Gramma, Tacos, and Holding It All Loosely

on emotion

“Can I really hold it all?” asked bear.

“Yes,” replied bird, “but loosely, always loosely.”

Mobile: The Storybuilt

Thoughts while making
“Just don’t get discouraged.” – Gramma.

It was 1994.

A letter. Beautifully handwritten.
Penned on college-ruled paper.
Frayed edges, torn from a notebook.

Some days, the world seems to spin (a lot) faster. A bit more wobble to the rotation, as it were.

On these days, I like to open that top drawer; the one with all those time-stained letters from Gramma in it.

As a published author, she certainly had a way with words.

“I probably would’ve sold more,” she once wrote, “but ‘Sin, Suffer, Repent,’ went out of style when nothing was a sin anymore.”

When I visit with these letters like I did today, I’m reminded that, in life, pain + suffering live right alongside the joy of a taco and the humor of kids in their baggy pants.

“All I can see that they [baggy pants] do,” she typed in one letter, “is make them fall off their skateboards. Perhaps, I just go to Taco Bell too often. Mostly, though, they are nice to old ladies with canes.”

In our letters, Gramma would just as readily share how humidity was causing her “Fantastic Sam’s Haircut of the Week” (her words not mine) to drip into her eyes, as talk about the unrelenting pain she was in and her own death.

Yet, no matter what she was sharing, she always did it with a good heart and respect, accepting that her way didn’t have to be *the* way for anybody else.

And even when she didn’t agree with you, she didn’t attack or mock or belittle.

She accepted the hard with the good, a lifetime balancing act, holding it all loosely. Yet always leading with love.

Thank you, Gramma.

Such a good reminder, now + always.

Here’s to continued courage as you meet the many emotions of your day, of these times.