Hope Floats.

This has been the summer of burrata salad.  It's been the summer of a lot of things actually, not all of them great, but the burrata salad, my own personal recipe of heirloom tomatoes, fresh basil and mint (grown by yours truly), peaches, and of course - burrata - has come through in a magnificent and wonderfully reliable way for me this season.  I swear I eat the salad at least five times each week, never tiring of it, coming home from work and craving the fresh fruits and vegetables, loving the simple task of chopping the peaches and tomatoes, plucking the herbs, and after adding some olive oil and red wine vinegar before stirring together my little feast.

I have long thought (and written here plenty) about how life is made up of the little things - because the things that don't seem to matter are, in the end, all that really does matter.  That mantra used to feel so clear to me, to my heart; but recently it's been harder for me to remember.  As I try to navigate through some heartbreak and unexpected curve balls and grief, I have felt that part of me, that crucial aware part of me that I have always been so proud of, slipping away a bit.  Or, more accurately perhaps, not so much slipping away as hiding somewhere, buried and dormant.

The other day I was reading a blog. The woman writing it was actually talking about her small studio apartment, how she manages to not have it bursting at the seams with stuff all of the time.  She shared her motto, explaining, "If it isn't beautiful, useful, or meaningful, it must go."  I liked the sentence so much that I immediately jotted it down in my day planner as a reminder to my own self in regards to purging and organizing my own one bedroom apartment.  As I walked home from work that night though, I thought about how her statement could actually apply to far more than just objects and items stored in small city apartments.  In a moment of unexpected clarity, I realized that it rang rather true for everything, everyone, and really, every thought that I might have bouncing around in my own head or overhear from others.

And so.

I have begun making a conscious effort during these days of August, during my always beloved summer season, to take stock, to take notice once more.  To remember the little things - like a very basic summer salad - that bring me joy and make me feel good. To let go of the ugly, useless, or ill-meaning.  Some days this feels rather simple, something I can actually accomplish.  Other days? Not so much.

Still, I am grateful for the clarity, the simple sentence that I can run over in my head as I make my way through my days.  Murmuring it to myself can be calming, it helps me feel as if the tide is slowly turning away from darkness, that it is heading toward the light.

Plus, in an unexpected and very wonderful twist, I found my Nantucket ring the other night, tucked away in my eye-glass case where I must have decided to put it for safe keeping.  Naturally I texted the friend I'd gone to Nantucket with immediately, told her the little miracle and exclaimed how thrilled I was to have finally located it.

"It symbolizes hope," she texted back.  "Hope that was lost...and then found."