Sugar Bowl of the Universe

Sugar Bowl of the Universe Jeanne Blum Lesinski (bio) One year, when my son asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I suggested magnetic poetry words, ones like my mother had had on her refrigerator door. Each time we'd visited her, we'd used them to make a new poem for her and admired her latest efforts. A positive set of words, though. I'd written enough sad verse in the years prior to and immediately after my divorce. When I was not old enough to be interested in the AARP, the group had sent me a membership ad that included a set of magnetic retirement-related words. I tossed the literature. I kept the words. The magnetic words from my son and the AARP were stuck in an annoying clutter on my own white refrigerator door (along with a grocery list, lists of Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen fruits and vegetables, and two metal bird magnets) until I spilled lemonade down the front of the refrigerator when trying to make ice cubes. I wiped down the door and rinsed off the words and laid them to dry on a towel. Then I put them into a fist-sized Wedgewood sugar bowl with a scene of cobalt blue on ecru: a Norman church and a peasant cottage fronted by a three-arched stone bridge. follow your bliss I intentionally searched the magnets until I found this Joseph Campbell-inspired saying and posted it at the top of the refrigerator door. It was like a title in this new chapter of my life in which I was determined to make happiness, not search for it at the end of a journey toward an ever-elusive reward. Each day, I vowed, I would do something that gave me a sense of contentment. I'd also try to recover the sense of adventure I'd once had, if not by actively searching out novelty, then by keeping my eyes and heart open to what might arrive in front of me. Over the years, pulling random words from the Sugar Bowl of the Universe became my whimsical I Ching. One summer, make barefoot memories and almost bluebird child End Page 225 found places next to the metal bird magnets—a reflection of the healing hours I spent in my vegetable and perennial flower gardens around the block. When family and friends stopped by, I gestured toward the sugar bowl that sat atop the microwave next to its matching creamer and teapot. I invited them to lift the lid and grab a pinch of words, and they overcame their initial surprise to join in the game. ecstatic adventure jump positive alive freedom kissone full moment is my life was the gift from my daughter who'd gone three thousand miles away to claim her freedom and make a life but who still came back to visit. Later the sugar bowl served up enjoy the best when true tiny taste did bring happiness here as a reflection on an almost successful romance, and give life believe better than anything arrived at the end of broken friendships. I'd never understood office cartoons until divorce thrust me into the workplace at a call center where I worked from a cubicle in a large room with dozens of others. For someone who'd long had more control over her physical and mental environment, the similarity of the office population to the mean girl cliques of high school stood out. My individuality in a company culture of conformists confounded some and irritated others. At about one-year intervals, something as absurd as to be a sitcom episode would happen: Why did I knock over that miniature Christmas tree on the shared wall of my cubicle? Did I really say what was in the thought bubble above my head? Since when is stretching at my desk seen as a dismissive gesture? Then I would find myself under the glare of unhappy management wanting to squash a gadfly with its corporate flyswatter. After nearly a decade of such treatment, it was surprising that I hadn't End Page 226 been gaslit into thinking that I was a horrible person...