Miracle in the middle of nowhere

It was a hot and humid morning when the phone call came.  After everything else that had happened she thought she could deal with anything, but this was too much.

Last night she had gone home from work with a coworker.  Pizza, a rented movie, girl talk, life was taking on a rhythm she'd only seen in movies or read about up till now.  Maybe she was over the hump.  Maybe things would even out now?

But the call ended that!  It was Matthew, her roommate, calling to let her know that at 1:30 he was setting off bug bombs.  All three floors would be rid of fleas and any pets left in the house would be disposed of without any more discussion.  Three hours to find homes for five kittens and a mother cat!  Who did he think she was?  A miracle worker?

To be fair she had been warned by her mother and others that letting the cat outside was a bad idea.  Not only did it bring in fleas and ticks, but it came back pregnant twice in six months.  Her friends were saturated with kittens, nobody wanted another one no matter how cute it was.

Calls to all the local vets and shelters turned up nothing.  They were all overrun with cats and not taking anymore, especially not six more, so borrowing a carrier from a friend she loaded up Selena and her brood and set off in the car.  Searching for some place they might have a chance to survive. 

She'd heard her grandfather tell stories about dropping kittens off, one at a time near school yards at lunch time back in the sixties, but her kittens were too young to drop off and today was Saturday.  She thought about trying to keep them in the car till she found them homes, but the heat index was 106, no one could stay in a car on a day like today.

So the only alternative was to "dump" them, which was probably illegal, but there didn't seem to be any alternative.  Dump them herself or have her roommate get rid of them?  She opted for the former and that was how she found herself driving down a quiet country road in the middle of nowhere.

Actually it wasn't quite nowhere, there were farm houses not too far away.  It was the best of a lot of terrible choices.  Stopping the car, she got out and opened the carrier door while looking furtively around.  As soon as all 24 furry little legs were in the grass she popped the carrier back into the car and drove away in tears.

It wasn't until five miles later that she realized her cell phone must have fallen out of her pocket when she dumped the kittens.  She turned the car around and drove back, searching the road for familiar signs, hoping her phone would show up. 

She found it -- along with all the kittens, three of them in the middle of the road and a car coming!  Turning off the key, she glanced in the rear view mirror and saw two more cars coming!  Suddenly her quiet country road had become a thorough fare!  Leaving the car right in the middle of the road she jumped out and began gathering up the kittens, trying to get them all safely back on the grassy area. 

People in the other cars got out too, a woman with two small girls, another young woman and soon a small crowd had gathered around the mother cat and five week old kittens.  Amidst much oohing and ah-ing people began trying to divvy them up. 

The girl slipped silently back into her car and looking back saw that all the kittens and the mother, too, had been "adopted" by the people in the cars who just assumed she had stopped to save the furry little family, like they had.

Maybe things were evening out.

Don't Settle

Life is a given.  Living is not so simple.

Some people simply go through life taking what they need, giving what they want.

Others become cornucopias of giving, like Old Faithful, with no thought of the aftermath.

There are those who only take no matter who it is from or what is left behind.

And then there are those people who give and take but with great care and even greater consideration.  They realize that too much is just as bad as too little and that although there is a formula or recipe for acceptable, living well is an art.

I don't really know if people are born with it, or learn it; and if it is learned, how.  I only know that there are people whose lives seem to be fairytale places where the dragons are all slain or become cherished mentors and pets; where the certainty of love makes even travail bearable; where the day dawns brightly even if the sun doesn't shine. And eternal night is a reason to huddle close to the fire and tell stories.

I do know that rubbing shoulders with all people can be the most frustrating thing in the world, or a dream come true. It just depends on what we ask and expect and maybe more importantly, will settle for.

Reflections

How often do I feel that dark part of me rising up, rationalizing that it is only being honest, or attempting to help, or sharing, when in truth it is defending itself? Insecurity turns would-be lovers into artists trying to remake each other into the person whose image first ran across the screen, two dimensional creations without the depth and mystery of human frailties.   Thomas Merton said it best: The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

Unaware

One of the irresistible things about babies is their wide eyed curiosity and unmitigated joy for figuring out even the most mundane things.  They are made to learn and love it!

