Lately the changes and lessons are rolling in so fast it is difficult to surf them. The children, thank goodness, are least affected for now. Hopefully they will receive the benefits without the supporting details.

Since third grade when they came and pulled my friend Sandy out of the lunch line because her Daddy died, and since fourth grade when our girl scout troop went to the funeral of Felicia, our troop mate who died with her grandfather in a trucking accident, most viscerally, since for some reason the scout leaders let us all view her body in its casket laying there looking like an impossibly big and perfect baby doll, I have understood that life is precarious. Fast forward through many ghoulish events to now. Yep, assumption correct, life is precarious.

My best friend from childhood is sick. She does have cancer. So now she will deal with that while she is busy raising her young children. I can't write much about that. But I can say this is perhaps the number one worst nightmare for every mother of young children. Here it is. Worse maybe, than having a child who is as ill, though it is useless to compare. My point is, here we are. How to keep walking around making pb&j with a smile? How to get up off the bed, hang up the phone, stop crying, and go weed the garden? After all, I am not sick and my children are still here. But living well while she is hurting feels like a betrayal. The bottle has always been a shared event. We took all the champagne together. One never kept drinking while the other was sick.

I was momentarily so staggered by the news that my friend is so ill, it hurt my feelings so bad, I was temporarily pulled almost all the way out of my present life. I was rightly called off to the hospital to spell her husband and parents. (Where is a more dangerous place to be alone than a hospital?) But more, I was taken all the way back to myself before my present family. And for a moment I almost forgot they are right here next to me.

The jolt of the return to the present moment has presented me with an unexpected gift: the present moment. And the realisation that, beyond circumstances truly out of our control, all the cliches are true. Happiness is a choice. Life is what you make it. All you have is now. Love is the answer.

And springing partly from these cliches, a thought new to me. A handmade life is love manifest. Is this vague enough to encompass all I want to say? I was upstairs yesterday, taking a shower at another friend's house when this came home to me. Of all the places I have lived and of all the people I have known, I am staying this week in the house that represents to me all that is sane, kind, consistent, wealthy, and beautiful. This handmade house where the food is grown outside the door, the timbers were felled on site, the art work was made in this community, the bread is fresh, you sleep on the porch all year round, and the children feel, not only safe, but free to be themselves.

So much of this life here is handmade, not handmade in China either. Handmade by people who are known. Here you can grab the hand that feeds you, houses you, pleases you. You can hold that same hand while you struggle in labor. That same hand falls around your shoulder when you are exhausted, crying. The same hand that dials the phone to say, "Hurry on over, there's an owl in the shed!"

But way over there is my husband, never far from my thoughts these days. Working. Working. Working. Is his gift not handmade? He has on a suit, travels a long way each day, we don't' see him toil. Yet most of what we have flows freely from his hands. In fact, he hands every single dime to me. And all his baking. And the music he writes. And the way he makes the children laugh. Our big new tree house. Our garden. The filter that must be changed. The bills due. "Daddy's one two three hands!" And my hands here writing. Knitting. Baking. Sewing. Painting. Shopping. Paying. Wiping. Plucking. Soldering. Holding. We too have a handmade life.

Doesn't everyone?

Through our hands we manifest that which we love the most. Do we love our anger? Then anger will be manifest in our life. Do we love time with our children? Then time with our children will be manifest. Do we love our own sacred point of view? Then our point of view is what we will see. Do we love order, calm, plenty? We will work to manifest what we love. Do we love butter and white flour and chocolate? There is the tummy to prove it. Do we love fresh ideas, better sex, real connections to the ones we love? There they are to prove it.

That which our hands can control, manifest that which we love the most. Here we are. Even if we are washing dishes and changing diapers for a friend who is temporarily down, even if we are working far away, even if others outside looking in don't understand. We can't control everything that happens. We can't even consciously control all of our reactions to all that happens. But we can be certain if we look around ourselves, what we see is what we have manifest. Is it mostly love? Is it mostly suspicion? Is it mostly art? Is it mostly tv? What do you manifest? That which you love.
unschool