Invisible Writing...

I took down my Christmas tree today. Usually a sad day for me, but for some reason, this year was different. It's nice to have at least a small sense of accomplishment--of packing up the old to make room for the new, of paring down and reordering. This year is starting out strangely for me...first, I made resolutions and now I'm glad the tree is down. Weird stuff in my house.

So...most of the ornaments on my tree are handmade, but there are a few exceptions. Like the series of Starbucks holiday ornaments I have. I've been collecting them since 2004.

Until this year, my 2004 ornament had a date written on it in black Sharpie--a commemoration of a "first date" with someone with whom I thought, at the time, there would be many more dates and many Christmases to celebrate. Not so. As I've unpacked the ornaments the past few years, I've looked at that date and "unpacked" a truckload of memories as well. This year, I unwrapped the 2004 ornament, armed myself with a rag and some rubbing alcohol and scrubbed the writing off. Gone. Kind of.

Thing is, I still "see" the now-invisible writing. It's a memory. And not only is it a memory, it's a shaper of my "today". Part of the pages of the yesterdays that make the story of my life what it is today. I can look at that ornament and still see with my mind's eye the writing that was there for 3 years, even though it's not visible to anyone else. But people can look at me and see the indelible ink of the past written all over me...whether or not they even recognize it as such. And isn't it so with everyone?

My friends Jon and Nate recently lost their father. I never met their dad--my only knowledge of him is through their eyes, but he must have been an amazing man to have left the impression that he did on his sons' lives. I'm grateful for the pages he helped to write of the chapters of their pasts, grateful for the integrity and strength and character and honesty he inked on the pages of their growing-up years.

Another friend recently went through an ugly divorce--from a cheating, lying, scheming, abusive man. His writing on her pages was ugly and harsh and cruel...and his pen slashed its way through those previous chapters and still bleeds ink onto her todays. Not so invisible. Not so easy to work around. Maybe someday she'll be able to turn to a fresh, clean, undamaged page and write something beautiful again.

And aren't we all like that? We're just books...of words and illustrations written on our collected yesterdays by people who might have loved us or hated us--people who left their marks, invisible or not, in various chapters of our stories. I see now (I haven't always) that my story is beautiful, even with the "ugly" pages scattered here and there--and, really, if it weren't for those messed-up, ink-splattered, icky pages, I wouldn't have nearly as much appreciation for the ones where all the words fit together in cohesive, amazingly-crafted, profound (sometimes!) sentences. I love my story.

So, it's ok that, when I look at a Starbucks ornament, I see invisible writing that no one else sees. It's ok that my life didn't go according to that plan. It's really ok that there's a better plan than the one I had in mind. And it's pretty cool to me that someone else might look at my little collection of ornaments (and at me) and see, instead of someone hanging onto yesterday, a woman who's (kind of) got her shit together, loves today, and can't wait to write on tomorrow's page.