Tag: love

More Than a Cup of Coffee

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“When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or the life of another.” – Helen Keller

Yesterday morning I had a house guest. I could hear that she was ready to come downstairs so before I went upstairs to wake the kids, I made her a cup of coffee and left it on the counter with a note.

When I returned with the kids, she said, “I can’t believe you had time to make me a cup of coffee.”

She turned to Mr. D and said, “Your mom is a miracle worker.” I smiled because it really was not a big deal. But no one need worry that I’ll get all puffed up because Mr. D replied,

“My mom is a mommy.”

It reminded me that as we go through our day, what we do is largely interpreted by the roles we play: parent, friend, sibling, daughter/son, grandparent, neighbor, project manager, boss, boy/girl scout, whatever. Those around us expect us to perform our duties as per our roles. And when we do, it seems then we don’t stand out for all the many things we do.

But that doesn’t make our best efforts any less miraculous. Especially when we are getting it done under tough or stressful circumstances, we are touching others as we do our “jobs.” The stretch that it takes to be a little more intentional, a little more careful or put in a little more effort to do it right will change us and the people around, even if it’s not immediately visible.

We can’t control how or whether other people will see us. But as the Helen Keller quote says, when we do our best, we never know how it’ll touch others. Hopefully for the better.

And if nobody notices, perhaps they have not yet had their cup of coffee. 😊

Has anyone noticed what you have done recently? Or do you have a story about noticing someone else’s best efforts?

Our First Team

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“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. ‘Pooh!’ he whispered. ‘Yes, Piglet?’ ‘Nothing’ said Piglet taking Pooh’s paw, ‘I just wanted to be sure of you.'” – A.A. Milne

After I landed at the airport on Friday night, I received a text from my nanny as I was making my way home:

“Lessons of the week:

  1. Big sisters make the world go round
  2. You can’t out-bargain a 3-year-old
  3. Sometimes you just gotta go out in your underwear”

Quite frankly, I was impressed that she was able to get Mr. D to go out in underwear when he has more often than not opted for the full on naked this summer.

And then she expanded on the role that Miss O played during the week.

“I’m just so thankful for and impressed by [Miss O]! There were some really emotional moments with [Mr. D] and she was there for a hug whenever he needed it! She helped me find things around the house, helped me interpret some of his words, and has a true talent for knowing exactly where Bunbun [D’s beloved stuffy] is at all times.”

It made me think of my family of origin. I have an older brother who always made me laugh and cherished me. And I had an older sister that was angry that I came along and was jealous of the easy way I rolled through life.

It seems to me that siblings are the first team that we join in life. Not surprisingly, I was delighted to be on my brother’s team when we were growing up. These days we don’t talk all the time – or even all that often. But if I need to feel better about something incomprehensible, no one can match the comfort I get from my brother.

And if I want to know how to do something, I watch my big brother.

When I don’t understand how the world works, the person I listen most to is my big brother.

He’s like a huge filter of the information I take in as if his context provides me a starting point of where I need to go next.

In my business, I frequently help companies turn data into information. That is to say, there is often too many sources of content and not enough time for workers to verify them. For instance, there may be so many versions of the company background sales presentation, that a new employee may not understand which one to use when her boss tells her to start with that. So I help build systems that tell people which content is trustworthy.

I suspect our older siblings are like that – the systems that help us to know where to start. Whether we learn to trust what they say or to do the opposite of what they say, either way they are a reference point. And when they are trustworthy sources, we have an advantage of using them to help us read the world.

I don’t always listen to my brother, agree with him or even talk with him – but I am forever attuned to taking cues from him. And I suspect little D is growing up to do the same with his sister.

When Mr D was first walking, Miss O decided to train him to give her hugs on command. She’d clap her hands and then yell “hug” and he’d come running (some of the time). When I came home after being away last week, it was like that bond they’ve been building for three years was that much stronger. I’m so grateful not only for the team I have with my brother, but that my kids are building their own team.

How do you feel about your siblings?

