Monday, January 4, 2010

Rose tea on a wedding day

Today a dear friend gets married, one I date back to high school with. I first wrote him a letter my freshmen year of high school, sitting in the dining room of my dad's house, my childhood home, looking out over the hills and surrounding avocado groves. He was in boot camp in ... Missouri, was it?, soon to be on his way to Germany. Nearly 24 years ago.

Early January of a new year, the calendar turning to a new decade, and a sacred ceremony joining two people -- all transitions, admittedly of different sorts, but all new starts.

Reflecting on the past year, the past decade, all that they may have presented and challenged and gifted and offered and granted us -- the important part seems to be extracting the helpful lessons, often painfully learned, so we don't have to repeat those. And all the gifts and wonders and joy, I think it's to acknowledge and be grateful for those, and to look for more to fill our lives with.

Wedding a life partner marks a different transition, both hopeful and yet also a solid leap into a concrete new, beyond the wispiness of hope. But the same reflections and past lessons and future aspirations and welcoming of joy and gratitude all have key roles to play.

There's also a bittersweetness to each of these transitions, as they mark the passage of time and of changes. Old ways and lives now gone, part of the foundation now.

As I ponder my morning tea choice, looking through my black teas, it seems fitting to reach for rose tea, feels right for a wedding day.

***

Tonight's tea is Early Grey, bookending this morning's rose, marking the rose-to-grey (to dark) transition of the day, providing a comforting tang of citrus combined with the sweetness of sugar.

After a two-hour training at Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic this afternoon, my eyes are slightly crossing. Yes, I already know how to read (!), but the training focuses on reading textbooks, specifically the accompanying charts, tables, graphs, photos ... not so simple to clearly convey to someone listening who can't see what you see. But they of course have a good, simple system -- you just have to think about them differently, draw them with words instead of relying on their visual selves.

I would rather read fun novels and the like, of course, but I gather a lot of the reading requests are for textbooks, and the majority of requests they have to turn down are for specialty scientific/technical subjects that they don't have specialized readers for. So, that's a bummer. Tiny reminder this isn't actually about reading MY favorite thing, right? Next week I record a demo and if I don't fuck that up, I get to become a regular reader. Yay!

More to come on Operation Find Freelancing, too much with the mental for right now.

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