I have a box where I keep ideas, like props I want to play with some day. In that box sits a light bulb twice as big as my palms.
It’s hard to hold onto ideas, sometimes. They’re fleeting. Unclear. Brilliant but bygone as soon as you try to fill them with details and words.
This light bulb wove its way to the top of the box and the top of my mind, after decades encased with a clip between plastic and cardboard. “It’s my time,” it whispered, then rattled some more.
The sun had barely crept over the mesa when the light bulb woke me that day. At first it asked to simply be held and beholded. It was slippery, that idea. My lack of opposable thumbs didn’t help!
I sought a twist-tie in the kitchen, but it was too short. Then I found a rubberband in my junk drawer, where other ideas toss-tumble and jumble, waiting their turn. Now I could hold that idea more firmly, testing its shine as the sun spilled over the peaks, past orchards and pastures, into my window. I leaned into listening to the idea, so quiet at first.
When have you heard an idea beginning to form? Does it whisper? Does grab your attention with a blinding Aha!!! ???
Snowflake, having finished her breakfast, had questions about this idea. But it was too early to clarify with any coherence, so she glared instead.
“Too bright,” she mutter-meowed.
Truth. Beauty. Love. Good words. Good ideas. But where do we go with concepts like that? We must lift up ideas to be seen, examined, experienced…
Let new ideas swirl in the light of day dawning…
Go toward the light. To the window! To the view!
“Staying indoors is not good enough,” said the idea. “Go outside and play,” it insisted. Ask other bulbs how do they grow…
When queried, “How do you do? And by the way, how do you shine?” the grape hyacinths answered, “We simply bloom from our bulbs into blue. We just be as we do.”
“So that’s how you shine?” I and the light bulb replied, our question mark rising an octave.
“I’m beginning to see,” I said to the light bulb, meaning this idea about shining your light.
Aha! I declared as we brimmed full of photons. We are diamonds in the sky, day and night.
We can twinkle in daylight, we can twinkle in dark. We can dream in starlight and sunshine.
What ideas are coming to life because you’re shining your light?
How are you holding the light that YOU are, not just in your mind but your soul?
We love the idea of YOU and your light! Please keep shining brightly!
Do you have a favorite children’s book that meant the world to you growing up? Did it by chance come as a gift from another adult, not your parents? I had so many favorite books as a kid but one that sticks with me is The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams, first published in 1921.
I bought a used copy of The Velveteen Rabbit at Granny’s Attic thrift shop on Vashon Island some years ago. Remember those books that say “This book belongs to” and you put your name there? I love this old book because inside is this—in unfaded, cursive handwriting, blue ink:
Dear Lin, This isn’t just a kids’ book. The message in this book is a sincere aim towards the adults of this world. Your family loves you very much, and with this book I hope you can understand how much! Love, Miff
I don’t know who Miff is, or Lin, but I do know this message warms my heart and soul, and hope it touched young Lin back then, too (circa 1975, I’d guess, from the copyright page of this Camelot edition of The Velveteen Rabbit).
I’m so excited to be sharing something now in print to be held in little hands!
Eleven Brave Pinecones is available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle on 11/11/23.
Eleven Brave Pinecones Debuts on 11/11
Someday I hope my new (first) children’s bookearns such an inscription. Eleven Brave Pinecones: A True Tale of Possibilities is the debut book in the Emotikin series. I’ve been playing with my Emotikin since 2003 — my inner artist personified — with countless photoshoots that I’ve come to call “metaphortography” and under-the-radar blogging for soul sustenance and self-care.
The paperback and Kindle edition of Eleven Brave Pinecones is available Saturday, November 11. I would be so honored if you’d consider buying a copy for yourself or a kid in your life! Here’s the link to the Kindle edition on Amazon, available for pre-orders now, and the paperback page will go live on 11/11.
What’s it about?
A Surprising Live Encounter Turns Despair into Delight
What would you do with eleven forlorn pinecones that fell (too soon) off their branches in a winter windstorm? What if you could find the right words to encourage them to go out in the world, just not in the way they expected?
“I know you’re not where you thought you should be. That means you’ll need brand new plans. And new plans take Courage!”
Eleven Brave Pinecones is not quite a counting book, unless you notice counting on each other and counting on your courage. This is not quite a science book, unless you count getting down to ground-level with these unique coniferous cones, catkins, needles, winged seeds, and even the weather and seasons.
This is not only a book for children, but for anyone who wonders how you move forward when the unexpected happens, by asking where we come from and how we might grow. Just as parents might explore nature with their kids, this book can start conversations about exploring their inner nature of emotions and feelings—from grief to joy, dismay to anticipation, and the difference between courage and encouragement.
This true tale of the imagination will delight and inspire readers of all ages to find their own courage to face stormy changes in life. This particular story begins on Vashon island, south of Seattle, and ends on Colorado’s Western Slope with a new group of pinecones, singing songs no less.
If you happen to live near conifer trees of any kind, you will fall even more in love with them and their pinecones!
Read this book to a child while sitting by a pine tree, then take a pinecone home to see how it unfolds!
If you loved The Hidden Life of Trees and The Overstory, Eleven Brave Pinecones will further spark your imagination and perhaps deeper kinship with the natural world of your own neighborhood.
By the way, if you ever find your own art manikin to play with, here’s how to transform this wood figure into a full-fledged Emotikin. First, simply acknowledge it has a soul. It becomes real like the Velveteen Rabbit with love. Have fun kindling your creativity with your own creative courage companion!
Available 11/11/23 in Honor of My Mom, Early Childhood Educator Extraordinaire
I choose 11/11 in honor of those 11 pinecones of course, but also to honor the second anniversary of my mom’s return to stardust. Mom was a kindergarten teacher who bought—and read—wonderful books to her classroom (and her grandson, my Wil), often with Caldecott Award-winning illustrations, many from her year in Australia where she swapped classrooms, cats, cars and homes to live there.
