Among the Trees

You know how sometimes you get to the end of a day and you don't want to say "it was a good day" or even "it was a bad day," but you pause, breathe a little deeper, and then you sigh "it was a day"?

Well this has been a week. Please excuse the melodrama; just last Sunday, I was a teenager.

Things I did that made this week a week:

• curled up under my rain jacket in Panera (these are the times I wish it were more socially acceptable to carry around a blanket), cried over a book of poetry, and drank so much sweet tea I couldn't sleep all night
• ate fan-freaking-tastic birthday cupcakes made with love by two of my favorite people
• [unsuccessfully] attempted to register for classes and get football tickets for the fall
• talked to my mom about scrapbooking
• made "lentil loaf" (there's a reason this post doesn't include the recipe)
• came home from work one day and collapsed on the couch until I mustered enough energy to microwave some eggs for dinner (clearly the raving success of the spinach burgers last week was balanced out by lentil loaf and microwaved eggs this week... what can I say?  I'm restoring equilibrium to the universe)
• made plans to go dress shopping with one of my very fashionable older neighbors this weekend
• hung out with some awesome preschoolers and danced and celebrated the ways we see God provides for us
• cried because people are hungry
• hit a girl (and got hit!) in a jam-packed Zumba class
• picked a lot of flowers and put them in my hair
• blew out birthday candles and wished that I would always be surrounded by people who love me as well as the 1158 crowd does (oops... does writing it mean my wish won't come true?)
• thought a lot about trees:

When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness,

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine."

-Mary Oliver

And so I've been trying to "walk slowly, and bow often." Because my sometimes-flighty, no-longer-teenage self has a lot to learn from the elegant, coming-back-to-life tree in our front yard, from the grasping branches at the park down the road, from the pink buds littering the sidewalk on my walk to work. They're inviting me to stay awhile, to hold out during the long cold months and trust that spring, flowers, growth are coming, to offer unashamed fragrance and beauty to the world. "'It's simple,' they say." Maybe not easy, but simple.