Little creatures who nose into everything, unaware that they are making messes and faux pas and lots of mistakes; they are natural scientists and artists, engineers and musicians -- unaware of their limitations.  They are also uncivilized little people who need to be taught how to thrive amongst other people.

It tugs at my heart when I see these miraculous little beings eroded by poor parenting, misinformed love, or plain old poverty.

They are little more than babies when they are sent out into the world, shaved, painted, and puffed up with misconceptions that they need to "do" or "be" something more than what they are.  Beaten down by poor diets, lack of sleep, and inappropriate clothing they begin life dragging their parents behind them.

Good teachers are people who see through all this to the child within, but often it is not enough.  By six children have already begun a trial by fire that sets the course for the rest of their lives; unaware that it could have been different.

It's a long time till the sun rises

Nothing like a long night lying awake and feeling sick.  Not sick enough to be running to the bathroom, but sick enough to not be able to sleep.

The things that sift up through my thoughts are enough to keep me awake all on their own.

Lists of things to do, to write, to work on, to clean.  Lists of things already done I might have done better, or kinder, or even more aggressively.

Ideas not quite good enough to get up and write down so I find myself in a compulsive repetition, trying to be sure I don't forget them.

That's when I realize I am getting sleepy, maybe even starting to doze, and the dreams begin!

Crazy dreams that Julia Child runs a concentration camp for those dressed chickens she was displayed with on Facebook.  Dreams where my family and I live in a large dark cage owned by a red macaw.  Dreams that dredge up the horror I feel about eating the meat I sometimes eat and enjoy.

I am sick and all my defenses are down. 

To sleep perchance to dream  . . .

It comes from within

It lurks everywhere!

I lie sleeping in my bed, eyes closed, seemingly at peace when it creeps into my dreams.  Slipping, sliding, sinuously worming its way into my head, but I am strong.  I persevere.

Upon awakening I feel a sense of dread.  I know it's coming.  I don't know when, or where, or how, but I do know it is going to catch up with me at some point.

Locking my door, I head out to walk, hoping I can put enough distance between it and me, but every thought puts me perilously closer -- there seems to be no escaping it.

All through the day and into the night it hangs over me like a dark cloud, deadly in all its implications, until eventually. . .

I am lost.  It grabs me and the overeating gnaws away at my self esteem, erodes my sense of well being and becomes an overwhelming, self defeating nightmare.

Them

Take a perfectly good little person and throw a "them" rock right into its middle.

Watch the circles that emanate out from it:
          Be nice to them..
          Share your toys with them.
          Share your treats with them.
          Treat them the way you want to be treated.

Not a bad thing  -- unless the center starts to disappear.

The center point is real.  It is necessary.  An axle needs to be strong if it is going to carry a whole life.

If the "me" becomes a black hole, giving, giving, giving, depression and passive aggressive behavior appear, without a sense of self worth it all begins to disintegrate. 

A person who loves and values herself knows how others should be treated.  Part of what she gives those she loves is a road map for living.   The "them" is an integral part of the whole, but not the whole reason for being.

As thinking, feeling, being creatures there has to be a sense of self.

Puzzles

Imagine being ten years old and meeting Merlin!  Becoming the sorcerer's apprentice, walking through the looking glass and discovering a whole other world where the rules were skewed in my favor if I only knew the secret words, the magical potions, the Way!

Of course journeys like this never begin the way you might expect.  If they did everyone would take them.  They only happen to those chosen ones, who notice something others seem to miss.  For me it was reading Edgar Allan Poe's, "The Gold-Bug."

In the course of one hot humid afternoon, curled up on the sun porch reading, I discovered secret codes!  Never again would I have to send in two box tops and twenty five cents for a secret decoder ring that only worked on one brand of cornflakes.

I delighted in cracking every code those Battle Creek executives could come up with in order to sell cereal to moms and kids across the country.  Then I branched out and began devising my own codes, even having a secret pen pal whose letters could talk about anything that crossed our fertile little minds without the fear that Dr. No (Aka: our parents) would stumble onto them. 

