I’m on the lookout for small miracles these days. Or maybe they are on the lookout for me. Whichever it is, I’m grateful to keep coming across them.
For instance, did you know that if you cut branches of a forsythia bush in winter, and put them in a vase of water, they bloom? I didn’t either until last year when a friend showed up at my house with a handful of barren sticks. She did the same this year, as other friends were handing me tulips. I smiled because now I was in on the secret. Last week, I walked into the kitchen and was greeted by a burst of little yellow flowers next to the sink. A February miracle.
The gathering my forsythia-bearing friend attended was the first of what I’m calling “Everything will be okay conversations” after the name of this column. I’ve long wanted to gather people in a salon-like setting to talk about things beyond the day-to-day and definitely beyond politics. Maria Shriver calls such an approach “living above the noise.” Some of those sitting around the fire were already friends, some were strangers to each other, all were open-hearted. It was a warm and enlivening evening, an above-the-noise miracle that I can’t wait to repeat.
It’s been a rare winter day that offered bright sunshine this season rather than gray skies and each appearance has been greeted as its own kind of miracle, remarked upon by walkers-by as a harbinger of warmer days to come. The sun led me to the beach one recent morning, where I settled on a large flat rock. The water was gentle, the tide just beginning to go out. I watched as each small wave pushed forward and found its way between and around the rocks surrounding my perch, as if following a path carved long ago. The light reflecting on the water beyond the tide line produced individual sparkles that seemed to form their own path to a larger field of reflected light on the horizon. Keep shining no matter what, seemed its message, indifferent to whether warmer days were coming. Being content in the moment is a miraculous way of being I still aspire to.
Picking my way around the large rocks as the water moved in and receded, depositing and taking away sand, my eye was drawn to a speckled smallish-size rock that was partially buried. The tide had sculpted the sand in such a way that the surface of what seemed a round shape underneath formed a perfect heart-shape, a small miracle of temporary transformation.
As I walked along the water line, multiple shells were scattered ahead of me. I picked one up and rubbed my thumb along the little shelf which gives the once-upon-a-time snail’s home its nickname — slipper, and to some, rowboat. I threw the shell in the water and for a moment, I pictured a flotilla of rowboat-shaped shells captained by little sea creatures launching from shore when no humans were around, following the path of light.
I laughed and shook my head at my flight of imagination, not much different than the 10-year- old me who would sit in the branches of our old apple tree and daydream about fairies and magic and of course, my own Prince Charming.
A friend, Nic Askew, creator of the extraordinary library of films called Soul Biographies, recently shared one of his poems which also reminded me of this younger hope-filled self. “As the light makes its way.”
A woman had lived in her imagination. Ever since she was a girl/ For it was full of wonder and adventure when set against the outer world that housed her everyday life.
Her imagination surrounded her in light. The outer world in a darker shade. But as she waited for this outer world to catch the light, she realized it might not.
And so she stepped out into the world hand in hand with her imagination. Knowing that together they would bring light to the darkest of corners. And she is you. And me.
As I approach my sixties, that I still sometimes walk hand in hand with my imagination seems the greatest small miracle of all.
A member of the Marblehead Current’s Board of Directors, Virginia Buckingham is the former chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Port Authority, chief of staff to two Massachusetts governors, deputy editorial page editor for the Boston Herald and author of “On My Watch: A Memoir.”
Virginia Buckingham
A member of the Marblehead Current’s Board of Directors, Virginia Buckingham is the former chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Port Authority, chief of staff to two Massachusetts governors, deputy editorial page editor for the Boston Herald and author of “On My Watch: A Memoir.”