If you want to see a video of Miss O training D to give hugs, check out my instagram @wynneleon

I’ve also written about the split in my family of origin because I’ve come to see my older sister’s suffering as one that started when we were young as a feeling of not belonging. More on that at Forgiveness or Letting Go?

The Whole Mountain

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“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yesterday, I was driving near an elementary school when I saw two school busses. My heart felt a deep pang of missing my children. Which is funny because my kids don’t even take the school bus. But I was driving in New Jersey, not in Seattle and since this is my first trip on an airplane by myself in 7 years, I guess that my heart isn’t being picky about what triggers it.

I once heard some very sage advice about what to do when we’ve grown weary around the people we love most – back up so you can see the whole mountain. And it spoke to me because often when I’ve climbed mountains, I’ve found them to be a lot of sweaty, hard work. And yet every time I see one, especially Mt. Rainier my “home” mountain, I am struck speechless, even for just a second, by my awe.

Back up and see the whole mountain to me speaks of finding the edge where our familiarity begins. And also of being able to trace the contours of the well-worn path where we often go with our dear ones. It calls me to picture in my mind the beautiful wholeness of my loved ones faces and the expressions that I most love to see on them. And when I’ve backed up far enough, I feel the pang of my ache for my beloveds deep in my body and know where they reside in me.

I’ve had three nights away from my young children. No one has spit half-eaten food in my hand or used my clothing as a napkin (and boy, wouldn’t that be weird if that had happened on business trip?). I haven’t been called in to witness grand accomplishments of using the bathroom and I’ve been able to sleep, eat and work out without interruption.

It all sounds great except I’ve had to do all that without my heart which remains at home with my beautiful children. Like climbing a mountain, my life is a lot of sweaty, hard work. But wow, I’m so glad I backed up enough to be able to see how much I love it, them and this beautiful inspiration called life!

How do you restore your love when (or if) it ever feels a little worn thin?

(featured photo is sunset from the airplane)

Monday Mourning

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“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever.” – Paulo Coehlo

The other day I needed to drop off something at the church where my dad last served as senior pastor. It’s also where his ashes are interred so I stopped by the Memorial Garden and put my hand on his stone. Even now, almost eight years after his sudden death in a bicycle accident, tears immediately sprung to my eyes as I imagined all the things I want to talk with him about and even heard his answers down in my bones.

After I’d been standing there for a couple of minutes, someone that knew my dad and knows me walked by. She simply whispered, “Beautiful picture” as she passed.

I’ve been thinking about that moment as I’ve watched the celebration of Queen Elizabeth II. Grief for someone who has done life well or is touched our lives significantly has its moments of being so beautiful. It celebrates both our relationship with them as well as what they did well in life. For me processing my grief means that I can start to distill the most important lessons I learned from those I’ve lost.

Trying to get a perspective on the huge topic of grief, I turned to Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown. She quotes the work of The Center for Complicated Grief at Columbia on their definitions of grief which include both acute grief, which marks the initial period after a loss, and integrated grief.

Integrated grief is the result of adaptation to the loss. When a person adapts to a loss grief is not over. Instead, thoughts, feelings and behaviors related to their loss are integrated in ways that allow them to remember and honor the person who died. Grief finds a place in their life.

The Center for Complicated Grief

Specific to my dad, I feel as if the longer he’s gone, the more I embody him. It’s as if I relied on him as a source of energy and wisdom for all those years he was alive and now that I don’t have him to do it in person, I’ve had to become that energy source. There are also others who I’ve grieved and in that process have learned the lessons of what not to become so it’s worked both ways.

Despite that integrating, I still leak tears when I talk to my dad. And also ache for those going through acute grief in all those rending and earth-shattering emotions.  We stand on the shoulders on those who went before us – may we remember all their lessons, good and bad, and honor them in those beautiful still moments.

The Blossom of a Distant Crush

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“There is no remedy for love but to love more.” – Henry David Thoreau

When my friend Mindy got married over 20 years ago, I remember her remarking that she felt like finding her person freed up a space in her brain for other things.

