Life and Light, and That Other Stuff, Too

Ya know, just when you think you have a handle on the situation, just when you're sure the light is really shining, just when you think you've figured out a little tiny microscopic part of the universe that you live in...
You find out you know nothing.
NOTHING, I tell you!
At least that's true for me.
As I said in my last blog, the nest is well and truly empty. Child number four took her wings, packed them up in her Honda and unpacked them in her dorm room at FSU.
I cried some. I mourned some. I grieved some.
Then she and I went to see good friends in St. Augustine for the weekend and I realized that she's mighty happy with her new life and that she'll always want to do things with me and she still loves home too. So if I'm worried about her, I'm seriously crazy and it is really and truly time for me to enjoy the fruits of my labor and understand that my life can go on, can get bigger and that good times are to be had. Hell, GREAT times are to be had.
The husband and I are enjoying the new freedom of home. So far this has meant nothing very wild. Mostly that if he needs to go see why the dog is barking in the middle of the night, he doesn't have to put his pants on.
But still, you know what I mean.
And he's been gone today and will be gone until tomorrow and so I've had the house all to myself. I fought the urge to scrub toilets or do something crazy like that and instead, sat myself down and wrote some pages on a could-be novel that I'm enjoying a lot. Sure, I did the laundry and I went to the store and I went to yoga, but I didn't even sweep! There's a poor little dead green frog on the porch as we speak and I haven't removed it yet. This takes more will power from me than you can possibly imagine.
And I'm thinking, "Yeah, I can do this. I can use my time to do what I've been wanting to do my entire life. I can sit down and write and not feel overly guilty. I am allowed to enjoy this sweet life I have the privilege to call my own."
It was bliss.
Then the phone rang.
Now I'm not the kind of person who can ignore a ringing phone and I haven't figured out how to turn these modern phones' ringers off. I will let it go if it's some 800 number but when it rang today the caller ID was someone I didn't recognize and it was a local call so I answered it.
The woman on the other end was looking for someone with my name. Turns out it was me she was, in fact, looking for. She's a woman whom we rented an apartment to years and years ago and she wasn't sure I'd remember her, but I did indeed.
When she showed up on my doorstep in answer to the apartment for rent ad we'd put in the paper, she was a shy woman, obviously gay, and I could tell right away that she wasn't exactly proud of that. Her entire demeanor seemed to be set in apology mode but when she saw the bumper sticker on my car which said, "I'm straight but not narrow" she visibly relaxed some. She felt it important to tell me that she was indeed gay because she didn't think it fair for me to rent someone an apartment (it was in our basement) without knowing.
I laughed and told her that was fine with me. Gay, straight- it didn't matter if I liked her and thought she'd be a good tenant and I liked her and I knew she'd be a good tenant. And she was.
She lived downstairs from our family for a while. I can't remember exactly how long but I was sorry when she moved on. She'd come from some very small town to Tallahassee, the "big city", to make a new life as a gay woman and she did. She outgrew the little apartment downstairs when she met someone she wanted to partner up with and moved on and we lost touch but I've thought about her many, many times over the years.
So when she called, I was surprised, but glad to hear from her, although I could tell immediately from her voice that something was very wrong.
And it was.
"I've been diagnosed with terminal cancer," she said, just as quickly and just as honestly as she'd told me she was a lesbian all those years ago.
My heart sank and I wished I could reach out and grab her and hug her up through the phone because I didn't know what in the world to say.
She said she'd been thinking of me a lot and something told her to call me. I was glad she did, but I didn't know what I might have to offer her other than to tell her I have always thought highly of her and wish that this horrible bad thing hadn't happened to her. She asked me if I knew of any churches that might have a support group so that she could talk with someone about this whole thing. Cancer, death, I guess.
She mentioned that her family has been asking her if she's talked to a preacher. She mentioned getting "saved" a few times.
Saved.
Huh.
I told her that in my opinion she was saved and it made my heart so sad when she said she knew she'd been a sinner.
"Jesus," I wanted to tell her. "Sin's just a damn word that religions have cooked up to keep people in control." I sort of did say that, but perhaps in more diplomatic terms.
"I know your heart," I told her. "It's as good as any heart on earth." And I meant it.
"Well," she said. "Maybe."
I promised to see what I could find out about any sort of spiritual support that might be more open to alternative life-styles. I know there must be some out there. I've already e-mailed one friend who might know something.
And I so wish I could help her to feel more at peace but how in the world can I do that? Her world is crumbling. Her life may be ending. What can I do?
I can call and check on her. I can do a little research. She has so many questions about what's going to happen when she dies. I told her we all do and that no one truly knows, no matter what they say.
When we hung up, I knew I hadn't made her feel better. But maybe calling me was one of the things on her list that she could cross off. Just to call me and tell me what was going on, to hear that I'd be sending her love, that I do love her- maybe that was important in some little way.
And here I am, at the tail end of this day that started out with me so full of light and joy at the prospect of a new life in front of me, a good life already behind me.
And I guess what I have to say is that now I feel darker, of course. Death is going to find us all and it truly sucks when it's someone relatively young and who is, no matter how a church may define sin, a good, good person.
Every time we rub up against death, it darkens us because it reminds us that it's going to happen to us and to the people we love, too. Eventually it will.
So I'm trying to just send her positive thoughts. I'm trying to remember that she's someone I used to know, and that my life hasn't changed one bit since I found out that she's not well.
But is has, hasn't it?
I know in my heart that when we die the light that we are made of does not go anywhere. It's here forever, just as it was here before we made our arrival on the planet. I don't understand how this works, but I'm pretty sure that it's mainly about light and it's about love and that those two just somehow have to be at least microscopically stronger than evil or darkness.
Even if I could explain that theory to the woman who called me today, I doubt it would make her feel any better. But I'm trying at this moment to make myself feel better.
I'm going to go light her a candle.
That may be all I can do at this moment, and it's probably not going to make much of a difference in her life, but it'll remind me of something I seem to need, which is that we need to dance in the light and in the love as long as we can so that when darkness surrounds us, we have something to call up to fight the darkness with.
At least that's my theory and what I hope is true.
So if anybody out there knows of any resources for this woman who might be able to give her some comfort, to let her ask the spiritual questions without judging her on being what God (and I use that term loosely) made her, please let me know.
Or at least just try to find that place in your heart that is as pure as the place in hers and send her a good thought. Send her a little light.
Then dance some, maybe. Do a little dance and celebrate your own light.
That'll make me happy and it sure can't hurt my friend.

