Folks,
Today, your esteemed webmaster hit the big Five Oh. When people ask me how it feels to reach this age, I said?”Age of Fifty, Feeling Nifty!”
I took today off from work, and Bobbi and I drove from Franklin, MA to the picture postcard New England town of Shelburne Falls, MA, in the Massachusetts Berkshires, to buy my birthday presents. It took a couple of hours to drive from Franklin to Shelburn Falls, MA, but it was worth it.
I’ve been meditating ever since my next door neighbor Becky (Gilpin) Milne introduced me to Transcendental Meditation and my friend Mark Zanger gave me my first mantra back in 1977. I meditated through Navy Officer Candidate School, Nuclear Power School, and even in the Missile Compartment and Torpedo room of my submarine.
I drifted away from TM to Zen, and Bobbi bought me a meditation cushion and mat a few years ago. Well, the mat has been looking a little threadbare, and the cushion has been smushed flat, so Bobbi figured I needed a new set of meditation gear.
She found a little family company called Sun and Moon Originals online , and she set up a visit.
Their directions were good, and we found their shop upstairs over a car repair shop. As we walked up to the shop where he and a staff of 3 make the cushions, the look and smell reminded me of my Grandpa Campbell’s mattress making shop that I used to visit when I was a pre-teen. It’s amazing how powerful memory is, especially when triggered by smell.
When we got inside, we asked for the woman who talked to Bobbi, but she wasn’t there. Instead, the founder of the company Brian Summer, welcomed us, showed me the regular Zafu (meditation cushion) and had me try out the Cosmic Cushion that he designed himself. It’s shaped like a whale’s tail, and it’s a dream to sit on!
In in addition to the Cosmic Cushion, I also got another meditation mat (zabuton) and a pyramid shaped meditation timer.
We went to lunch at the Bridge Street Cafe in downtown Shelburne Falls, where we had cold cucumber soup, some fine sandwiches, and, as our waitress said, “the best chocolate cake you’ll ever taste.” (She was right!)
Like our kids always used to say when they were young, this truly was “the best birthday EVER!”
Dave