slip sliding

The nearer your destination the more you're slip sliding away.  
Anticipation is not my friend. 
What I would not give to be less of a cliche'?   
Actually what would I give to be different and what would I sacrifice to receive the answers for my questions?  
How uncomfortable in my comfort zone do I have to be before I'd give up what I have or who I am in order to remove the fearful nearness of my destination.




I do know that the preciousness of things close to me quietly erupted beside me this afternoon and I was once again reminded of the gifts planted on me, in me and nearby.   
I was gladly forced gently into regarding things that can be missed and would be missed greatly, but as luck would have it, were observed and taken in and then taken to heart.
Just when I begin to not notice, I'm confronted, kindly and thankfully with the reasons for everything being as it is and I know then that things are as they should be and not any other way.


"A love so overpowering I'm afraid I might disappear."  For that, I might consider giving something up.   For that, I would sacrifice, but already I know that a thing like that isn't something that comes along, it's not something you give up for, it's quite the opposite, it's what you call in, it's what you take on.  So again, I cannot change a thing to make that part of my mid-solved equation.  I know, innately, that it's here, I just have to give it my full attention and not make a wish about it, but just chose to recognize it.
  
So what would I give to alter my reality?   Not a thing and that in and of itself is the reality of my existence.  

Third time may in fact be a charm...

My third Christmas on my own ~ I've decided to call this, "The Year of the Rat".   Though it is in fact the year of the rabbit, here we have our own reasons - - -

Days ago, while searching through the seemingly endless cabinets in my garage, I came across a rodent.   It was dazed and slow to move.  Gathering all my gusto, I dislodged the rat, nest and all, from the shelf it occupied.  I took it and it's cozy bed made on top of the box of Christmas lights I'd been searching for  and I let them be, hoping IT, or as it turns out, SHE would hit the road and let me gag my way through sweeping up her shredded paper bedding before I tackled the likely tangled strands of half working lights shoved in the box she rested on.   She would not budge.  She, chubby and wide eyed, stayed put. Suppressing my natural urge to scream and flee myself, I instead remained composed, found a broom and a dust pan.  She was scooped up, but as luck would have it, my luck that is, she promptly began to give birth to several rat babies right before my very eyes, while in the dust pan.  

Yes - I know.  Why does this happen to me?   What am I?  The stable keeper in Bethlehem?  

Christmas spirit kicks in.  An empty firewood box makes a decent new home, especially when it's stuffed with the stinky paper nest and mom, plus babies are carefully placed inside of it.    The whole fam-damily is relocated west  and outside of my garage, to which I realize they will quite likely return to once again pillage and deflower my cabinets, this time in mass and not just a single mother, stuck in place, struggling, overwhelmed and alone.  Yup.

What has changed in these three years, these three Christmases?   Lots has and then again, maybe not all that much has, but more then likely what's changed is enough for now...

This year my children strung the lights on the outside of the house all by themselves and they've managed to withstand the raging winds that seem to want to pull them down.

I've accepted that one sugar cookie can actually handle a half a bottle of sprinkles without collapsing.   I no longer make futile attempts to dictate the amount of decoration on each and every cookie.

My heart only skips a few beats now when a mom beside me at a holiday program says, "See, your daughter is actually smiling and having a good time", a comment said with sweetness, but for me, the mother of a child with Asperges, can never really be sweet to hear.  I'd like her smiling to be typical and go unnoticed, not seen as extraordinary.    Now that would make life sweet.

Somedays I'm more afraid then I ever was, but other days I'm not afraid at all, not one little bit.

I still wake up and wish that I could kiss my mom good morning on Christmas Day.

But I never wonder anymore if I did the right thing.

Time moves slowly still and somehow goes by too fast.

Recently I went to sleep on the other side of my bed and interestingly enough it felt surprisingly right.   I plan to try it again, hopefully soon.   

I love my family and appreciate all of my friends more then ever.

