Grateful for Twinkle Lights and Poetry

There is a lot going on around here right now… A lot of buzzing activity centered around Banner Makin‘ and Client Meetin’s and Car Fixin‘ and Child Rearin‘. My hands are cramped from pinking the edges of (what seems like) a million circles, all in an attempt to get all the Christmas banners shipped in a timely fashion. The laundry has piled up, and the kids are scrounging for socks in the mornings. I am keeping at bay the urge to completely overhaul my business website and this blog, realizing instead that those projects will have to wait till January when no one wants new furniture OR banners, because they are recovering instead from Christmas Overload – both sensory and fiscally.

Yesterday I bought a 4ft lit tinsel tree at Target so that I could have something to photograph the new Holiday Gift Cones on. Miles was very excited to help me set up the first tree of the season. Somewhere along the way, I have turned into one of those people who has a tree in every room. I didn’t set out to be this person, but it has happened… So now I will have a Studio Tree too – a lovely vintage looking tinsel tree to display my goodies on and brighten my work days. As I was setting up the tree and taking these pictures, I was thinking of all the things I need to do, want to do, will have to do.., and as usual, I was not quite sure how they were all going to get done. How I would pull it all off this time. Then that great line from You’ve Got Mail started running through my head… “I’m not sure what to do, but in the mean time…I’m putting up more twinkle lights.”

I love that movie. So many great lines. So many things that just say it the way you would want to say it if you could. Oh, to have Nora Ephron writing the script for your life… But thinking of You’ve Got Mail made me think about how grateful I am for not only More Twinkle Lights (because frankly, how could you not be grateful for those???) But also for my sweet man. My sweet man who got my computer to play DVD’s for me so I could watch all my favorite movies while I craft… I am very grateful for Nathan, I really am. Our marriage is not perfect, it is a process, but it is real and honest and full of things that I am truly blessed to have.

Recently during the office/studio shuffle, I came across a poem he wrote for a creative writing class he had a few years ago. The poem is about us. About about his acts of love for me, and I am so grateful for them, even the smallest, simplest act, because when you string them all together, over time, the impact is lovely, and heartwarming and full of hope. Like twinkle lights.

Things That Sustain Her
by Nathaniel Greer

It is not like changing the air filter for the central heat
Or cutting the grass out of a sense of obligation
More like an obsessed greaser polishing his street machine
When I massage her neck until my hands cramp from motion.

Nor like taking out the trash or washing the silverware.
But like a gardener kneeling in moist dirt
Gently nurturing each sweet scented and soft flower
When I switch off the small screen and surrender the night.

Like a voyager out of matches who must regularly nourish
His fire to survive, I am grateful and glad
To take her window gazing at furniture,
Clothes and fixtures I could never afford.

These activities mean no more to me
Than any other time spent together
But yielding the remote or bringing home sweets
Are things that sustain her.

(PS – He got an “A” on this poem, which of course I thought he completely deserved!)