House of Blue

Only fragmented memories gleaned from old photos or imagined memories remain of my young life. I sometimes flinch while replaying these old reels but am determined to face them nonetheless, painting with small brush strokes and highlighting those images most fore and front. What seems significant to the child may pale when viewed from the more mature filter or “The Viewer.” I’m here, but I’m not here because I’m there too – I’m here in the present, but I’m also not here because my space is shared with childhood memories, ghosts from past lives. I am burnished. Now I’m 60 years old: “the hulking milestone of mortality,” another grim Styronian quotation. The image in the mirror betrays how I feel on the inside; where I consider myself young and flexible, my body balanced in its gait from many years of yoga practice. I have decided to participate in the dance of life, and dance like no one is watching, because life is like an echo – what is sent out, comes back. Inside the sacred ground of our own mind, we have the power over where we rest our attention which, like Dr. Hanson says, is “like a dual flashlight and vacuum cleaner.” Can we rest it upon what is beneficial for us and others, cultivating what is beneficial to ourselves on the inside? The more we are exposed to the terrible things that are in the world, the more motivated we must become to grow strengths, abiding protection and inner peace, inside. I now take advantage of and enjoy the simple things in life; low-hanging fruit as it were such as cuddling with our beagle, Gracie, chatting on the phone with Moriah, playing miniature golf with Shayla, or receiving off-the-cuff voice messages from Fred stating he loves me. At the same time, I am cognizant of the suffering in the world. To be of assistance to others is my primary goal, and I will have considered myself to have lived well if I have helped but a single person. Compassion with action. As Joe Kennedy III states, “It is among the most basic human truths: Every one of us, some day, will be brought to our knees. By a diagnosis we didn't expect, a phone call we can't imagine, or a loss we cannot endure. That common humanity inspires our mercy. It fortifies our compassion. It drives us to look out for the sick, the elderly, the poor, and the most vulnerable among us.” It’s not so much the people who are involved as the interactions of the people; for example, the firefighter holding the deceased child, Baylee, who had turned one the day before the Oklahoma City bombing blast. It’s beyond touching, the way he is cradling her and looking down at her, it is a truly human moment. It is human moments like these that can move us to tears and resonate with our deepest being. As Fred and I settle into our routine: he with his cable network news and coffee, me sequestered with my books and self-help videos, I sometimes still yearn for a small space to hide in; an adult linen-closet hideaway, a blessed refuge where there is no sound or light to compete with my thoughts, no distractions to foil the space in my blue world. While I look outside my window, watching the breeze blow between the filigree ferns of a Palo Verde tree, a faint melancholy stirs within me; I perceive a sunless sky and a background sense of dread. Then, a delicate pink blossom rolls and flutters in front of me, in stark contrast to the slate dome overhead, and gives me pause for hope.