Life was exciting.  For just a short while I was powerful and invincible.  You couldn't put anything over on me!  That madness slowly slipped away, replaced by the sanguinity of a teenage girl trying to look sophisticated.

I still love puzzles: crosswords, jigsaws, riddles, small challenges to my mind that give me the impression, if not the reality, of being in control of my world.  And lately I have discovered a new challenge:  Transcribing handwritten stories from a mish mash of crossed out scribbles into neatly typed pages -- ten times more difficult than, but twice as exciting as, those cereal boxes!

A big day

Everyone has seen the television show or movie where an expectant father becomes so concerned about his pregnant wife that he suffers more than she does and eventually goes into labor.  It is funny unless you happen to be the wife.  Then I suspect you must feel a bit put out.

I empathize with that guy now.

I woke up this morning with a cold sore, something I haven't had in years.  I went around with a sense of sadness and loss I couldn't put my finger on for a good part of the day.  I found myself unduly tired, plopping down in front of the television for a good chunk of the afternoon.  And tonight I was ready for bed at eight o'clock.

It wasn't bedtime so I took a hot bath instead.  The pain of climbing into the tub is always offset by the wonderful warmth of the water once I am in and as I lolled there it occurred to me that I have been suffering false labor!

My life is pretty much stress free, but I have been eating for two, sleeping poorly, feeling totally stressed for a long time now!   Maybe now that I know that, things will get better.

No one can really live (or suffer) for anyone else.  And this weight I have put on is not going to go away when this little project comes to term. 

Time for beddy cause tomorrow is the big day!

Do do

A sure sign that the world is improving would be the lack of self help articles, shows, ads, and talk.

Cause that old phrase, "Them that do...DO!!!! And the rest just jabber about it."  Or something like that . . .  is certainly true.

I'd like to believe that all this talking is a sincere desire to help people, but I think it is much more likely it is a sincere desire to make money or rub my nose in it.

It is so much fun to write about myself -- when I am doing good.  I just know I am doing something right.  I am sure I have found that place where it all comes together!  Nirvana is approaching!  I must be one of the chosen~! 

Then my feet touch the earth, the mud, the swamp and life returns to Normal (near where I live.)  I resume living one step at a time --  because that is all I can handle.  Some days it is all I can do to lift that one foot high enough to get it out of the muck.

On those days I read self help articles, watch exercise shows, write out plans for WHEN I get back on top . . .  but I don't DO much else.  I forget that:

It's the doing that does it.

The truth about different

I am discovering that people don't really want the truth about most things, they only want the comfortable truth, the facts that support what they believe.

No matter how many facts support it, or how well documented it is, if the emotional impact is not satisfactory, truth is often rejected.

In fact, people seem more apt to accept absolute nonsense than logic much of the time.

We have become a nation of people who love suffering, blood and gore, (for others) while spouting high sounding rhetoric about what is right and wrong.

What makes me think this?  Our extracurricular activities!  It's the drama that pulls us in from one end of the spectrum to the other.  Drama lifts us up, horrifies us, inspires us, entertains us and the more extreme it is, the better it seems to go over.

No wonder our children are confused.  How are they supposed to know what kind of killing is okay, what kind of torture is acceptable, what kind of decision making in the name of some authority is the absolute? 

We love to hate . . . anyone and anything that is DIFFERENT.  And the scariest thing about this is that we are all different to some degree.

Homesick

I remember going off to college at the ripe old age of 17 wanting excitement, involvement. . . drama!

It was 1967.  Sit-ins filled the newspapers.  Bobby Kennedy was campaigning.  We were going to change the world!

My parents drove off down that long driveway after dropping me off and I felt -- homesick!  What a disappointing feeling that was.  How could I be so banal?

I thought there must be something wrong with me.   No one ever wrote about Plato being homesick, or Lincoln being distracted by thoughts of family dinners around a big dining room table.  Setting out to join the justice leagues, to become a part of history, to join the hallowed people who walk the halls of academia means shedding those mundane parts in return for passion and purpose.  Only for me it didn't.

Thoughts of what I'd left behind swallowed me up.  But the worst part was the feeling of uniqueness I felt -- not scholarly brilliance, but aloneness -- and I thought of that as I walked around the park the other day.

