1: By Day and By Night

By day, she’s your basic ordinary lamp with all the right lamp parts: a base, a switch, a bulb. She’s pretty enough, in that unassuming high class kind of way, her love for the Victorian era evident in the clothes she wears.

For as long as anyone can remember, you can find her there on the creaky white wicker nightstand that won’t stay steady no matter how many napkins you fold up and put under that one leg, her days spent reflecting the light and colors and images of those who come close. Never bad to attract attention to herself, she silently perches there, always ready and waiting for Someone In Need to happen along and flip her switch to own.

“Selfless,” they call her.
“A bit eccentric with those old dresses she wears, but she’s so nice,” they cluck.
“She never makes trouble, and she helps a lot of people,” they say.
“I know her like the back of my hand, and she is a good lamp,” more than one person assures whoever will listen.
“A lamp unto feet and a light unto paths – is there any higher calling?” they ask no one in particular.

She knows they say all these things, and while it’s definitely a good reputation to have and one that brings no shame to her family, this life spent being dependable and helpful and easy going simply isn’t Enough. So by night, when all anybody needs is their own closed eyelids to project their dreams on, when she knows she won’t be interrupted save for maybe a dark:thirty sleep-walking trip to the bathroom, she tattoos the bland walls of that room with beauty the likes of which you’ve never seen before.

I tell you what: it’ll take your breath away, the beauty that lamp creates when she cuts loose and lets her own light beam, and even though she knows there’s a chance nobody will ever see the art she makes, it doesn’t matter cause it’s the making that fills her soul, and that is most definitely Enough.

~~~~~~~

I’m penning 100 stories in 100 days. Why? Because neuroplasticity being what it is and all, we know that repeated focus has life-changing power, and I’ve a hankering for just such a thing. I’m calling it #100Days100Stories, and if you want it to land on your doorstep every morning (relax, I never break a window), maybe you want to subscribe by following the directions in the orange stripe at the top of this screen. Of course I’m still stitching, too, so many of the stories will feature my Hymns of Cloth.