You Are Here

I am spending the week on a beach with my daughter, my father and my step-mom. It is bliss. After the winter Kansas City experienced I need a break. And my daughter does too.

Today I went for a long walk. My “baby girl” stayed behind with her Grammie and I enjoyed a very long walk. As I walked my mind roamed. And it landed in Japan. A great sadness came over me. I started to feel guilty. I felt like I should go home. How could I be so brash to enjoy a beach vacation with the devastation in Japan?

My body grew heavier with each step. My legs started to fail me.

I then thought of the book Eat, Pray, Love. There is a part of the book that chronicles her experience with meditation. I often think of meditation in a romantic way. I keep thinking I could one day learn to meditate. I am not there yet.

But today I tried. I tried to not think. I walked. I walked. I walked.

And this is what my walking meditation brought to me. Mother Earth is not a God. She does not reward or punish her children. She does not pick one country over another. She is just living and trying to thrive. She is random, beautiful, powerful, devastating and glorious.

I realize that trying to suffer for the people of Japan will not ease their suffering. That my daughter’s screams of delight in the waves is okay. It does not mean I am entitled, that somehow being in America makes me special and that I have somehow earned this pleasure.

It just means my joy was here – now – and I need to soak it in completely. I ran back to my family. I laughed, I played, I read, I napped, and I thanked Mother Earth for this peaceful day on the shore.

And I keep silently chanting – “you are here, you are here, you are here”.

Casey

SHARE THIS: Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Fed Up

I’m breaking down. I’m worn slick. I can’t take another minute. I’m fed up. The sun needs to come out now and stay out for more than 5 minutes. My vitamin D is lacking, and I am a shade of pale I have never been before.

The large long handle would be my choice today.

When I start to feel this way, my mind turns to blue. The color, not the emotion. So today I visited a place that always makes me happy – the LL Bean Boat & Tote page on their website. I seldom buy bags that I design, but I do enjoy the process and their blues make me very happy. I won’t be buying a bag anytime soon. Just knowing that I had so many blues to choose from calmed me down.

I have written about blue before. My previous musings can be found here.

Sloane 

SHARE THIS: Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

In Retreat

Sloane and I are in an Internet retreat learning fabulous tips and tricks for our blog posts. We know you will be very impressed with our new skills. Okay, not really, you probably won’t notice anything, but please feel free to find joy in knowing that we are learning new skills to throw around our blog.

Website work is so much fun!

Casey


SHARE THIS: Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Silence

One evening last winter – not the one that ended yesterday when the sun rose in its glory, but the winter of 2009-2010 – I was sitting in my darkened office at STUFF. I like working at night when the store is closed and the lights are off. I turn on just one task light over my desk, and I attack the minutia of retail. To say I was diligently working on the brain-numbing details of inventory would actually be correct. I was so close to finishing that task, and I had come in after the store was closed to have total silence and full reign.

Then the phone rang. The voice on the other end said, “Your husband says you’re working very hard, but I want you to come and have drinks with me at the girl’s night I just threw together.” I hemmed, I hawed, I bandied about the “I’m so close to finishing and I really need to work because I’m a self-employed business woman and this is what we do” speech. It fell on deaf ears, and I was in my car a few minutes later heading to exactly where the beckoning had sprung from.

Karen Errington & Missy Koonce

My friend Missy had pulled together a wonderful group of women that evening. She says she “threw” it together, but it really seemed to have come together as if by magic. The women I met that night were a mixed bunch to me. Some I knew by name and some I met that night for the first time, but one woman was in the nether region between the those two. She was a dear friend to Missy. She and I had been introduced numerous times at Bar Natasha, and I had seen her perform professionally on many stages in Kansas City. But that night, we talked – about kids and husbands and friends and commitments and responsibility. She is someone you don’t forget easily – her eye contact very focused, her laughter extremely contagious, and her singing voice coming from her whole body, not just her lungs.

And today, while I was sitting in my fully lit office, the phone rang. Missy told me that her dear friend Karen had died very early this morning. The cancer that had re-visited her body – and this time aggressively – had won. I was speechless for a minute. Missy and I continued to talk, and we re-confirmed with each other our deep hatred for cancer. Many other things were said, like “I love you” and “Take care”. Then we hung up and went back to doing. Doing things. Tasks. Work.

There was a silencing in my universe today of a voice I will never hear again. I can fill that silence with peace. I can fill that silence with hope. I can fill that silence with friendship.

I will do all of those things after I live in that silence for a bit longer.

Sloane

I grabbed this photo from Missy’s facebook page without her permission. She’ll forgive me.

SHARE THIS: Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Copyright Casey Simmons and S. Sloane Simmons. People who steal other people's words & thoughts are asshats. Don't be an asshat.