The heart and imagination

The largeness of my heart seems directly reflective of how willingly my head accesses my imagination. When I was a girl, maybe the age of the young girl who has befriended us at the Bunny Campground, my imagination was shy of the escape hatches; what if there was no way back. Who would take care of things then. What serious beginnings my young girl had.

But there were inklings that my Imagination would watch, and wait, for the timing of events and people to show up in my life. There were suspicions that made my itchy feet dance at the most unexpected moments.

The forecast of weather promises a day like Summer today. A very clear and crisp morning, and the company of a fine Doodle of a friend makes this day a very new one. We are at a friend's place experimenting with a new setup for wash day. Two coolers for wash and rinsing, and the nylon clothesline for hanging occupy Hopi's deck. Sunshine rises through the tips of the Cedars.

It is Sun that will help make wash day a success. That, and the openness of a friend to find a way to help. A friend with Imagination.

This weekend we sat at the picnic table on the north side of the mobile home that houses our new friends. Pete had promised a day of kite making, and Sunday was that day.

"I've never done this before," Pete admitted. It has never been a reason to not try something. In all the years we have known each other, the stories of Pete at work or Pete being out in the world not having done something has never, well ... rarely, stopped him from trying something that appeared needing to be done.

The kids were excited, impatient in between being necessarily patient, as Pete and I muddled through the kite making process. I felt my old habit of being efficient or purposeful. I watched and listened as our styles of 'doing' clashed. But the thing is, in the company of real life children who were living forward in-the-moment, we were treated to a Sunday of once-more-with-gusto kind of experience. We were in the middle of fun and that is a big, big time imagining in practice.

 The afternoon of kite making stretched longer than the attention of the children, but Pete kept at the cut, tape, wind and measuring. Folding in lots of chewing the fat and sharing stories with Dad to the gaggle of children who have come to love Pete, the mylar bags that held the pounds of herbs we steep for Nourishing Herbal Infusions pulled time and circumstance into legend.

I bet, Pete will become a story in those children's sometime. I know the children are imprinting my heart with a story I could not have made up without them.

Perhaps the marks we make on the ways through and into the story that is ours to live is rich because it fills with broad and prickly memories. The regrets we have only so much dirty laundry left over from decisions that will have another chance at a different ending ... down the way, or around the corner, with a strange yet to become familiar.

It's also possible we judge the peculiarity of our styles and then ... pweff and puffery, we lose the timbre of the heart's beat which is as peculiar and powerful as the Sun. A star burning is peculiar. Sun Shine. Trees leafing out to goggle Sun Shine, human's call photosynthesis.

Leaves just call it yum.

How fortune are we to find drying clothes under the Sun's Shine an act of great imagination!