Night sky and the stars still move me, still touch me at my core,  just the same as they always could.

I'm happier now.  

Beyond Friday Morning

Don't watch me.

I don't want to be watched while I try to figure this out.

I want to explain to them that it's more then just my mindset I'm fighting.

Metal and Steal, muscle and bone are giving me grief.  

But in all truth, beyond a nagging, odd discomfort in my leg, my brain simply rejects this skill I'm trying to master.  

My brain would much prefer to veto my will and my desire to improve my double unders and improve myself.

It tells me, "This is too hard for you.  You don't belong here".  

Not only do I have to learn to string them together as I did with my single jumps months ago when I first came to Crossfit , I also have to convince my brain that I do belong here and I'm here to stay.

I will get it right, but I'll have to find something stronger then my brain to say that with.

I'll have to use heart, which is infinitely more powerful then my mind and the rest of my body and those limitations they seem to love to put on me.

Now I watch her. 

She's a new mom. 

She's an expert here, but today she's more new mother then expert.  

She's struggling and I've never seen her struggle.  

Is her body, her "new mother's body" giving her grief?  

Is her mind fighting against her? 

Is she too experiencing a wave of emotion, a discomfort she's not familiar with?  

Just seeing her continue on, find ways around the new and strange obstacles she faces, elevates her in my eyes.  She's more of a trainer/example to me then she ever was in her most powerful, elite and perfect athletic condition.  

While she fights all that she's fighting and who can know what's really inside her, just like who can know what's inside me; my doubt, my insecurity, my screws and rod, my fear and even my unstoppable and sometimes unrealistic hopefulness, I see that we both are battling similar demons, just that they're dressed in different sweatpants.

We'll both get there... heart over mind.

There is no end to the gifts that Crossfit gives me; body, mind and heart.

Thanks Jen and Mark and Aaron, Brandy, Stephanie and also thanks to Bill.

I wait

I can be lazy about things, like being patient.
I tend to want to turn the page at times, before I've digested each word, before the meaning or meat of the paragraphs are sunken in.
I can rush ahead before I'm meant to, because stopping for red lights is more work then revving up at yellow.
I want to see what comes next, as if knowing will change anything about what's happening right now.  And would it?  
Would knowing the outcome in any way affect the feelings I have today?   And don't I love these feelings? I do and after all there is a reason they are mine.
I can know this, yet it doesn't make me suddenly patient.
Nothing but patience leads to being patient.

I looked very automatically to a book, reading something that typically sets me at ease, because when I thought I was easy, I was in fact not.  I turned a page, but it felt thick in my fingers, as if two were stuck together.  I tried for some time to pry them apart, careful not to tear the paper, though it felt tough, it is not.  It's only paper with words on it.  Its only a story and a story is one word at a time, one page after another.   It takes time.  You won't understand it any better if you turn the page before its read and if the pages are feeling glued together, running your fingers up and down the tender edge searching for the undetectable rift will only lead to painful, miniscule slits, which will likely slow the process further still.
Perhaps it's best to study the words again.  Sometimes there is more to learn when you go over things a second time, or maybe more.   Maybe this page is really a poem you'll want to recite later and maybe there'll be some value in knowing it word for precious word.  Once it's understood, it's yours.
You can't always rewrite things later on, after all.
Once I tried to look to the end of my own life book to see whether or not the whole story was worth the read.  Once I thought of throwing it away, jacket and all.  But, I found that the words on the last pages were invisible, as if my eyes were filled with sea water.   Just once, force your eyes to remain open in the ocean, let the rough tide take you down and tumble you a while then surface and look for shore.  You won't see it until the salty fluid flooding your eye sockets, like a wave, recedes.   Then you can focus, then things are clear.
WWMOD?  What would Mary Oliver do?  She'd write it down.  She'd take it out of herself and separate the complicated feeling from what was meant to be felt.  She'd uncomplicate it.  She'd patiently break it down.
Being patient is an activity that is not intended to exhaust me, but it can.  I just have to learn to not let it, which again can only come in time... like all good things.

