No Mood For Martha

I opened up my Living magazine at lunch today. The June 2010 issue that had arrived in the mailbox yesterday and had been tucked away in my bag just waiting for 12:30 was finally out and I was ready to read. With a quite tasty-looking cheeseburger on the cover....I was ready to dig in and read for an hour....drift away into the world of summer recipes and outdoor party favors. I opened it and Page 4 fell into my lap: Martha's Calendar.

June 6th: Cut roses in the lily pond garden
and make arrangements.

June 11th: Clip the barberry, rue and teucrium
in the herb garden.

June 27th: Make fresh lemonade.
Picnic and play croquet at the farm with friends.

And the list goes on and on. It goes on for 30 days to be exact. Organic fertilizer, garden symposiums, mowing the meadow and cleaning up compost areas......and all of a sudden it just hit me: I was in no mood for Martha today. A lily pond garden? Really? And if that even does exist, which I doubt, I'm sure there's a highly paid "lily pad/rose bush" specialist working round the clock to make sure it's in full proper bloom. And what the heck is barberry, rue and teucrium?? REALLY?? I'm all for growing a little basil as it's $6 a bunch at the store, but teucrium? (I googled it by the way - it's a genus of perennial plants, of the family Lamiaceae. These species are herbs, shrubs or subshrubs. They are most common in Mediterranean climates. They are valued as ornamental plants and pollen source, and some species have culinary and/or medical value.) REALLY?? I mean it was 29 degrees yesterday morning - Connecticut hardly has a Mediterranean climate. And okay, while playing croquet at the farm with friends and drinking tall sparkling glasses of homemade lemonade with mint garnishes in Gatsby-type dresses is a likely chick-flick movie scene, I highly doubt that it's her Sunday afternoon activity. Who lives like that? Who pretends to live like that? Really? Anyone? Is it just me?

It got me to thinking about my own calendar. Laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning up, commuting to and from work, making flyers, typing documents, getting ready for the day, getting ready for bed, bathing, eating, more dishes, more laundry, filling up the car with gas, stopping for trash bags and toilet paper, watching tv or reading a book, charging the phone, the ipod, the GPS. Get up and repeat all over again. AND I DON'T EVEN HAVE KIDS! Most of life is hard and tedious and repetitive. It's routine and common-place and simple.

But as Brian Andreas says, "Time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life." So, I wanted to give a shout out to all the people out there finding love and life and joy and happiness in their calendars that look more like mine than Martha's. The parents who are finding joy in kite-flying and bubble making, book-reading, simple picnics and fishing trips. You know who you are! The women who bring sweets to their co-workers or find joy in cooking a good meal for friends and family. They find pieces of satisfaction in their lives through meetings and clubs and bible studies. You know who I'm talking about! The husbands who buy cheap flowers at the grocery store and bring them home just to see the smile on their wives' faces. The people who get up and get at it day in and day out even when they don't feel like it - physically or mentally. They press through with pain or sickness or depression and often no one ever realizes how hard they are trying. You know who you are - even if we don't sometimes. The people who are truly honest that life isn't always picture perfect, because we all know it's not, and there's no comfort in pretending. The encouragement is in the honesty - knowing we are all in it together - going through this human experience. Thank you to all of you who really are Living. Who are finding the joy in the little things. You are an encouragement to me and so many others. Thank you!