Your own vision

I just bought a tiny stove top espresso maker and have taken out my old milk frother. So as I sit here writing to you I am treating myself to a home made latte. I have not quite gotten the ratio of milk to coffee right yet. They are always too milky. I am wearing a silver necklace of circles that I bought from an artist in her home in Gourdes, a medieval village in Provence about ten years ago. When I touch that necklace I remember that woman, and how she went upstairs to add a few loops to it so it would fit my strong neck. I bought a necklace for my friend Denise that day too. Hand made. Silver. Pounded and shaped from the earth into adornment. Beauty and hard work. 

Our life is made of moments. My house has been very quiet these past few days. I have had a retreat of sorts. Everyone is away and doing their thing. There have been only four times in my life that I have had the house to myself for a time. Where I could really listen to the stillness. And I like it, and I miss the ones I love. And tonight they will be home and I am preparing a favourite meal. I like the thought of them arriving, surprised to find a little feast. It says to them, "You are home, you were missed."

I enjoyed these quiet days. Feeling the rhythm of the house. Living with quiet. And now I am ready again for the hum of the ballgame, someone else's bath running, a cupboard door closing, a beer can opening. The sounds of a life at home.

As I sit here writing to you today I am observing a life, my life. What I am doing, eating, wearing, feeling, thinking. I am here in this life but I do not have to be lost in it. I can feel it, notice it, see it, smell it. The last of the autumn leaves slowly falling like yellow snow in the yard, a house fly on the window buzzing, the last of the milky coffee with lipstick on the rim of the glass, the rain dripping from the roof as a car whizzes by. 

Just out my window there are hundreds of colours and shades and shapes. No two trees are alike. Nature, the wild thing it is deems that every single thing must bear only its own resemblance. We accept this. Ever leaf, every blade of grass, every pebble its own. And each of us the same, no two faces the same, no two souls alike. Our natural selves, interesting in our individuality. Like this silver necklace of circle after circle. Infinite circles. Around and around. Made by hand by a woman over a sea of waves, far away surrounded by stone walls and lavender fields. She could never make two exactly the same, each circle responding to the hammer in its own way.

We are each our own. We have our own hands to hold, to make, to love and to nurture. Each with our own vision to imagine what we want to create, our own lives to observe and mold into the tactile beauty that we surround ourselves with. And this is a gift, that each of us is our own soul in our own life. And it is worth noting, worth watching, worth paying attention to because you never know what you may find.