Getting What You Wish For

So, after a lifetime of wishing, yearning, praying, scheming, planning for, and hardly ever getting some time to myself, I suddenly have it and in spades.
The baby is off to college. The husband is at work. I have no "real" job as my resume has read "housewife" for many years now. I am trained and licensed as a nurse, but it's been so long since I worked at anything remotely involved in nursing that only a desperate fool would hire me to do anything that involved a "patient". Except to perhaps make a bed or bring in a tray of food. Something like that.
Something, in fact, a housewife might do.
Back in the olden days, when I had assorted children around, some of them still hanging like monkeys on my hip, some of them needing transportation to various lessons, all of them needing breakfast, lunch, dinner and clean clothes, I somehow managed to write a novel. I thought it was a decent novel and I still do. I sent it around and got an actual agent. She thought it was good. She tried to sell it. She didn't. I haven't heard from her in several years now.
This is so depressing that I don't even want to talk about it.
But now I have time to write, right? I have at least four other novels on various back burners, some of them with hundreds of pages in them, a few with actual plots.
So now it's time to get off my ass (or, more accurately, it's time to get ON my ass) and do some real writing. The problem is...
Oh Lord. The problems are so vast as to render me in full writer's block.
My main problem is that even though the children are gone, I am still a housewife. The good, old fashioned kind of a housewife that hangs clothes on the line and sweeps daily and washes dogs and works in the garden and the yard and cooks from scratch and has no dishwasher. And even though I could and SHOULD let some of this go, I have over three decades of conditioning and training in the field and it just feels so wrong to sit down to write when there are dirty dishes in the sink or if the beans haven't been soaked or if the dog hair in the hallway is thick enough to knit a nice peasant-y sweater out of if I'd just collect it, clean it, card it, dye it and spin it into yarn.
Okay. I'm not that crazy. But almost.
And I think I'm afraid. What if, after all that whining about not having the time to write that I needed to do it RIGHT- what if I get the time, use the time, and find out I SUCK?! Huh? What then? Because if that happens, my dearest, deepest non-family related, completely selfish and life-sustaining dream will have been a lie. A pretty little lie I told myself for all those years when I should have been working part time as a nurse so I could make good use of my time now that the children are grown.

Ah me. Ah dear me.

I suppose, since the baby has been gone for less than a week, I need to give myself a little time to settle into this new reality. I need to realize that it's not wasting time to sit out here in my office, dogs scattered around under my feet and in front of the fan, to try and spin words into worlds.

And besides, it's only two thirty in the afternoon and I've already done the laundry, put it away, made up the bed with clean sheets, washed the dogs, done a little sweeping, a little yard work, got the beans and collard greens half-cooked for tonight's supper and taken a walk.
So. It's time.

Wish me luck.

Haul Water, Chop Wood, Breathe Deeply

The moon must be in the house of Deep Emotion right now. Either that or...

Oh yeah, many life changes are happening here at home.

The last baby left the nest yesterday. After thirty-one years of being a mother with children in the house, my youngest took off to move into a dorm at FSU where she'll be starting school next Monday. Okay. It's not like she's moved to California; she's only a few miles down the road and honestly, she packed like she was going to camp. There must be at least six pairs of her shoes on the back porch alone. And the library is filled with her school papers from last year, her sheet music and I don't know what all. Hell, she still has laundry in the laundry room. She'll be back.
But even if her move is as much symbolic as real, it's still a symbol of the fact that all of my children have, in fact, grown up.

Mostly.

And here I was, thinking that if they really loved me, they'd stick around the house forever.

That's a joke. Sort of. I have a feeling that at least half of them would indeed move back if I gave them the nod. And I'm having a little struggle with myself not to because darn it! I spent all these years learning how to be a mother and then all of a sudden (all of a SUDDEN I tell you!), they don't need me anymore.
Well, they still need me, but not like they used to.

And it's been ever thus. I can change diapers (the real cloth kind with duckie diaper pins) in my sleep in the dark. Literally. And they've all been potty trained for quite some time now. Breastfeeding? I am the Queen of Lactation and yet, not a one of them cares to nurse anymore, the ungrateful wretches.

I can sew cute little dresses, make baby quilts, teach children to tie their shoes, read stories with all the funny voices, answer questions on everything from "why is the sky blue" to "where do babies come from" in a professional manner appropriate to whatever age child has asked the question. I can make casseroles to fit four different types of dietary needs that will feed six with enough leftovers for lunches the next day. I can help with homework, accompany classes on field trips (how many times have YOU been to the Jr. Museum?), teach a child how to bake, make cupcakes for a class of thirty in an hour or less, know just what to do for many various childhood illness, and can charm a toddler into letting me wash her hair.

And all of that stuff I know and can do is rendered completely useless in the life it would appear I'm about to lead now.

