Lovers' Lane

I am not a runner, nor do I define myself as any type of athletically-engaged individual. I do relish in my ability to exercise, though, and love the fact that if I want to run, I merely have to throw my hair up, pull on a sports bra, lace up my sneakers...and go.

That's what I did tonight. After putting on a few (or ten) pounds since moving to one of the most foodie cities in the country, I decided it might be time to get outside and work up a sweat.

Garrett said he would join me on the run, so I knew we would end up pushing ourselves farther than I would ever push myself. I am so, so glad that we stretched our legs a little longer for we ended up at the Presidio, a beautiful park that served as an army post for 218 years.

Garrett asked if he could run off-path in the woods, and as soon as I nodded my head he took off like a bullet. With no company and no phone, I continued down the path on my own.

As I trusted my feet to do their job and carry me forward, I kept my eyes up to soak in views of the Golden Gate Bridge, children playing hide-and-seek, birds darting through the air, and the soft evening sunshine filtering down through leafy green trees.

And in that moment, with my non-runner feet running, stripped of all connection to anyone else, I was at peace.

The peace grew as the path became enclosed by an archway of trees and opened at an old wooden bridge. This was the end of the trail, and at it was a sign that told me I had just come down Lovers' Lane, the oldest path in the Presidio. It went on to say that soldiers once walked Lovers' Lane to meet with their sweethearts in the city. Upon reading the sign, my heart took flight. I had just delighted in the same trail that hundreds before me had used for the best thing in the world: love.

My happy heart and tired feet encouraged me to walk the path back to the entrance, so walk I did. And when I saw my husband waiting for me at the top of the hill by the front gates, I imagined what it must have felt like to be a soldier laying eyes on his sweetheart at the edge of Lovers' Lane.

image from presidio.gov

Friendship Bracelets for 14, Please

As a kid, I loved getting gifts from visitors or family members newly returned to town. Shameful, I know. But it's true. There was just something about receiving a present, no matter what it was, from somewhere far away.

I thankfully remembered this childhood love of gift receiving before my last vacation, on which I was going to see my sister's three young children. A couple of days before our trip, I popped into my favorite quirky gift store around the corner and picked up a few presents: a book for the baby, a fun drawing and ink pad for my nephew Jarlath, and a friendship bracelet kit for my niece, Lucy.

After arriving in South Carolina and saying hello to the children for the first time in over a year, I slipped them their gifts. They got excited, took a good look at them, and then ran down to the beach.

We spent all afternoon at the beach, with baby Lena crawling fearlessly into the ocean, Jarlath burying himself and others in the sand, and Lucy doing round-offs and cartwheels into the water. It was a fun, effortlessly happy day.

When we decided to retire from the hot sun and salty water, the kids fell into playing with their newly acquired toys. Lena flipped, slapped, and threw her book in between visiting with family. Jarlath managed to cover himself in the ink from his drawing pad (I secretly knew it was a bad idea when I bought it). Lucy busted out her friendship bracelet kit and started twisting threads together with Garrett's cousin and bracelet making extraordinaire, Meggan.

Lucy made matching bracelets for herself and Meggan first before taking orders from others. I asked her to make me one, and when she told me not to pick the same colors that she and Meggan had, I begrudgingly complied. When they completed my friendship bracelet, Lucy walked over to tie it around my wrist.

"Do you want me to tie it so you can take it off, or do you want to wear it forever?" she asked, looking into my eyes expectantly. 

"Forever," I answered, with a nod of my head.

Lucy continued to make friendship bracelets with Meggan for everybody in the room. And when I say everybody, I mean: her brother, father, mother, my dad, Garrett, Garrett's mom, Garrett's dad, Garrett's brother Patrick, Meggan's husband TJ, and Meggan's parents, George and Laurie. Without fail, upon delivery of every friendship bracelet, Lucy very seriously asked her very serious question of whether or not you wanted to be able to take the bracelet off (not the correct answer) or wear it forever.

I think everybody chose to wear theirs forever.

Later on in the week, after the children had returned home, it filled me with so much happiness to look around the room and see everybody wearing their friendship bracelets. The bracelets seemed so out of character for many of the group, yet nobody paid them mind or, better yet, broke their pact to wear them forever.

Two weeks later, mine is still going strong.

Bioluminescence

It was a mundane summer night. Garrett had spent the day's hours in solitude upon his sailboat in Greenwich Cove as I worked away mine in a downtown Newport t-shirt shop. The midnight hour struck, and as I locked up the shop I momentarily struggled with the decision of driving two minutes down the road to my bed or 25 minutes to meet Garrett on his boat. I chose the latter because, well, that's what you do when you're in love.
 
So over both bridges and through the woods I went in the dark quiet of the night. Garrett called to ask when I’d be arriving; he was excited to show me something. He couldn’t tell me about it, though, he said. It was purely something that I would have to wait and see.

When I arrived, Garrett was waiting on shore, practically bouncing from foot to foot with excitement. We piled ourselves into the one-person kayak—yes, kayak—and pushed off into the cove. I sat on Garrett’s lap, knees high to my chin, as he navigated our way through the water with the paddle.

"Look down,” he advised me.

I didn’t see anything. I told him so.

“Just keep looking down. Watch where the paddle hits the water.”

And then I saw it, the most awe-inspiring thing: as our paddle hit the water, what seemed hundreds of neon green sparks bounced away. Mesmerized, I asked him to do it again. And again. My head turned like a tennis spectator’s from side to side, watching as every stroke took to the water. With every stroke, the sparks returned. The night sky and sea were black, but at the tip of our paddle, neon green sparks abounded.

