It starts with boiled potatoes – overcooked to the edge of mushiness, then peeled and diced into uneven chunks; and hardboiled eggs, sliced diagonally, cooked so long the yokes fall out and crumble as they are being cut; and chopped sweet onion and celery for crunch; generously salted and mixed with Miracle Whip – not mayonnaise – Miracle Whip.  Served from a very large bowl, still slightly warm and freshly made or quite cold from the refrigerator, it is still my favorite potato salad.  My mother’s potato salad.  Wonderfully simple and basic and imprinted on my memory and taste buds for so long I don’t even remember the fist time I tasted it.

According to a recent New York Times article, that’s exactly why it is my favorite.  The author of the article was writing about pizza choices, but I think potato salad serves as an equally strong trigger for imprinted preferences.  And chocolate chip cookies.

And music.  As an adult , I took a night class called “The History of Rock & Roll” offered on a local college campus when I lived in Indianapolis.  The first night the instructor launched into the lesson with the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly and Fats Domino.  Within the initial few notes, I was in my early teens and living in California.  I could smell the beach.  Suddenly, this was my favorite music – music I could identify with.  Because it was the first music that was “mine.”  (I can also get that thrill of recall with old church music like “How Great Thou Art” and “Amazing Grace,” and a lump in my throat every time I hear “Jesus Loves Me.”)  

It’s all about the imprint – the first taste of something.  And therein lies the comfort of it.

We all have our favorite comfort movies, I think.  And books.  People are always offering me their newest book discoveries – great new authors and best-sellers.  But stacked up beside my bed are mostly my old favorites – Agatha Christie and Elizabeth Gouge and Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham and John Moore.  A highly talented actor friend of mine sinks into the comfort of Shakespeare – walking his house reciting it, reading aloud the plays and favorite passages.  I know many of us rejoice in the comfort of the woods and playing with dogs and riding horses and drawing with chalk and making small boats to sail down streams.  All because they imprinted on us first and most and remind us of things.  It’s like they have always loved us best.

Perhaps these things imprinted on us because they did so when we were in a place and time of innocence and vulnerability.  And they became memories that still delight us and touch us beyond reason because they make us feel safe, somehow.  I suspect it’s the flip side of PTS (post-traumatic stress) recall – where terror and horrific imprinting can paralyze us.  Rather, it’s that part of sense memory and pure remembrance that calms us and makes us smile.  It’s that part of memory that we too often forget to claim and enlist.  Perhaps we have simply become too accustomed to walking around in the dark places.  We allow them to take over.  We accept them when they move in and crowd comfort out, like new hard-edged furniture.

And yet, I suspect that now may be a time when our old imprinted comforts are rather more critical and precious than we realize, and need to be revived and revisited.  I suspect we should all go reread a favorite book, and dance to our special music, watch birds in a woods, hug a dog, sit astride a horse, craft a toy boat, draw in chalk on the sidewalk.  I suspect we should get out the big bowl and the Miracle Whip, boil mushy potatoes, and make our mother’s potato salad.

This is a truth to which I can personally attest:  when you have damaged legs or feet – for whatever reason – and you’re trying to regain your walking skills, you tend to watch your feet all the time.  Or at least you watch the ground around them.  Tripping and falling is such a dread that you constantly look down before you take a step.  Even with the help of a cane or walking sticks or even the hand of a friend, you can’t help but keep your gaze scanning your path for awkward stones and uneven places. more “Lifting up our eyes.” …

It’s an ordinary Wednesday.  You’ve done a hard day’s work on your farm.  You’ve fed the animals and put them up for the night.  You’ve fed your children and tucked them in.  You’ve kissed everyone goodnight and drifted into sleep yourself – on that ordinary Wednesday, September 2nd, 1752, England.

The sunrise awakens you the next morning.  And it is Thursday, September 14th, 1752, England.  Overnight you lost eleven days from your month and your year.  September 3rd to September 13 simply disappeared. more “Learning to dance with a limp.” …

And so, here I am convalescing.

