A grateful day off

Day's off are really the best. Yesterday I truly got to embrace the idea of "rest" on a Sunday; today I woke up and made pancakes (gluten-free of course); and now, as I sit down with my lesson plan book beside me, four days to plan sounds so much better than five. 

 But, I guess today isn't just a "day off". At least, that is what I told my students. It's a perfect day to be grateful for the life that we live today. But, to also realize that there is still so much to be done. I went on a gorgeous hike today with some old friends that were visiting my little canyon town. It's funny to bring people up here. Even though we are in LA, it feels like you are a world away from the city when hiking on these trails or looking out my bedroom window. I'm not sure how long we'll live here. A year? Five? It's easy to get into this questions and dialogue when hanging out with a girl that has known you since you were four years old. I tried to stop myself from going down that path. It's a tough one to go down; that whole predicting the future kind of thing. But rather, as we were walking I tried to take in the part about being really grateful for what is beautiful around me. My mom once told me that it's impossible to feel anxious and grateful at the same time. 

I left my students with this quote on Friday afternoon, "I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear." ~Martin Luther King Jr

Although my mom was right, being grateful trumps being anxious, I think love might trump grateful. Either way, it's a better way to live; a better way to bask in the joy of the day.

Thanks for pushing me to write this Em. I needed a little self reflection as the sun was setting...

Back, with a poem.

"You, Reader"

I wonder how you are going to feel
when you find out
that I wrote this instead of you.

that it was I who got up early
to sit in the kitchen
and mention with a pen

the rain-soaked windows,
the ivy wallpaper,
and the goldfish circling in its bowl

Go ahead and turn aside,
bite your lip and tear out the page,
but, listen—it was just a matter of time

before one of us happened
to notice the unlit candles
and the clock humming on the wall.

Plus, nothing happened that morning—
a song on the radio,
a car whistling along the road outside—

and I was only thinking
about the shakers of salt and pepper
that were standing side by side on a place mat.

I wondered if they had become friends
after all these years
or if they were still strangers to one another

like you and I
who manage to be known and unknown
to each other at the same time—

me at this table with a bowl of pears,
you leaning in a doorway somewhere
near some blue hydrangeas, reading this.

- Billy Collins, from his collection The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems

Cheers to more reading, writing, and many more adventures in 2012! Happy to be back on this little blogger dashboard.  Do you like the new look?