“Good Morning!” my friend sang out when I answered my cell phone. “Want to have a long distance cup of coffee?”

“Sure,”  I say.

“Ooooh!  Good!  I’m sitting here in a lawn chair on the sandy beach.  The Gulf air is so warm,” she beamed.  “People all around me are playing and swimming.  I’m wearing a sweatshirt, though, because I’m a little chilly.”

Hmm.  Nice.

“What a coincidence,” I say, without a hint of sarcasm.  “We are also at the beach.”  

We chit chat for a just a few minutes.

“I love you.”  
“I love you, too.”  

Then my friend returns to the sunshine and her cup of plain, weak black coffee, just how she likes it.  I turn back to our frozen beach, longing for the thick, caffeine-jacked coffee awaiting me at home.

Here at our beach, it’s minus 2 degrees with a strong north wind, which cuts through my jacket like a knife and makes my ears pulse.  My fingers hurt and my toes are numb, but someone has plowed a rink, and my five year old is learning how to ice skate…  And she is smiling.  Her too-big boots do a shuffle-shuffle-glide across the frozen lake. Powdery snow blusters away on the wind with every step.  Some years the ice is bumpy and pock-marked, but this year it is smooth as glass, reflecting the morning sun like a three-mile diamond. 

And I am rich.  

Not because I possess this three mile diamond.  
Not because someone is on a balmy vacation, and I am not.  
But because we are here, skating across the public beach on a winter morning, freezing our extremities off.  And we are together. 

Because we can say “I love you” and mean it.  

“Hey, Small One!”  I yell over the icy blasting wind.  “Want some hot chocolate?”  

I hold her hand as we make our way to shore.  

“I love you, Mom.”
“I love you, too.”

And I am rich, indeed.

I found this flower out in the shadows of the woods.   He faithfully turns up every summer.  He stays in the filtered and dark places, the forgotten and lonely places, raising his leaves like flags to the world.  

Jack in the Pulpit, they call him.  Three leaves clustered together for the Trinity.  He holds those Trinity leaves up all summer, in rain or in wind, even until the frost comes and changes the flower to a heart of bright, blood red seeds.

After that, he fades away in the snow. 

But I know he'll be back around the time that Easter returns.  
Just watch.  

He's faithful.

Sometimes, you may not feel it.  Sometimes, you might even doubt it.
But you are loved.  
If you can't see the truth in this, then perhaps you are looking in the wrong spot.

Because everywhere I look, I see how much He loves you, and how much he wants you to know that he does.   It is written in the leaves, in the flowers, in the stars.

And if today, no one else tells you this, I want to be the one to give you the message.  To deliver your beautiful valentines.  To show you how much he cares.  
You are loved.  

He's whispering his love into the wind.  He's writing it into the woods.  Can you hear it? Can you see?

Did you ever receive an unexpected gift?

This is a story of an amazing stranger, a couple of teenagers, a gift… and a dream.

A few years ago, I took some teenagers to Washington, DC.   In trying to be economical, I searched online for hotels.  The affordable hotels, of course, had terrible online reviews.  Higher crime neighborhoods, paper-thin walls, poor customer service.  The great reviews were for luxury travel, which did not exactly match our teenagers-with-backpacks plan.   What to do?  

After watching me change my mind many times, Doug made the decision for us.  
“Choose the least expensive room in the nicest hotel you can find.”  
Whatta guy.  He wanted to give these kids the best trip of their young lives.  A gift.

We were hoping for a Washington DC experience filled with education, art, government, and history.  A swimming pool and pizza were not so high on the list.  So we chose the 150 year old Willard.   Their advertising stated: 

“…this grand Washington DC historic hotel has hosted almost every U.S. president since Franklin Pierce in 1853. On August 28, 1963, the Reverend Martin Luther King finished his famous “I Have A Dream” speech while a guest at the Willard. Other notable guests have included Charles Dickens, Buffalo Bill, David Lloyd George, P.T. Barnum, Lord and Lady Napier, and countless others. Walt Whitman mentioned the hotel in his works; and Mark Twain penned two books here in the early 1900s.”

 The photos looked beautiful online, and the place was walking distance to every place we would be visiting.   Charles Dickens, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, and Mark Twain stayed here?  We were sold.

I booked one of their cheapest rooms, which was a real splurge for our budget.  But this was an important life event.  The crown jewel of high school, the beginning of the Rest of Life for these teens.  Trips like this can be inspiring!  We wanted them to think big.  The world is a big place, anything is possible.  

