A beautiful Saturday with watercolors, butterflies, Thoreau, and Bonnie Raitt.

I had a nice little interlude this morning at an intersection in Jamaica Plain. As I pulled up I saw a youngish man collecting trash. His bike leaned casually against a tree as he purposefully gathered the rather gross remnants of other people's lives. I watched him for a moment and then rolled my window down to call to him. He came to my window and I thanked him. He looked surprised and then smiled broadly and thanked me back. He stated he lived up the street and that as he had rode by the intersection he had felt an urge to do a little extra something for his community.  I agreed that this was a good gesture and as the light changed we parted ways. The moment that we shared was brief, but it was a gentle reminder that even when other's in our communities don't do their role we don't have a free pass. Sometimes when we do that little extra we can inspire others to do their part too and may even a little bit more too. And those little extra bits help our communities to be a whole bit better.

These are weeds along the side of the road. I saw them on my walk from the bus stop. Many consider weeds nuisances, yet I think so often how wild and unintentionally beautiful they can be. Dandelions are weeds, yet those merry orbs inspire us to be silly and make floating wishes. I loved the flashes of pink that the bright green leaves of this 'weed' flaunted proudly. I could stretch and make a metaphor of all this, but I think I'll just enjoy what I found. Beautiful mistakes of nature, yet does nature have mistakes? A purpose to everything perhaps. 

Some fetching little blossoms I spotted on route to meet a friend in Brookline.  They looked like little fallen stars.

'Catch a fallen star and put it in your pocket. Save it for a rainy day. Catch a fallen star and put it in your pocket. Never let it fade away'.

I also found a penny heads side up. Good fortune all around. :-)

 

Oh exciting! I realized there is a blogger app so I can more easily create posts! Let's see how this looks and turns out. There may end up being a lot more Story Girl posts in the future if this comes out well.
 

This weekend was not exactly as planned. Friday I experienced an unexpected hurt. Since then I have been enveloped in the love of my friends and have until today rarely had a moment alone. I am as ever grateful for the love and support of my friends. They are each beautiful and special to me. Today though I decided to do something I had wanted to do this weekend all along anyhow and visited the Blue Hills. I had not been there in some time and was anxious to see my favorite trees and walk along some of my favorite trails.

When I arrived I walked along the familiar entry point with purpose. It had changed little from my last visit and this was a tremendous comfort; however as I reached the top, the clearing to the trail was covered and overgrown. Slightly confused I traveled to the left. Had I forgotten the trail or had it changed in my absence? As I wandered about a determined spirit came over me. I would figure this out. As I worked to do so I felt sturdy and assured and unfortunately that feeling helped me to not focus on where I was stepping. I slid on a loose rock and hurt my ankle. As I stumbled over to a large rock to sit and assess my pain, I felt frustrated. I calculated my pain. I considered that I was not far from the start of the trail and thus my car. I could easily turn around. As I gingerly stood up I realized that the pain, while acute, was bearable. I could handle it. I could figure out the trail. I could do it...and as I stood and looked around I saw some other hikers and realized the trail was indeed near. I rotated my ankle a bit and I was off.

I took the trail to Houghton's Pond and while I gazed at the water and the sunlight dancing against it, I was reminded how resilient and strong my spirit can be. I was also reminded once again how healing nature can be. It is my soul. It is my grace. Four miles to remember who I am, four miles to remember that the pain in my heart, like my ankle, while acute- is bearable (and temporary). Always remember my friends that we are all resilient. Be brave. And smile. Always remember to smile.

One of my old friends. The way the sun hit it today was extraordinary.

Thank goodness for waterproof shoes! It was too tempting to not wander into the water and snap this and I would have done it regardless. So yes, thank goodness for waterproof shoes.

How could this view not help but heal one? I love the way the clouds swirl in the background.

Today it will be nine years since my Grandma Jeanne passed away. That it has been nine years is hard to believe...sometimes it feels so close and my heart aches with every beat. Sometimes when I swim in the ocean and float on my back I can feel her in the sun's warm embrace and it is like I am in her arms again. I have been so blessed in my own life and her love will always be one of my greatest blessings.

 Another blessing I have cherished is the memory of being able to help a 90 year old woman find her own history. Her niece came to me over two years ago asking for my help in finding information for her father and aunt. They and their three other siblings had been surrendered by their mother in the 1920s. They had all been sent to different places and with the exception of two of them had never seen one another again. The aunt and father had found one another as adults when someone said to the auntie that they had seen a man working in the fields that looked so similar to her. She rushed there with her husband and her brother was found. They had been separated since childhood. Both had been institutionalized. Both had suffered neglect. Both were so grateful to have found each other. From that moment forward they were a part of one another's lives and kept their hopes alive that one day they could find their other siblings. While they waited and hoped they raised their children together and tried to provide the love and care that they had not received.

They came to my agency multiple times over the next few decades looking for information and each time were denied or told the info was lost. By the time they came to me the father had died and his daughter had taken on the search in his honor and for her elderly auntie. This woman is one of the most persistent and courageous women I have ever met. I knew I would do everything I could to help her.  Her auntie just wanted to know where she came from. It was a simple request and something many take for granted. I myself know what is like to not know your own history. Over the next two years I spent any spare moment I had piecing information together and taking trips to our archives. My hands would gingerly touch each ageing file and I would hope against hope that the next one would be it. Each time I walked out with blackened by dust fingers and a heavy heart. And then one day with our intern in tow we found it. It was pure luck. We were looking for another file and I looked at one of the boxes. There was a sequence of numbers on it that looked familiar. I grabbed auntie’s paperwork. I carried it with me to the archive always just in case. There had been one piece of paper that randomly had numbers on it. Breathlessly I realized they were similar to the ones of the box. One quick conversation with the archivist and I had the box and auntie’s history was found.

She and her niece (and some more family) came the next day to the office and we went over the file together. The history was ugly….she had forgotten so much and here it was. Being institutionalized, abuse, neglect, a diagnosis of being feeble minded. And auntie took it all with aplomb. She knew who she was. She knew what she had achieved. And knowing her history didn’t change who she was. She handled everything with humor and grace. Her family looked at her with such love that was so easy to understand. She hugged me tightly and I was so grateful to be a social worker, so grateful I am nosy and persistent (two traits from both my mother and grandmother) and so grateful to have met this woman. She changed my life in the course of one afternoon. Her dignity, her ability to accept the past and to create love, these things all moved me immensely.

Today the niece called me with an update as to how they are doing. They have found more and more family members including one of the auntie’s sister’s grandsons. Auntie had cried. She saw her brother in his eyes. The niece wanted me to know that auntie has been collecting photos of all of her new to her family and in the middle of all of them is a snapshot of myself, our intern, and auntie. They all consider me family. I can think of no better than today for me to receive that call. As she told me about the picture I looked at the same picture- it is on my own desk next to the one of my Grandma (that also looks over Ben Affleck. We both had crushes on him so I gave her some eye candy. She was always a flirt.) Auntie and Grandma both looked at me and my heart felt so full. Tears came to the corners of my eyes. Where earlier I had struggled to keep in tears of longing and sadness, I now let tears of joy flow.