When my husband met me, I already had two children so never in our lives have we been at home, alone, for any extended period of time. We've taken some great second, third, and so forth honeymoons but this is completely different. You can't stay drunk all the time, my friends! Well, you could, but I'm thinking it would not be prudent.
The only activity we've really come across that we can do together as a couple together for this new stage of life is....uh, cleaning behind the refrigerator.
We may be in trouble.

But the bottom line on all of this is... if I'm not a mother, then who am I? Oh sure, I'll always be a mother, but let's face it- when they've all moved out, it's just not the same. Should I now go get a job? Who would have me? I have a nursing degree but haven't practiced in about twenty years. I can garden, bake, cook, sew, clean, and just generally tend to the needs of others in many different situations but I don't want to be a nanny, waitress, or cook. I've done all that. And I'm too old.

I guess I have to figure this out. And I'm trying. I'm in a play, I'm taking yoga, I plan on spending all the time writing that I've never had before. Perhaps I can make my lifelong dream of being a "real" writer a reality now. I can be a better wife. I can spend more time doing whatever it is that I really want to do.
I just have to figure out what that is.

And I am so grateful to have this time, really, even though I wasn't quite ready to let that last one go. She never went through the mean, awful years that teens are famous for. In fact, she's too damn sweet by half, and funny, and fun to be with to want her to leave at all. I feel like I've been ripped in half, which doesn't say much for my parenting in this instance. A parent's job is to raise children to the point where they're ready to go out into the world without us. I know that, and I think she's ready. It's me I'm having the big doubts about.

But when I get weepy or worried about what I should be doing, or where I should be headed, or who I should be now I need to remember the lesson I've learned from yoga, which is that when a new position seems impossible and it doesn't seem as if I can stretch into it ever, ever, ever, all I have to do is breathe, and let my body do what it needs to do and before I know it, I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing.

I'm going to try to stretch my heart and my soul and my life now. It's probably going to feel awkward and strange and hard. But here I am, with breath and with will and a wonderful and loving man and with friends and yes, even with children who live right down the road, and I'm going to do this.
Whatever it is, I'm going to do it.

There may be a little down time. I honestly don't know right this second whether to sign up for an AARP tour of the world, have a drink, take one of those strip fitness classes, or just crawl under the covers for a few days. I swing from wanting to sob my guts out to having small sparks of excitement about what the future holds for me and my husband.

I guess right now I'll go put some brown rice on to cook. A small amount of brown rice. Just enough for two. I can tell you right now I need some smaller pots.

Which doesn't mean a smaller life, does it?
Not unless I make it that way. And I surely don't intend to.

Weeki Wachee- Real Florida Magic

Back when I was a child, back before the Rat ate my state, there were amazing places to visit in Florida and amazing things to see and do at those places. You could hardly throw a coconut patty without hitting a bird riding a bicycle on a tightrope, a bevy of beauties (as they were always advertised) being towed around a lake on water-skis, a monkey riding a unicycle, a Seminole rasstlin' a 'gator, or an orchid blooming fuchsia under a clear blue sky with hundreds of wide-eyed tourists looking on, eager to pay for the pleasure of seeing the unusual, the tropical, the exotic.

There were Stuckey's placed every fifty miles or so on all the main highways. Stuckey's had cool roofs and were great places to stop and pee, get a hamburger and an ice cream cone, buy a rubber alligator and stock up on pecan logs and saltwater taffy to tide you over until the next teal blue roof appeared on the horizon.


These were simpler times and we simple folk were satisfied and even amazed at simpler attractions than people are today. We didn't require monster roller coasters or animatronics. Palm trees and blue water and all the really cool things you could find around them were enough for us. Hell, for most Yankees, the sight of an orange grove was enough to inspire a spate of postcard-writing.

Ah. Good times.

My favorite attraction, far and above all the rest, was Weeki Wachee Springs. My mother, little brother and I went there in the early sixties and that trip remains as one of the best times of my childhood. We stayed at the little mom-and-pop motel across the highway from the attraction and just staying in a motel was pretty exciting. They had air-conditioning!

But the park was amazing. There were gardens and an animal show and even an "authentic" Seminole Indian village with chickees and a little train that transported the tourists through the swamp to look at the village.

There was a terrific gift shop where my mother bought me one of those great necklaces that spelled out my name in golden wire and had a tiny diamond (and I'm sure it was real) dangling from it. Also, a 45-RPM record that played the Weeki Wachee song. "Weeki Wachee is the place to be..." went the tune, and I sang and danced along with that record for years.

But the best, the whole deal, the reason for the very existence of the Weeki Wachee attraction, were the mermaids. There was an underwater theater where the audience was seated and when the curtain was rolled up over the glass wall in front of us, the spring was revealed and in the spring, as the sun dappled the gently waving eel grass growing in the deep bowl of white sand, three unimaginably beautiful mermaids were suspended in the air-clear water, smiling and blowing gentle bubbles. They began to dance and twirl in the water, doing slow-motion, no-gravity ballet and my life was transformed. A lifelong obsession with mermaids began right there that day and I knew that not only were mermaids real, but that there was indeed real magic on this earth and that it all happened underwater. I yearned with all my heart to be a mermaid too, and practiced holding my breath and twirling underwater whenever I found myself in a pool.

I grew up and realized, finally, that I was never to be a mermaid myself. I became a mother instead, and there was magic in that, too. Part of the magic was knowing that I could take my own kids to Weeki Wachee Springs and I did. We must have made at least three pilgrimages over the years to the springs to worship the mermaids and enjoy the animal shows and the Dippin' Dots (The Ice Cream of the Future!). The Seminole village disappeared, as did the little train, but a water park sprang up right next to the theater and the kids loved that. It was always a terrific little vacation and every one of my children fell in love with mermaids and was as enchanted by them as I was when I was a kid.