Looking at all the new young faces moving in I could almost smell the homesickness.  School hadn't quite started, strangers filled the air, the unknown was the only real known at that point in time and I wondered how many of them felt like I did nearly 46 years ago? 

What I thought was a weakness, a flaw, was really an opening, but it took me years to understand that.  Strengths set us apart, but weakness gives us a common base, a place we can all relate to and build on with the surety that loving acts of human-ness are the place where the most enduring changes begin and grab hold.

Homesickness is nature's way of reminding me that I am loved and loving.  Translating that into the global community is the ultimate involvement and believe me it comes with enough drama and excitement for a lifetime.

Toilets

The wonderful thing about toilets
Is that toilets are wonderful things!
Their seats are made out of hard stuff
But for bottoms they're perfect rings!
They're sturdy, stable, stolid,
Nobody carries them away
So the wonderful thing about toilets
Is they are there day after day,
Your couch may be on a moving van
Your chairs may still be in transit
But as long as you have a toilet
There is always a place to sit!

Home

Bare bones don't leave much to the imagination.

Take away the pictures, the rugs, the dishes and the towels . . . remove the chairs, both hard and stuffed, disassemble the beds and sweep them away into a moving van and pretty soon the floors are bare!  The walls empty!

This is when you need to listen for the echoes, the sound of the past drifting around your head.

Laughter and tears, disagreements and concurrences . . . Love . . . it's all still here, just close your eyes and let your self feel.  Let these parts of you attach themselves to your being and drag them along behind you.

Wherever you go, there they are -- the real home, the essence.

God

There are so many ways to write.

I write for me, but if I were just writing to be read, there are a million ways to rack up numbers of readers.  Certain titles draw readers like ants to honey.  All I have to do is name it right and people will click on it.  The machine doesn't care what they do after they land here.  It just gives me the benefit of the doubt and assumes they go ahead and read what I wrote.

So if I want numbers I pick the right name, but what if I want people to read controversial subjects all the way through?  Then I have to be wilier.  I write about universal things in the beginning, things almost everyone is interested in and agrees with to some extent.  Then at the end I throw in my little zinger, my own opinion and it is read before it is understood.

That might not make anyone change their mind or agree with me, but the seed is planted and if it is good, some day it will grow.

That is not as under handed as it sounds.  A good idea will appear when its time comes and the more people who think it is their idea, the better.  People are always much more excited by their own creations.  If something is worth bringing into being, it is worth whatever time it takes.

That is the God principle:  everything in its time.

Shadow box homes

A walk through someone's house tells me more about them than almost anything else.  At least if that house is one they set up and take care of.

Clothes reveal how I am feeling today or the day I bought them, but a house is a little more permanent.  It is the accumulation of months, or years of living. 

Everything has a story -- even the dust bunnies under the bed. 

The books, or lack of them, are a glimpse into what interests them.  I look at wall décor, is it from the store, or a decorating party, or original art?  And if it is original is the artist three years old, or a professional,  or simply beloved.

Pantries and closets and basements!  Oh my!  Here is a peek into the deepest darkest recesses, the closest I will ever get to the inner workings without words.

Whose photographs are in the bedroom, the inner sanctum?

What kind of religious iconography appears and what form does it take?

A home is a reflection of a whole person, whether it is a mansion on the hill, or an apartment tucked up in an old house. 

It is a shadow box hanging on the world's wall, a small microcosm reflecting the soul who put it together. 

I find them all endlessly fascinating.

Savor

To savor life, one bite, one step, one thought at a time, appeals to me.

It might sound like a life filled with routines and I think I would love that.  The orderliness also appeals to me, but . . .

For me, one step at a time means there is always an unknown moment coming up. What follows depends on what happens, how I feel, what I see, the thoughts that pop into my mind -- it is chaos theory in my life!

I love the idea of routines but in reality I struggle with them.  Without someone to make them happen I wander along like a butterfly who only lands on blue flowers, zigzagging through life in tiny bursts of energy.

So. . .  the best I can do is to savor it.

But that is not what I remember

Looking through old pictures last night I wondered where I was?

Where was the big plain child?  Where was the fat dumpy woman? 

