Walking on the beach with my grandmother when I was a child was an uncommon treat. She had great feet, tiny with extremely high arches and even at her age one could imagine ballet slippers were their natural habitat. She walked with a lilt and her body had an uplifted quality that made me proud to accompany her on the beach.

Bubba was already in her 80s during my childhood, the result of two generations of women having babies in their 40s. But to say she was still vibrant was a serious understatement. She would race me down the sandy shore, skipping and leaping all the way and she’d win if I didn’t give it my all. Her philosophy was, in summary, that if you never stopped moving neither infirmity nor death could catch you and at that point in her life she was running away from both with a renewed sense of purpose.

Late one summer afternoon we paused from our castle building to eat our third snack of the day. “Just a bit of refreshment is what you need” she told me though we both knew who needed to be refreshed. The lemon water appeared from her thermos and a sprig of mint was tossed into each glass. Bubba believed in using your best every day and the beach called for her pink cutglass goblets and a small china plate of thumb print cookies with jam. The miniature table cloth she pulled from the picnic box and spread on the sand was made of pink linen and the embroidery caught my eye.

“What are these 10 pictures, Bubba” I asked. After looking at it for some time she started to cry a bit. This was odd, Bubba didn’t cry often. “Your grandfather loved this cloth” she said. “We used it on our first picnic in the Park.” Sensing a story was coming I resolved to settle in and enjoy the moment, not easy for a rambunctious 10 year old.

“I embroidered half of this and my sister did the other half. I suppose we were about your age at that time. Our Bubba called us to come inside one hot summer afternoon and gave us this piece of fine cloth. She told us to find ten things that took our breath away and to make up a picture for each. “Ten breath catchers” she called them. After we had drawn our little pictures of these beauties she would help us transfer the pictures onto the fabric with talcum chalk and then we could stitch them using any embroidery thread she had in her sewing chest.

“I had no trouble with this. My mind was still concrete and I chose very simple things, This blue flower here, that little dog in the corner and these three people were my choices. My puppy, along with my mother, father and sister were my favorite and most beautiful things in life at that time and I wouldn’t have left any of them off my list for fear of offending. In truth Samuel, the boy next door was also on that list but this was a secret I would tell no one for another six or seven years so Samuel is represented by the blue flower. “

As I looked at each image I could imagine Bubba as a little girl, stitching these on the big enclosed front porch while drinking ice lemonade. I felt connected to her in that moment as if our brains and hearts were made of the same material. We both loved beauty and neither of us could bear to slight that which we loved. My stuffed animals all went to sleep with me each night. Which one was not worthy of its place on my bed? Had I inherited this from my Bubba? My bedtime prayers were interminably long lest I leave out someone who needed God’s protection; leaving out someone was intolerable. Was it like that for her too, I wondered? The cloth I held said it was.

“What are the other 5 pictures?” I asked Bubba. They were much larger. Each was a full scene, a story onto itself. They were exquisite and very complex. Even the faces had detail and each seemed to have taken weeks to complete.

“Sister was talented even then, wasn’t she?” said Bubba. There was no jealously, just appreciation in her voice. “God gave her a special talent, and we all knew this of course.”

My great aunt had used her art the way my Bubba had used her music, to reach far beyond their world of immigrant families to travel and earn an independent living, something few women could accomplish in the 1920s.

“Clara decided she would change the assignment that day. What was knew about this? Clara always changed the assignments our teachers gave in school; making them better, more creative and more interesting to view. She told our Bubba that she would rather sketch and embroider the things that she could do that gave the breath back to the world. Who could say no to this! It was an extraordinary thought!

“Go ahead my dear one. We’ll call it “Breaths of Life.” Do you like that name? “

“My Bubba and sister had a special bond, much like you and I do; as if knit together by God. She appreciated Sister’s brilliance even as a child and never allowed anyone to quash it with unnecessary rules or doctrine. So if the work of the day was to be to draw the ways you breath life into the world, so be it.”

Bubba looked reflective for a moment, and her eyes began to swell with tears.

“I remember asking our Bubba if I should do this too, but I didn’t really want to, it just sounded so much bigger, so much more important that my five little symbols. She held me close and said “No, sweet one. You have your own way of seeing the world, and Clara has hers. Each is beautiful and both are important. You see beauty and love deeply, intensely. Clara creates beauty. She loves more broadly but I think she loves less intimately.”

It was true. I had heard often from my own mother that her aunt Clara loved everyone and used the word as much to say how she felt about the Prime Minister as about her Father and Mother. She loved the grass, she loved the poor, she loved the sky and she loved her box of oil crayons.

“So we set about a fine afternoon of sketching and transferring and then stitching. It took weeks to finish and I often wished to skip a day and play with my friends but Clara never stopped. Each afternoon there she was, rain or shine, stitching and clipping. She made this little area of cutout work and sewed the blue fabric behind the cloth for the sky. Imagine it has never come undone even after 70 or so years! When her five were done she did five more; her 10 Breaths of Life.”

