Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

1. Morning walks. Because it’s been so cold and I went back to work this week, Eric’s been doing most of these for almost a full two weeks. I told him this morning how grateful I was that he’d been doing it, but that next week we need to get back on our normal schedule — I miss it.

2. Flowers in the bathroom. When we redid our bathroom a few years ago, it was so pretty all by itself that I didn’t actually decorate it. Two years later, there’s still nothing on the walls other than paint. I bought new bathmats and some towels, but the only other thing I do is keep flowers in there. It makes me happy.

3. Baby Ringo isn’t a baby anymore. He graduated to getting to have blankets in his crate when we aren’t home. He was so bad the first few years, putting everything in his mouth, eating and swallowing things that ARE NOT FOOD, that we didn’t want to risk leaving bedding in his crate with him when we weren’t there to watch him. We started leaving him with them last week, and he’s done totally fine, doesn’t even dig them up, just settles in for a nice nap. Good boy, Ringo.

4. Lineage. Three of my dogs have been rescues, and the next ones will be too. However, we got Ringo under special circumstances and he was born on purpose. Because of this, we know his parents. Peach, the dog top left, is his mom, and Spec, on the bottom left, is his dad. I’m so grateful to their human for cultivating a line of healthy, beautiful, smart, and even tempered dogs.

5. My tiny family. Besides Ringo, the rest of us are mutts.

6. I get to see these two love bugs. My niece had a baby just before Christmas, and my mom and I are hosting a baby shower for her in a few weeks. It’s in Oregon, but I’m going to fly out for a few days so I can be there. Can’t wait to meet the tiny new one!

Bonus joy: practice, deadlines — because once they come and go there’s nothing else you can do about it, Sam (because Ringo got all the attention in this post somehow) for being such a sweet dog, good books (I’m finishing up Jenifer Lewis’s book, The Mother of Black Hollywood: A Memoir), good TV, podcasts, Emergen-C, aqua aerobics, the sauna, my new heating pad, clean sheets, soft flannel pjs, snow tires, windshield wiper fluid, sleep, writing, Burrito Del Mar breakfast burritos.

1. Truth: Our sweet confused Christmas tree is sprouting buds, thinks it’s spring. Eric hasn’t watered it in a few days, and is planning on taking it down today, maybe even before I get home from work, but she doesn’t know that. It feels like a metaphor for something, reminds me of the way we all continue to move forward even in the face of certain death. And when it’s over for us, we become compost for the next thing that will arise. It makes me feel both so small and so expansive, both so sad and so filled with love.

2. Truth: I’m cultivating patience. If I’d picked a word for last year, that would have been the right one. It was the quality I kept coming back to, the thing that both confounded and comforted me. I had to learn to be content with how long things took, to surrender my irritation when things didn’t work out how I wanted. I’m slowly (slowly, slowly) understanding the wisdom of allowing space and time, of letting go of my agenda.

3. Truth: I have to go back to work today. In this way, in particular, I am practicing patience in the moment. I’m allowing my longing to do something different and the discipline of doing what I said I’d do to coexist. Patience is about being able to stay with what is happening, even if it’s not what I want. It helps me to maintain my effort and enthusiasm in the face of obstacles. It’s an antidote to anger, which is really just a mask for fear.

One wish: May the light of wisdom and the warmth of compassion enable patience to arise.