My Mother Had Holes in Her Sweaters

Mom and Fanta filling the birdfeeders.

The world is loudly losing its mind. You've felt it. That low hum of anxiety that follows you into your phone, your dinner conversation, your 3am thoughts. And yet. Some people are fine. Not "I'm fine" fine. Actually fine. Grounded. Even happy. I've been studying them.

My mother had holes in all her sweater elbows from leaning on the kitchen counter, watching the birds at the feeders in the old plum tree. That's how much time she spent doing it, enough to wear through the wool.

She was ill with cancer. And she was still finding happy moments. Not performing brave. Actually happy, because the birds came, because family was there, because there was always something, if you looked. She taught me that. Not as a lesson. Just by doing it. Every single day. Elbows on the counter.

She died last August.

My father is struggling with his health and the loneliness of losing 57 years of someone. And what does he do with that? Every morning, he calls his brother-in-law and his old friend. Checks regularly in with my aunt, who lost her husband a few years ago. He makes sure the people who could disappear into silence and loneliness, don't.

He is sad. Of course he is. But he gets in his camper truck anyway. Drives to beautiful places in Norway. Goes fishing. Warms a can of Swedish pea soup in the small kitchen of his truck.

My friend Debbie walks along the Halifax River in Daytona Beach at sunrise with her dogs. Not to hit her step count. Not to process stress. Because of what the light does to the water at that hour. The sky. The clouds. The way it changes by the minute and then it's gone and you were either there or you weren't.

My cousin Mona has her own difficult stuff to deal with. But she's always the first to show up when someone else is struggling. First to call or show up at the door.

Here's what they all have in common: They're not positive. Not in the relentless, manifesting, gratitude-journal way. They're something quieter. They're present. Paying attention to the thing directly in front of them, the birds, the light, the person who needs help, instead of the catastrophe on the horizon.

I am grateful for every one of them and for what they've shown me, without ever trying to. And I hope, quietly and imperfectly, that I'm passing some of it on to my children.

Because that's how it travels. Not through advice. Through the way you live.

The world isn't going to calm down and give you permission to be happy. You have to find happiness yourself. In the small, unglamorous places where it actually lives.

First flower of spring. 

Sunrise on the river. 

A can of soup on a small stove. 

Calling the ones who are alone.

Start there.

Still figuring it out

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