I see a beautiful little girl with big eyes and such a hopeful face.  Not much bigger or smaller than all her classmates, just an average child in average situations.

But that is not what I remember.

I see a dark eyed young woman cradling her children, protective and loving.  Her eyes are big and deep and dark.  Her face animated and alive.

But that is not what I remember.

I remember the criticism, the feeling of being hopelessly tall and big and unbeautiful.  My children were what gave me joy, what gave me hope, what kept me alive when the woman under that façade looked in the mirror and saw the seeds that had been planted so deeply they blinded her for most of her life.

I didn't know.  I had no idea.  And it colored my world in ways you cannot imagine. 

But I am one of the lucky ones.  Someone came into my life and gently removed the scales from my eyes. Someone who taught me that love is not conditional. It does not have to make me less so it can be more.  Someone who taught me that I am loved and beautiful just because I am.

That is what I remember now.

The wonder and the worry

The list of things I cannot change has never been more apparent than it is now.

I am hampered by both the meagerness of my pockets and their depth. 

I am driven to the edge of frustration by the mind set of those around me and my inability to see how they reached such a impasse.

The unbelievable thirst for violence I find in entertainment dismays me.

Walking, I look into the faces of those I pass and wonder, "What do they see?"  An old lady lumbering down the walk ways of a world rapidly going faster and faster, or a grandma still spry enough and wanting enough to get out here and join in?

I have reached that age I thought about as a child when I wondered what it was like to be old. Now I wonder what old is.  Is it gray hair hiding under a made up façade, or youth tucked up under a fading shell?  Is it a mind set and if it is, whose?  Mine, or the people looking at me?  Does it come with venerability or infirmity?

I remember thinking grandmas were supposed to be people with white hair tied up in buns, who wore little gold glasses perched on the end of their noses and spent their time knitting socks and baking cookies.  That was an outdated concept 63 years ago, so it certainly isn't true now.  Maybe it never was.

It makes me think that I am not so different from the grandmothers of ages past.  We are still the same people we always were -- full of wonder and worry, but understanding now that the first is much more productive.

Tunnel vision

Imagine waking up in a cherry tree.  Hungry, your sweet tooth raging, you cannot decide which cherry to eat first.

Life's decisions are seldom so simple, or so sweet, but the decisions can be just as overwhelming.

In books and movies it is always so clear.  Do project A, then B, then C and the reasons are plain.  Anyone can figure them out.  In real life it is seldom so straight forward.  When it is there is no problem.

Otherwise I just assume that even if it all needs to be done, it doesn't really matter what goes first.

Some things can just be set aside because there isn't anything I can do about them anyway.  World peace, the national debt?  They are beyond my control, at least for today.  Worrying about them only wears me out and wastes time.

But I can clean the bathtub, or dust the coffee table.  I can  load the dishwasher, or pack up Aunt Mabel's china.  In the grand scheme of things these may not seem like very big accomplishments, but after a while they mount up and I discover the house is clean, the dishes are done, dinner is cooked and I am ready to go.

Forget the big picture for a change and exercise your tunnel vision.  Almost anything is easier in tiny bits.

Exploring

Things change.  I just brought my bicycle home from my sister's where it has been stored.

I haven't been on the bicycle trails here in nearly eleven years!  I live near what used to be the end of this part, but now it goes on!  It may go on and on and on, but there is a problem.

I was worried about negotiating the very very steep hill north of here.  Turns out there are lots of them going south!

I rode my bike home from the shop the way they gave it to me after the tune up, but now I have adjusted the seat and bought a security lock.  I was going to store it in the foyer, but it seems to have doubled in weight.  (My sister over feeds everything.  You should see my dog!)  Just carrying it up and down the steps is exercise. 

The possibilities are endless now. 

It's time to go exploring.

Adaptable

It is good to be what we are.

Magazines and books, television and the Internet would have us believe that it is difficult to know what that is.  I used to think that, but now I think it was because I wanted to be something I thought was more exotic or exciting than I thought I was.

I wanted to be sophisticated and elegant, acerbically witty and brilliant!  I wanted to be all those people I liked to watch and read about.  It never occurred to me that I was only learning about pieces of their lives, usually the best pieces.

