I Feel Hopeful

When I was younger, it never occurred to me that my life would be anything but better the next day. As much as I was a pragmatic young adult, choosing to work instead of take that Europe trip, taking the solid job in front of me rather than risk for anything else, somehow I was still the optimist. I always thought that if a bad thing happened, I was supposed to learn from it and move on, and never experience that kind of pain or disappointment again, because I had already learned that lesson. I didn't think you had to live through bad things more than once.

I did not fully prepare for things like financial stress, career disappointment (mine or my spouse's), or losing best friends. My heart could not fathom the disability, or dead babies we have met along the way, which perhaps is better because I think some things are just too big and too sad to prepare for. It's better to be hopeful, and encounter pain, than to wait and anticipate hurt. My heart is a little bit achy today, and not because of any particular tragedy in my own life, but in the lives around me. So instead of mourning their losses, or taking on their worries, I was thinking this morning about smells, and sights and sounds that make me feel hopeful, like the world is still filled with promise and good fortune and possibility. 

• stacks of lumber
• cooking stores with rows of pots and pans and little tiny dishes for specific things
• ribbon
• dawn
• finishing a book
• new lipstick
• the first rain on oil soaked streets, and the bright green of leaves that have just been washed for the first time all summer
• getting off a plane and having the weather be completely different from the weather I left.
• pens that work without shaking them or holding them at the correct angle
• when my husband sends me a recipe he thinks we should try
• IEPs that go well
• singing in the shower
• realizing that I am singing in the shower
• watching my daughter sing, and make up her own songs
• the smell of onions cooking on the stove in olive oil
• shoe polish
• painters tape

I need to take Lucy to school, but I think I may add to this list later