It’s been eight weeks since the dogs and I collided on the driveway, which resulted in a broken hip, a fractured arm, a tangle of nerves in one leg and foot, and assorted other bruises, sprains and damages.  All mine.  The dogs escaped injury-free.

After eighteen days in the hospital, I’ve been homebound now for another thirty-eight days … and counting.  And feeling properly grumpy and cross. more “Words matter.” …

I’d been feeling it for weeks.  It would come over me in waves – like those first gentle breezes of summer dawns.  Again and again it came – a deep sense of inexplicable gratitude.

And it reminded me a little of the joy of a hug from a long-ago friend … or the way a certain swell of brilliant music can take your breath away … it was even a bit like the rush of a first bite of chocolate. more “Recognizing gratitude.” …

It rode in on a black horse.  And then it melted under a hot midday sun, and it circled about on a bit of breeze and voice and intentionality, and finally it leaned into the heart of the man who had been building a very powerful connection between himself and the black horse.  The man and the horse were now trusting each other completely, with silent breath and touch, with in-sync energy, a private exchange of conversation.  So here was pure “grace,” I thought.  Here was witness to a moment of true, perfect, grace. more “Moments of grace.” …

I suspect they’re quite cozy and content right where they are.  After all, it’s dark and quiet.  It’s warmed by the radiance of the sun, cooled by filtered rain water.  There is plenty to eat.  It is utterly safe, protected, at peace.

For almost their entire lives, cicadas live underground.  For nearly as long as we like to nurture our human children – feeding them, protecting them, keeping them at home – these other growing, developing, and changing creatures are coming into their own maturity as well.  And that ultimate emergence, lurching into the next reality, can be rather alarming for both species. more “Belonging with cicadas.  Fitting in with introverted dogs.” …

I’m supposed to be writing a column today.  But I’m not.  I suspect it’s just me being rather unfocused and undisciplined.  Or perhaps it’s the child in me being unruly and interested only in playing and messing about (I think she’s about four).

It began as a day of good intentions.  But then I thought maybe I’d sit outside in the sun for just a minute and have some tea, and I started watching Daphne – the new-ish little dog that came to live with me a few months ago.  She was digging a hole in the backyard.  There was no purpose to it that I could see, other than it felt good on her toes to scratch down through the cool damp ground, to get her shoulders stretching and her little bum bouncing to a rhythm that only she could hear; and the smell of it was rich and the shower of dirt that fell all around her was like a confetti of joyfulness.  I walked over and stood beside her as we looked down into the fresh hole together and admired it.

And then I noticed that all around the hole there were multitudes of tiny blossoms growing.  Little fairy-sized blooms of yellow and white, some blue, and one very dark pink one.  I know they are considered weeds by some, but they reminded me of what I think the very first flowers to appear on earth must have looked like all those millions of years ago.  It was something I had read about a long time ago, so I thought I should look it up again, just to make sure.  But first, I decided to pick a few of them to keep in water on my kitchen windowsill.  

So as I was rounding the corner with a tiny vase in my hand in which to put my tiny blossoms, I saw wild violets filling an old forsaken flower pot and spilling over into the cracks of the driveway and the unused plant beds at its sides.  I wondered if they would transplant into my window boxes that just happened to be waiting for something to nurture.  And so I dug some of the wild violets up roots and all with my bare hands and carefully placed them into a nearby container.  The hole that was left behind in the ground looked a lot like the one that Daphne had made – the earth smelled as sweet and fresh, and I thought my fingers must have felt like her paws, muddy and young.

The new transplants needed watering, of course, so I pulled out the hose and happened to notice whole families of bees hovering all around the bird baths and I thought how they should probably be freshened for the bees as well as the birds.  But Daphne wanted to help, too, so rather than just filling them, we let them run over and made puddles where we splashed our feet and made footprints and toe-prints – both hers and mine.  Even big dog Liam joined in then, although he preferred to just watch the bees in fascination as they bathed and drank.  So I had to take a minute to sit down with him to listen to the bee music and watch their dance together.

