A Large Unhurried Swallow

I’ve always been a celebrate-er. I got so excited I could barely stand it when it was time to put the deliciously pink Queen of Hearts cut out on the front door for my birthday parties. When I practiced and practiced and practiced doing baton tricks in my front yard, I would celebrate 10 catches in a row (surprisingly difficult depending on the trick) by walking around the corner to Looser’s Grocery Store for a Snickers and a Coke. And when several of my friends got married or had babies, I was first in line to help throw a shower or plan a dinner. 

Celebrating is fun and I don’t think we do it enough. As my children have grown up and gotten too old and cool to celebrate the events in their lives, I’ve implored them to “mark the occasion” somehow. First day at a new job? Mark the occasion. Bought a new-to-you car? Mark the occasion. Hit all your exercise goals this month? Mark the occasion! And, it doesn’t really matter how.

Maybe you need a weekend away, or a new haircut, or a new outfit. Maybe you need to have all your friends meet you at the Mexican restaurant for dinner. Maybe you need to call a special friend to share all the gory details. Or, maybe you just need to treat yourself to a new bracelet from the booth you love at the antique mall. All valid. All great ideas. Just do something. 

Maybe that’s why we take so many pictures nowadays, to make the events in our life stick. To make them stand out, dripping with meaning and significance.  

When my son graduated from the University of North Alabama without once setting foot on campus in an academic capacity, it made sense for him to opt out of the formal graduation ceremony. But, just doing nothing to celebrate his graduation wasn’t a good idea. So, I convinced him to let us have a big family dinner at Oskar’s, a restaurant near Lake Martin. It was wonderful. We ate delicious food, visited, and decorated golf balls for Davis to use (to USE Davis!). 

There was a time during Davis’s engagement to my daughter-in-law, Kailee, when I thought we were going to have to mark the occasion of their wedding at the courthouse. And, we would have too, but instead they marked their own occasion with a beautiful wedding in Florence, AL. I’m thankful they took care of that for me. 

Marking the occasion is what weddings and birthday dinners and graduation parties are all about. It’s just doing something that’s special to you, something that you’ll remember, something that will make you think, “Awww. I love that we did that.” And, it doesn’t just have to be for a birthday or wedding or graduation. Maybe you need to celebrate the fact that your mom isn’t sick anymore or you finished everything on your to-do list, or you had a really good hair day. 

Davis and Kailee Marking the Beautiful Occasion

Do it! Celebrate. Mark the occasion somehow. You’ll be glad you did. It’s pretty important. I think there’s something scientific to it. You have a life event that’s meaningful and special, so you buy yourself some flowers, or a car, or a vacation. But, you do something thus marking this event and this memory as special and significant in your life. 

When I googled “mark the occasion” I found this: To mark the occasion means to do something special to celebrate, honor, or remember a significant event. Common ways to mark an occasion include throwing a party, having a formal ceremony, buying a gift, or raising a glass. 

When looking up synonyms I found a lot of stuff about raising a glass or drinking a toast and one mention of taking a quaff or draught. I wasn’t familiar with the word “quaff” but it means A Large Unhurried Swallow.

Ahhh. A large unhurried swallow. 

That’s it, isn’t it? The next time you feel the urge to celebrate finishing War and Peace or giving up biting your fingernails, you need to mark the occasion by taking a quaff. A quaff of wine, of life, of time with those you love. Large and unhurried. 

No! Ne'er was mingled such a draught 

In palace, hall or arbor, 

As freemen brewed and tyrants quaffed, 

That night in Boston Harbor 

Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

My Coach Purse

 “If you believe that your thoughts originate inside your brain, do you also believe that television shows are made inside your television set?”

― Warren Ellis 

I recently bought a Coach purse at a local thrift store, Recycle Circus. I love it. It’s pink and too small for all my stuff. But, it’s pretty and it’s Coach. I bought it after seeing that someone I follow on Instagram is constantly finding Coach bags at thrift stores. 

This is how it happened…

When visiting Recycle Circus, I spotted the pink and brown bag and thought it was cute. I knew it was Coach and had recently seen several videos about finding Coach bags at thrift stores. But, this one was $25 which I thought was a bit much. So, I left the store and went happily on my way. 

With Coach bags fresh on my mind, I went to Dillard’s with my husband, Bobby, to find a shirt and tie for him to wear to our son’s wedding. While taking a detour to the women’s clothes, we passed the purses. Lo and behold there was a Coach display! So, I wandered in and picked up a small, leather bag. It was almost $300! A quick examination of the rest of the display showed me that the small bag was the cheapest of the lot. 

Suddenly, the Recycle Circus Coach purse didn’t seem so out of my price range.

The next weekend, I returned to Recycle Circus to find the Coach bag still hanging by its leather and gold strap. I grabbed it, carried it around the store for a few minutes, then took it to the register to pay. It’s all mine now. 

Until recently, I didn’t even know that I should want a Coach bag. I never even thought about Coach bags. The few I had seen were drab and brown with the Coach logo all over them. Not really my style. Plus, they were super expensive. Definitely not my style. 

It’s all the fault of Amber Yackzan. She makes these really cute videos about “thrifting in NYC” and cutting her own hair. While I’m not about to cut my curly hair myself, Amber reminded me that I really love and appreciate thrift stores. 