Last weekend we all went down there together. All four kids, a soon-to-be-son-in-law, and my husband, too, who somehow had never been. We were meeting up with my old friends from nursing school with their kids and we were staying at the motel across Highway 19 from the attraction. The old mom-and-pop where I stayed is long gone. I think it was replaced by a Holiday Inn, which became a Best Western, and now is undergoing renovation by what appears to be an Indian family and I find that a nice, tidy little circle of goodness.

My kids (ages 31, 29, 21, and 18) were all terrifically excited to be going and I was too, although I was worried at what I'd find at the park. The last time I went, back about six years ago, I could see that things had definitely slid downhill and the fate of the park was then in question. It still is. NPR just ran a program about it and who owns it and how uncertain its future is.

It seemed to be holding its own. The gardens were nice, there were still Dippin' Dots (is it the future yet?) and there's a little river-boat cruise and an animal show and the water park seemed very popular.

But the best, as always, was the mermaid show. The magic of that has never faded for me. When the curtain (looking a bit worse for wear, I have to say) is rolled up over the glass and the mermaids are revealed, tears come to my eyes. In this world of high-tech everything, there is something so unbelievably and indescribably beautiful about seeing gorgeous young women, swimming and floating and dancing in the pure, sweet water, connected to life on earth only by an air hose that they sip from to stay alive, to stay breathing in that other world just a few feet away from us as we watch, enchanted. There are few cynics at the Weeki Wachee mermaid show. What is there to be cynical about? No one is trying to trick anyone. No one is making false claims. These women are indeed mermaids. Magical, mythical, beautiful, athletic, graceful, smiling mermaids who dance and twirl and even drink coca cola out of small glass bottles, just like they did when I was a kid.

It was a great weekend. I loved seeing my old friends and getting to know their children and husbands a bit better. It was awesomely wonderful to go on a family vacation with all four of my babies and the man, as well. We visited, we ate, we drank, we swam, we laughed.

But the best, the very, very best, was the moment when we were all sitting, front and center in the underground theater when the curtain was pulled and once again we were able to all be children again, to gasp in wonder at the cold, clear water where three women floated as if by magic, while friendly turtles swam about, and the sun dappled their faces and the white sand, and the bubbles rose to the surface, and one of the mermaids dove deep into the bottomless cave below and we all held our breaths with her as she disappeared from view for what seemed like way too long, and then, like a childhood dream returned, swam back into our sight, alive and well, a smile on her face as her mermaid hair floated around her.

Grace. Grace-full.
You don't find much of that at Disney now do you?

No, for me, Weeki Wachee is the place to be.

Always and forever.
I sure hope we have that option.
What kind of a world would it be for my grandchildren-to-be if I can't take them there when they are old enough?
A very sad world. For me, anyway.
Go. Visit. See the City of Live Mermaids. It's straight down the road. Take a left at the Capitol and keep on going 'til you get there. You can't miss it.
You really can't miss it.

P.S.
I'm reading a terrific book about Weeki Wachee by Lu Vickers and Sara Dionne. It has the whole wonderful, wild history of Weeki Wachee and I am discovering that the inception of that attraction has quite a few ties with our own beloved Wakulla Springs. And Johnny Weissmuller, too, my own first, best, and always crush.
See? Magic.

Terror In Our Times

I want to talk about terrorism. It's a word that our president certainly bandies about with great abandon on every occasion possible.

"It's a war," he says, with that slurry condescending voice of his, "You don't understand. It's a war on TERRORISM."

Yeah. We do understand, Pres. We remember when the towers came down and when the Pentagon was hit and we also remember you reading the My Pet Goat book looking confused, unsure and as idiotic as anyone on the planet. But hey! We were all confused, unsure and felt like big idiots- wondering what in the world we should be doing about this completely unimaginable event as we watched planes fly into the World Trade Center on live TV.

But oh yeah- we had the sense to stop what we were doing and watch the TV. Right?
But let's get past that.

Ever since that morning on 9/11, our president has used the term "terrorism" every time he wants to push any part of his right-wing, take-away-our-constitutional-freedoms agenda.

"Americans were killed," he says, and I know you can hear that voice of his, even as you read the words. "A-mar-i-kans." "So we need to be able to listen to your phone calls, read your e-mails, peer into your hearts to see if you are one of the evil-doers. To prevent more A-mar-i-kans from bein' killed by the terrorists."

Excuse me?

As if men from middle eastern countries with enough evil in their hearts to suicide bomb American targets with airplanes represented all the terror in the world.

How many Americans were killed in that attack?

Approximately 3,000.

And it was startling and it was unthinkable and I pray we never witness anything like that again.

But how many people have died since then in the so-called war against terrorism in Iraq? If you just count the Americans, that number would be a little over 3,700.
Iraqi casualty numbers are debated. One study showed that as many as 650,000 Iraqis have been killed as a result of the American led military intervention in Iraq. This number is highly disputed and could be as low as a tenth of that.

Still- at least 65,000 people are dead. We'll probably never know the true number. Our government refuses to keep track of Iraqi mortalities. Why?
Can I get a big ol' racist, jingoistic shrug here?

And that doesn't begin to list the numbers of all the other people killed, both Americans and other nationalities, since this whole war on so-called terror was begun. There are the coalition troops, the whole other war in Afganistan, the non-military "advisors" and suppliers and workers "over there" fighting this war on terror. So, just taken as pure numbers, I'd say that since we're the ones over there and we're the ones picking the fight, we're the terrorists.

But that's not really what I wanted to discuss. I wanted to discuss what terror really is. Okay, sure, it's terrifying when giant buildings are felled by planes. We all get that.