But soon I was feeling another tug at my conscience – I needed to be writing a column.  But I wasn’t.  And so I started to get up, but looked up instead.  And I saw that Nature was doing somewhat the same thing as the dogs and I were doing today.  There she was, dancing with tree tops and winking at the sun, with no purpose, no goal, just joy.  She has her busy times, of course, what with pollen duties and rainstorms, pushing up flowers and vegetables and new tree sprouts, helping bird eggs hatch and creating lightning that refuels the air.  But every now and then, even Nature just plays and messes about – simply for the joy of it.  

Wiser minds than mine have put words to it, like A.A. Milne:  “Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.”

I suspect that was true for me today, when I was supposed to be writing a column.  But didn’t.

It was a book I’d brought home with me from clearing out my parents’ house ages ago, but I’d never read it.  It was one of many books I’d confiscated from their shelves, one of the older ones.  

The book jacket was long gone, of course, and the imprinted title was worn nearly bare from the hardcover cloth itself.  But when I opened the front cover, I discovered a small square folded gift tag that was still pasted securely onto the middle of the first page, just before the title page.  The tag was delightfully dated in its design, with Christmas bells and poinsettia blossoms and the words “Seasons Greetings” printed against a background of silver and blue.  Opening the tiny card, I found my mother’s familiar cramped handwriting:  To Byron (my father); From Helen (my mother).  

The book had been published in 1938, the year before my parents married, so I assume this had been a gift early in their 70-plus years together – perhaps their first Christmas as husband and wife.  It was, in fact, written about a young newlywed couple on a first trip to Europe.  The wife had written it entirely as journal entries documenting that year-long experience as they lived it – mostly in rural England during the husband’s employment there as a visiting professor.

The story was filled with often surprising and insightful reflections of place and time – told with humor and intelligence and keen observation.  It was a story that went beyond the experiences themselves, and spoke of society and culture, of political atmosphere (pre-World War II) and physical climate (a lot about the weather), of fashions and food, modes of transportation and living conditions, even insight into the equality (or lack thereof) between the sexes and races and “classes” of people.

It didn’t strike me as being an “historical” account particularly because it was written by a contemporary of my own parents.  Although it was published some 85 years ago,  it touched my heart and my mind as if it had been written just now, just for me, just as my mother might have told it to me.  My parents travelled a great deal during their time together, as well – perhaps inspired in part by this book that was shared between them at the start of their marriage.  And they, too, told stories of peace and of war, stories of startling differences and of surprising similarities, stories of welcome as well as mistrust, stories of unspeakable poverty and of equally unfathomable opulence.

I suspect that right now I may be especially aware of the stories we tell because I have just completed the writing of a new one myself – a novel.  And it has reminded me of the significance of storytelling, of how compelled we are to do it, even the responsibility of it.  Storytelling is such a purely human way of connecting with one another.  A way of reaching out and sharing ourselves with each other.

My conviction about authentic human storytelling was also thoroughly underscored these past couple of weeks as I was privileged to attend several performances of the “Joye in Aiken” series.  Here, the stories were told not through the written word, but in a vast and diverse array of astounding “voices” of sound and movement.  From vocals to instrumentation to dance – from individuals as well as collaborations – the stories were profound.  They were stories told for the most part by youth – yet many had their roots in generations of long ago, while others reached forward and introduced us to generations of what is to come.  

All of these stories were brimming with human energy and enthusiasm, talent and excellence.  And they were overflowing with grace and beauty and love.  But more especially, I suspect they were expressions of hope.  Hope for humanity and each other and a future for all the stories yet to be told.

I don’t remember when I started wrapping gifts in scarves.  But, for a very long time now, instead of using gift bags or wrapping paper, I much prefer to find interesting or pretty scarves in which to wrap and deliver my gifts.  

Sometimes I choose a particular scarf because it reflects something about the gift; sometimes it reminds me of the recipient.  Typically, I buy the wrapping scarves from little corner resale stores or charity shops, yard sales and church bazaars.  They’re fun to find and they add just a bit of extra presentation and value to the gift itself. more “The gift.” …