Mindful Living: Rose Colored Glasses

People used to say that my mom wore rose-colored glasses. I suppose it was because she was an eternal optimist, but she was no pollyanna, she could see the scratchy side of life too. Her glasses were not so much rose as they were blue, a deep depression-era blue glass. When I hold up one of my blue dinner glasses, the world is suffused in an evening glow, softened. There are little wavy spots where the glass blower left a few imperfections to remind us that neither are we, perfect. Mom might not have had a set of dinner glasses to explain things, but there is no doubt that she traveled in the realm of sometime magic. Not the big miracles that we all wish and hope for, but the everyday kind that mostly gets trampled in the din. Mom didn’t give me much in the way of clothes and stuff, but she gave me a gift that would be around when those things were long forgotten.

A lot of people’s birthdays are in the upcoming months because parents want sunny, balloon-filled birthday parties for their children, or maybe just because of all that cuddling in the cold winter months. Then there’s the weddings and baby showers and housewarmings. I read about living more simply, and changing our attitudes about buying big fancy gifts, especially considering our mounting credit card debts. Perhaps necessity is indeed the mother of invention, because it was only during my poorest years when my gifts were more of the heart than the wallet. One summer I steeped vodka into liqueurs, with sweet summer strawberries and fat bilberries. Last year we made homemade soap with a lavender scent that misted out the windows and across the grass. These gifts may appear to be gone, eaten or all washed up, but even now if I close my eyes, a drift of lavender still lingers.

Of course my sister’s birthday is in the summer months too, and she does usually benefit from my creative sprees. I love buying her gifts because she tells me what makes her truly happy - flowers and fresh fancy figs, bursting out like those strawberries, with the joy of summer. But even these things are just stuff to buy. She told me the other day about her real gift to herself. It’s a room in her house that she painted cerulean, a kind of soft blue purple. She calls it her Zen Room, a place for nothing.

A place for nothing. No books. No music. No computer. Nothing. If I had an extra room, could I make this kind of space for my soul? Would I be unable to resist filling it with just a few things? Maybe a brass floor lamp or a pine rocking chair or a black cherry candle. Could I allow the space to exist for itself, and not something yearning to be filled? If I had such a room, what kind of fairy dust would settle in there?

Of all the gifts I will receive in this June month, my birthday month, the gift of my mother’s vision is the most precious, her gift of seeing the miraculous in the everyday, of being mindful of the every moment.

So when my sister asked me what all I wanted for my birthday, I was kind of stuck. I have all the stuff that I need.

But when I lift the blue glass to my eye I can see what I dream of. The setting sun on my cheek as I drive home from Jazzercise on summer evenings, my fingers riffling the breeze out the window. My cat’s smooth orange fur, as he leans against me, looking up with a steady gaze. A song that makes me shiver in memory of a morning so long ago that only the feeling remains. If I can hold the glasses up for long enough, even the scratchy things of life soften and blur, and only the spirit remains.

Copyright January, 1999

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