More Than This

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"Sometimes serendipity is just intention, unmasked," someone wild once said to me.  I think I answered him with some sort of vague Mmmm-hmm, right, hidden as I was behind my copy of now-defunct 'Sassy' magazine in the comfort of his backseat.  Sure, he sounded like his mother...but I'd always remembered it.  And now I think I knew what he'd meant.  When you were willing to say what you really wanted, something or someone just might help you along.  

Growing up, I longed to live in a big city, and then in the early 2000's I read Money Magazine's "Best Places to Live".  Believe me when I tell you I honestly considered moving to a few of those places.  Ah!  As I read along about each one and considered the flattering photographs in the spread, I was filled with hope! Just to pack whatever of my things would fit into my convertible, and just drive away, never going back again, that's what I wanted.  To start a fresh life in a new place and totally reinvent myself.  

Fast forward through college, plus a few years.  Here I am in Nowata, raising three kids and trying my hand at peaceful co-parenting.  I truly believe I am SUPPOSED to be here right now, right here in this very place.  And, to be fair, Nowata hasn't ALWAYS been this bedraggled or this snaggled.  For the most part, the houses here were old and large and well cared for, many with big and welcoming porches, sometimes wraparound if you were lucky.  Alleys ran behind them -- the wide, old-fashioned ones I'd always loved for the way they offered views of the backs of people's houses.  In alleys, things were more casual and more intimate -- and therefore more revealing.  In summer, you saw things like colorful plastic glasses left on little outdoor tables, rugs draped over back-porch railings, toys strewn across lawns or homemade sandboxes, laundry on the line with the sleeves of upside-down shirts seeming to wave.  And, just like at my grandma Gorley's house, there might even be hollyhocks and snapdragons and gigantic sunflowers, tomatoes hanging heavy on the vine, green peppers hiding in the shade of their own leaves and waiting to be found like Easter eggs.  There might be sugar snap peas climbing chain-link fences with curly abandon, children's gardens with leggy printing on Popsicle sticks identifying dependable and forgiving crops: zucchini, carrots, marigolds to keep away the bugs.  In winter, you could find families of snowmen, sleds resting against walls like tethered horses, imprints of snow angels, lopsided circles with wedgelike lines stamped out for a game of snow pie.  And no matter what the season, I always liked seeing what was left by the big garbage cans: boxes from new purchases, kitchen chairs with broken rungs, refrigerators with the doors removed, suggesting an odd kind of nakedness. 

Alleys still spark other pleasant memories from my childhood: playing in those narrow little streets behind the houses with other kids who lived on streets other than mine.  We played old-fashioned games like tag and hide-and-seek and Mother May I?  My voice would always sort of catch when it would be my turn to ask Mother May I?, because everybody knew I didn't have one, but I would wait until I could retreat to my bedroom to cry about it.  I always felt grateful for being able to just go somewhere and get it all out, like it was my sworn duty as a human being to complete my own personal checkoff list of certain things every day...do something--anything--physical...let myself feel something emotional...enjoy conversation with others or just learn how to be silent and be okay with others who want to be silent in an effort to be social, to say my prayers because that's just how things are supposed to go when you're raised in the Midwest, or simply go out and lie on your back in the cool green clover only to look up and appreciate the clouds...and to learn something new, every day, no matter what it was. 

I once read every time we learn something new yet another wrinkle is formed in the brain.  This fascinated me.  In fact, everything the human body is capable of fascinates me!  Growing new skin as is the healing process of a wound, even after we have been cut deeply.  How the body manifests physical symptoms that often warn of us to seek help from someone with a much higher level of understanding to help us fix it.  The eye's ability to look up and spy Andromeda, seeing as far as humanly possible without technology.  All the physiological mechanics, never once orchestrated by humans alone, to allow for our beating hearts.  It all matters, and it is all relevant.  As intention is defined as an aim or a plan, I NOW find myself making positive intentions more than ever before.

Over the course of the past 2 years, I have had several pleasantly inexplicable things happen.  Just..various times when something would happen and I just knew ​it was the Universe, the hand of God, gently nudging me along.  Whether the sum of these occurrences are seemingly accidental and unexpected fortuitous circumstances which we sometimes call good luck, or even if they are pieces of life's jigsaw puzzle that is ultimately the aim or plan of God, I just choose to be thankful.  So, thanks, Daddy.  Sometimes, serendipity really IS intention, unmasked.  I get it now.  Happy belated Father's Day.