Three songs of great importance

It is a strange song to close such a monumental day upon, he insinuated. 

The DJ I hired was perplexed by my musical choices. Apparently I was truly different from his other brides.  To him it made no sense, but I could see it. In my mind, the ones I loved would get it. They'd move, they'd be moved and it would bring us all back together for the finale and we'd smile, we'd laugh and we'd remember it always. 

I was right.

The last song played on my wedding day was Miss American Pie. 

A rowdy, dwindling, tired crowd rose up and sang 
it out.

Circled round me on the dance floor, arm in arm they swayed.

Everyone knew the words.

"Good ole boys were drinking Whiskey and Rye, singing this will be the day that I die..."

It was very ME.

and in some small, surreal way, it was the day I died, a portion of me did anyhow

Two more songs for the day mattered most to me. Not necessarily the one's you'd imagine either. 

The second was for my whole family.  Music had been a part of every aspect of our life.  It still is for me and my own children. I have a personal soundtrack in fact.  This one was for my brothers, sisters, parents and the relatives who were the constant cast and crew on the periphery for the saga of our upbringing.  Sweet Caroline.  "Good times never seemed so good"

Third song, the last song I really cared about, was maybe most important of all...

My Father-Daughter dance.

I was not "Daddy's Little Girl".   I was not sugar and spice, everything nice.  My older sisters were, but by the time I came around, I was not, had never been and still could not be categorized as a little girl. Perhaps I was born an adult.   My mother tells me that her grandmother held me when I was first born and said, "This one's been here before", maybe I came into the world as an experienced human being. Whatever the secret is, that song, that traditional music was not meant for my father and I.

It was hard to find a summary of what he'd come to mean to me. It was hard also, because I knew that I now meant more to him then I ever had dreamed I might.  I had made quite a few mistakes as I was growing up.  I'd strayed off the never firmly intended/unintended path. I'd often felt that I slipped through the cracks in the sidewalk of the life I was meant to walk on. I was a near miss. I could have been something rather spectacular, but by the time I was old enough to go there, those who were meant to shove me that way were disappeared into their own lives. Maybe this is what happens when parents divorce and have many young children to raise? Maybe by the time the younger, more difficult ones come of age, there is no one left with the energy or interest to guide them and so those like me go unattended?  In any event, somehow, maybe because of a hint of potential innately buried inside me, I had rallied and rounded several dark corners and here I was, on my wedding day, in an awesome setting, in a dress that my father bought for me, which was more beautiful then I could have hoped for.   For he and I, I chose this song; because at some point, he'd taken me back in and helped me right the small wrongs that seemed bigger then they were. He propped me up, he gave me chances and space and support. He gave me the love I wanted and needed and he showed the pride in me that I had no idea I could earn. He clapped loudest as I hurdled the gates and low brick walls placed before me, while I ran steadily, at last, a course in life that would make me a prize winner.   If not for him, if not for the last few years I'd spent in his house, repairing, regrouping, re-centering, I'd not be who I was that day and not who I am right now. Who I am right now is a woman who loves her father, loves him as if there never was a day in all my life where things were less then just plain right.

The Absence of Blue

Twenty three paintings and each of them contains some shade of blue.  All twenty-three.

She loves blue.  

She is particular. 

She won't eat at McDonalds for personal reasons.

She's good at swimming, really good.  But, she dislikes competition and so being really good at Freestyle, Butterfly and Backstroke, being fast, and skilled is just something she is, not something she'll do.  

I struggle with this.  I want her to have something; something to fall back on, to advance with.  Something to carry her through.  Some way to participate with others.

Walking into her art lesson yesterday, I immediately noticed an absence of blue on her palate and in her painting, on her clothes and in her hair, where there usually is plenty.  No blue, but instead; purple, red, gold, green, white, black, grey.  

