hail mary

full of grace (and long shot miracles)

wouldn’t this make an amazing Pie & Mighty?

Last week I mentioned a place for sale that I thought was perfectly pie and joy shaped. The image above (and if you click on it, you’ll be able to see the inside too) is the place I was talking about.

Can’t you see it? Mainstreet downtown Hopkins, antique stores, the Hopkins Center for the Arts, adorable little shops (like Cream & Amber - oh my word I am SUCH a fan). It’s got that vibrant small-town, slow-down vibe. Pie: classes, slices, seating and eating with real plates and forks. It’s a gathering space for whatever your brain is seeing right now. Here is what I know, deep in my soul: there IS someone who wants to make this happen (besides me). I just don’t know who you are yet. If you are this person and have no idea how you’ll do it, call me. I have ideas.

I used to believe I would win the lottery (or the publishers clearinghouse sweepstakes). A few years ago, it was early March of 2020, we were just about to open the shop on Chicago Avenue. The sun was streaming in, the yellow tile was glistening, and the only sound you could hear was the hum of the refrigerators. We flicked the lights off, Ratchet and I were ready to lock up and leave. “Congratulations, you’ve won,” whispered that still small voice. And I knew I had.

What followed was probably not unlike other lottery winners. The place and all the money that we put into it is gone, but oh did we have fun. The stuff that matters—the stories, the friends, the memories—they all linger.

I am putting this out here because I believe in the power of pie, love, and magic. I believe in belief, accepting something to be true, despite what may appear “real.”

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"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

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a litany (of sorts)

the tippity tap on the keys sounds like a crackling fire
so may the words that do not serve love,
the ones that haunt and hurt from out of nowhere,
burn, rise, and flicker.

feeling lost,
may the sound of my keys reach you, connect you
these hands, this love, we’re in it together.
I am already here, waiting.

people say things about you
and sometimes those people say they know you.
You know You.

You’re made of stars and fireflies and all things that glow in the dark places.
You are light.
shine.