Staff writer
My sister sent me a text message as I was trying to eek out both productivity and “me time” while my daughter “napped.” I put down the laundry soap I was making and read it.
“It has taken me an hour and a half to empty and reload the bleepin’ dishwasher. So . . . How’s YOUR day going?”
I texted back: “Well, brown recluse spiders (plural!) are lying in wait around my front door, my wee dog was attacked in the back yard, insomnia, the other dog shredded the new linoleum, and the baby refuses to nap — so, normal . . . What does it all mean?”
She came back with something incredibly insightful that kinda just made me want to slap her. I really wanted the “meaning” in all my suffering to be, “Though I suffer mightily right now, the universe has a plan for me, a plan that involves Tahiti, a hammock, and a lifetime supply of vegan chocolate.”
Actually, I don’t really care about those indulgences. What I really want, most days, is to treat myself as lovingly as I treat everybody else. Yes, it would be nice if the world would stop so I could take care of me, but that hasn’t happened since it began as far as I know so I probably need to just go ahead and learn how to do it mid-chaos.
It seems like remembering to treat myself gently would be easy to remember. But I think a lot of us (moms, dads, wives, husbands, teachers, students, bosses, employees … people) forget ourselves. Forget what there is within us to take care of and to treasure until we feel so neglected we find ourselves weeping bitterly as we grate Fels-Naphtha instead of doing yoga (again!) and being pretty cranky in general.
There’s a passage in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio that I meditate on daily. I blame that habit on a dear, loving friend of mine. In the chapter “Paper Pills,” about an older doctor named Doctor Reefy, the speaker says this about him:
“Winesburg had forgotten the old man, but within Doctor Reefy were the seeds of something fine.”
My friend, Lynda, has a knack for seeing the seeds of something fine in everybody and a foolhardy passion for those who need help believing in the good within themselves.
When I read Winesburg in high school, I was not very good at believing that I, too, have the seeds of something fine within me. Lynda saw this. She made me read that chapter aloud to her one day and then we planted seeds in a pot with a marker that reads “Amanda has within her the seeds of something fine.”
I kept that crusty old pot until it cracked, then I pulled out the marker and put it in a box of special things I keep on my dresser. It’s a mantra I have held on to, clung to some days, whispered under my breath hoping I’d believe it later some days — and some days I’ve gotten angry at it.
Today, I’m thinking I haven’t treated myself like I have the seeds of something fine in me in a long time, and perhaps that’s why it feels like I’m having a panic attack when I can’t squeeze in a little “making it up to myself” during naptime.
Today, my sister told me she thinks days like this come along to remind us how easy it is to forget ourselves, even in the most precious of seasons. To keep us diligent even in something as simple and basic as seeing our own self-worth.
That sounds a little more uplifting than my idea (remember, Tahiti?).
For me, seeing the seeds of something fine in me comes more naturally when I’m being intentional about seeing the seeds of fine things around me — in people, in situations, in the town, in everything.
I’ve been asked to write this column. Weekly (gulp). And I was given leeway to decide what it will be about. So, in total selfishness, I’ve decided this column is a great opportunity to search for the seeds of something fine around me every week. And if I can pass those along in a way that helps even one other person stop and remember those seeds are in them, too, well, all the better!