My chair has a blanket draped over it. It's a summer blanket, a beach blanket that the kids got me for my birthday a few years ago. It has a pretty blue background and white stripes, which is what a summer beach blanket should have. But when I open it to spread across my legs to keep off the chill, I see red juice stains from summers ago. There are about 4-5 pinkish dots that scatter across one small section of the blanket. I don't remember how they got there. I picture the blanket spread on the sand marking our family territory, making room for more people to gather around, and warning others that more would be joining us. The blanket holds everything from beach bags to T-shirts to sunglasses to towels and sometimes phones and wallets left under a baseball hat. The kids can lay across it or huddle around to eat their lunches. The stains could have come from anything. Maybe my niece ate a frozen SpongeBob popsicle from the Fudgie Wudgie guy. Maybe my daughter spilled juice as she laughed at one of the stories that were being told. Maybe snowcone dripped down someone's arm and they didn't even know it. And I don't know why I didn't clean it up right away. Maybe we were scurrying off the beach to get home before a storm. Maybe we were hurrying to get dinner ready. Maybe we were so caught up in our stories and it didn't matter about a couple drops of juice. Maybe someone folded it just so you couldn't see the stains anymore. Maybe it was one of our last days down the shore and I stuffed it in the beach bag and stuffed the beach bag on the back porch and focused on getting ready for school. Whatever the reasons, I'm glad the stains are still there. They remind me that even in these cold, snow-laced days, summer is coming. We will sit on the beach again. We will have fun in the sun very soon. I might try to get rid of the stains, but isn't that the funny thing, that they serve a small purpose? They transport us back to another time and space and ground us in a way that a clean blanket wouldn't. I guess every beach blanket has them. What do you do? Do you call it stained and go buy a new one? I learned yesterday, during a good housekeeping segment, that sheets should be replaced every two years! Hmm. Around here I still have the sheets that Annie got when she got her first big girl bed, about 18 years ago. I guess I do hold onto stained things.
The chair where my blanket is draped is my coffee chair. At the beginning of COVID, when all our college kids were home and we were on lockdown, we moved the dining room table to the basement and brought in two stuffed chairs and a little table into the dining wing of the kitchen. With 6 adults in the house, we needed to be creative and make some flexible spaces. It was just a way to make more space for work and at the same time more space for play. My husband and I could sit and relax and catch up on our days. Anyone could hang out in the kitchen saving the precious family room space for work or zooming or watching tv. The coffee chair kept me in the center of the action. If the kids did make an appearance downstairs, I wanted to be accessible and present. The coffee chairs are the perfect spot. So now, even though we aren't on lockdown anymore, and the kids have gone back to school, my husband and I still use the coffee chairs every day. Maybe I should call them wine and beer chairs since that is more likely what we are drinking at 7:00 at night after the kitchen is cleaned up and the only child that remains home has gone off to do his things. There are probably some invisible stains there too, from the chardonnay and the beer splashing as we try to sink down into the cushions. But we have sunlight on Sunday mornings and big windows so we always have something to share. We can talk about the garden or the pool or the fence that needs repair or the dog as he runs back and forth outside. We talk about the weather as we watch a snow squall on one of the last days of March. We talk about the kids or work or the kids' work and how they are doing. We talk about what is next and what we might do this summer. We talk about our parents and our siblings and their kids. We talk about college and concerts we once went to. We talk about how old we feel now. We talk about our old houses and how we miss certain things like our First Avenue house and the back stairs that went up to the attic and down to the backdoor. We have had lots of conversations here and I'm sure we will have many more. Each one lingers on my mind and on my heart.
I try to meditate every once in a while. I lean in to clearing my mind and my thoughts. I bring my awareness to my breath and my body. But still, stains creep in - the ugly thoughts that I thought were gone, the memories that I thought I had healed from. Ugly things people said, hurtful things that I wish I could erase. I don't know why. I sit in the quiet. I sit comfortably, I rest my hand on my heart and I try to listen to the voice within me. I try to pray. But there are still stains that come back and memories I would rather forget. But then I think about the blanket. Maybe there are more lessons from those hard times, more courage that I can garner from those experiences to take with me into the next day. More understanding for the next person I meet, more compassion for myself. Maybe there are things that we can't and shouldn't wash away. Juice stains.
