Random Sunday: Happiness, Sizes S to XXL

It’s Memorial Day weekend here and between today’s event at Art With Flowers (familiar and new faces there from the blog, so much fun!) and also Diva’s 16^th birthday today, and her party, and All That Entailed, including brunch for her and her friends and a shopping trip… I’m a bit tired.  But I smell amazing, if I do say so myself.  (Keiko Mecheri Paname on left arm, L’Artisan Nuit de Tubereuse on right arm, vintage Diorissimo EDT on back of right hand.)

This weekend my nephew, whom we all love very much, came home to us Saturday from his tour of duty in Afghanistan, and we are grateful to have him back, in a way I can’t put into words on here right now.  I’m grateful for all my family, from Hecate and Buckethead on up to my dad, who’ll be turning 88 in a couple of weeks.

When I was growing up, on Memorial Day we’d drive around the cemetery next door (as I’ve mentioned, it’s a literal stone’s throw from dad’s house) and put flowers on the graves of my mother’s family.  I never knew any of her people, but it always felt special and even a bit magical – our childhood wonderland/playground infused with a sense of mystery and responsibility.  In my memories, the sky was unfailingly blue.  My sister and I toted the water buckets from the pumps to fill up the flower vases.   My mom is right there in a shady part of the cemetery under a big old oak tree, next to her folks.   Some years the flowers were bought, and other years they’ve been cut from the huge wild rose bush that still grows next to the gravel driveway, with its prickly stems and fragrant open-faced white blooms that tend to open just in time for this weekend.  I have a cutting from that bush, which is growing like mad in my own back yard.

For me, cemeteries are for the living.  I’m glad I have a place to go and say hi, to sit on the grass and think, to pay my respects to ancestors I never met.   I also try, every day, to remember look up from the daily distractions and think of that cloudless sky, and to open my arms and my heart, even if it’s only a little (and sometimes that’s all I can manage) to those around me who are still here to be loved.   Right this second it’s those twins, who are giggling in their room way past their bedtime and arguing over which night light to use.  Everyone’s a little caked up (sugar!) and sunburned (pool!)   On another night I’d be cross and fuss at them.  But I’m going to go give them another hush, and then step outside and say hi to the fireflies.  It’s sultry out there, my favorite kind of summer evening.

PS  — I went into American Apparel at the mall for the first time in my life, with the teenagers, and up on the checkout counters they have some very cool nail polish colors — the bottles look sort of like the StrangeBeautiful ones.   They are all matte (I think), I didn’t have time to fully investigate.   I have no idea how they wear, but they’re 3 for $15.