When does enjoying something turn into being good at something?  

 Apparently yesterday is when.

Right around lesson number twenty-four.

I couldn't take my eyes off of it.  

"I would buy this", I said to myself.

"I love this one.  Can I have it?"  I asked her.

"Maybe?"  She answered slowly, thoughtfully, after she looked long and hard at her work.  She seemed unsure about giving it away so easily, even to me.  She loves it too, I realized.   Unlike all the others she handed off to me in the past without consideration, this one was different, completely different.

I could not contain my smile.  I felt it actually pull at either side of my face.

"It's really something", I said.

Something

to hold on to.

stone days...

On weekends we woke to the smell of frying meat, usually it was Taylor ham or bacon, but sometimes it was this incredible mystery meat from the Scottish butcher.  Whatever it was, it was wonderful and always accompanied by the sound of John Denver from my mother's record player.  
We'd feast.  We'd devour the buttered rolls and the hard to eat, but so worth the effort Crumb-buns bought fresh and hot from the bakery in our town.
After we were stuffed, we'd dress and then ride away in either the big van or the Country Squire.   No matter where we'd end up, be it the base of the local Ramapo Mountains or someplace further, we'd  hike for hours together.
Though we began and ended in a pack, while we walked, spaces developed between us.  It was possible to think differently and clearly in these spaces.  Something about the air, the woods, looking at the sky distorted by tree tops, seeing sun speckles on the ground as light penetrated leaves on branches, shining like a kaleidoscope on the earth around me.   These changes opened me to thoughts that never came while at home in our crowded house.
Though my energy was endless then, the apple breaks were the thing I loved most.  Finding a flat surface or a large boulder near water to stretch out on, everyone stopping to rest a while, the crunch and tartness of piecing the flesh of fresh fruit, an end to my well earned hunger and thirst, sun on my face, breeze in my hair.  Then we'd go further.
As I grew older, I'd do as my ambitious sister had, I'd bravely navigate ahead of the gang and find a place to hide from them.    Waiting in the base of a hollowed tree or mashed between two giant stones, secreted under a pile of leaves, the anticipation of springing out to surprise them would build as I heard voices coming closer.   Sometimes I'd surprise myself, lose the desire to move and instead remain hidden, letting them pass me by, instead spying and noticing them in a way I otherwise might not.  Seeing them as people, not family, taking in their voices, laughter, clothing, the strands of hair, freckles, bright eyes, their individuality and their unity.  They were beautiful.  In some strange way, seeing them apart from me made me miss them.  Seclusion was a rarity, privacy gave perspective.   When they'd pass and a distance formed, I'd run toward them, glad to be close again.
I could feel so alone, but I never was and that is something I know well today.   Now long grown and gone away, I am alone, but not truly.  I'm one of five, which makes it impossible for me to be unconnected, no matter where I am, where I go, how I hide.


Like the words to a song that 
reminds me of waking in my childhood home; "Somedays are diamonds, somedays are stone"... somedays are stone, but I can love the stone days, because of all those diamond days...  I am one of five.

something else

"Perseverance".

I wasn't looking at all forward to hearing Jennifer Lopez speak.  
I couldn't imagine that she would have anything to say that might apply to my life, to who I am or want to be or have been.
We are not alike, J-Lo and I.
It is also true that I am in no way similar to a Supreme Court Justice and yet I was thrilled that later in the day I would be in the audience as one of those amazing Madam Justices spoke.


