Prompt: Gift. This month, gifts and gift-giving can seem inescapable. What's the most memorable gift, tangible or emotional, you received this year?
I went on a walk this morning with my camera, just for fun.
It wasn't exactly where I wanted to go, but circumstances took me out and about my neighborhood so that I could document this early morning, December 30, 2010.
It is a one time only thing ~ this gift. I took it, graciously. I am now sitting here, uploading the photos onto Flickr and thinking about the #Reverb10 prompt today.
I have made some forward, intentional motion regarding gifts in 2010. In 2011, I only want to receive (we're talking physical gifts now) things people make or find someplace else, that someone else has used. I don't want anything picked up at Target on the way. I would rather someone take a photo or write a poem about the choice to not pick up something at Target. I have come to a place in my life where gifts are more than the new stuff... the bauble, the trinket that will be in a future donation bag to goodwill or regifted or possibly in the landfill because while it may have been good intentioned, it just didn't mesh with my life.
So ~ on to the most memorable gift.
The most significant gift of 2010.
I realized it as I was walking along the streets of the Upper La Cresta neighborhood, in Bakersfield, California. My fingers were chilly, but I kept snapping what might seem to some as random photos of whatever struck my fancy as I reflected on this year, once again.
This year was mundane and wild, in a "fancy pants" way as my sister might say.
The end of the year it felt like everything was lining up for me ~ people started appearing out of the muck and mire and last year's leaves to offer me ways to give me money to do the things I love. These were growth opportunities and ways not to learn anything new, but to do more of what I am doing and what I love to do now. Right now. In a bigger, bolder, more financially abundant way.
It is like everything I have been doing for these past few years since my business got back burnered all of a sudden went from embers to blazing without me doing anything except continuing to put one foot in front of the other.
None of that would have happened if I didn't give myself the gift of time. The gift of not pushing. The gift of feeling what I needed to feel, processing what needed processing, loving myself and my children and my community with an infinite, wordless, unmistakeable love.
There were times during the period of "quiet business" that I wondered what the hell I thought I was doing.
It didn't always feel so good.
It was downright scary and sometimes hungry and sometimes angry and sometimes frustrated and sometimes it felt like I was in the center of an enormous stadium and no one else was around for miles... just me. Lying on the grass in the middle of left field. Somehow being ok with lying on the grass in the middle of left field.
In fact, that was when momentum started doing its magic.
When I didn't want to be anyplace except there, lying on the overgrown grass in the middle of left field.
I wasn't frowning anymore, I was smiling. Content. And the people started wandering in, lying down with me. Commenting on the clouds. Noticing the cool sunrises. Bringing paper and writing alongside me. Laughing loud and not being embarrassed about it. Feeding ducks and birds. Taking random photos there, along right field because even though the adventure seemed to call way outside the stadium, there was nothing wrong with right field and my gut said, "Right field is cool. Go shoot along its edges. The Call way outside the stadium is not going anywhere."
I could have written this Reverb10 post when I first woke up, but it would have been different.
It would have been fine, too, just fine, but this. Now this... feels... just right.
Emma is snoring. Hank the dog is snoring. My coffee is more than likely cold by now, and Samuel is playing with... a num chuck? This gift of time keeps giving itself to me in extraordinary ways and I am grateful.
2011 is beckoning me. I know the pace will be faster and slower. I know I will love it, no matter what comes, because if it gets too be too much or not enough or even feels like too much or not enough, I know how to lie down here in left field. Gently lower myself and look up at the sky and wait to see what messages come to me in the exact right moment.
As a matter of fact, one of my final gifts of 2010 is to offer you a space here, too.
Yes, right here, beside me.
Lower yourself on this green grass of left field. There is a perfect you space here.
Ohhh, you look so peaceful and content.
Smiles, all around.
Thank you, 2010. Thank you.
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