Dream big!

In this fog of dreaming, we drove, flew, and taxied toward our destination, backpacks in tow.  Everything took longer than planned.  We finally arrived, utterly exhausted and very hungry, just as darkness was descending on DC.  Exiting the taxi, we were instantly greeted by valets in gloves.  And opulence.  The golden lights gleamed from crystal lighting overhead, reflected on gorgeous, immaculately perfect furnishings.  

Oh, my goodness.  
We held on to our own backpacks and stepped up to the front desk.  

“Welcome to the Willard.  What brings you here tonight?” the front desk man said with a quizzical smile.  We so obviously didn’t fit in.  Politicians and lobbyists consulted around the famous lobby and Peacock Alley.  Others were dressed to the nines for a glamorous wedding reception taking place down the hall.  I felt like Cinderella, showing up at the ball in rags, toting a mop.  Late.   

“And what is it that you expect from the Willard?” the man asked.  

Without hesitation, the bold teen piped up, shoulders back.  “Nothing less than perfection.”

The man put down his pencil. He folded his hands.  “Well, the reason I ask, is because we have a problem with your room.  I see here that you reserved a double queen room, but I would like to change that.  We have one single King room that you may stay in.  The room is larger than the one you reserved, and you would need a rollaway bed.  Would that be acceptable to you?”

“That’s fine” I breathed a sigh of relief.  We had arrived so late, I was glad to have any room secured.  I was so tired I would have slept in a bunk bed.

“If you are certain that you can accept a rollaway, then here are your card keys.  Upstairs and to the right.  I hope that you will find the accommodations to your liking.  Again, welcome to the Willard.”

We giggled in the elevator, feeling ridiculous in jeans and sweatshirts, surrounded by such richness and propriety.

Our laughter stopped suddenly when we arrived at our destination.  A placard on the door in front of us read “Martin Luther King Suite”.

This was the one.

The King Room.

The room in the advertisement.  

The room where Dr. Martin Luther King wrote his “I Have a Dream” speech.

We opened the door to the most luxurious, 5-room suite that any of us had ever seen.  Marble floors, antique furniture, a magnificent view.  The rooms in which one of the world’s most inspiring speeches was written.  

I cried, of course.  

It was like walking into a piece of history, and getting to live there for a few days.  What a way to inspire some kids!

Later, room service was delivered.  Gourmet food, linens, china, crystal were rolled in on a wheeled table by a man in gloves and tuxedo.  He set it out like the footmen in Downton Abbey might have, removing silver domes from the serving dishes and quietly filling glasses.

We had reserved the humblest room in this hotel, and had instead been given the best.  

I slept in the rollaway in the round parlor.  Staring out into the moonlight, I pondered the world.  How was it that I was inside this magnificent spot of the world, overlooking the power strip of the nation?  I sat, secure in comfort and luxury on a rollaway, in the very room where a dream had taken form and started to change to world.  He was a big, important person with a big, important dream… I am a mom with teenagers.

“Why?”  I asked the front desk man later.  “Why did you give us this amazing gift?”

He smiled sincerely, and replied, “It is wonderful to give to someone who doesn’t expect or demand it.”  

There aren’t even words to describe just how important that trip was.  Think back to your teen years…  Do you remember times when people treated you with generosity?  Can you remember all the times that people were just good and wonderful and kind and respectful?  Even to total strangers?

This trip that we took changed our lives.  We saw people differently…kindly.  We looked with gratitude because we were aware of what a gift we had been given.  

I’d like to keep that perspective.  

Each day we have here is a Gift.  

We did nothing to deserve it.  
We couldn’t afford to pay for it even if we did know what to ask for.   

It is a Gift. 

The man behind the desk at the Willard showed us that humanity is kind.  
People can be kind, and good, and generous. 
People can change lives for the better, in unexpected ways.  

If he can wield that kind of power, then we can, too.

That is a powerful dream. 

I have an amazing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. story. 
It has been a super busy day, and is getting too late to tell it tonight... But this picture must go up right now, tonight.  For solidarity.
Check back soon for a surprising MLK story of human kindness and generosity.  

Do you have Happiness or do you have Joy?

They are two very different things.  
Happiness depends on external circumstances…   Is the sun shining?  
Are you feeling well?  Are you living in peace?  These things seriously affect our ability to be happy.  

Happiness doesn’t happen easily.