It was an interesting observation but one I hadn’t thought about in great depth until recently when out of the blue someone I had a distant crush on sent me a beautiful email. In the one gesture, distant crush blossomed into a romantic possibility.

I haven’t spent much time actively dating since I decided to have kids on my own. In these seven years, I’ve had that space in my brain, as Mindy calls it, free to focus on taking care of these kids and more or less just cruising along getting things done.

So I’m a little shocked to remember all the space that having a little romance takes up in life, of which only a small portion is actually consumed by the lovely time spent talking to him.

First, I have emotions all over the place – excitement, fear, expectancy, impatience. They cycle through my day creating waves (often of elation and joy) in what to used to be a pretty calm (mostly happy) sea.

Second, I’ve spent all sorts of time making a music playlist called “Thinking of You” and listening to it instead of the podcasts and books I used to so efficiently consume. Granted, a lot of my podcasts have been on summer break so there’s that but to match my mood, all I want to listen to is The Cure, Cold Play, Leonard Cohen and so on.

Third, I wake up in the middle of the night now with my brain racing to think about what’s next, the last conversation we had or to wonder about all sorts of things I can’t control. I think about The Hot Goddess’s latest brilliantly funny snarky pie chart about communication in midlife dating and wish I had her sense of humor about all this. Or The Goddess Attainable’s list of Zen she’s found from dating disappointments and wonder if I can find my Zen again.

All I can say is that this makes for a very rich meditation practice. Finding the space beneath all the energy and excitement where the river of life still flows and will carry me regardless of what is to come seems both harder to do these days but also more important.

I’m also discovering that it doesn’t matter how old you are, the intensity of new possibility is electrifying. I might have lost that space in my brain but I’ve opened wide a space in my heart where possibility roams free.

(Quote from Mary of the delightful Awakening Wonders blog, featured photo is mine)

Love No-Matter-What

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“Love is God’s religion.” – Rumi

A couple of days ago, Miss O and I had a mother/daughter day of rock climbing at the climbing gym. As we were buying our after-climbing lunch at the neighborhood grocery story, Miss O dropped the glass bottle of soda she was carrying and it shattered right near the check-out lines.

Trying to ease her embarrassment and horror, I told her that it was okay. She hissed back, “It is not okay. Have you ever dropped something like that?”

And I replied, “Only all the time.”

Which is a phrase I picked up from a recent Ten Percent Happier podcast with Father Gregory Boyle . In it he suggested the most expansive view of love and the power of love that I’ve ever heard. Days after listening to it — twice — I clearly am still trying to ingest the beautiful view of loving people no-matter-what that he presents. So it’s the topic of my post today for the Pointless Overthinking blog: Expansiveness.

Photos of the Week: Aug 6

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“Time wasted at the lake is time well spent.” – unknown

We were lucky to spend the last day of the PNW heat wave with friends at a lake cabin. It was definitely the right way to beat the heat!

For the kids’ birthdays, the Tumblebus, a full-sized bus that has been converted to a mini-tumbling gym, pulled up front for a fantastic party bus. It was so impressive to watch the guy parallel park the bus!

The August mornings have been a little bit darker which is delightful for my morning yoga and meditation time. The kids are great at staying in bed and not interrupting my sacred time – but the cat not so much. She brought a baby bunny in the house early in the morning (see corner of the room in the picture) and then I had to get creative about how to get it safely out of the house without waking the kids. Good news – the bunny was just fine and lived!

What were you running around doing this week?

A Question of Love

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“The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.” – Margaret Atwood

Yesterday in the car, Miss O asked me who she should marry. Off the top of my head I said, someone who is kind, honest, funny and smart and then stopped to ask what she thought. She added, “Someone who is sweet and who likes to kiss.”

I started laughing and she explained that not all boys like to kiss which I’m sure is accurate in the 7-year-old world.

But it made me think of all the times I’ve wondered who I should love and the answer started with loving myself.

And it made me think of that WHO I should love is also an acronym for HOW I should love which I found is best with conviction, patience and kindness.

