Nurturing an Oak in the Seed

A few years ago, inspired by a magazine article, I spent an afternoon designing a Vision Board. A Vision Board is a visual representation of where you are in life or rather, where you want to be, emotionally or spiritually or physically. The idea is that by surrounding yourself with these images, your life will change until your vision becomes reality.

Without going into the gory details, my reality deteriorated instead. In a fit of frustration, I tore my vision board to shreds and threw it away. An hour later, I went through the trash and rescued some tatters and shoved them in a drawer. It’s not good to give up hope entirely.

A conversation with a friend and fellow blogger a few months ago reminded me of those ideas and dreams and desires and hopes, and I thought of the little trinkets and labels and notes piling up in cabinets and desk drawers, snippets of what I love and reveal who I am to myself: A dragon-shaped thumb tack purchased during a craft show mom and I used to enjoy together, a painted hummingbird pin from my oldest sister, a special card from another sister who is my soul mate during this life turn, a Mary Oliver poem, a “Wonder” sticker, the Flying Red Horse gas station sign that so enraptured me as a child.

There was too much to paste on a piece of letter-sized paper. But while moving stuff around in our storage room downstairs, I picked up an old frame that once belonged to a relative. Aunt Mae liked to paint and before she passed, gave one of her framed paintings to my parents, who hung it in the living room for awhile before storing it in the attic. When mom and dad were divesting themselves of stuff for their move to Florida, I took the oak frame because of the carved acorns budding along the edges. It’s me, I thought. One of these days, I will put a picture in this frame. That was over 25 years ago.

Little could I know the oak frame would one day hold not a picture, but my life.

 

 

 

 

Combination scrapbook, vision board and whimsy, my Vision Board will not make it into an art museum, nor will it ever be finished. I put things up there at random and take pieces down when they don’t fit any more. It takes my past and present and knits them to a hope for my future. But it wasn’t until I was putting it together that I realized this old frame has become the focus of how I see my life and how far I have come.  I know now where the mighty oak is growing, surrounded by its circle of seeds.