"Blah blah blah", she might as well have said.
She wore a dress I wouldn't choose.  Had on make up that seemed excessive for morning, even in my eyes.   I was in no way familiar with even one of her songs.  She meant essentially nothing to me and so I busied myself as she began chatting into the microphone.  I browsed the beautiful keepsake/program that you are handed as you enter the annual California Conference for Women.
I felt lucky to be one of 14,000, mostly female audience members, for the second time in my life.
This experience is all together magnificent and magical.  I'm not exaggerating one bit when I use the word magical.
Like a bolt of electricity striking you - ZAP, you're cracked in half and then you are systematically filled all day long with information, communication, education, stimulation, explanation, imagination, exaltation, till you are exhausted and rung out like a soaking wet towel that has washed and dried 1,000 plates, from 1,000 different shelves, in 1,000 different houses, in 1,000 different towns, used by 1,000,000,000 different people.   You are touched and touched again on this one day by some of the brightest, most influential and fascinating people on the planet.  Except her.   She has nothing to offer me... or so I thought, until she said, "persevere".
It's a nice word, but not one of my favorites and yes I have a list of favorite words.
I'm not sure what she said next, but I can tell you what I was wearing, what I tasted in my mouth at that very moment, who was on either side of me and what I did just at the exact second the word "persevere" stopped rattling around my previously distracted brain.   I cried.
There it was again, the common bond, the inbred cell, the undetectable thread that binds us all, even her and I together in our sisterhood, our humanness.
She had my full attention then and she taught me something more then she likely meant to with her speech.  I learned, by mistake perhaps, that there is no experience we are presented with from which we cannot learn.
I liked her now.  I liked what she said and I liked what she did; persevered.


In my life of 1,000,000,000 experiences it still stuns me to recognize that I am fallible.  Very.  Highly.  It surprises me that I still make mistakes.   How old do you have to be before you actually know enough to recognize right from wrong for sure, all the time?  How old are we when we're no longer potentially erroneous?   Know what I find harder to swallow then knowing that I am still, with all that I know and all that I've seen and all that I've read and everywhere I've been, faulty at times?   What's harder then knowing I am sometimes completely wrong?  Knowing that I am absolutely right.   Knowing, really knowing that I'm not in the wrong, but am in fact just plain right, is actually more difficult for me to accept.
Isn't that something?

gone fishing

 Is it me, or at times doesn't life seem to be more difficult or at least a bit more trying?    


It seems that many days are simply a walk in the park, with maybe a few detours, but mostly a good walk  You're moving, you're getting there, it's all good.   It's walking/working, but it's good, its life.   You know how to do that and you know what to expect, for the most part. 
Then there are those few other days, which turn out to be maybe more like pushing a motorless lawnmower through that same, but now noticeably sprawling, tall grass-filled, dog shi_ riddled, mosquito infested, suspected pedophile hangout of a park.


I liken this particular week not to walking in my park but to fishing.  The whole act of fishing.  Not deep sea or anything so elaborate, but like lake fishing.  Lake fishing at my favorite spot in Pennsylvania even.   Doing something I love, where I love to do it, but taking notice of all the work involved in what often seems like a walk in the park/fish in the lake I know so well.
Fishing = living my life...
Some days it's all cast and reel it in.  Other days its more, lots more; like...
Go get the pole.
Don't forget the tackle box!
Make your way to the lake.
Dig up some worms
Put those live worms in damp soil inside the little foam cup you keep in that before mentioned tackle box.
Bait the hook (ick, please, for the love of Pete).
Now here is the nice part of any day, even hard days, we cast the line.
Reel it in (yes, very nice).
Cast again and maybe again.  (This is not bad.  This is pretty darn good in fact.)
Pull in a fish!
See the fish.  (excellent)
Oh sh_t.  Um?  Take it off the hook?  Gut it, cook it, eat it?   Never mind.
Throw it back.   
Walk home. 
Put the stuff away.
Try to forget the worms, the removal of live fish from lovely line, the whole momentary contemplation of cleaning it, etcetera, etcetera.


Just remember casting; joyfully tossing that silvery line into open water.  Don't think about the snags on hidden, sunken logs just beneath the placid surface, knots in your line, lost bait or unavoidable hook pricked fingers. 
Live for the casting and the catching.
Remember it's a hope filled endeavor.

mental notes

"They're mental to me!", he said.  