Because of this, the Pursuit of Elusive Happiness seems to consume our lives. We buy the right clothes, live in the right neighborhoods, choose the right friends.  We go to the best schools, work at the best careers…eat at the best restaurants.  We just want to be happy, but so often that is not possible.  Happiness is fleeting.  
Illness, tragedy, disaster strike.  
We suffer.
And there is nothing we can do about it.

But I am not a fatalist.  There is more to the story than that!

I had a happy place when I was a kid.  Off the beaten path, on a forgotten section of a neighbor’s unused farm, there was small pond, a stand of maple trees, and a field of wildflowers.  Neglected and abandoned by the whole world, I claimed it as my own.  I hiked its hills and discovered butterflies, made bark boats to sail the pond, and dreamed very big childish dreams.  I wanted to stay there forever, because that place made me happy.  But you know what happened?  

The property was not mine.   
The property was mined.  

Literally.  

One day the bulldozers moved in.  As I watched from a perch in a tree, my happy place of dreams was mowed down, churned over.  Over the next few years, the land was carved up, trucked out, and driven away.  
Perhaps you have some of that earth in your yard, as landscaping?  
Is it making you happy? 

Probably not.  

But happiness is overrated.  There is something more important. 

The thing we really can’t live without is Joy.

Joy is a gift. 
It is yours, right now, despite any crushing problems you are feeling.
Because no matter what your circumstances, no matter how little control you have over your own life, you can still receive Joy. 

You can’t buy it.
You can’t make it.
You can’t take it.
You can’t control it.

But it is given to you, every day.  

Look around you.  

When I began searching for Joy, I began to find it everywhere.  
It is not in any whirlwind of activity that I pursue.  
It’s not in the loud volcanic explosion of daily stress.
It’s not in the thunderstorms of life, which always return, screaming for attention.

I found Joy in the soft, steady breath of a sleeping child.
I find Joy in the iridescent majesty of a dragonfly wing.
I find Joy in the sparkle of morning dew on a leaf in spring. 
Joy lives in the icy crystals of snowflakes, unique and beautiful. 

The small things of this world can fill you with Joy.

The big and troublesome things don’t ever go away, but they can’t suffocate Hope 
if you find Joy in the small things. 

When I think back to the “happy place” of my childhood, I smile.

It wasn’t possessing the property that was important.  It doesn’t really matter that it disappeared.  The important thing is that is where I began to find Joy.

Joy was given to me in the rippling waves of that little pond.  It was there, in the silky milkweed seeds, floating on the breeze just for me.  Joy was in the warmth of the sunlight, dancing on the purple sweet clover along with the bees.  
It was given to me.  
A gift.

And no one can take that away.

Joy.

Want some?  Look around you.  It is here... A gift for you.

I am thankful.  
We ate.  We drank.  We laughed and talked and played games and solved world problems with our ideas.  We all scrunched up on the old couch and chatted and watched old movies, we ate each other's leftover sandwiches without caring about cooties.  Just for one weekend, no one cried, no one was sick or hungry or too tired to be kind.  We spent the holiday with each other, in peace, love and joy.  
I am thankful. 
Today, my house is a bona fide wreck, I have two sick kids, another going back off to college, no food in the house except one dried out, thrice-cooked turkey leg, a veritable mountain of laundry, and no coffee.  Though I vowed I would not shop this weekend, I will shop for coffee.  Today, the world is back to normal.  Someone even yelled "cooties" when I drank tea from the wrong cup.  So, the holiday is over.
I am thankful.

If you have read Part 1 and Part 2 of this story, then you’ll know what happens next. 

Happy Gluten Free Thanksgiving!

“NO!”  My brain wanted to shout.

It was, indeed.  A Thanksgiving Traditionalist nightmare. 

“Well, people all over the globe eat this way.”  I told myself.

“No!”

“Actually, yes.  Africa, Asia, South America, Antarctica…”

Look, if you have to hold Antarctica up as an example to defend your menu and food choices, then something is seriously wrong with your life.  And besides, those continents don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.

But truth is truth, and facts are facts.  We couldn’t go anywhere to eat anymore.  Not with Stella and her Celiac Disease.  Even if we packed her a dinner from home and went to Grandma’s, we would have to follow her like hawks to make sure she didn’t toddle over to the buffet or the cookie trays and eat something that would cause her hours of screaming and pain.

We would have to stay home and make our little family a Gluten Free Thanksgiving.  

