Her True Colors

After owning the movie Frozen for only a week, Chloe, the youngest of my ten grandchildren, had watched it so often, she could quote lines from the movie verbatim. For weeks before that, (even before I knew there was a movie called Frozen), she was running through the house singing “Let it Go” at the top of her lungs. What does a five-year-old know about letting go? I wondered as she breezed past me one day on her way from the kitchen to the living room.  

Which reminds me. When Chloe returned from her first day of preschool two years ago - and while we were coloring adjacent pages in her coloring book -  I decided to ask her how her day was. (Is there some kind of secret oath that students take that makes them all say "good" whenever they are asked that question by their elders, and despite the crayons, I am her elder)? 

Chloe didn't disappoint.  "Good," she said. I decided to try harder. "But what did you learn?" After holding her breath for a moment, she looked up. "I love Antarctica," she said in a way I could tell came straight from her heart. 

"You do?" I said, so surprised my voice rose an octave or two. "Why?"
"Because it has penguins - and Eskimos and lots of snow," she answered. (That, of course, was before last winter.) I marveled at her innocence.


Now, as the school year is about to end and Chloe is about to graduate from pre-school, she still loves singing "Let it Go" at the top of her lungs and I am still wondering what she could possibly know about letting go. At least I felt that way until a few moments ago when, after sitting in my room alone - giving a clown purple hair, Chloe rushed in, gave me a hug, and told me she loved me. It was then that I turned to my computer and found these words posted on my Facebook page: "Innocence is the ability to give and receive love without holding on."   

My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE

It Happened One Morning

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have been taking a course in Mindfulness.  The course, based on the teachings of Jon Kabat-Zinn, is being taught at the Bucks County Community College in Newtown, Pennsylvania.  The building we meet in is called the Orangery, which is located next door to the sixty-room Tyler mansion whose formal gardens lie between the two buildings.   

On the first day of class, one of our teachers instructed us to find an object outside as she guided us in meditation.  I had never before done a meditation with my eyes open and I doubted that this would work for me. 

It was a brisk but sunny autumn day with a breeze that was gently shaking the leaves from their trees.  A statue of a naked woman stood on the other side of the largest window in the room.  The woman was holding a jar on her shoulder through which a stream of water moved steadily. 

                                                           

There was a short footpath at the base of the statue and, at the end of the path, was a solitary leaf sitting on the ground.  At first, I expected the leaf to blow away, but it never did.

The leaf was brown and brittle, about the size of my hand and it looked like the letter “C.”  For some reason, it held my interest as the instructor lead us, her voice so low she seemed to be whispering.  I continued staring at that leaf for a full ten minutes or for however long the meditation lasted until suddenly it seemed to become a part of me – a part of my consciousness. 

Hours later, when I was no longer anywhere near that leaf, I could still see it, not only with my eyes closed but also with my eyes open.  It was an experience I had only heard about before.  The spiritual teacher, Deepak Chopra, calls it unity.  The Catholic Church calls it communion.  I call it beautiful.

Later, I realized I had experienced a feeling very similar to this one and that it had happened during a moment I write about in my memoir, Rude Awakening, when I fell into a love, which although it has swayed, dipped, spun around curves, evolved and transformed itself, has never ended.      

My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE