pull up a chair

it began as an inkling….it gathered steam and conviction. an idea, born ages ago, would finally take form. where? at this virtual kitchen table. come, pull up a chair.

long i have dreamed of being a wise old woman, with a place at my table always set, an extra mug just a hand’s reach away. i would welcome friends. we would pour out our hearts and our souls. wisdom would be born, there at the maple table, where generations of pencil marks had been etched in the wood. i have been a writer as long as i have been breathing, it seems. i have been looking for light for a long long time. because my life’s work for the last quarter century has been to gather great stories for a great newspaper, i have had license to indulge my insatiable curiosity and to turn up the amp on my listening ear. my other life’s work is being a mother and making a home. they are, all three, the thump-thump-thump of my heart.

i am, unabashedly, a nesty girl, with deep roots sunk into the floorboards of my old house, and into the earthen beds of my gardens, now frozen over in this middle-of-america winter. as i have grown older, wiser, inhaling more deeply the rhythms of the natural world, the rhythms of my own heart and soul, i have discovered that perhaps my highest calling is to weave everyday grace and beauty into this world. for me, maybe for you, that begins on the homefront–in the way i shape the space in which i dwell, in the way i feed those i love, in the way i tend my gardens and, certainly, my relationships, my relationships with those i love most dearly and with those i merely pass by in the course of a day.

but i am hellbent on not stopping there–there is a big sad world out there, and we cannot turn our backs, close our hearts to the injustices, the ugliness beyond our front door. together, perhaps, we can spur each other on, stitching small moments of poetry into the vast gray canvas of our lives, reaching a hand across the table, living with a gentleness and grace that keeps at bay the staccato-paced, hyper-tech world and illuminates our way back home.

–bam 12.12.06*

* thus was the original backstory of pull up a chair. all these years later, it remains very much true. only, we’ve turned more pages of the calendar, and poured many more cups of pure heart and soul here. welcome to this blessed table. please, pull up a chair.

–bam 03.02.12

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