But it's also terrifying to get a bad medical diagnosis. Can there be any four more terrifying words than "the lump is malignant"? Or how about "your child has leukemia"? And what if the person hearing those words has no health insurance?

And there's the sort of terror that no one but a homeless woman with children can know. There's the terror a woman feels who is being beaten secretly and consistently by her spouse. Or the terror of a child who is being sexually abused by a family member. Or how about the terror someone might feel when they're driving over a bridge and it collapses? There's the terror of being raped, the terror of getting a phone call that tells you your child has been in a car wreck.

Terror. It doesn't just come dressed in a turban, armed with a box cutter. No, to be human is to know terror at some point in our lives.

And some of it is preventable and some of it just is not.

And I don't care what our president says, you can't possibly hunt out terror and destroy it. Even if you spend over 450,000,000 (that's just so far, folks!) dollars on one little war in one little country and we're not even going to discuss that fact that that country had nothing to do with the terror Americans experienced on 9/11.

But that amount of money would go a long way towards ensuring that every American has health care so that if they do get that terrible diagnosis, they are not left with nowhere to turn for treatment.

It would go quite a ways towards dealing with the aging infrastructure in this country. It would certainly help out with making sure that all our kids get a decent education and so have a way to support themselves, a way to get out of poverty and to avoid all the different ways poverty can be terrible.

That money could go for programs to help children and women who have been abused. It could go for research to help find cures for the diseases that create terror in those who have them. It could help feed the hungry, it could help find solutions for this vast problem of global warming that if we don't deal with RIGHT NOW could very well result in the end of life as we know it.

How's that for a terrifying prospect?

Frankly, the thought that evil-doers are going to bomb us doesn't strike nearly as much fear in my heart as does the worry that one of my children or my husband will fall ill and we won't have the funds to pay for the very best health care we can find. Nor do these evil-doers make me nearly as frightened as is a friend of mine whose son is about to go over to Iraq as a Marine.

"We must fight them there so we don't have to fight them here." So says GW. I keep wondering if the terrorists are going to stow away in our (inadequately armored) humvees when we bring them home, planning to spring out with (stolen from us) weapons in their hands, spraying death and destruction.

I think that our president has led such a sheltered, protected life that he doesn't truly know a damn thing about terror. He thinks it's all about box cutters and planes and evil-doers.

We here in the real world know a lot more. And by God, why in the world we and our congress keep letting this man spend our money and chip away at our freedoms, and sacrifice our children's lives and the lives of countless others, is so vastly beyond me that I can't even begin to verbalize it.

All I can say is that having that man in charge of the free world feels a lot like...terror.

Sour Lass

So I went to get new glasses today. I have been wearing corrective lenses since the Lion's Club came to my school when I was in the third grade to test our vision and it was discovered that I could not see the largest E on the chart.
"Which way is the biggest E pointing?" asked the Lions Club Guy.
"What E?" I asked.
"Oh my," they said. "You might need glasses."
Well, in the third grade, I thought glasses were the coolest things in the world. Especially when I got some (blue plastic frames, quite stylish in 1963) and could see the individual leaves on the trees! Wowzer!
Of course in high school I got contact lenses, the better to be beautiful, and I put up with all that saline solution shit for many years, but eventually decided that I was lazier than I was vain, and went back to glasses. Having children had a lot to do with that decision. Mainly the fact that when the opportunity for a quick nap arose, I did not want to have to get up and go take my contacts out, wash them and put them in saline in their clever little holder. Etc.
So anyway, today's new glasses were the latest in a long, long line of new glasses experience for me and I think they're going to work out. It's not a new prescription. I didn't think I was going to get new glasses, just my old ones fixed, but when I went to the optical place (which I shall not name), they said that I could just get a whole new pair! Again- Wowzer! I could have fixed the glasses myself with a spot of super glue, but offered brand new ones, I felt I should take them. I never liked the broken ones that much anyway. And getting them had been a major hassle. Between doctor prescription mistakes and optical technician mistakes, it took me about three weeks and over half a dozen visits to get things straighted out to where I could actually see.
Now, my eyes are old. I have nearsightedness I have farsightedness and I have an astigmatism. So I can see why things might go awry in the glasses-making process. And go awry they did. Over and over and over.
Which would have been fine if the people at the optical place had apologized or taken responsibility for their mistakes.
But no. They did not.
I kept having to deal with this one chick. And maybe it's just our chemistry or something, but she and I were like oil and water. No, that's way too tame. We were like fire and gasoline. Yeah, that's more like it. She evoked an anger in me that was more powerful than the burning surface of the sun. She kept insinuating that there was nothing at all wrong with the way the lenses were being made, but that it was my particularly picky attitude about my vision that was at fault.
"It's hard to get used to progressive lenses," she kept saying. "You have to give it time."
"But it's been a week," I said, "And besides, this is like my third pair of glasses with progressive lenses."
"Hmmph," she'd say, flicking her blonde hair over her skeletal shoulder. This is a chick who (and there is no doubt about this) aspires to be Paris Hilton's twin. She does pretty well at that, too. Except she is about half as fat as Paris and does not have Paris's winning smile or so obvious charm.
And it goes without saying that I got my first pair of bifocals when Paris Lite was still learning that pee goes in the potty.
Anyway, after much struggle and a whole lot of restraint on my part, I got glasses that finally were okay. Not great, but I just could not face going back in that place again. I got used to them.
And I had remembered the difficulties that I went through, getting those glasses, but I had completely forgotten (blocked?) all about the girl who had raised my ire to the point of spontaneous combustion.
Until I went back in today and dealt with her again for about forty seconds.
This optical place has more than one branch and the one I'd gone into for the repair has nice people. Very nice people. And they were the ones who looked up my records and told me I could just pick out a new pair of frames if I wanted and get a whole new pair of glasses. For free! Now they didn't have any frames in the brand that I needed that I liked, so I went to the other branch. Which is where the Sour Lass works. And of course, she was the one who waited on me.
"Name?" she asked, sitting at the computer. I gave her the pertinent information and told her what they'd said at the nice location and she said, "Hmmph," and flipped her blond hair over her skeletal shoulder. "Let me call my manager."
Which she did. And kept saying "Well, she's here wanting a brand new pair of glasses." As if I had come in and demanded a brand new pair of glasses when all I thought I was asking for originally was a spot of glue or something. I mean, those people at the other location were the ones who offered the glasses to me! I kept trying to tell Paris Lite this while she was talking to her manager and she kept giving me the "Hmmph" look.
The manager okayed the new glasses, which I personally think pissed off P.L. "If you take them," she said, "You will be forfeiting any more repairs on this contract."
"When does the contract end?" I asked.
"September," she said.
Since it's August, I didn't think that was such a bad thing. What the hell?
So I picked out new frames and she kept asking if I was sure I liked them and reminded me that it's hard to get used to progressives and just generally annoyed me so damn much that I wanted to pop her head off. This is exactly what I was seeing in my mind's eye. Me popping her head off.
I also wanted to say to her, "Why in God's name would I listen to what you're saying about my vision when you obviously are so dense that you think people can't see where your real lip line is?"
But I didn't say this and I didn't pop her head off. I swear though, I came way too close for comfort. I had two of my daughters with me and by the time our exchange was over, they were cringing and people were starting to stare. And I'm not usually like this. I don't send food back in restaurants, I don't take things back to stores for ridiculous reasons, and I generally try to be as polite and gracious a human being as is possible.
But this girl...
Well.
It's weird to feel that sort of self-righteous indignation to the point where it's almost enjoyable. It makes me feel powerful in a twisted sort of way. I can feel myself getting to the point where I am going to start screaming. Doing what I've never done in my life- creating a real scene.
I really didn't know I had it in me until I met this one girl with very blond hair wearing a black pantsuit and pink lipstick that went way past her lips.
And I don't really have a point here. Just...wowzer.
And I'd say "Bless her heart," but frankly, for once, I just don't have it in me.