Great auntie’s scenes now fascinated me. I never knew this woman but my mother adored her and at that age I loved anything and everyone my mother deemed worthy.

What was it that Clara breathed into the world at age 10? This was a matter to ponder. There was a figure common to each scene, a girl, tall and skinny, with her long legs revealed in a way I knew the sisters never really dressed. This, I concluded was Clara. In one scene she was pulling a wagon; giving a little boy a ride up a hill. In another, she was walking arm in arm with a very bent over elderly man in a tall hat. His long beard and sideburns gave it away, that was her grandfather, there was no doubt.

But my favorite was of this girl praying at her sister’s bedside with a moon shining through the window. The sister had a cloth on her head as if to cool her and the expression on the face of the girl in prayer was striking. Her eyes were closed and her face was lifted up to the sky; not bent in prayer.

“Was this you in the bed? I asked my Bubba.

“No” she answered.

“But you don’t have any other sisters. Who was auntie praying for?”

“You assume that she stitched herself doing all these things, don’t you? she aid as she pointed to the girl in each of the scenes.

I nodded.

“I did too and I’m afraid I considered her to be somewhat egotistical for putting her good deeds out for everyone to see. We had been taught to do good in secret; to “Do good and run” our father used to say. But I was wrong.”

Now my bubba was crying softly and I had to wait to hear the rest of the story until she could compose herself.

“The last scene she finished was the one of the girl in her bed and the moment I saw it was among the happiest in my life. You see, Clara was the one in the bed. She had been in asleep for several days the Winter before when influenza had nearly taken her life. I stayed with her anytime I could sneak into the sickroom and I put cold rags on her head. I prayed like I had never prayed before but I had no idea she even knew I was there. When I saw the embroidered scene I knew. I was the girl giving the breaths of life into the world and Clara had seen fit to immortalize these little kindnesses in her stitches.”

“But why does it make you cry, Bubba. That was a wonderful thing for her to do.”

“Yes it was! But until then I thought that I was just a little pest to her; a little sister that took away time from her special relationship with our Mother and Father. Until then I thought I took away breath from her life; took away good times and replaced them with responsibility for always having to play with me and look out for me when Mother asked. Her stitched scenes told me that she really did love being my sister, and she was proud of me even if I wasn’t beautiful like she was or talented or terribly brilliant. In choosing to document my contribution to our little world in those scenes she breathed life into my living and I loved her for it forever.”

Every evening that summer at dinner my Bubba asked my brothers and I the same question. “What were your 10 breaths of life today? Later this was shortened to “Your 10?”

We spent our dinner hour sharing the opportunities that had come our way to serve a little; often not ten and seldom big ones, but valid in her eyes and ours nonetheless.

“I put the grocery cart back in the rack.” Tom would report. “I put the newspaper up on Mr. Brook’s front porch” I’d share.

Soon the dinner game changed to something else because the idea of 10 breaths had been internalized. It was habit to look for the ten ways to serve each day, and we could return to doing these goodnesses in secret.

All good summers come to an end and soon school days arrived. As all good teachers, probably everywhere in the world do Mrs. Palmer assigned the expected that first day of school. “Write an essay to tell us what you did this summer, and what you have decided to do this Fall.”

I wrote the story of the linen table cloth laid out flat on the beach to reveal its story in full. I told how I learned it is best not to keep your most important treasures hidden in dresser drawers for safety but to take the risk that they might get dirty, or trampled a bit in order to share them.

Life is full of opportunities to breathe life into the world. Commit to giving ten breaths of life into the world each day even when you’re asked for only five. Never count the cost or wonder whether anyone notices. As our world warms we need the refreshing breath even more. In times of war and division 10 breaths of life offered by strangers can bring peace and unity.

Ideas for Engaging Your 10 Daily Breaths of Life

1. Write a letter to a prisoner in your local jail. Their names are registered on the web site. Keep it simple and encouraging. Tell them about a few things happening in town. You do not need include your address.
2. Pull weeds from a neighbor’s sidewalk or yard.
3. Pick up trash on your daily walk.
4. Put your own grocery cart away and someone else’s too.
5. Read to a child.
6. Make an extra serving of your meal and take it to someone you know.
7. Put a few special tea bags in an envelope and mail it to a friend with a note.
8. Stop and help someone when their car runs out of gas or their battery dies.
9. Bring a bit of research to a colleague or help a student by proofing a paper.
10. Write a thank you note to someone who has blessed your life or send an email to someone that has accomplished a special, but seldom noticed feat. A second grade teacher told me one day she had received a note from a grandmother thanking her for her work and congratulating her that all 21 students in her class could now multiply!