Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: friendship

  • Mahogany Table

    My friends wanted a larger dining table. But it had to be one that could also be small enough for the four of us to play cards or dominoes, as we often do.

    I had put an item on Marketplace but the smaller items that had not sold went home with my daughter for her to list in a larger market. I thought I had pulled all of the listings and was surprised to get a message about the Bose sound system. Searching for my listing, I came across a dining room table and 4 chairs: “Beautiful mahogany table with claw feet. Antique table that goes from 4 feet to 7 feet.” It was less than 30 minutes away. And the price was very reasonable. I sent that listing to my friend.

    A few days later I received a text message from her, “Going to look at that table from Facebook Marketplace today at 5:30. Hoping it works!”

    I wrote back, “The craziest thing is that I saw the listing for the table when I was responding to a message about a listing I thought I had pulled.”

    She added, “Crazier yet is that I’ve been looking on FB Marketplace for a month or more now and never saw this one.”

    At 7:38 pm she sent a photo of their new beautiful antique mahogany table already set up in their dining room along with this message, “And three leaves so it will comfortably seat 12!”

  • A Shared Love – Hawk

    They had met years ago, when she and her husband were wintering on the east coast of Florida. A retired judge from Pennsylvania, he and his wife were also wintering in Florida. She and her husband attended a delightful birding class he was leading at the nature center. A shared love was born!

    These many years later, in December 2023, although they were separated by miles, she still loved sharing her birding experiences with him.

    Sitting on the lanai in Southwest Florida early that New Years Eve eve morning — at the exact moment she was writing an email telling him the details about two hawk sightings the previous day — a hawk loudly flew overhead! She grabbed her phone and hit the voice memo record button…. she included the lovely sounds of hawk in her email message to him.

    Hawks most often screech in flight. A male screeches to announce his territory during the mating season. A hawk will screech loudly and repeatedly to defend his territory, generally from other hawks.

    While each species of hawk, along with the details of the visit, can have slightly different spiritual meanings, hawk generally means change, accomplishment of goals and dreams, clarity, and protection which comes by your honoring your inner wisdom. These magnificent birds demonstrate the results from knowing and going after what you need and want.

    Over twenty years ago she and her former business partner had chosen Red-tailed Hawk as their business logo. Or perhaps Red-tailed Hawk had chosen them. The logo line they used was: Perceive, receive, and use your abilities…. as the hawk rides the wind.

    (This photo of Red-tailed Hawk is one her birding friend sent to her in 2014….)

  • Small Seed of Faith

    It was late in the evening of a long day and it had been a very emotionally difficult week when her friend shared an  11-minute video which the friend found very funny. She did not laugh.

    “You did not think it was funny?” the friend asked.

    “I did not find it funny. It was long and just not my cup of tea,” she could see hurt in her friend’s eyes and it brought up painful emotions around differences they were navigating in their preferences.

    Still processing the following morning she wrote in her journal: What might I do differently, if I could do it over?

    “You did nothing wrong, Dear One,” was the immediate response she heard in her heart/mind.

    She did a bit more writing in her journal and ended the entry with a question, “Is there anything we could/can learn from the exchange?”

    Checking email, she immediately recognized the answer to her question arrived in the “Daily Reflection”:

    Come back to the place inside you, over and over and over again, where that small seed of faith lies and nurture that seed with the reminder, “We are both right. I am seeing it through my senses and he or she through his or her senses. I do not have to prove them wrong, nor do I have to feel threatened.”

    “For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20-21)

     

  • Do It With Love

    “In doing something, do it with love or never do it at all.”
    — Mahatma Gandhi

    My husband, John, violated a long-learned rule of relating when he said “WE” would do something that I would never have agreed to do.

    What am I to do now?

    Gandhi’s point is to not do it unless you can do it with love.

    I did it with love when I was honest with John: It was not wholesome for you to have committed me to something without asking me first.

    Then, I did it with love when I was honest with myself: I had to either do it with love or not do it at all.

    The “IT” in question is detailing a house here in our manufactured home community for a friend. She has essentially already moved to be near her children and grandchildren. She hired someone to do the painting, but that did not go well for a variety of reasons. Partially, it did not go well because she had previously painted without proper information or experience.

    For some of it, there is no easy solution.

    Here is the before-and-after view of one corner in the master bedroom. It is amazing what a truckload of Fast ‘N Final Lightweight spackling compound can do.


    It is very good karma to lovingly clean up messes you did not make!

    I am reminded of our helping one of our friends move out of a house that our other friends were moving into.

    I am reminded of the closing of Holistic Alliance in 2005 when we had 6,000 square feet of space to be emptied out and cleaned, making way for the new owner.

    As we were there working on the house, one of our neighbors stopped in to see how it was going. She said how fortunate our friend was to have someone who was willing to step up and lend a hand. I reminded her who our friend is. Our friend works for our local hospice. She paved the way for John’s mom to get hospice care when needed, and then for his brother, Jim, as he was dying with lung cancer. Our friend had also assisted the neighbor’s husband.

    Yes, it is a clearly “compounded” mess. As I mused about all of this, I could see that I have left messes (physical and emotional) for others to deal with. We all have.

    And admittedly — even with all of our hard work this week — we have not been able to make all things right. Doing that will fall to some other at some other time.

    Obviously, universal implications….

    And, while I could not do a great job of everything, it is my intention to leave things better than I found them.

    We can all do that.

    More obviously universal implications….

    Things are improving.

    Evidenced by that before-and-after photo!