Since watching her videos I’ve bought the adorable Coach purse, a pair of sneakers that look like they’re made of lace, and a maroon jacket with embroidered flowers on it. There was a time when almost every day I wore at least one thrifted item. I’m getting back to that now. Today, for instance, I’m wearing a blue shirt, recently bought at my local America’s Thrift Stores. It fits great and goes with almost everything. A very good find. 

I’m embarrassingly susceptible to influencers. I asked for and got a Warmie for my birthday thanks to Jessica_Rae and her videos about Christmas gifts. I started using ChatGPT like a madwoman after watching upgradingkatie and her life transformation. And, I’m doing stretches in my pjs in the morning because of thepeachiespoon. 

None of these things are bad. They may actually have improved my life. But, I never would have thought of them on my own. Or, if I did think of them, I wouldn’t have implemented them or known how to get started. 

So, now we come to the point, social media, good or bad? But, maybe it’s really not so cut and dried. Smart people have been saying this forever. It’s the use of social media that can be hauntingly destructive. But, social media itself isn’t so horrible. 

Unless it makes you buy stuff you didn’t know you wanted. Then, maybe…

Celebrating Lent

“O Lord, make this Lenten season different from the other ones. Let me find you again. Amen.” —Henri Nouwen

Google says that Lent is a “solemn Christian religious observance in the liturgical year in preparation for Easter. It echoes the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the desert and enduring temptation by Satan, according to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, before beginning his public ministry.”

Somewhere along the way, people in the church decided that since Jesus fasted before his death and resurrection, we should too. Then, the ideal was whittled down until the essence that remained was fasting not from all food all the time, but fasting from meat on Fridays which would allow us to give our meat money to the starving. Devout Catholics still observe this tradition today. 

However, I’ve seen that Fridays in the Catholic-ly populated midwest have become something of a party. Lenten Fridays in Nebraska and Iowa are a time where people gather in smokey community centers to swim through a haze of grease, and sit together at paper covered tables eating fish with slaw and hushpuppies. I’ve been there and it’s wonderful and delicious. But it’s a bit of a departure from Google’s definition that “Lent is solemn.” 

Many Protestant believers also celebrate Lent, but not necessarily by giving up meat on Fridays. I’ve had friends give up social media, coffee, or TV. It’s all in an effort to focus more on how we should be living in light of Jesus’s sacrifice. 

When I occasionally helped at the Charlotte Mason school in Birmingham, AL, they celebrated the Christian year in their chapel services. The students all wore different capes for different parts of the year. The ones they wore for Lent were made of burlap. They were brown and drab and scratchy. But after Lent they got to turn the uncomfortable capes in for one made of purple velvet signifying the royalty of Jesus. It was beautiful and soft. A definite upgrade and it demonstrated in a way the students could truly understand that something wonderful had happened.  

One year for Lent, I listened to a specific Christian song every day - Keep Making Me by Sidewalk Prophets. In 2026, for every day between Palm Sunday and Easter I watched an episode of The Chosen. I liked doing both of those things. They made me think and that made me feel closer to Jesus and the trials he went through. It made Lent and my faith more of a practice, more of an almost tangible part of my life. Perhaps I’m not just adding something into my life, maybe I’m giving up what I would normally listen to or watch in exchange for something that will bring me closer to God.

I don’t seem to be as good at giving something up for 40 days. In college, a friend of mine suffered through the jitters and headaches of going without caffeine for Lent. I was with her on Easter Monday when she sat on the floor of her dorm room with a huge Coke. I think she had jitters and a headache after that, too. My sister has given up secular music and styrofoam takeout containers. She says giving up something for Lent shouldn’t look like you’re trying to lose weight, like giving up chocolate or fried food. 

Another friend of mine who grew up Catholic asked her children to give up sugar for the week leading up to Easter. The sugar rush they got from the candy in their Easter baskets must have been real and intense. 

While I think it’s amazing to even contemplate giving something up (or adding something in) as a spiritual practice during Lent, what happens after that? After the 40 days, what then? It seems there should be another spiritual discipline you employ, kind of like a maintenance phase. 

But, maybe life is a maintenance phase. When I just looked up “what is a maintenance phase” Google told me that a maintenance phase is when people use several weeks after a diet or weight loss to let their bodies adjust to a new norm. “(A maintenance phase) allow(s) the body to recover physically and mentally before potentially resuming weight loss or focusing on other goals.”

Eastertide, Pentecost, and Ordinary Time, the next three parts of the Christian year, may fall right in line with Google’s wisdom. After the excitement of Jesus’ resurrection and the potential stress of giving up complaining or Chick Fil A, it might be time for a little recovery. It might also be time to rest before focusing on another area of life that needs attention.

So maybe instead of thinking how sad and drab it is to be in the season of “Ordinary Time” I’ll reframe that to be a season of slowing down and reflection. A time not to test myself, but to let myself recover from the strain of adding or taking out something hard and taxing. 

So, what about you? How do you observe Lent? I’d love to know. 

“Lent is a time for discipline, for confession, for honesty, not because God is mean or fault- finding or finger-pointing but because he wants us to know the joy of being cleaned out, ready for all the good things he now has in store.”

― N.T. Wright