I wrote the following one day for a friend who had suffered a terrible tragedy . . . But I've kept it posted . . . first on my refrigerator, like a child's milestone of discovery . . . and then transferred to my vision board . . . Because it's who I want to become this year.

It's a reminder for me on those days . . . in those times when things fall apart in the microcosm of a single moment . . . when I imagine a catastrophe that's not  . . . when I've underestimated one that comes hurling back at me like a boomerang on a random Tuesday in June . . . or when there's just no mistaking the soulshatter . . .

​In the worst of these (and they're coming for all of us) I want to remember that being human is to open our hearts to the pain  . . . to agree to the suffering because we understand there is something better on the other side of it . . . to know that what we do with the pain might be the key to our own or someone else's heart and healing . . .

​And so I begged, stole, and borrowed to write . . .

Dearest Friend,

​On my very last day I found a note with this key waiting for me when I arrived home . . . As I pass it along to you, I'm reminded that it's not what happens to us that makes us brave, but what we do after . . . when the shock and grief and awe have the power to paralyze . . . and after, when it's only necessity that pushes us forward, and we find, like a discovery, that necessity is still important to us . . . and after . . . when we look for joy and purpose and other things that had lost their importance at a place in time . . .

​For your worst days . . .

​Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones, and when you have laboriously conquered your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.
~ Victor Hugo

​On your better days . . .

​"Go back?" he thought, "No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!" So he got up and trotted along with his little sword held in front of him and one hand feeling the wall and his heart all of a pitter and a patter.
~J.R.R. Tolkien

​And on those days when your courage overtakes and exhilarates . . .

​I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.
​~ Charlotte Bronte'

​My friend, I am inspired that you've arrived at this place. Go forth with adventure and a lion's heart.

​p.s. Keep the key. I have one for both of us.

In watching the annual TV coverage of the Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery this morning, I'm remembering how this place took hold of my soul a very long time ago . . .

​On a 7th grade class field trip to Washington DC, Arlington was a compulsory part of our educational itinerary . . . along with a tour of the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, the Smithsonian Institute, and a few  other vague and hazy stops. I remember the austere sterility of the White House, standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with friends and looking out over The Mall, and the incongruity of a pair of Ruby Red Slippers displayed behind glass in the Smithsonian (oh, the whimsy of American history) . . . but over the years and all these years later, Arlington National Cemetery is what I remember most with vivid clarity . . .

​There were neat rows  -- rows and rows of bone-white epitaphs stretching out in every direction . . . great lines of marbled, uniform tombstones , intertwined between pink cherry blossoms and stretched infinitely for miles and miles over hills and valleys.  Old soul that I was, even as a thirteen year old girl distracted by thirteen year old girl preoccupations (think bashfully holding hands with the thirteen year old boy beside me on the tour bus and pondering what I would wear for the hotel dance later),  I was able to disengage from the adolescent chatter to internalize the sobriety of where I was -- the significance.

It was terrible, beautiful, and tragic. These people died for me, I thought. Thousands and thousands . . . maybe millions of men died, sacrificed their lives, so that we -- I -- could be free and red, white, and blue.

It was a simple, noble, and enduring concept. I don't remember how quickly my thoughts turned back to the shy hand-holding, but those haunting rows of glory white sacrifice had become a part of me.

​On a different day in a different season . . . I had thought that the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Ceremony had made a lesser impression. But when -- over three decades later -- we had opportunity to be in Washington DC to watch our daughter run the Marine Corps Marathon, I told my husband, an Air Force veteran with a patriotic soul "You have GOT to see this" . . . as if I'd been there yesterday . . .