"You mean senti-mental?", I clarified.

"Uh huh.  I want to keep them for when you're dead".  

I tried to find the compliment in that and avoid the ugly truth.  One day I would be dead.  On the upside, he liked me enough to already be hanging onto little mementos, things to help him remember me.

Only moments before, blood curdling screams had ensued as he peered into the kitchen trash.

"WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!"  

Why did I do that?

I guess I thought they were junk, these crumbled up, scribbled on post it notes.  I don't really know why I threw them away when I cleaned out his lunch box this afternoon.  I just found a wad of paper scraps in a ziploc that had seen better days.  Looked like nothing of importance.  To be quite upfront, I barely recall writing these notes each day.  I just sort of do it.  It's become almost a mindless habit, but maybe not.  Maybe half awake, putting lunch pails into backpacks each morning and slipping in a little  message and sometimes a stick figured cartoon of he and I living out some fantasy is more then reminder of how I feel about my kids. It has seemed like just second nature, but maybe it's my nature, my true nature?  Maybe it's mindful and not mindless.  Whatever it is, he counts on it.  He holds onto them and it all matters to little him.  This tiny, two second effort apparently means a whole lot.  

So we sponged off the bits and globs of food and what-have-you that had sadly splattered across them while they lay in the garbage.  We spread the soggy little messages on the counter to dry.  I ran my fingers over them, I stared at them and then I took a photo.  Suddenly I wanted to remember something too.   I wanted to remember how wonderful it feels being the mother of an eight year old boy and a ten year old girl who also saves her mental/sentimenatal notes.  

"Will you always do that Mom, will you always write me these things?"    

"Count on it", I answered.  

Count on me to love you, even when I'm dead.

Otherwise Engaged

"And have I shown you my ring?"   I find the sunlight streaming through the windows and I aim my diamond straight at it, let brilliant little reflections sparkle for just us.    Shy rainbows appear randomly on the walls all around the square room.   The bed opposite her is empty.  It is Valentine's Day 1999.  I became engaged the night before.  I am a nursing student and I have to spend my day, my first day of promised matrimony otherwise engaged.    I am fulfilling some of my zillion hours of required clinical training at a hospital near the beach, on a perfect Sunday.   My patient, old and riddled with cancer was subdued when I came in at seven o'clock this morning, but my mood has lifted her spirits.  I'm all about the ring on my finger.  I gush endlessly.  

The bath I gave her has breathed life into her and she talks to me about places she lived,  houses, parrots, vacations she took long ago and about swimming in the ocean.  I feel close to her.  I pat her hand, let my fingers circle her frail wrist.   I gaze at my ring and I marvel at how it looks against her pale, sagging, speckled skin.   I like holding her hand.   I don't feel like letting go.  When her son comes in, she livens up further still.  

He seemed amazed to recognize his mother in the bag of bones lying on the bed.  The woman I'd shown my newly acquired engagement ring to over and over, seemed to be nearly born again.  

I leave them be.  I go spend some quality time with my ring.  "Have you seen this?".  I flaunt it to the nurses at the Nurse's Station.  A few roll their eyes, but not before I say again, "Take a look at this!!", as I shove it in front of their computer screens.  It looks strange on my familiar hand.   I'm fooling around; boasting, bragging.  I'm happy.   I want to make a nuisance of myself and conveniently enough for me, I'm an expert at it.  

It is a strange thing when someone dies.  

The room was quiet when I entered it again.  Sunlight no longer struck my diamond.  Rainbows were not dancing on the walls.  She'd stopped breathing.  I'd stop asking her if she wanted to see my ring and my finger stayed in line with the other ringless, less boastful fingers on my hand, which hung at my side.

I called her son.  He seemed angry with me.  It was sort of unexpected, I guess.   She had been terminally ill, though on this particular day, she'd seemed so extremely alive and now she was gone.   He wanted to blame me and so I let him.  But, when he came back to her room, where I waited for him with my ringed finger tucked into the pocket of my nurse's jacket, he hugged me and he cried.  For this I was ill prepared.