“Well,” said my mom.  “If you’re not coming to our Thanksgiving dinner, then we are coming to yours.”  

“Really?”  I was surprised.  “You guys would do that for us?”  

Everyone?

I have a big family.  Some of them are normal.  They’re the in-laws.  

The rest of us are like the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota… our lives are messy, tangled up together, bumbling around, having fun and in each other’s business all the time.  Oh, the year this story takes place, we have, collectively, seventeen kids under the age of twelve.  

One of those kids was my newly-born son, so I was busy with diapers and nursing and ‘new mom narcolepsy’.  All that meant is that I was so fatigued every minute that I could, and often did, fall asleep mid conversation.  Pardon my drooling.  I have six kids, my thyroid just quit and my dog chewed another hole through the drywall.  Would you like to come to my house for your Thanksgiving celebration?  This would have been a great sacrifice for anyone, even without the gluten free part.  

My poor sisters in law.  They are both from families with much more decorum and manners.  The rest of the bumblers I didn’t worry about. They were used to adapting.  And besides, most of them are kids.  They won’t even care if there is no stuffing or bread or pumpkin pie.  

They have each other. 

And that, after all,  is the whole point of it.  Thanksgiving or any holiday…  the idea is to be thankful for each other.  It’s not about the turkey, or the particular recipes you cherish, or the traditions and china plates passed down through the generations.  It’s about being thankful for each other.  And that’s what my extended family did that year.  We let go of our expectations and our traditions, and we were glad that we had each other.  

Doug made a feast of roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, corn bread stuffing, all gluten free and delicious.  One brother and his wife brought cinnamon ice cream.  Another brother and his wife brought paper plates, cups, and plastic silverware, which meant no one had to do the dishes.  My sister made a mountain of veggies, freshly steamed and drizzled in butter and almonds.  Sixteen little kids had the time of their life, playing hide and seek in every nook and cranny of my house.  The dog ate scraps, cleaning the floor with great joy.  I sat on the couch with the baby, a fatigued but grateful beached whale, sleeping. 

Happy Thanksgiving!  

Yesterday, I attended a funeral for a woman who died, unexpectedly, in her sleep.  Just like that.    She didn’t know that it was her last day here.  She did the things she always did.  When the coroner came to the house, I was told, she said that in all her years as a coroner, she had never seen a home so orderly, clean, and tended to.  The woman had her clothes for the next day lying out, pressed and ready.  Holiday cards were written, addressed, and stacked up for the mail.  The woman loved her family, and was on good terms with all of them.  She was prepared.  

She was ready.

This got me to thinking:  What will they find when I’m gone? 

When I was a child, my grandmother stayed with us frequently.  I can still hear her precautionary warnings as we left for school.  

“Did you remember to change your socks and underwear, Schnookie?  If you get in an accident, you don’t want someone to find you in dirty underwear.”  

I stressed about that as a kid.  I worried about the what-ifs of someone finding me, unconscious, in mismatched socks or less-than-clean knickers.  My gosh.  What would happen?  What if I hadn’t scrubbed behind my ears, either?    Would they also see what I wrote in my diary when I was mad at my sister?  There was a lock on my diary, at least.

I didn’t realize until much later the lesson she was trying to teach.  She wanted us to stay clean, whether people could see it or not.  She was warning us that all of our secrets would come to light, one day.  


I have a good example of that.  Can I tell you a story about my grandfather?

Gramps picked apples and made homemade applesauce every autumn.  Usually he picked “seconds” off the grass at the apple orchard, checking carefully for the freshest fruit that had fallen from the trees.  Bushel baskets full of crisp red apples lined the kitchen countertops and table, as he began full-scale applesauce cooking production.  Wash apples, peel apples, slice and chop apples, pinch of this, pinch of that…cook it all down, sweet and simmering, so that even the neighbors all the way down at the end of the block wondered where that delicious apple pie smell came from.  

All of his visitors received gifts of his homemade sweet applesauce.  He packed it in recycled butter tubs and plastic boxes and re-used cottage cheese cartons, filling three large freezers in his basement.   Walking carefully down the steep steps of the home he’d built for his family after the war, we grandkids had to walk past an ancient gas oven, complete with mint green steel trim.  It looked as if a gingerbread boy might come popping out of it at any moment.  Then pass by Grandma’s washing machine.  I can still see her there, standing in the cellar in her floral housedress, feeding fresh-washed laundry through the wringer.  We waited by with the laundry basket and wooden clothespins.  It was our job to hang the laundry out on the line in the back yard.