Storms and Other Forces of Nature

I'm sitting on my back porch and a late-afternoon storm is rolling in. The sky is growing dark and the pecans and Bradford pear trees in my back yard are rustling their skirts in the wind. The calla lilies and the wisteria are shimmying and shaking like Tina Turner. Then...stillness and quiet.

It's funny how although I love a storm, the approach of one sets off small alarm bells in my belly and I share that with my boxer dog, Pearl. She is deathly afraid of a storm although the small dogs don't seem to notice the weather at all, except to avoid going out in the rain to poop and pee. I have taken lately to giving them all "thunder treats" when electricity starts to crackle and roll across the sky, coming from some great distance on its way to here. I am hoping to associate the sound of the thunder for Pearl with the taste of something good- in today's case, a bite of leftover hamburger from Saturday's grilling. I doubt this will really work, but I'm trying.

I was never afraid of bad weather until I was fifteen. I was at a camp in North Carolina when a huge storm came through and lightening hit the wall of the cabin I was sitting in. I and my cabin mates were fine, but a counselor in another cabin was crying out that she'd been hit, that she was burned, that she needed help. I took off down the steep, rocky path to get help under a black sky that was spitting lightening all around me, rain was pouring down and the thunder was deafening. I knew I was in real danger and I did pray for safety, but even at the age of fifteen I had a strong feeling that God, if He did exist, was not really watching out for one fifteen-year-old girl.

All turned out well. The counselor was mostly just scared, and we all lived to tell about it, although the wall of our cabin bore a scorch mark for the rest of the summer to demonstrate what nature could do when she took a mind to it.

I'm sure that's where the little niggle of alarm comes from when a storm is approaching. Well, that and the fourteen or so hurricanes I've lived through and oh yes, that time we were on the boat and a storm came up...

But the bottom line is that I lived through every one of these experiences. And it amazes me that the lesson I've taken away from them isn't "Oh, this is so exciting! Another adventure to live through and remember!" but "Shit. Another opportunity for death or dismemberment." It takes everything in me not to call each and every family member I have to make sure they're in a safe place and are all aware that a storm is coming through.

But I think that's my nature. I am a worrier and a brooder and a glass-is-half-empty kind of girl. I have tried so hard to learn not to be this sort of person. I know that it's the optimistic, swing-with-the-wind, adapt-to-changes sort of person who lives to be a hundred. So far though, it hasn't happened. As with Pearl, I continue to work on it.

And the really good thing is that even though I get buzzed (and not in a good way) when a storm comes through, I can still enjoy it. I can still enjoy the power of it and the relief of it and the way the air changes and the birds welcome it with chitter, and the frogs call it with croaks and I love feeling cozy and safe in my house, observing it all.

And it's good to remember that when other types of storms come through my life, my heart, this crazy brain of mine. I can respect the power of my feelings and of the situations, even as I grow anxious and worried. I can remember that I have lived through these sorts of things before and most likely will again.

The storm will pass, the air will be all the fresher for having been rinsed with rain and cleansed with ozone, and the trees will have had their thirst slaked. All of my children will be safe, and the sky will quite miraculously turn blue again.

The thunder is beginning to rumble now and Pearl is huddled at my feet. The goats and chickens and the turkey who all live next door are silent, waiting for the party to truly begin. And I can feel the oak trees yearning for the clouds to open and pour their water out, to soak the ground around them.

I have prayed for these storms. I have ranted and raved for these storms. I have craved their arrival for months and months. Now they are here and how can I be anything but grateful? They are life and without them, we would perish.

