Jami's idea

I know I don't spend as much time as I should being mindfully grateful.  But I do know I am blessed.  For the past few weeks I've been running through a mental this of things I'm grateful for before I get out of bed in the morning.  I try to do it at night, too, but usually drift off to sleep before I get halfway through.  (One of my blessings is the ability to sleep well.)

  

Right now I'm grateful that I only feel concern for the wellbeing of one of my children.  Three out of four ain't bad!  And I think all the grandkids are in a safe place, too.  Until this morning we were a little concerned about my grandson, Michael who was stranded with his partner, Rose, in the South Island.  But only a little.  That boy,  oops, sorry, young man has always had an angel on his shoulder and he/she came to his rescue again.  He is the most positive of souls and unable to get on a ferry or a plane he was thinking of all the good things about being stuck where he was, when they drove past a tiny regional airport at Takaka (who knew there was an airport there?), made enquiries and they got two seats on a plane tomorrow.  (After being weighed to make sure their weight was acceptable on the small plane.)

Bernie, my younger son is my worry-child right now.  I've learnt over the years to not stress when I don't hear from him for a period of time.  That period has stretched out to 6 months from time to time and I'd tell myself he was busy living his best life, no news is good news, and so on.  And, seriously, I never worried about him, had faith that he was smart enough to look after himself.  But this "thing", this virus is different.  And he's in Brazil, a third world country with a high death rate at the best of times.  He lives in the centre of a huge city with a population of 2.5 million.  And, here's the kicker, he is about to become a father in a few weeks, something everyone in the family had given up even thinking about.  My stone age brain, the mother bear in me, is pushing me to anxiety.

My granddaughter, Jami, without knowing it, has come to my rescue.  She's a clever, creative university student who has already published a small book of poetry.   I received this message from her this morning, inviting me to be part of her new project.  I wonder what she will call it? 

I want to create a collection of journal entries spanning over 30 days. It is a monumentally devastating time right now and for me writing always helps, however, I think it could be quite special to have a creative product of what we are all experiencing. It doesn’t need to be a long entry, of course some days will be longer than the others. I have picked you because you have a special way with words. With this collection I want to highlight how “in this together” we all are, and no matter what policy our governments are enforcing, the influence it has on us will ultimately be quite similar. I want to see what effects this has on our wellbeing and I think documenting it in an artistic way could all help us individually but also help readers evaluate for themselves what individuals do to cope; whether healthy or not. Of course, it will be anonymous and will most likely just use your region as an identifier. More details are to come as I don’t have a strict plan for this. You don’t have to write every single day but the span of the collection will be 30 days starting from tomorrow. If you are keen let me know. Love you all and hope you are taking care x

It doesn't have to be specifically about what's going on outside either, I want it to be more of a what-goes-on-inside when the outside seems like chaos.

So, my age of introspection is upon me.

Go well, my friends.