Garrett explained the phenomenon to me as what I now know as bioluminescence, an emission of light by process of a chemical reaction. It is most commonly used by creatures for offensive, defensive, or attractive purposes.

In our case, the luminescing creatures were jellyfish—the night tide washed them into the bay in massive quantities. We assumed that the jellyfish were acting in defense to our paddle’s disturbance. As they were defending themselves against our paddle, and not our flesh, we were able to appreciate the show that they were putting on.

We didn’t stop for a moment to realize that we were sitting merely inches above the waterline of a cove filled with thousands, yes, thousands, of jellyfish. We only noticed the wonderful beauty that was happening around us. No words escaped our lips, breath barely flew from our lungs. The only sound to be heard was the whooshing of the water being pushed behind us.

Through the water in our tiny kayak we quietly glided, flanked by a sea illuminated by flashes of light. What was a regular 5 minute trip to the boat became a 20 minute journey, a journey where Garrett and I understood that we were together receiving a beautiful gift from nature. When we reached the sailboat, we sat in silence for a minute more. As we had no further use for the paddle, we let the jellyfish be. The water swallowed the light and all was black once again.

We arose from our peace and faced the realization that we’d have to stand in the kayak, one at a time, to hoist ourselves over the boat’s edge. Standing in a kayak is no easy feat, mind you, especially when you are surrounded by waters engulfed in jellyfish. The mistake of shining our flashlight on the water’s surface was made, revealing a stretch as far as the eye could see filled with brown jellyfish.

They weren’t going away, and Garrett was trapped beneath me. I took a deep breath, slowly rose to my feet, and grabbed onto the boat. My heart quickened until my mind admonished it to not be afraid of something that had been so beautiful just a moment earlier. I pulled myself up and fell ungracefully into the aft. Garrett secured the kayak and leapt into his boat. We peered over the edge together and watched the sea of plain jellyfish float by. Our light show was over.

Love yo' kids, love yo' wife

I love love. It's my favorite thing in the world. Love is what I hope for, what I believe in, who I am.

It shouldn't be difficult to surmise that I am a hopeless romantic, either.

I appreciate and practice all types of love: familial love, sisterly love, friendly love, conditional love, unconditional love, and romantic love.

My husband and I must say "I love you" to each other at least a dozen times a day. I'm like this with most people that I love and am comfortable telling. It's kind of like word vomit; I can't hold it back. All of the sudden I'm walking down the street with you, going about my business, and the love hits me. I have to tell you. I can't not--otherwise it builds up in my chest and becomes so uncomfortable until I can no longer bear it. And sometimes, even if I'm not that comfortable with telling you yet, I have no choice. I become overwhelmed with this need of sharing my love.

And it usually never comes during opportune, already heart-felt moments. It'll happen at the grocery store, or mid-conversation during dinner, rushed at the end of a phone call, while driving on the highway, or called over racks of clothing while shopping. I usually feel awkward about it, this compulsive need to tell you that I love you.

I guess it isn't the worst thing in the world, sharing my love for you. Most of you accept it graciously. Nobody's ever not replied with an "I love you too," which is pretty nice. I've been lucky in my ability to restrain my impulses for those that I knew the love was unrequited, seeing as they're usually so uncontrollable. I'm sure I've surprised a couple of people with my feelings; love can be so restrained these days. In my opinion, people don't tell the ones they love nearly enough.

This month, I challenge you to try it. Work the word "love" into your daily routine. Tell your mom, your dad, your siblings, your significant other, your friends, your pets. Tell anybody you love. There is great potential in making their day by uttering those three simple words. You may feel awkward, as I sometimes do, but in the end it's a nice thing to do, really.

 

 

The Tea Kettle

I’m all about modern appliances. I am a creature of efficiency; I have much to do, and I like moving quickly. I like it even more when life provides me with the tools to move quickly. One of the places where I most enjoy modern appliances is in the kitchen. I work long days, up early and home late. Therefore, I like to be able to prepare things speedily. Toaster? Great. Blender? Awesome. Keurig? Perfection. But there’s one thing in my kitchen that I just won’t let go of: my tea kettle.

The tea kettle was a staple in my house growing up. Its whistle blew every weekend morning and afternoon, if not every weeknight as well. The tea kettle whistle served much like the historical lunch bell, calling us all from our nooks in the house to join around the table like farmers coming in for a midday break from the fields.

We didn’t have a tea kettle in college. For me, that was extremely strange. Tea pretty much became absent from my life. Yes, I knew that I could heat water up in a pan or in the microwave, but it wasn’t the same. The pan just bubbled and the microwave beeped; neither whistled.

I didn’t have a tea kettle in the first apartment that my husband and I shared together, either. We lived in the desert. The need for hot beverages was rare. Time passed, weekends were spent drinking coffee (usually iced). And then we registered for our wedding. A tea kettle was one of the first items I added to our registry.

We were gifted the tea kettle, and my home felt complete. I don’t care that we live in the desert—I just crank up the AC and pretend it is cold outside. Coffee is drunk on the weekdays, but tea is reserved for Sundays (I’m out the door too early on Saturdays for work to take the time). I love hearing my tea kettle whistle on a Sunday morning, secretly gleeful that it’s waking up my husband and pulling him out of bed. It’s the perfect start to a perfect day.

Did I mention that Sunday is my favorite day?