Most people write about life's extremes, but there is an awful lot of ground in between and that's a good thing!  When there isn't, the word bi-polar comes to mind.

The enduring me came out and made herself visible a few years ago.  At first I thought she was just another reflection, one of those ephemeral mes who shows up when I am in a relationship.  I was raised to be a helpmate so I always thought that couldn't be the real me.  I thought I had been turned into a sort of Odo from Star Trek, a creature who took on the shape of those around him.

It slowly dawned on me that that is who he is!  And this is who I am!

I am adaptable.  I have other parts too because I am not just a character in a movie or book and I am not just a segment of my life.  I am whole and real and strong -- and adaptable!

Morning has risen

The curtain rises and a new day dawns.  I figure at my age I have had over 22, 000 of these new days and the sad part is how many of them I dreaded for one reason or another.

First of all let me say I was never a morning person.  Probably because I didn't sleep at night worrying about what I had to do the next day -- even get up.  I am anxiety in a person's body.

A doctor or dental appointment was reason for terror as a child, as was a test at school, or the dogs I had to walk by to get to my piano lesson.  Later just having to play my solos on the oboe in class, let alone a performance filled me with anxiety for weeks.  A zit on my face, not having the clothes or shoes my friends had made mornings less than wonderful ways to start my life while growing up.

Later on I found myself in a dysfunctional relationship which only added to the problem.

I still worry about waking up on time when I have morning engagements and I obsess over my weight, allowing it to define more than it should, but I have shed most of that anxiety.  Wriggling out of it and enjoying the moments as they come most of the time.

Every so often I go through a dark period, but now I know the sun will shine again if I just hang in there, so I try to look at mornings as opportunities instead of meditations in terror.

No matter what happens I know I don't have another 22,000 mornings left so I need to make the most of them. 

Gifts

To love something so much that on the worst day you will still miss it is a gift.

It is so easy to love when everything is perfect, but the true test of love is to see if it still exists when everything goes all wrong.

When the weather is gray and gloomy, or the food is a disappointment...when you cut your foot and it hurts to walk...when the family is bickering... these things can become the focal point for some people.

Luckier ones find beauty in the moments that sneak in between all the mundane ones.

A walk on the beach with a loved one, a painting emerging from the soul of a new born painter, even waking up next to someone you love with the sound of the ocean surrounding you, these are gifts.

I hope I always seek the true gifts in life.

“Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.”

James Joyce wrote that and it speaks to me today.

I have a tendency to live in other places like Camelot or The Barrens.  Always looking backwards or forwards.  Reveling in what was.  Worried what will be.  Forgetting that I am the driver on this trip and my steering makes a huge difference.

What was is seldom as good or bad as I recall in any given moment. 

Whether I believe it, or not .. .  Whether I like it, or not . . . Whether I want it, or need it, or despise it . . .  Life is lived one footfall at a time.

Where I've been leads to now which is the way to the future.  My future.  My Way, because my perspective is the set of blinders that define me.  When I pick up my foot, or hand, or thoughts and set them down in another place-- it matters where that place is.

I learn from the past, but I shouldn't necessarily live for the future.  All of those clichés are just thoughts someone else had in good or bad moments.  My own philosophy needs to incorporate my own strengths and skills.

When it comes to other people, the best I can probably do is set a good example, show them how it works for me.  That is one way I learn, paying attention to people I admire or respect and seeing what they do, or don't do.

The best I have to give is a map for living that shows what works for me and what doesn't.  In the end everyone has to walk through the wilderness alone. 

A moment seems too short when it's full of joy and too long when it is painful, but it's all there is . . .

Folk lore or truth

 I have been intrigued by the idea of the fountain of youth since I was way too young to care.  In the beginning I envisioned a place where people could be turned back into babies, dolls to play with in a child's eye view.

Later I imagined dropping in the people I loved so they would live forever.  Another childish view and one that probably emerged in my early twenties.

Of course I was always aware that it was a dream, a piece of folklore that didn't really exist, but now I wonder.

