Thanksgiving 2010

Me, Marci, husband Ken, Mom and Dad Wolfe
We’ve eaten, walked by the French Broad River, shopped, played Scrabble and worked. This year has been so full of blessings and rich in rewards. I am grateful for my health this year, for my daughter’s acceptance into High Point University, my husband’s career success, my in law’s wisdom. There is more, actually so much more.
I wish for you:
After you sit down at the table
After you  eat and savor those familiar dishes
After you look deeply and joyfully into the eyes of those who love you :
Take a bit of food outdoors
Walk among trees, by a river, or find,  along a country lane
 some wild critter, and share your feast.
If you can, look into wild eyes.
Then touch a place of this beautiful earth, like homage to that which feeds us.
Happy Thanksgiving.

First Snow

  

The first cold flakes fell silently in the early dawn, blanketing the leaves we’ve not yet raked into piles.
Each white glistening orb seems like an answer falling from heaven. My world is transformed from autumn’s landscape of loss into a confection made with spun sugar and pearls.
It is beautiful as we walk outside, but we scurry inside soon as do all our woodland friends. Time to share our stories and dream our dreams by the fire.
Here is my new glaze, Blue Ice Crystal. The first piece sold right away but I'll be using it more in weeks to come. Wishing you beauty, and the light of love that shines from the eyes of those who gather with you by candles and fireplaces, as we burrow inside.

grateful

When I rise from the ocean of sleep, my eyes open with gratitude. Last year at this time we were all so fearful, wistful, hoping for a change, a way out of economic collapse. I did not let that fear climb into the driver's seat of my life nor tell me what to imagine, nor write the story of my year. Everywhere I saw light upon frozen snow, painting a softness, and glowing from the eyes of moths at my window, and shimmering cool dappled shadows beneath the tall trees. I gave my heart to the light, everyday.

My pottery has been a refuge this past year, a doorway into a land where something deep and precious waits to be born. And I've opened my kiln, curious to see who is there.

And so this year, I am most grateful for creativity and active imagining and dreaming and all the attributes that they tell you, in 3rd grade somewhere, you must outgrow in order to memorize endless useless lists of facts.

As my heart and soul have dreamed, so my life has become. Hope has been a winged bird this year. And for this, and the other gifts of grace given to me this year, I am grateful.

3 new dresses

My daughter can now drive; she has her own Etsy store, and has done rather well. I want her to save some for college and also have the experience of being in charge of her own money. So, for the first time, Marci drove herself downtown to shop the small independent stores on Lexington Ave, and bought 3 new dresses with her own money, and without me to help her choose. I like them all! I like that she is choosing independent designers selling in small Indie shops, and I really like the hand crochet on the 3rd dress, which is her favorite. It's a new kind of moment for me, I mean, it's one thing to pass along your genes, but to see that I've helped nurture my daughter's talent, helped her start her own creative business, and really enjoy her sense of style, too- that's a lot to be thankful for! Dress #2, the one with the pockets, that's just so cute. I like that she'll still humor mom with the posed pictures, too.

on a hike

We went hiking in Graveyard Fields this weekend, and saw how the leaves are just beginning to peel off summer's safe beauty and begin the wild magic show. I fell in the creek trying a daring move, and was not hurt at all. We laughed like we were little kids again.

Later we found bushes of wild blueberries, sweeter than any I have ever tasted. It is like falling in the water to put one in my mouth. I am suddenly filled with surprise.

There is so much goodness in the world. You know? It is wasteful not to notice.

Spring Snow

I woke up to a fluttering white dance of snowflakes, and the sun has not yet fully emerged. Everything of color is now utterly stark and unmistakeably visible. The few clinging leaves and the ordinary evergreens are momentarily transformed.

And so it is with my life since last October stripped our family of 80% of our income. We have not grieved once for the things we lost, but rather, the things that were always so ordinary as to be invisible we see as precious gifts. And when this snow melts away, and the economic recession returns the lost jobs, our hearts will be richer for having seen the extraordinary beauty that money does not offer.