I suppose the same can be said for those tumultuous occasions that we all go through. They must have purpose in our lives and a positive purpose, too.

At least that's what I try to tell myself. At least that's what I try to believe.

The Dreaming Life in Late July

Sitting in my office in the afternoon heat
A fan blows air my way
It's noisy, but can't compete
With the chirring of the crickets outside
Trying to stir up the storm they think is coming.
The day before my birthday
It's Sue's birthday today,
That bucktoothed girl, gone to Heaven.
I work beneath a small statue of the Virgin
Some of Sue's ashes wrapped up and tucked away
In the little votive below it.
I think of her today and miss her terribly
My birthday twin
My sad friend
But I know she's fine
Where she is.
My boxer dog sleeps right in front of the fan
And has a dream that makes her growl and make
Small, strange barking noises
My other dog, disturbed, gets up and goes to
Pearl to investigate.
"She's dreaming," I tell him,
"She's okay."
I look around at all of this
This life, this dream of my own.
And suddenly, for no reason,
Here in the late afternoon heat
Of the last part of July
Under the bruised gray sky
I am too.

They Say It's Your Birthday

There's a myth out there that aging is not for wimps.
Not true.
We wimps do age. We just bitch about it more.
I'm about to have a birthday and I'm having a lot of ambivalence about it. It's not the fact that I'm turning fifty-three. Hell, how much worse is that than fifty-two? Not a whole lot. And how much better is it than fifty-four? I guess we'll see. But frankly, fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four- they all sound really tired to me. Boringish birthdays, wouldn't you say? What's to celebrate?
I have a good friend who always loved to celebrate her birthday. She was of the opinion that her life had positively impacted a lot of people and that it was a fine thing for those people to get together with her and celebrate that life on her birthday. She was right and always had huge parties with lots of friends who agreed with her.
But when it comes to me, celebrating my birthday, I have some real issues. And this year, they seem to be getting out of hand, making me sort of crazy.
Last year, I had a fabulous birthday. I got on the road the day before my birthday and drove down to Tampa where I met up with my best friends from nursing school. Back in the mid-eighties, we four women were tight. You have to have good friends in nursing school to get you through it. We studied together, partied together, cried together, laughed together. No one but someone who's been through it can understand what a summer of clinical experience at Chattahoochee State Hospital is like. It's a bonding experience- nursing school.
But we'd gone our separate ways and this was going to be our first coming together in years and years. Between us, we'd had eight children since we graduated and one of us was pregnant. Not me!
We had a wonderful little reunion and it was great to catch up. I was the only one who didn't bring kids, though, and I felt a bit old and a lot happy to have gotten through the years of child-raising that all my friends were still firmly involved with. And when I left, the next day, on my birthday, it felt like I was driving away from all responsibility and care. I drove across the state to Roseland, the little town where I spent my childhood and which I blogged about earlier. It was an incredibly beautiful drive, and it was with true happiness that I sat on the dock over the river the night of my birthday and watched the sun go down. I spent almost a week there, eating what I wanted to eat, going where I wanted to go, having adventures on my own, writing for hours every day, taking care of no one but me. Any mother knows what I'm talking about here.
And that was just a great birthday. I celebrated me and it was perfect.
I should have remembered that for this year, and it's not like I didn't, but I just felt like for some reason, I shouldn't go off this year. We've got a trip planned for next month with all the kids to go down to Weeki Wachee Springs where we're going to meet up with my nursing school buddies again and that's going to be swell. And my husband and I were just in Roseland last month for his birthday.
So what do I want to do for this one?
Everyone keeps asking me. Kids, husband. A precious girlfriend called me and asked me if I'd like her to cook a meal for me, have everyone over to her house. That was a gift in and of itself.
But I'm so weird about all of this.
I love getting presents and having a fuss made over me as much as the next person. BUT, I don't.
I get very uncomfortable when given presents, and despite the fact that I've given literally hundreds of birthday parties for my own family alone, when it comes time for my birthday, I just get all Old Jewish Mother and martyrly. No fusses for me, please! I don't need a cake. I don't want anything. I don't need a thing in this world.
And yet, if no one makes a fuss, I get hurt. I know this is crazy. No one needs to point this fact out to me.
And I'm trying to figure out why.
I keep thinking about how I used to go out with another dear friend on her birthday, which was the day before mine. We'd go out on her birthday and come home on mine. We'd have dinner, go listen to some music, have some drinks, dance, laugh, and give each other our presents.
She's dead now. Died fifteen years ago and I miss her every day and when her birthday comes around, I miss her bad. So there's that.
And my friend who believed that her life was worth celebrating? She's in a nursing home, suffering from a horrendous neurological disorder that makes it almost impossible to take her out, much less throw a big wingding for her. And all those friends? They never come visit her. So there she is, her fifties passing her by as she spends her days sitting in the hallway of a nursing home, unable to communicate or do one damn thing for herself. She can't even turn on her CD player, put a little Beatles in to dance to.
And all of this should make me realize how precious the years are, make me want to celebrate them.
Somehow, though, I just mostly get sad.
And since I'm a wimp, I bitch about it.
And I have no idea what I want to do for my birthday. Today it feels like I want to dig a hole and crawl into it.
I hope I feel differently by Saturday, I truly do.

A Little Confusing

I am also blogging on the website Slow Food Tallahassee Talks.
I had thought to copy and paste the blogs here on my site, too, but let's face it- I have been discussing food a bit too often as it is. So if you want to read a blog I wrote about fig preserves, please go there and check it out.
Meanwhile, it's time to start doing that rain dance again. I'm sure you've noticed. That's all I'll say about that now because we've beat that horse to death, too.
But really- could we just get some REAL rain?

