Monday Morning Greetings!

Apparently, there are big events elsewhere, but I hope you have time for me to share a few happy photos of a sweet small event here recently — and to share an excerpt from my latest Substack post (and ask you to go read the whole piece, over there).

First, the sweet small event. High tea as a belated birthday treat for someone who marked another year while I was travelling in the fall. Months late, but she loved extending that good birthday “I’m Special” feeling. . .

She grabbed my phone for the selfie, and I love the snap she took! New-generation tech skills, no hesitation or fiddling. . . and don’t we look happy together. . . #NanaLife

The Secret Garden Tea Company is the perfect spot to get together to learn all the school gossip, talk about books we’ve read, movies we’ve enjoyed, friends who got to go to the big concert, what Nana thought of Marrakech, and when we were going to get together for a knitting session. . . .

And then we stopped chatting for a bit and simply admired. And planned a starting point. . .

I’d brought my sketchbook along, but only managed to get it out briefly while we were waiting for the bill. . . So I sketched this page at home afterwards. There’s a sketch I don’t love on the right-hand page that I can see if I flip back the menu card I’ve hinged over it — that’s what the strip of washi tape on the far right is doing. I’m just pleased I got anything on the page by the end of the day. I’ve struggled to manage this since I’ve been home, but last week I managed five days with some sketching (5-15 minutes, it’s a start!)

And here’s an excerpt from my latest Substack post, a continuation of last week’s explanation of the planning that (did or didn’t) go into arrangements for my extended travel last year.

I have to admit that in preparing this post, I’ve erased almost as many words as I’ve typed on this screen. Words that took on a tedium of chronological detail, sketching out a calendar of arrivals and departures to and from multiple destinations and a network of relationships between husband and wife; parent and adult kids; grandparents and grandkids; son and daughter-in-law and grandkids; daughters and sons-in-law and cousins; between sisters and brother. . . you get the idea. There was even a well-loved dog to take into account. Medical concerns, a surgery, school schedules, work schedules, train routes, flights changed arbitrarily by airlines.

So I’ve condensed; I’ve summarized; and I’ve even arrived at some insight about planning ambitious travel at this side of a rich (read complicated, if you will) life. . .

And a peek at some of the insight I gained in writing the newsletter:

Respect for what we did — that in our (early) 70s we took on a slightly goofy adventure. Is that too self-affirming? To give ourselves respect? I don’t do it enough, and I want to. I want to applaud myself (wouldn’t it be a wonderful habit to acquire?) simply for trusting that foolish impetuosity. Launching ourselves on that goofy adventure.

A manageable adventure, yes, but ambitious, nonetheless. Destabilizing in ways that, I believe, were ultimately productive, but also at a few points stressful, fear-tinged even. The “slight goofiness,” it turns out, is valuable in my assessment of the trip — it signifies that we’re still capable of handling a random challenge or two. An important ability, one I’d like to hang onto for a bit. . .

To read the rest, you just need to click this link. While you’re over there, I hope you’ll consider subscribing. It’s free, it’s easy, and it will allow me eventually to streamline the uploading, downloading, managing subscriptions, and letting readers know about posts in two places.

And I can’t close this post today without a nod to a very special day, Martin Luther King Day. In the words of that indefatigible activist for justice, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

May your Monday be a hope-filled one,

xo,

f