Like all magical places I think it exists in a way and on a plane that is less concrete and more ephemeral than science yet understands.  Unable to explain this, people invented fairies and wizards and magical dust or words to try and create a road map for others.

It does exist.  The proof is in the pictures I have.  Yesterday my sister-in-law was amazed.  "You look so young there!"  It was a picture taken this past June but she's right. 

In that moment I was much younger than my birthdays avow.

I haven't actually found the portal to the fountain of youth, but I do sometimes find a way to slip through it unbeknownst and play in it for a while.

Nesting

I lived in the country for a while and one of my jobs was knocking down the nests of house wrens who built right over the lights on any exterior door.  I was reclaiming the house from nature and they were adamantly refusing to yield.  I could knock down a nest in the morning and by noon it would be almost rebuilt.  Finally, one morning I knocked it down and some eggs fell out, cracking on the porch.

I felt terrible.  I only meant to drive them away so they would build their nests somewhere else, like the trees or the bird house I put up for bluebirds.  That was the last time they built there while I lived there, but it was a sort of sad victory.

The bluebirds did finally move into my birdhouse and as I mowed the ever growing yard I kept tabs on them.  First three eggs appeared.  Then I could hear babies chirping and see the parents flying in and out all day long feeding them.  Then one day there was nothing.  Finally peeping inside I saw one broken egg shell and nothing else.  I never saw them again.

I felt a kinship to these birds.  Struggling against all odds they were trying to raise families and get on with it.

My parents were like that.  Two people very much in love, both with amazing skills, trying to do what they were supposed to do and raise a family.  Totally unprepared for raising their own young my parents were like cuckoos who refused to follow suit and lay their eggs in other bird's nests.

Instead they struggled valiantly on, building and rebuilding one nest after another in an attempt to bring us up as the exotic creatures they believed us to be.  But some divine hand kept knocking the nests down until one day we were all grown up and some of us flew the nest.

Others hung on until the last twig disappeared.

Who knows

My neighbor and her boy friend sit outside on the back steps lovingly lighting each other's cigarettes and it makes me wonder. 

How often is an enabler mistaken for a soul mate?

Perhaps it doesn't matter if the things in common are good for us or not.  Perhaps it is only that we have them in common.

Maybe soul mates are truly just the other part of us, dark side and all.  After all, if I cut a rotten apple in half, the halves still belong together. Good and bad, all mixed in together, one is one.

I suppose it's possible there is more than one.  Maybe lost souls are simply one whose parts are scattered like chaff in the wind.

Who can ever really know?

Hard to get

A worthless dime store gee gaw is treasured by a woman who polishes it, stares at it lovingly and guards it against any damage.  Whether she believes it is Irish crystal, or is simply sentimentally attached to it no one knows.  Her daughter inherits the piece and remembering the care her mother gave it, does the same.  Generations pass and the story becomes a family fable.  The little dime store trinket is given a place of honor in the home.
 
And so a piece of cheap glass becomes priceless because of all the love and care that has been lavished on it. 

So much of what this world values is based on its scarcity.  If it is hard to get we want it, but...

Imagine a world where your value depended on how well you loved the people places and things around you.

The goal would be to actually live a loving life.  Not a life that just looked loving. Not a life spent giving things to people, but really doing the most loving things.

I don't know how you'd measure that and maybe that is one reason it doesn't exist.  Greedy little creatures that we are, we want to be sure we get all the credit we deserve and that's not particularly loving.

First

First of all, routines are good for me, but old routines are deeply rooted and at my age there are lots of old routines.

Growing up was a fairly sedentary thing after I turned twelve.  Girls in my neighborhood were not encouraged to ride bikes, or play ball, or do any other really active sport.  I did walk though because we, like most people, only had one car. 

As a young woman I played tennis.  Lots of tennis!  And the result was a slim trim healthy me, but that ended when the children came along, at least until they were old enough to play too.  For a while I had home grown playmates, but they quickly out grew me.

The gist of this is that I have years of routines that involved very little activity.

Last year I learned a new routine and lost eighty pounds!  Along came winter ice followed by summer heat and that has gone by the wayside.  Time to get back in the rut!

Today is the first.  The first day of August.  The first day of a new routine.  The first day of the rest of my life.