The Smile and the Albatross

When I received two quarters in change at the Farmer’s Market, I simply placed them in my pocket. Later that day, I rediscover them while sitting on a park bench waiting for a friend.

Turning the coins over in my hand, I was surprised to see a yellow smiley-face sticker on the heads side of one piece. Since the metal felt lightweight, I wondered if someone had tried to disguise a foreign coin. I flipped it over, found an albatross on the tails side, and looked closer with curiosity. Which state of the Union would have chosen this symbol as its representation?

But there was no state designation. Turning it again, I discerned the words United States of America and quarter dollar peering out from either side of the sticker. Despite its slight feeling in my hand, this was a true coin.

Meanwhile, back at home, I was packing and preparing for my move to Minneapolis. Everything was unfolding gracefully. In certain moments, I felt nostalgic—for the view from my office window onto the white barn and field, the frogs in the back pond singing at night, the beauty of the landscape that supported me and my dear cat, Belle, all the way through her passing.

But home truly lies where the heart is and mine has moved on. Waiting for me in Minnesota is a new home with welcoming friends, a place to write, and even a nearby arboretum. Most of all, my husband—and a Temple that called my name. When Love calls, we go. There is no question, hesitation or resistance.

In 1798, the albatross entered the culture as a symbol of an encumbrance or burden with Coleridge’s poem Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The term, however, has a very positive connotation in golf where it refers to a double eagle, or three-under-par on a single hole. Conversely, the enormously popular yellow smiley face, created in 1963 by Harvey Ball to raise the morale of employees at a company in Worcester, Massachusetts, remunerated the designer only $45. Sad for him?

The gift of the quarter invites me to always search deeper than two sides of the same coin—the smile and the albatross—of this world. When I seek pleasure, I experience both pleasure and pain. When I seek purpose, I still have both, but a third emerges. A sure, steady, ever-present certainty in the reverence and power of a truth I cannot deny without betraying myself.

Life, rarely being what it appears, requires payment in true coin. I’ve learned to ride the flip-flops by focusing on my mission in this world. It’s not a thought or vision that I set out to conquer, but is revealed to me, moment by moment. Aligning with my North Star, ever listening for this essential purpose, I’m always home.