Smell The Roses

Our yard is exploding with fragrant color right now. Roses, varying degrees of red-pink-crimson, who've been here longer than I. Perhaps decades.

The pace these days is so accelerated I can barely remember to eat, let alone sleep or wax nostalgic over the deliciousness hanging in the air. Maybe these photos, silent visual beacons, will help me remember to slow down--if not stop, and smell the roses. Transport me from flurry into transcendent beauty.

Do we remember delight? Deliciousness? Frivolity and just because it pleases?

I stepped on an escalator recently and haven't stopped. Capitol, senators, assemblypeople, rallies, plane trips, talks, speeches, lunches, picnics, meetings, doctor appts, teeth wigglings, school functions, a speech to write, accommodations to procure, birthday parties to plan, Playbills and laminates to create, talking points, spreading info, a dead computer, Genius Bar, Dead Motherboard, the dreaded dead computer replacement purchase, extracting data, losing data, recovering some data, new operating platform, new systems, new installations, new touch, adjustments to make, transitions, lost time, lost sleep, flying by the seat of my pants, elevated platform, elevated expectations, elevated worries, no time to worry, just enough time to do, dead debit card, loss of access, to money, to internet, to files, to info, dead food in the fridge, rebooting, re-authorizing, reconfiguring, taking out the trash, cupcakes to bake, speeches to write, revisions to write, new frontiers to venture forth in....

Tonight I cleaned up the counters and cooked real food. A meal. A solid meal. More than a meal. (More about that another time. If I find the time.) I've always said food is more than food, more than taste. Good food heals. The food itself is almost irrelevant. It's what is done to it, and then transformed, what it does to us. That's its magic. Aroma, color, texture, taste. Love. Ahhh. Exhale. Enjoy. While I can.

Did I mention that my daughter counts her years on both hands now? Six. Half a dozen. More than half a decade.

Mom to me is now like a pair of broken-in jeans. She's in there like cupcakes between the tarragon chicken and Lacrima Christi Bianchi and high heels and power suits and lip gloss. As she grows, so do I. In ways unexpected.

The Mom Clogs have been hurting my feet lately. Plus they just look so dowdy. Time for a new pair of shoes. Not sure what suits me these days, or even where to go to find it, but I've been looking. Something between being comfortable and being a presence. Might need to look in not the usual places. Might need to venture farther...

Damn those are beautiful roses! Been blooming every year for decades. Long before I got here. Long after I leave. Remember to notice. Put a few in a vase so I can see them and take in their powerful magic, their wisdom, their fragrance, citrusy and voluptuous, abundant and abundantly clear. It gives me pause.

Smell.


Not like I've had much time to do just that, just thought it'd be a good reminder.