​It was October 31st in 2011. The entire east coast had been blasted overnight out of quintessential Autumn and had awakened to a skyfall of snow. By late afternoon, it had turned to a cold onslaught of steady sleet. We stood under an umbrella, under the heavy patter and amidst the blowing leaves. It was cold . . . bitter, bone cold. But we stood in that sobering cold in reverent silence with a hundred other patriots and watched the faithful sentinels step in cadence without flinching, watched the soldier transfer his duties to the next soldier, listened to the haunting melody of Taps . . .

and have never been so moved to understand the sacrifices of the men that lay beneath those tombstones . . . have never since been so thankful and honored to brace ourselves against the cold.

​Since 1937, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has been honored and guarded uninterrupted, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The dogwoods are blooming.

The lilacs, the redbuds, cherry and apple blossoms have burst onto our scene. Spring is in a full bloom of color and I'm chasing it like it might never happen again . . . trying not to miss it.

It's important to think this way. I learned this lesson some years back when I woke up one hapless late November morning and realized I had missed Autumn. Completely missed it. I had been slogging through the annual education grind of data analysis and reading assessments and equitable grouping and the training of new teachers. Then one morning the trees were bare and I wondered, When did that happen?

I had missed the first cooling breezes of a balmy Michigan summer for the late hours of an air conditioned office in Detroit. I had missed the magenta morning skies against flaming trees and ignored the wind-blasted, sideways gusts of golden poplar leaves across highways as I phoned home my guilty ETA. I had missed the comforting hush of dusky, waning fireplace evenings and the glow of a harvest moon for the rush of unforgiving deadlines. I had missed everything between the first dazzle of color and up to the November guests. I had missed the thankful . . . the joy.

I hated that I missed it. It had been the simplest, most glorious gift to overlook . . . It was like my soul was choking and I simply forgot to breathe.

Since then I have vowed never to forget . . . to remember the gifts of every season . . . to chase leaves and chase a full moon with free abandon. I chase barns all red and rustic telling the history of the humble and hardworking . . . and I chase sweet, blue-eyed babies across the country. I chase morning glories and mountain paths, waterfalls, and the glinted edges of wine glasses . . . up-close flower faces in bold colored vases . . scarlet sunsets . . . falling snow against twilight sky . . . ocean waves . . . the winding of rivers . . . and the holiness of Words . . .

I chase these things . . . freeze them for a sacred second in the cruelty of time . . . and offer them back to the world. Have you noticed how I chase?

If you've forgotten how to do it . . . or don't remember ever doing it . . . have lost your childlike wonder to the ravages of time and later . . . Later was yesterday . . .

Find something beautiful . . . something that tugs at your soul . . . Intentionally, unabashedly, unapologetically chase it down. Wait for it. Look for it. Or just stop when you accidentally stumble upon it. But when you find it --you'll know it because it used to be yours - - give it your full attention. Now look at it . . . and learn to play . . . like a grown-up. Honor its curves and its lines and its energy. Find its name (that beautiful lavender bush is actually a dogwood tree;). Give your pursuit of it a name . . . Like moonchasing or barnstalking . . . Dogwooding? Celebrate it every time it comes around. Memorize how the light plays off its color at different hours of the day. Angle yourself just right above or below it . . . as close as you can or from a reverent distance . . . but build a relationship with it . . . and remember it . . . trade your own importance for it and lose yourself in it.

It helps to have a friend or two willing to indulge your crazy . . . As in the case of my barnstalking whimsy last summer . . . Someone needed to be driving the getaway car when I may . . . or may not;) . . . have trespassed on private property to get that perfect shot of the antique barn over the bridge with the billowing clouds reflecting in the water. Someone needed to be tied to my innertube when the river slowed to a crawl and the only thing left to do was squint into the sun and kick up our feet against the loveliness of blue-green . . . and simply remember . . . Someone needed to witness the rare in the bluebird flitting among the low branches . . . the fleeting wonders of the running path . . . the one that got away before we could snap the memory . . . But it's there . . .

Friends don't let friends chase alone.

Find your dogwood . . . and a little joy this week . . . before the bloom gets away and you have to wait til next year. Next year is not a promise. Have a simple adventure. Feed your soul.

​Chase the dogwood.

​