with a flicker and a flame, everything old is new-ish again:

if in doubt, resort to candle light...

My house is an English Muffin.  There are "nooks and crannies" everywhere.   I can't discover it enough, fast enough.   It can be overwhelming.... paralyzing.  

Like my pup, who paces down the hall before caving and finding an acceptable place to sleep, I find myself walking then setting down temporarily, till I move again, for reasons I can't define, from each room, till now.

On the sofa in the center of the whole house, caved in and comfy; I listen to somewhat surprising buckets of May rain pouring down on everything and then I do the one and only thing that magically makes me feel at home in this new house; I light candles and gaze at everything I have, everything I know, in clear light.   

Somewhere in this house of things is everything I long to know, already have, already have loved but somehow have lost and now found again.

And only at this moment have I just realized...

I love even just the purest, simplest flames that shine light on everything I'm dying to see, dying to love, all over again.

It's that simple.

just like a maze...

(me, about 8 years old, at my father's cabin, Greenwood Lake, NJ)

When so often these days I think about the impact I have on the lives of those who depend on me

I can somehow forget about the impact I have on the lives of those I once depended on.

I didn't want to hunt for Easter eggs yesterday.

I wanted to sit with a glass of wine and I wanted to take that deep breath I'd been reminding myself to get around to taking all day.

But there it was, the third basket, waiting to be filled with found eggs; one for him, one for her and one for me.

Wine in a paper cup is just fine.  

"You used to run", he pointed out.  "If Curt was here, you'd run"...  

"Can you give me a hint?", I asked.  "Am I warm?".  

"No", he said, "getting colder".  

I am, I thought to myself.

Then I took that breath I'd meant to take earlier and I found my eggs and in the last of them, a pale, plastic, pink one, cut like a diamond, carefully folded, was a hundred dollar bill.

Another deep breath.

...And I felt as if I won the lottery... because I have you see... my father loves me.

I'm 47 years old, reluctantly hunting for Easter eggs and the thing to look for here, the thing to find is this...

even when I'm stressed and tired, taxed and worried about my own children, moving from one house to a new one, juggling the million details of my days ahead and trying to understand the year behind.   Even when it's my own daughter's Birthday and the holiest of holy days and I'm weary, in need of wine in a paper cup, when I don't feel like hunting for Easter eggs, when my dogs are waiting for me at home, when I am everything I don't want to be and not much I hoped for, I am still someone's little girl.  ... And that someone is looking to me to show them that they did alright in their own life.

Happy Easter 2012.   I love you Daddy.