On Thursday, I rescued four pieces of art from my storage unit.  They currently reside in my rental car.  I intend to ship one of them out to California each time I visit.  I can’t afford to do all of them at once.  I’m not sure where I will store the others but when Paula K-V warned me of rodents which eat canvas, I knew that I couldn’t let them suffer.

I made First Friday last night by 5:30, wrapping my arms around Ruthie Becker as we stood in her Gallery 504, me clutching a dozen purple tulips which had seemed to be a fitting gift for this stunning soul.  Once the flowers had been safely stowed in a vase, we raised a toast to lasting friendships.  David Hughes sat at the bar beside me, reciting poetry.   It might have been any First Friday, any month, of any year.  I felt as though I had never left.

Then the door opened to reveal the beaming smile of  Genevieve Casey.

Her photograph “Floating” will be the first of the rescued works to make its way to Angel’s Haven.  I have saved a spot for it above my kitchen counter.  With her husband Wes, she made a special trip to the Crossroads last night to see me.  My heart lifted.  Some people bring their light wherever they go.  Genevieve’s radiance precedes her into a room and lingers long after any evening ends.

A little while later, another graceful spirit came to sit by me, the goddess of play therapy, Sara Minges.  If my heart had received any more wonder by that time, it might have taken flight.  I found myself floating, any lingering worry falling away, all tension easing from my hunched shoulders.  I let the nastiness of small-minded people slough to the floor, trampled under dancing feet.  I do not need those relics of my mistaken alliances.

I’ll take the warmth which surrounded me everywhere I went this week back  to California.  It will sustain me as I continue to restructure my days.  I have wicked good friends. I cannot ask for anything more than that.

It’s the third day of the fifty-first month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Genevieve Casey and me

Sara Minges

Refraining from complaint often comes easier in pleasant surroundings.

From the elegant comfort of Jeanne Foster’s guest bedroom to the casual benevolence,  Marimekko fabric and Victorian writing desk of the guest bedroom in the home of Elizabeth Unger-Carlyle, I’ve been well-tended this week.  Still, I had to bite my tongue when the breathtaking boldness of someone’s dismissive behavior towards me revealed itself yesterday.  I didn’t quite succeed.  Paula Kenyon-Vogt sweetly endured more of my disgust than I wanted her to manage.

I lay in bed just after six today, listening to the Brookside songbirds.  I’m mere blocks from the home in which I raised my son and which I only recently vacated.  I don’t yet have the strength to drive past it, but the rise of the winter trees in this old neighborhood seems welcoming.  My brain struggled against sleep nonetheless.  The constant refrain of my self-examination hammered against the murky edges of my mind.  I finally broached an uneasy truce with myself.  I pledged life-changing measures in exchange for a few hours of rest.  I sank into slumber, surrendering my doubt, though the certain knowledge of my own proclivities awaited with the sunrise.

I can hear my friend Jeanne clucking over this entry.  Along with the rest of my little fan club, she favors cheerful passages.  But I do not feel it.  I confronted the knowledge of my own inabilities yesterday, including the persistent failure to embrace a true abandonment of lament.  My purpose in this effort includes public accountability for my trials as well as praise when I succeed.

So I confess it, again:  The month began with gross lapse into complaint.  Put aside the fact that the person against whom I protested would likely earn your disdain.  It’s the lack of complaint which I’ve intended to embrace.  Those who might deserve my outrage must tend to their own betterment.  Mine still eludes me but in the famous words of Lucille Johanna Lyons Corley, where life persists, improvement can flow.  I intend to forgive myself and start anew.  I might not be up to the full measure of the task.  I started on 01 January 2014 intending to go a full year without uttering one word of complaint and have not managed to do so for more than a few days at a time.  Sad, I know.  But not yet forsaken.

The birds have fallen silent, yielding to the grosser sounds of the city.  I must push forward.  It’s the second day of the fifty-first month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.