RECEPTIVITY

Always in August it seems as if Fun has surely drained from the weave of the world. Those towels striped the color of the tropics, six lush feet of Egyptian cotton and half-price, a mere pittance for such sweet promise, reminded me of that. The old Happy Talk song from South Pacific played in my head—you know—‘you got to have a dream, you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?’ Somehow here it was, another hot, grim August, another year without a beach, how did this happen again, last year I said next year, and now, here under the bright glare of this week’s shopping at Wal-Mart, this year was already spinning out of sight

I’ve read the books, I know the Secret, act as if your dream has come true and it will, so I piled the lengths of Aztec gold and orange with that thin strip of sea blue into the bottom of my basket. At this stage of my life I could afford a frivolous notion, so why at the check-out stand did I tell the clerk I had changed my mind? What I could not afford was to open a drawer some future August and discover the forgotten towel packed in the bottom, dusty and never used.

Though I put it back, acceded to the nonclutter wisdom of my new housekeeping creed, the colors of the towel hovered in my dreams, soft and bright and full of hope.

Then my sister called. She was coming in the middle of the month, bringing her lone grandchild with her. I have told you: August. Hot. I did not tell you that judges are ordering school children to stay inside, forbidding outdoor sports in this heatstroke weather. What’s a four-year-old, alone with the oldies to do? How are the oldies going to keep him occupied without losing their sanity? What a child needs in the throes of such a month is water.

On a notion, a beach towel wish, I called our favorite little family resort, the one we go to each Easter before the pool is open, the one that by January is booked solid into next winter, the one that has had no openings the previous two times I called this year.

The week my sister and my nephew were coming, our favorite cabin was open. The cabin has air-condition and plenty of beds and a nice little kitchen for breakfast and sandwiches and guacamole. The cabin is on a lake, with a pier and turtles and ducks and fish. The resort has a restaurant with yummy, melting-in-the-mouth vacation food, cooked and served by other people. It is hot, hot summer August and the pool is open.

Cabin! Sunsets! Sunrises! Fishing! Pool! Restaurant! Restaurant! Restaurant!

The connection between beach towels and a trip to a small family campground and receptivity might be a bit subtle, but for me that’s how this Universe/God/Law of Attraction/miracle stuff happens, even when I get the glooms and forget what’s possible. It’s all ideas. We’re ideas. And we get to choose the ideas we want to color our lives. Beach towels dreams, real-time pool trips…Universal truth working out, or hum-drum coincidence? And small stuff at that…what about world peace and joy and love? But the next time I feel like a weary traveler in a glum world, I hope I remember to choose the good dream.

Yesterday in Wal-Mart I bought two six-foot-long gleaming Egyptian cotton beach towels. “You’re going to a beach?” the clerk wistfully asked.

"Yeah," I said, though the beach part wasn’t exactly true. I grinned big time. "I'm gonna have some fun."



© Donna Warner, August, 2007