“Watch out for your fingers, Dear!  I don’t want you to get hurt!”  She’d say loudly, as the black rollers pulled each article of clothing through, squeezing the water out in rivulets that flowed back into the tub.

Gramps had a much more gruff tone of voice.  

“Keep your diamonds.  Gimme a heart.  Every pig’s got a heart!” he’d say, as he trumped all the tricks and won all the card games.  Monkey Bridge, Bridge, Sheep’s Head, it didn’t matter.  He said it would make us good at math, but that didn’t work out so well for me.

After the games, we’d follow him downstairs, and he would open the antique green paneled door to his “cold room”.  I think “cold room” was the original root cellar of the house, cool and dry.  But now it was packed full, floor to ceiling, with coupon items that Gramps had purchased for almost nothing.  “Take some cereal,” he’d say.  Or “load your car up with toilet paper before you leave.  The store paid me to buy that.”  In his retirement years, he commandeered the kitchen and collected coupons, dispersing the goods throughout the families of his children and grandchildren.  The “take home pile” of toilet paper and cereal was usually topped off by plastic tubs filled with applesauce, fruits, home grown vegetables, coolers and insulated boxes and newspaper-wrapped bins… He loved to give us the food that he made.

We all loved it.  

Then came the day that he died.  He was working in his organic garden, when suddenly, that was it.  Card game over.

When he was buried, all my family gathered together.  We tried to comfort Grandma, but after 50+ years of marriage, there was no comfort for her without him.  We prayed, and ate together, we even played his card game of Sheep’s Head around the dining room table. We neatly folded back the tablecloth, and I lost, as usual.  Evening fell, the relatives began to disperse, and the funeral mood began to lift.  

“We need to clean out the freezers,”  my aunties said.  “Since you have a truck here, you take a freezer home.  We’ll even let you have all Gramps’ applesauce.”  they promised.  

So, with mixed emotions, we trudged downstairs.  “Think of it as your inheritance!” chuckled one of my aunts.  “You can take home all the applesauce that Gramps made for himself.”  What a sweet gift.

We opened up the freezer and began to unpack it.  We chuckled about how many applesauce cartons I would be taking home.  But upon opening the freezer, it became clear that something was wrong.  Gramps had spent months making applesauce and handing it out as free gifts to those he loved.  

But his freezer at home was filled only with apple peelings.  That’s what he had saved for himself.  All the good and sweet fruit, he had packed and given away to others.  

He kept just the peelings for himself.  

All these years later, I still don’t quite have the words to say just how that made me feel…

I always recognized that he worked hard for us.  Despite any faults he had, and his gruff voice and his card-playing compulsion, I knew he loved us. 

But I didn’t know about his secret sacrifices.

It made me feel small and humble…

And loved.

That was a good secret to discover.  

I have a boy.  He is growing bigger, but still kind of a little guy.  He doesn’t like to comb his hair, it sticks up in the front and in the back where the cowlicks are.  He licks his fingers after he eats something he really loves, like bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwiches.  When he falls asleep at night, he hugs my hand to his chest, and underneath the baggy t-shirt that was a hand-me-down from his grandpa, I can feel his heart beating.   

I love this boy with my whole soul.  I know every freckle, every joke, and sometimes when he’s asleep, I step into the soft darkness of his room and listen for the steady rise and fall of his breathing, just to hear him and be at peace.

Once upon a time, exactly thirty years ago, you had a little boy, too.  And you tried to get him to comb his hair, and watched as he enjoyed his favorite supper that you prepared.  Was it pizza?  When he fell asleep at night, did you sometimes stay by his bedside, re-telling his favorite story until his eyes gently closed and his breathing smoothed out and the soft snore of a boy who played really hard that day touched your heart and made you smile quietly in the dark?

Maybe I cherish my child so much because when I was a kid, my own mother was often too ill to sit at my bedside…  When I had a nightmare, Dad came to save me and rub my head ’til the monsters slunk away, back under the bed.  The doctors never gave her long to live, and one year, we opened our Christmas presents in the Intensive Care Unit because she couldn’t stop bleeding.   People came to the hospital in the night, after they sang their Silent Nights at Christmas Mass.  They came  to donate blood to Mom because our small hospital was all out, and she needed more to make it through the night.  She raced away from us by ambulance on Christmas morning. Because of them, she made it.  Years later, at Parent Nights in high school, when all the players on the team line up to thank their parents and everyone claps, my friend’s parents always made sure that one of them stood by me so I wasn’t alone.  One time, just once, Mom came to a game.  Dad wheeled her up to the sidelines in a borrowed chair, and she beamed at me with love and pride and I don’t know how she did it, because her back was broken and probably her ribs and collarbone were broken, too.  She was so weak, dying, really.  But she smiled at me and loved me from her broken shell of a body.  

