Category: spirituality

Dream Small

Published on by Laura Nicole Diamond3 Comments

Unexpected wisdom from a midlife birthday

Many years ago, an artist’s handpainted signs at a crafts fair at the local park caught my attention. I came home with five, and hung them on the wall outside my sons’ bedrooms. They implored:

THINK BIG.

FOLLOW YOUR PASSION.

NEVER, EVER GIVE UP.

As a fledgling writer working on a novel, these three messages I needed for myself. Acknowledging that these messages carried their own kind of pressure, the wall also bore warmer fuzzier, and perhaps competing, messages I also wanted more of:

LAUGH OUT LOUD.

GO WITH THE FLOW.

A decade and a half later, on the eve of my birthday, I sat at my dining room table with my family. Dinner was winding down, and my father asked with his winsome smile, in the quiet voice he uses now, if I had a speech. Like a doll he can wind up with a key, needing the barest of nudges to speak (I am like him), I said, I do.

I have been thinking lately, we need to do the opposite of what the world tells us is called for. We need to let go of all the pressures we take on that we cannot see or name, like the signs I hammered into our walls — think big; make a splash; publish the book and hit the bestseller list. We need to dream small.

Dream small.

Dream of having dinner with parents who are healthy. Dream of an imperfect table with uneven leaf extensions. Dream of the flavors of Thai take-out. Dream of a chocolate-smeared tablecloth and pink candles melting into icing.

Dream small.

Dream of an array of pink tulips your husband arranges for your first-thing-in-the-morning view. Dream of your 18-year-old’s doting presence and phone calls from college towns. Dream of a board game whose rules you don’t understand but you play because it makes the kids happy, and their happiness makes you happy.

Dream small.

Dream of an afternoon dog walk over slick, muddy grass that pulls you down, then pulls up a laugh and a memory from your honeymoon.

Dream of a fireplace and fresh chopped wood that catches. Dream of hand-me-down sofas with room for everyone. Dream of the ache in one hip that is loosening with stretching and time.

Dream small.

Dream of Prince’s music playing over the speakers, reminding you of how in 1987 you danced to 1999, and how in 2023 you are dancing to it still. Dream of the friends who walked that arc with you, whose smiles you count on appearing at your door.

Dream small, and in naming your small dreams discover their immeasurable enoughness.

Laura Nicole Diamond is the award-winning author of Shelter Us: a novel, and Dance with Me: a love letter and editor of the anthology Deliver Me: True Confessions of Motherhood. She is writing a memoir about becoming a foster mom to a teenage asylum-seeker from Guatemala. Follow on Medium, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Go Slowly: Advice on Writing and Living in 2022

Published on by Laura Nicole Diamond5 Comments
Pearl demands a morning belly scratch

As the days continue to spread their light over more minutes of each new day, the intensity of that light remains gentle. I’ll take that as a message: Go slowly.

Read the full post at Medium.

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Laura Nicole Diamond is the author of Shelter Us: a novel, Dance with Me: a love letter, and editor of the anthology Deliver Me: True Confessions of Motherhood. She is at work on a memoir about becoming a foster mom to a teenage asylum-seeker. Follow more of her writing on Medium.

Possibilities

Published on by Laura Nicole Diamond6 Comments
Photo by Wayne Evans on Pexels.com

The notebook paper is warped and stained with coffee from the mug I knocked over when I pushed my laptop screen away from my “maturing” eyes. An accident, though you may tell me there are no such things.

I blot the paper dry, and the mark it leaves on it does not obscure what is written in my 17-year-old’s hand: “College Possibilities.” His list, unnumbered, stretches more than halfway down the horizontal blue lines, in penmanship neater than years past. He is thinking about his future.

I time-travel backward, and sit at this same table writing a list of names for the baby who is still a part of my body, who at 17 will still be part of my body in a way he will never understand until he is a parent. I try out the sound of each name, closing my eyes to envision what each collection of syllables and histories and meanings might predict for this as-yet unmet soul, how he might live into the sound of them.

Over the next 12 months, he will do much the same with his list, trying on each for fit as best as he can. If time is not linear, the lists sit side by side.

I could find that list of baby names if you gave me an hour, folded into a journal or photo album or baby book. I could place my hands on it, wipe its spine coated with dust, particles of our skin and sweat that have collected these past 17 years.

In the end, none of the names on my list rang true. Days after he was born, it was my sister’s suggestion that wrapped him lightly like a cloud, wide enough to allow any adventure he might choose — artist or clown, athlete or sage — wherever his big heart may lead. I hope his list of possibilities does, too.

Nature

Published on by Laura Nicole Diamond1 Comment
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

A pregnant lady in a bikini stands at the shoreline, her gorgeous tanned belly stretched to capacity, a leash looped around her wrist. The muscled dog at her feet holds himself back, ready to spring toward the waves rolling in and away. She casts her eyes down at the phone held in both hands, its spell cast over her.

I say aloud, to no one but myself, or maybe the pelicans skimming the surface of the water, How sad.

But as soon I say that, I think about what my kids would think of the lady at the beach with her dog and her phone. Not sad at all. Not even a drop of sadness, Mom! Just the way it is.

Last night, thirsty, I pressed a glass against a plastic lever on my refrigerator. Electricity and metal pipes that run under asphalt and concrete filled it with cold water. I did not go to a stream, bend down, cup my hands. On another plane, an ancestor said, how sad.

I have had the unplugged beach, and its restorative power. I want my children to know what it feels like to sit at the shore alone with their thoughts, to get lost in their heads, to share their thoughts only with themselves or the ocean or the birds, not the connected metallic world contained in their hands.

But who am I to judge, a hypocrite who dictates these words into my phone as I sit on the beach watching her, watching the dog, thinking about how I’m going to type it up later and press publish.

Video by Laura Diamond