It reminded me that sometimes the answer to the question isn’t who I should love but am I brave enough to try.           

Finally, I landed on what is with age becoming clearer to me is that when I tap into the Oneness of things, I find it easier to love everyone, even the people that get my goat because when I look closely there is something about them that reminds me of me.

Miss O has about 20 years until she reaches the average age of brides in this country. I hope that in that time she learns a little about love, especially self-love, before she does.

What’s your list for what to look for in a partner? And your best advice about love?

(featured photo from Pexels)

Young Love

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“The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.” – Rumi

The other day Miss O came home from playing at a neighbor’s house with a mystified expression. She told me that the 9-year-old brother had been kidding his 7-year-old brother about “playing with his girlfriend.” It appears that the younger brother had confided in his brother about a crush on Miss O and now the older brother was teasing him mercilessly.

Now I understand why that delightful boy is always smiling ear to ear every time I see him. I had just assumed he was extraordinarily happy and polite.

There are so many places to go with this story it feels target rich – the complete and utter delight of having a crush, the irrepressible urge to tell others when someone sparks your heart and the vulnerability of sharing your secret.

Just witnessing the potential energy of this little scene reminded me how powerful young love is – and I don’t mean just love among the young but the first stirrings of the heart. There are so many more questions than there are answers, the anticipation is excruciating and life is so wonderfully alive! It’s the heart begging to be let off the leash and dance, the mind trying to fill in the blanks all the while you are pretending to have it under control even as you know nothing is actually normal or controllable.

So you have to tell somebody – and this leads to the next potential topic from our story. It makes me think of the time in junior high that a friend told me she’d been making out with my best friend’s boyfriend on the side and swore me to secrecy. After I sweated it out for a couple of days, loyalty won out over secrecy and I told my best friend. And it also reminds me of my friend in my adult years that would relish in telling all the dirt she knew about other people’s indiscretions. She always had a story and it made hiking up a trail a little more interesting.

Then when my husband’s infidelities came out, I found out it was my messy life that was her fodder. I was chagrined that I had listened to those other stories. And I also learned that the vulnerability of falling in love might actually pale in comparison to the vulnerability of falling out of it.

So then we get to the third act – the brotherly teasing. In his book, The Thin Book of Trust Charles Feltman defines trust as “choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions.” It seems like siblings and these juicy secrets full of so much potential energy are often the proving ground for trust. And we don’t always get it right.

Our neighbors were leaving for an extended trip on the day after older brother revealed younger brother’s crush. Hopefully that gives the boys time to work it out. Meanwhile, Miss O doesn’t seem too changed by the news which makes me glad that the power of love is still pretty tame at age almost 7.

When We Look Closely

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“Who sees all beings in his own Self and his Self in all beings, loses all fear.” – The Isa Upanishad

The other day my son was nose to nose with our cat then turned to me and said, “I see me in kitty’s eyes.“

It reminded me of a story from the Talmud that I read in Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening:

A Rabbi asks his student, “How do you know the first moment of dawn has arrived? After a great silence, one pipes up, “When you can tell the difference between a sheep and a dog.” The Rabbi shakes his head no. Another offers, “When you can tell the difference between a fig tree and an olive tree.” Again the Rabbi shakes his head no. There are no other answers. The Rabbi circles their silence and walks between them, “You know the first moment of dawn has arrived when you look into the eyes of another human being and see yourself.”

The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo

I was talking with a friend the other day about Monsters, Inc. which is my son’s favorite movie these days. She asked the question, “Wouldn’t it be great if we as humans figured out how to harness laughter & love instead of screams & fear?”  

To me, it feels with almost 8 billion people on the planet like an almost overwhelming task for the dawn to break so that we can all see we are all different yet we share the same aches and pains of life. But then I breathe and remember, it happens one person at a time. It happens when I remember to be open and take the time to look into someone else’s eyes and gather the power of laughter and love.

And maybe when we exercise gentleness and closeness, it happens too between species like with my son and the cat. That is hopeful too.