To be honest, I felt unworthy of hugging him back.  Who was I?  Just a person who'd given his mother her medications and her last bath and forced a ring into her face too many times for anyone healthy or not, in one day.  

She was my first patient to die while I was her nurse.

Things I thought while attending to the newly dead;

What if she isn't really dead?

Can she hear me?

If she can't hear me, can she read my mind?

Was she scared?

Is there a God?

Did she go to heaven or  H E double toothpicks?

What did I do wrong?

Why did this have to happen today?

Does her son blame me?

Did she think my ring was pretty?

How come I can still feel her?

And every time anyone died while I was their nurse from that day forward, I felt mostly the same things.

Are they really dead?

Is there a God?

How come I can still feel you?

half heartedly

"She looks like you when she does that", he said.  That little She, is holding her head in her hands.  One arm propped on the table with the soft palm opened at a 90 degree angle, holds stable the base of her head, her precious chin.    The other elbow also set on the table, with the open palm stretched upright, comforting the side, length of her face.  She, to me, looks lost, half hearted at best.
Note to self... no longer set head in hands for any stretch of time.   In future, hold head high and remember, impressionable people are observing.  
*Set a good example.


I had good examples around me while I was growing up.  
I had these nifty gifties, called "sisters".  
One came here yesterday.


Sometimes I feel like coming to my home is an actual sacrifice for those who come.
I live far.
In the rain like yesterday's, it seems farther still.
I am in a state of transition, which infers mild duress on those emotionally close to me.  
I have youngish children, who refuse to condition their hair on their own and so there are interruptions.  
Dogs here behave badly.  They give themselves baths (you know what I mean).
Sometimes I feel exhausting to others.
Sometimes I feel like my life is so alive that I can't possibly impose it on those who's lives seem under control, even though they love me and want to be a part of it, want to be "here".
Oh boy.


Another She in my life, a grown up She came here for me yesterday afternoon   She, who is nearly perfect, was extremely giving and polite.  
She gave me encouragement. 
She gave us pumpkins.
She gave them cookies.
She and I went allllllll the way out to the movies, at night, to see a film she'd already seen, but she watched again anyway, for ME.  
She talked softly to me as we drove home in the dark, all the way to where I live.  She listened to me tell stories about the "horse with no name", who stood in the middle of the road one night.  About the boulder in my hot tub, the frog in my toilet.    She listened with all of herself, while I half heartedly talked about my whole, little life.
When we arrived home in the dark, in the rain, at my house, in the middle of nowhere, we got out of my car and walked to my entry door and found it literally covered with teeny frogs.  We laughed at them.    We laughed at my door, at my frogs, at my life, at this situation.  We laughed with all our hearts.  
She reminded me, without words, to embrace all my life, whole heartedly, because it goes by so quickly.  It goes by too fast.  
She made me notice myself, my life, my door, my night, my frogs, my life.  She silently pointed out to me the noticeably unnoticeable oddities of my everyday existence.   In her laugh were the words, "Don't waste it".   In my mind are the words, "I'll try not to...

sign significance

The first time I watched this video clip, I laughed till I cried.  The second time I watched it, just a few days later, I actually threw up.  What does that tell you?

My reaction was strong.  

When my body reacts strongly to something, I should pay attention.    

This afternoon a bird, a Mourning Dove, landed on my car about 4 feet away from where I sat outside on a porch step.    It was beautiful and it was so near, I wanted to touch it.  When my kids and dogs came out, the bird quite smartly moved to the low eve of the roofline, then eventually back to my car.  It stuck around, uncomfortably comfortable while my kids and dogs created  commotion enough to drive away a thousand birds.  Something was clearly wrong with it, or was it a sign?  If so, what did it mean?  It was not exactly a bird in hand, but a bird on car might be similar enough.

