Simple Little Things
/When my little-girl cousins and I were just old enough to form opinions, one summer’s day we observed our mothers – three sisters – sitting in a row on the tender grass. They settled down one in front of the other, eldest sister in the back and baby sister in the front. And, of course, middle sister in the middle.
I remember they wrapped their straddled legs close into the sister in front so that they were close enough for the brushes to reach either long tresses, a bob, or close-cropped curls.
As they chatted, laughed, and whispered, they gently pulled the brush or pastel combs through each other’s hair of differing lengths and shades of red. Why, we asked them with the whiff of disdain children reserve for their parents, were they doing this strange thing – with the three husbands openly teasing (and secretly admiring) them?
Because they had been doing it since childhood, they explained. Brushing each other’s hair felt good and was an act of love and connection.
A Simple Little Thing.
By and by over the years, they invited us and their sisters-in-law to join in the ritual, the youngest still always in the front, hands empty and eagerly waiting for the eventual newcomer. It felt grown up and, in its own way, secretive and private, even though we sat squarely in the middle of the living room. A Simple Little Thing.
How often has someone said to you since Covid hit the land, “I miss the simple things”?
Often a story spills out about what is missed: enjoying rich coffees and robust conversations at iron tables outside the brewhouse; piling onto the pontoon without measuring distances between human bodies; sitting shoulder-to-shoulder at the movies or in the opera house, hugging. And most especially that – hugging (much less kissing). The stories bind us. Inherently, instinctively, we feel their implied meaning – a longing for when life seemed easier, more welcoming, less sinister.
I miss holding my only grandchild more than the few times afforded to me since he entered the world in late December. I mourn no longer sitting at table with my adult children and my friends, passing communal bowls of food that represent love. I long to board a plane, grab a cab, rush onto a packed train ready to go anywhere. I reach for a hand to shake or hold and then present an elbow. I still want the hand. I reminisce about crowding around a center island to chop vegetables and sip wine in someone’s kitchen in a world that seems far, far away. Simple Little Things.
And yet, new Simple Little Things emerge.
I hear loons and coyotes from the regional park across the street for the first time in years. I schedule Zoom and Facetime dinners and happy hours with faraway and sometimes long-lost friends. I dig my hands into the rich soil around my home to plant flowers and vegetables. The latter now bear produce.
Just today, I picked the second ripe tomato and tenderly held it, still sun-warmed, in my hands.
I wept when, for the first time since we partially reopened Green Lotus, I once again lay my mat down on the gleaming floor of one of studios in one of our five centers slowly coming to life.
Simple Little Things.
These days, I often think of those three sisters sitting in a row on the floor, hairbrushes in hand, heads often thrown back in glee or bowed low to whisper in ears. How I long to witness it again and to be invited to sit in that long row with them. A Simple Little Thing.
