Everything Has Its Place

 

Perfect Place for Wisteria I'm Planting in Honor of My Friend Jim Hamilton

 

I’ve been unequivocally blessed in the housing department since I moved away from home when I was 18.  The year I went to Berkeley, many California residents didn’t get into dorms.  The year I moved to Paris there was a bizarre housing crisis.  New York is always New York.  Yet in even these most extreme cases, even though it sometimes took a while, I miraculously ended up in the most beautiful, convenient spots. 

My homes have been of various sizes, some super tiny (first place in NY, but lovely setting so I didn’t care) and some huge (a mansion I rattled around in with sheer glee), but I have never fit a home so perfectly as the one I just bought.  It’s a glove of a house, not too small, not too big.  For Goldilocks and her two furry bears, it fits just right.

The internal cheer that I keep hearing myself repeat silently to myself as I continue to get settled is “Everything has its place.”  There’s a drawer for the hummingbird food.  There’s a perfectly sized and placed drawer for baggies.  The bijillion cooking and/or eating utensils that I have amassed (and proclaim to be over-the-top by friends) also each have a perfectly situated spot.  The furry bear girls are serene and happy here too.  They have all their perfect happy places too.

My heart is happy right where it is too.  Many times a day I thank my lucky stars, even when I’m in the middle of the crisis.  Yep, even that has its perfect place because crises – whether mine or that of a friend that needs my attention – makes me connect with people in a different way, makes me appreciate.

I’m starting to get that this phrase I found myself repeating throughout my days as I’ve been doing my necessary nestling is becoming a new mantra for me: “everything has its place” brings me delightfully into the present, and reminds me to be grateful. 

It’s not about stuff.  It’s about being here right now in this perfect spot: even as I write this, overtired, having dealt with difficult news today, working too late, many more tasks ahead of me before bed.  All of it is perfectly placed.  With a furry bear girl snuggling on either side of me, it’s hard to doubt the perfection.  Even in the pushing through, there is perfection.

Sometimes “be here now” is too much for me to take on.  I aspire to it daily, but I sometimes think only Eckhart Tolle and a few others have that one down.   I’ll continue to strive, but this new mantra has the training wheels I currently need, perfectly placed until they no longer serve me.