When my body reacts,  when something out of the ordinary persists, when I feel a sensation all the way to my core, some part of me says, "pay attention", but I don't always listen and I now sit here and wonder what would've happened if I actually heeded those signs.  What would come to me if I opened myself?  What is there for the taking or harvesting that I've passed over and over and possibly even over again?  What have I missed?  What did I lose out on?  

When I sat in Barbuta, on Washington Street in NYC with an old friend and a new friend and a soon to be friend, I laughed till I cried watching that crazy video.  I can feel everything about that moment, that whole night.  The food was out of this world, but maybe it was the company that made it taste that way?   Did I miss something?   Was there a sign in there.  Why did I laugh till I wept one night over something rather horrendous, when another night it made me completely ill?  

I don't really have regrets from my life, despite the way things have gone, how can I regret anything when I have you?  But I wonder what would have been there for me if I'd have paid attention to the signs in life.   

More then thinking about the signs I've walked past without changing course, are the signs I've presented to others.   Watching others ignore them is even more profoundly disturbing.   Have you ever given a green light to someone and watched them simply stay still?  Nothing more frustrating.
Eddie says it quite well, "oh the rusted signs we ignore, choosing the shiny ones instead"....

                                                    

familiar foreigner

I drew circles on her flat, brown tummy with the tip of my finger.
"This is where those things are with the eggs inside them", I said.  Then I went on in greater detail, referencing my Nurse's knowledge and history with physiology and using my somewhat newly acquired maternal instincts, plus incorporating traits I've most  recently adopted when dealing with her in particular, it's called frankness.  I try to be blunt and direct, because flowering up the subject with subtext and subterfuge dilutes it too tremendously and things get lost in translation.  
I worried as of late.  I see her growing up and I see her body change.  This is normal, but she is not.  She is different.   She is remarkable.
I worried that the very important start of puberty would come for her while I was not around, like say in the middle of math period at school.  I had visions of a scene, something not unlike the horror movie Carrie, heaven help me.   So I preempted the whole thing by telling her what to expect.   I concluded by explaining that this was rather private, not a topic for the lunch table, but something she may only discuss with me and with female members of our family.   I cautioned to avoid talking about it with good friends even, until she was a few years older and then I said, "by all means, when you're bigger, you can talk about it with your good girl friends".  To this, she responded, "Oh mom, don't worry, I don't have any good friends".   She smiled then, meaning to comfort me.  My heart twisted inside my chest and a discomfort I cannot explain overtook me.  My love for her burned a hole through the roof above us, straight up to the stars in the sky.
People with Asperges Syndrome seem to have a hard time making friends.   
Last night, again, lying beside her, talking before sleep, in a language I know, but which I alter so that we can communicate clearly.  "What do you feel inside when someone cries?"  I asked.  "Sad", she said in reply.  But I didn't buy it.   Her flat response was typical, but even still, I sensed that she was not telling what she felt.   "Tell me what you actually feel like when someone cries, not what you think you should".   She breathed deeply, thoughtfully and turned to me;  "I wish they would stop.  Their face looks funny.   I don't like the sound".  Bingo.  
I didn't give her instructions on what to do when someone wails after that.  I stopped talking to her and just looked at her face a while.   We made eye contact.  Such a gift.  So neat to look into dark eyes that stay connected to mine, when so often they do not.  I spoke with my eyes to her.  I said, "I love you". But what I meant to say was, "Oh man, how I love you, even more then I realized I could ever.  You kill me.  You, with your little ability to live in the world and remain unaffected by all that surrounds you, never change.  Always be this way.  I think maybe you are onto something... and if I could, I'd be exactly like you, my little Martian, my stranger, my familiar foreigner".  
Today I looked up 100 ways to say I Love You in different languages.
Wo ai ni  -   Mandarin
M 'bi fe   - Bambara
Te sakam  -   Macedonian
Volim te  -   Serbian
Thank God for you  -  Aspergerian