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Abundance

I’m writing this on my 72nd birthday. I think I’ve said so before, but I always like to check my birthday number in terms of the mathematical principles of abundant, deficient, perfect, and prime.

Prime numbers, as everyone knows, cannot be divided by anything else. Perfect numbers’ divisors add up exactly to the number itself, and that is very cool. Deficient numbers are those whose factors (divisors) add up to less than the number itself, whereas abundant numbers’ factors add up to more than the number itself.

Well, 72 is incredibly abundant. Yeehah!! I take this as a sign that my 72nd year will be filled with abundance. And I am here to say that it has already begun.

Last night I went on a night bike ride sponsored by our Parks & Rec Department, called Kaleidospoke. It’s all about lights and color (much like the Lantern Festival in Taiwan). I went with three wonderful friends who had gifted me with my ticket to the event, including a “glow package” and s’mores by the lake. The ride is on a gravel trail with many bridges over the creek. The bridges are all lit up and there are lots of other lights poking out of the ground or otherwise lining the trail. Magical!

And then of course, starting out at 7:00 p.m., in the gathering light, sunset is happening over the lake. Ahh. So lovely. We, ourselves, were lit up, as were our bikes. We had things stuck on top of our helmets or dangling off of us. Lots of people had lit up their bike wheels. It was super fun, but especially so because of the company I was in. Already I’m feeling the abundance.

I won twice in a row at Mah Jongg on Friday, too! And on Wednesday when I returned, after years away to play pickleball at the gym, I won game after game. Strangers were happy to meet me. I learned the names of 15 new people! One (Chuck) said, “Come back. We want you here.” I told my son, “I’m Somebody there!” Abundance.

So the abundance is all happening.

Just to say, whenever I hit a year whose number is deficient, I ignore that, and I think you should, too. But the other three–woohoo!! And since it’s my birthday and I’m having a party, I’ll have to keep this one short.

I hope your year forward is also ABUNDANT!

“Keep your best wishes close to your heart and watch what happens”― Tony DeLiso, Legacy: The Power Within

“Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature.” ― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You

“The truth is that there’s more than enough good to go around. There are more than enough creative ideas. There is more than enough power. There is more than enough love. There’s more than enough joy. All of this begins to come through a mind that is aware of its own infinite nature. There is enough for everyone. If you believe it, if you can see it, if you act from it, it will show up for you. That’s the truth.” ― Michael Beckwith

If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. If you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. And if someone forwarded this one to you, you can sign up here to receive the letters right in your Inbox. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”

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Losses

My pickleball community just lost one of its best loved members. At this writing, it’s not even been 12 hours. We are, as a group and as individuals, immersed in this loss right now and I am hard pressed to think or write about anything else. Life sure does turn on a dime. I cannot very well write about nature or my dogs or anything else at all today.

Dick was a truly beautiful person. Oh, you hear that said about people all the time. But he really was one of those people that everyone loves. And I don’t think I’m stretching anything or hurting anyone’s feelings to say that he was, hands-down, the most beloved person in our community, having just joined us three years ago. Always joking, always fun to play with or against, and a very good player, too. Plus, he was adorable! One day when he was coming off the court and I was going on, he said as he passed, “I saw in the news that Hallmark is going out of business. The article specifically stated that you and your cards were the reason.”

For maybe ten years I have said I only want to live to be 82. And then Dick showed up. He was 82 then. He moved like a young guy. I was flabbergasted. I asked him where he had come from, etc., and he said he and his wife live here but had been wintering in Arizona. Oh, well, that explained it. Those people in Arizona are crazy over pickleball. They play all the time. “So you’ve been playing out there for a long time?” No, he said, he only just started playing. “You played tennis, though?” No. “Racquetball?” No. “Ping pong?” Nope. He just took up pickleball in his 80s and played like a young guy.

So that’s great, but the truly wonderful thing about Dick was his fun-loving personality. If you snuck in a clever dink that he couldn’t get to, he’d give you the stink eye, big time. It was all in fun, of course, and he’d make some remark about how we were supposed to be friends or how mean you were. But in reality, I don’t think Dick ever once got mad or even irritated at pickleball. He was pure joy to be around.

I wonder if it takes effort to be that sort of person–or did it just come naturally to him? Was it easy for him to be wonderful, kind, fun, and lovely? Or did he have to talk to himself about it? Did he have to work at it? Or was he born with an adorableness that you’d have to inherit genetically? Could I ever be even somewhat like him? I don’t know but I sure would like to be. I sure would love to embody his spirit for this last part of my life.

“Genuinely good people are like that. The sun shines out of them. They warm you right through.”

― Michael Morpurgo, Alone on a Wide Wide Sea

I know I should count myself lucky when my losses are hard, because they tell me I’ve had someone wonderful in my life. If I hadn’t met Dick or had the pleasure and fun of his company on the courts, I would be feeling very differently today. But what a loss that, too, would be.
If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. And if you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems on here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”