One of the best things mom said to me the summer before she died, when I was sharing an idea for another children’s book, was “Oh, Shel, don’t let anyone talk you out of writing that book.” In some long-lost box somewhere, Mom kept a copy of my first children’s book series, written and illustrated as an 8-year old, hand-sewn together with pink cotton thread about Timmy Turtle and Sammy Worm.
What Are Your Favorite Kids’ Books?
Please share your list of favorite children’s books in the comments. I’ve made a list of “creative courage for kids” books at Bookshop.org (I get a tiny affiliate fee from purchases here). I hope that Eleven Brave Pinecones will make it onto your list.
How You Can Help Make a Splash
Tell your friends about Eleven Brave Pinecones, especially if they have kids or grandkids.
Purchase the book at Amazon: https://bit.ly/BrvPnczK (the paperback page will be live on Saturday 11/11 and the Kindle is up for pre-orders now).
If you’re on GoodReads, you can add this to your “Want to Read” list and post a review later.
Post a review later at Amazon to help others decide.
In a few months (I’ll let you know), ask your local librarian or indie bookstore to order a copy. (The book needs time to get into “expanded distribution.”)
I’ve been saying this year that when new books make a splash, they create good ripples. I’m most grateful for any splashing around you’d be willing to do:
I made Monday a Sunday.
Slept in. Dawdled. Worked only one hour.
Then I went to the beach by myself plus my soul and my snapshot machine. And beach blanket.
High tide was on its way in. So much for exploring.
My self said lets sit. No need to explore. We can see what we see from this spot on the rocks.
She was right. Our eyesight grew sharper with a short-sighted focus. What could we see in the sand and the gravel and driftwood from here? A lot it turns out.
Like flat rocks to stack, like thoughts on a shelf.
And blue mussel halves of size large and medium. Then lo and behold, a super small two-halves still-intact whole!
Add a half ancient shell with hole for a string to add to my collection back home, then a super small shell of the same kind, sans string hole.
Clear sandblasted glass then a green shard.
My eyes were having so much fun noticing, I mostly took pics with my mind.
I noticed how high tide comes in with so much stuff in the swells. It matches the muck in my mind that’s needing releasing.
The waves serenaded. The sun played hide and seek. The sand bugs jumped up and down in delight or delirium; it was hard to know what they meant in their popcorn-like frenzy.
Time slowed. Time passed. Sea slowed and did a 180 sans fanfare.
By the time dinner called I noticed the waves were clear of all stuff. So was my mind.
Blue doors have been my thing for a very long time. I’ve always claimed blue as my favorite color, sometimes periwinkle, sometimes cornflower. But blue. I’ve never had a blue door though I’ve painted blue walls.
I have a blue door in the alpine meadow of wildflowers where I go when I meditate really deep. It stands there, no walls, in the middle of the meadow, as if I’m supposed to go through.
But I couldn’t. I would sit down with my back against the door. I heard a laughing invitation to just walk around the side, that I didn’t have to go through. But I couldn’t. I was stumped.
Another time, not long ago, I landed in my meadow out of the blue. I opened the door. Beyond it was a dark midnight sky full of stars. I stepped through and soared through the stars for a bit, tethered to the doorway by a silver cord. I didn’t stay long.
A few weeks ago, I finally stepped all the way through, not just that door but a whole series of doors. I erased some hard parts of the past, walked down paths now easier to see and to choose. And I heard, “Trust and believe. Expect miracles.”
I didn’t expect what happened the very next day. I saw my blue door, live and in person, around the bend in an old country road, in front of a cottage for sale, with a tree swing out front. I screeched the car to a halt and pointed. “Look! A Blue Door!” We sat there in awe. Then we got out of the car.
This blue door beckoned. It seemed to lead to a land of bliss and enchanted forests and talking trees and one friendly sit-on-your-shoe kind of squirrel. The cottage holds a piano, built-in bookshelves, and wrap-around windows with a view to the sea. Only a cane in the corner would have made it feel like our own Miracle on 34th Street. It seemed to say, here is your doorway to heaven. You’re welcome. Come in.
So the question is whether this cottage for sale, this land of bliss, this tree swing, this door, this meadow with room for a horse and some chickens, is supposed to be ours. It sure feels like a soul sign. It sure feels like a miracle.
I do know, at the least, that this real-life blue door is a sign from my soul to pay attention to miracles. To pay attention to gifts that come out of the blue. To open the door and walk through, with courage not fear. With hope, not with doubt. With wonder and more wonder and more wonder yet, and some patience to wait for the answer to “I wonder what this all means?”
I don’t know the answer. Not yet. We’re doing some work called Logistics and Research. That hard human work that makes miracles happen for real. Or at least invites the result. Accepting the invitation to a miracle takes as much courage and work as you can muster, it seems.
And I’m waiting to see if the sign was a “Yes, this is your home.” Or if it means something else. Trust and believe can mean anything. But I do believe in blue doors. And I believe that miracles might have a different answer than the one I first thought of. I don’t know the answer. Not yet. I just hope I am asking all the right questions so the right answer will come when it’s time.
This blue door beckoned. It seemed to lead to a land of bliss and enchanted forests and talking trees and one friendly sit-on-your-shoe kind of squirrel. The cottage holds a piano, built-in bookshelves, and wrap-around windows with a view to the sea. Only a cane in the corner would have made it feel like our own Miracle on 34th Street. It seemed to say, here is your doorway to heaven. You’re welcome. Come in.
P.S. I marvel that today’s high tide is so calm and wonder at the metaphor.
happy water dog!
Words to the wise.
Emotikin World 