That’s when everything changed.  That day, November 6.  

Something horrible happened in your life that day - I am so sorry that it did.  
In one single heart-wrenching, terrible moment, an auto accident took your son away from you.  As you sat in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, looking for your son, hoping to see the rise and fall of his little chest, praying to God for strength to bear the sunrise of a day without that boy, you made a choice.  The light had gone from your son’s eyes, and you thought of others.  

You made a choice that a part of your son would live on in the broken body of another human being.  You gave a stranger a second chance at life.  

And all the way across the country, that is exactly what happened.  Thirty years ago, a team of doctors transplanted your son’s liver into my mother’s decrepit body.  Thirty years ago!  How does one say thank you for thirty years of life?  It is through your anonymous gift of your son’s liver that my mom lived to see her children grow up and graduate from high school.  It is your generosity in your sorrow that allowed my mom to be here for our graduations from college, our first real jobs, our engagements and our weddings.  Mom was here for her twenty fifth wedding anniversary.  And her fortieth.  She was there when her granddaughter was born, named after her.  She was there when her grandson was born, named after your son.  She is present today, and dearly beloved in the lives of all nineteen of her grandchildren.

After getting a second chance to live, she decided to choose joy.  No matter what the circumstance of each day, she finds the love in it.  She has a special gift for making others feel that joy and love, too. 

I wonder about you, Little Boy’s Mom and Dad.  I pray for you.  Have you found peace?  In your great loss, in your great generosity, have you found the spark of joy that lives on even when happiness seems gone?  I think you have.  I think you have because you are the kind of people who give others hope even when you have little of your own.  That makes for a life that even when it is colored by pain, it is filled with love.  

I thank you for thirty years of life, given to us by you and your son.  And I hope and pray that you, too, have somehow made it a life filled with love.

God bless you,

Another Boy’s Mom

Laundry.  

Can you even imagine the amount of laundry I do?  I have seven kids, a dog who likes blankets, and a rabbit who sheds.  And I am allergic to them (the pets, not the kids!)  Every single day the kids play outside, digging, climbing, running, tearing holes in the knees of their pants…and I have more laundry.  

I could despair.  But I don’t.

Right now, at this moment, I have seven loads of laundry, piled high on the kitchen table.  Did I mention it’s 7:00 a.m.?  

I don’t despair because I have a secret. 

A laundry weapon kind of a secret.

To be perfectly honest, every time my incredible mom comes over, she throws in a load of laundry before she says hello.  If I have artwork to do, or an illustration due, she is the one to show up and fold towels so I have some extra time.  But Mom Helping is no secret, it’s a well known fact.  In addition to my wonderful Mother, I still have a secret.

About a hundred years ago, when I was in high school, I was complaining about laundry to a friend.  In my ranting and moaning about folding shirts and ironing creases in our jeans, which I totally had to do, Missy stopped me. 


“I love to do laundry!” She exclaimed. 

“You’re lying.”

“No, really.  I love to do laundry. I pretend I work at the mall, and I get to fold all the perfect and beautiful clothes.  It makes me happy because I get to keep them all.”

It’s a mind game.  

It works.  I look at the piles of clothing, towels and blankets, and I’m glad to have them.  It’s difficult to imagine them new and hanging on a rack at Macy’s, but I have become grateful for my laundry.  Grateful to be kept warm, grateful for the quilt and the dog that sheds on it, curled up and cozy when we weren’t looking.  Grateful for the holes in the jeans, because the kid found so much joy in climbing the tree.  

My laundry secret works in many different circumstances, too.  For example, my truck has my son’s name scratched in the side of it.  He picked up a rock back about age 5, when he learned his letters, and wrote his name on the side of our truck.  He was so proud.  And you know what?  We left it there.  I like it, because I am reminded of the pride and joy in his face when he showed me that he knew how to write his name. 

I am free to choose to see the laundry and the scratches and dents of my life in any way I want. I can see things as a burden, as a drain and a pain.  Or I can choose my secret weapon of positivity.

It’s called gratitude.