelings and emotions rather than factually writing about events, memories, objects or people.  Of course the events, memories, etc. are there, the underpinnings of our feelings.  Our feelings and emotions are about something. 

I didn't write today as part of the study; that writing is only done together, in a weekly 90-minute Zoom session with professionally designed prompts.  But like that writing, this would be read by no one but me. 

One psychologist says that writing can sometimes be better for our mental health than seeing a therapist.  Not sure about that, but I get her point.  It can be hard to be vulnerable and honest with another person, any person. Too many layers, too much background, too expensive, too exposed, possibly hurtful . . . .  But writing what no one else sees can be as honest as our minds are capable of.  A way to process experiences, stressors and thoughts that costs not one penny.  If we're writing about something that bothers us, it's out of our head and on the paper.  I suppose we could even take the paper, fold it up and put it somewhere if we wanted a symbolic action of removal. 

If we're writing our feelings of gratitude, how much more vivid they become when we search and tag our lives for the things that buoy us.  Professionals say that writing improves our immune systems as well as our minds.  I know that I immediately become calmer when I open my Prayer Journal--I remind myself of Pavlov's dogs (or my own):  stimulus/response.  My breathing slows, my body settles in the chair.  Yoga, mindfulness, exercise, prayer, writing, nature, meditation--all benefits to mind, body and spirit.  What else?

So today has been a day of nourishment.  Like the balance I wrote about a couple of days ago ("A Crazy Balanced Life, Even Now," 6/8/20).  The news will be there tomorrow.  For today, writing, a healthy lunch, walking the dog in the rain, publishing this post . . . and it's still early.  I hope all is going well for you too.                          
                                                        Nina Naomi

PS.  "If someone you love, real or imaginary, were feeling just as you are, what encouragement would you give them?"  It's an awesome prompt!  Write for 10 minutes. 

YOU COUNT

There's a writing prompt in that magazine I like, Bella Grace.  You can word search Bella Grace in this blog--everything about the magazine is rewarding. The prompt is a bit different:  "What is your favorite spot in your house and why?"  @ dakota, @sweetgirl and @ophelia all answer.  I'm interested that @dakota's favorite spot is her window seat with the lambswool throw on it where she has seen the most falling stars.  Because I have a lambswool throw I brought back from Keswick, a town in the Lake District, UK where some friends live.  I love that throw!  And falling stars . . . who doesn't love those? 

Another prompt, your favorite book and why:  I'm interested that @rainmama's favorite book is This I Know by Susannah Conway because I too have waded through grief and sometimes need to reset. Perhaps that's a book for me to read too.

Readers are invited to respond to the query, "What might the world never understand about you?" This provokes wonderful introspection, doesn't it? Many of us with a bit of thought have a secret self at our core, a characteristic that is ours alone.  Maybe it's, "I'm truly myself when I'm singing."  Or dancing.  When I'm alone or praying.  Or I'm creating, writing or you fill-in-the-blank.  Or how about this:  

I'LL NEVER FIT IN.

THAT'S ONE OF MY BEST QUALITIES.

   Terri Willingham  

Isn't that nice?  I snipped it from Bella Grace to make this collage.  

Another Bella Grace prompt encourages readers to rethink gratitude by contemplating small things.  So many good responses.  Grateful for:

the chickadees who visit my feeder

sharing silence

watching my nephew play

seeing the sun catch the mirror on my mantle

the feel of my local bookstore

the group texts I share with my friends

the first brush of morning sunlight in my bedroom

holding hands with my husband

    . . . 

Yes me too for so many of these, especially holding hands after such a long marriage.  We do that a lot. 

So what is it about Bella Grace?  What is it about inspirational quotes?  Why do they sync with mindfulness and other good things that remind us who we want to be?  I think it's a simple two-word premise:  YOU COUNT.  It's what we need to remember.  What we like counts.  Who we are counts.  We count to our friends, to our families, to our colleagues,  and even to the strangers with whom we share a simple comment while walking the dog.  We count most of all to God.  A calming, peaceful thought that I am grateful for today.  Nina Naomi

 

THE IMPERFECT CHRISTMAS

Christmas is over and the New Year is here.  It went too fast, not just this Christmas but all of them.  The ones when my grandparents were alive and got to our house in time to see me and my brother wake up to Santa.  The one when my husband and I got engaged.  The ones in London with our baby where like the gift of the Magi we each gave the other a long winter scarf.  The one where we were planning that baby's January wedding.  The ones where the grandchildren were all in cat-in-the-hat pajamas.  

Our old analog photos show a young woman in a pink velveteen sheath dress flashing her new engagement ring for the camera, a handsome equally young man by her side.  A couple of years later the analog photos show a bald but happy baby in her infant seat next to the table-sized tree in our London flat.  The best gift.  But not all Christmases have been Instagramable.   More like imperfect Christmases to be exact.  There was the year my volatile aunt threw the dinner rolls across the table at her husband.  Worse, the year my parents drove to our country parsonage separately because they were living apart that winter.  Then the year the baby, the first grandchild, had an undiagnosed ear infection and couldn't be comforted.  And the year (this very year) I finally gave away the winter lace dress left at my house from the January wedding because that marriage is over.  

This is how life is isn't it?  Our Christmases are markers, sometimes marking blessings we'll never forget--the newborn in our arms, the red bicycle under the tree, the elderly parent presiding at table, the whole family together in church.  Sometimes marking a year that for one reason or another we are thankful to have survived. Sometimes a little of both.

As we enter the New Year I'm content with how life is and if your holidays follow a similar pattern I hope that you are too.  All things considered this was a good year.  My gratitude list is long.  I took out my 2020 brand new Prayer Journal this morning to tell God about that. But I bet God already knew.  With thanksgiving, Nina Naomi

  

GRATEFUL FOR A SNOWY DAY!

I woke up to a beautiful new fallen snow.  It kept falling all day.  Still at sundown it falls.  Our power flickers but we are ready with flashlights, candles and matches.  We baked apples and roasted a chicken earlier in the day to eat hot or cold.  We have left-over beef/bison/lamb meatloaf for cold sandwiches. And chilled cranberry sauce that goes with everything. We've cozied-up in the bedroom with an aromatic cedar fir candle burning.  

We brought in Mr. Wiggles' bed so he will feel safe when the power goes out and all the devices start beeping--smoke alarms, microwave, printer . . . .  We're ready for a cold dark night. 

I have socks by the bedside, a Shetland cardigan, a robe and an old wool shawl.  We will read and write until the power goes out.  

After all-day flickering we know the routine.  The snow that has been weighing down the power lines turns to ice.  Somewhere, somewhere a line comes down and 350 homes lose power.  Then another and 350 more homes lose power.  Then another. Just like dominoes. 

We have enough wood for a fire.  

But it's the North Carolina Piedmont.  Our floods and hurricanes are worse.  Snow is temporary and most of us love it.  By day-after-tomorrow the sun will shine.  The snow, the dark, the food, the candles, the warm duvet, the wonderful men and women who work on the power lines--for all this I am grateful.  For all this I am glad.  

I am betting there is joy in your winter too!