Kool Beanz, Open for Business

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Kool Beanz at all. I am not related to any employees there. I have no financial interest in the restaurant.

Unless you are speaking of wishing I had more finances to eat there more often.

The husband and I rarely go out for meals any more. We used to go out every Friday night, come rain, shine, or hurricane conditions. But we live farther from town now and it's just easier to stay home, throw something together to eat, have a drink on the porch, and enjoy what we have right here.

So when we do go out to eat, it is a real occasion and frankly, the food better be killer.

Which is why we always go to Kool Beanz Cafe. Almost always. Sometimes we drive down to the coast, but that's not really for the food. That's for atmosphere and adventure.

For food, for a really good meal that's worth leaving home for, my money is (quite literally) on Kool Beanz. (By the way, I really don't like that name, but what can you do?)

The restaurant was shut down about six weeks ago due to a fire in the kitchen and during that time, we went out to eat only once in Tallahassee and it was a grave disappointment and it cost a ton of money and no, I won't say where we ate, but I will say that any restaurant which claims to be French should know how to make a Nicoise salad. In my opinion, anyway.

So last night we put on our goin'-out drag and went to Kool Beanz for its reopening and we sat at the bar, which we always do, because we can watch the chefs do their thing and I can flirt with the dishwasher who has the prettiest smile in the entire world. I am not kidding you.

And we were so happy to be back. The husband got a fried chicken, black-eyed pea, collard green, mashed potato dinner that came with the best fried okra I have ever eaten in my life. In fact, that fried okra may have been the best thing I've ever eaten, period.

I got some outrageously good tuna with new potatoes, Greek olives, spinach and tomatoes.

We split a salad and were able to eat only half our meals, so we came home with enough for lunch for two. I've already eaten my leftovers and they were just as good today as they were yesterday. So good that I was inspired to sit down and write this.

I feel blessed to have this restaurant in our community. The menu changes daily and shows creativity and respect for the freshest ingredients. The chefs are geniuses at using local seafood and produce and coming up with dishes inspired by other cultures' cuisines. They're also terrific at putting new twists to old favorites without ruining them with ridiculous and pretentious cheffy bullshit. They know how to cook collard greens, they can fry oysters that'll compare with any you'll get on the coast, and don't get me started on the okra.

Kool Beanz. Worth every penny.

And oh yeah- best servers in town. They're friendly, knowledgeable, remember what you drink, and don't ask you to leave when you start making sounds of ecstasy that are really best heard only in the privacy of your own home.

And one more thing- the only key lime pie I've ever tasted that was better than mine comes out of their kitchen.
Their new, restored kitchen.

I'm so glad they're back.

Couldn't have said it better myself

And this is what I believe, too.

Soul Food

I love to cook and I love to eat. In fact, if I ever have a gravestone, I've told my family that I wouldn't mind if it read, "She sure could cook". I had my first real epiphany about cooking when I was about fourteen. I was primitive camping with the Girl Scouts on a mountain in North Carolina and I was in charge of supper one night. I built the fire and peeled potatoes and carrots and onions and put them in a pot of water and set them on the fire and when I went to check on them later to see if they were boiling, I realized that this simple act- cooking vegetables in water over an open fire- satisfied something in me that had never been quite satisfied before. I will never forget that moment. I'd been cooking for a long as I could remember, everything from home-made pizza to birthday cakes, cookies, pies, and family dinners when my mother was sick or out of commission somehow. But this iron pot of bubbling vegetables seemed to be something altogether different and real in a way that a tray of chocolate chip cookies never had been.

Going to Europe and tasting the food there when I was eighteen was another eye-opener. "So THIS is soup?" I'd think, after believing that soup was something that came out of a red and white can, poured into a pot and diluted with a can of water. "So THIS is bread," I realized, eating a French baguette fresh out of the bakery, after a lifetime of Wonder Bread. Everything tasted better- the fruit, the vegetables, the meat. And I wasn't eating anything fancy, either. Simple fare, freshly picked, simply cooked and seasoned- this was food the way it was meant to be.

The third big influence on my cooking was a restaurant in Denver, Colorado back in the early seventies. I was living in a dorm at the University of Denver, but whenever I could afford it, I ate at a small restaurant near campus called Hannuman's Conscious Cookery. Okay, I probably spelled that wrong, but it was something very close to that.

Hannuman's was somehow religiously based. All the servers and cooks wore white- long white robes and white turbans. Very exotic. Very vegetarian. And everything I ever ate there made me feel like I was eating something cosmic. Not just cosmically great or cosmically healthy, but cosmic in every since of the word. My favorite thing they made was a mung-bean casserole. Yeah, I know- sounds nasty, but boy it was not! It was thick with beans, rice, shredded carrots, cheese and who knows what all else? It had none of that hippie bean and rice paste consistency, either. Every bean, every grain, was perfectly cooked, perfectly itself.

COSMIC, I tell you!

They made their own bread, their cheeses and yogurts came from a goat farm on some nearby mountain, and their vegetables had to have been grown by totally enlightened beings somewhere not too far away.

I saw Allen Ginsburg eating there one night. I was not surprised.

And those were my influences on how I cook and what I want to eat to this day.

Oh! Wait a minute! I almost forgot Granny Mathews.

Now Granny Mathews was not my actual granny. We just called her that. She was a friend of the family, was at least eighty years old, and was a real character. She wore a lot of nylon negligee outfits and she always had a cigarette in her mouth, but the woman could cook. Just watching her in the kitchen, shuffling from stove to sink, stirring this and cutting that, adding a pinch of this and a pinch of that, mixing it all up in the most casual manner- I think my cooking style borrowed more from her than anyone else. She transmitted the idea to me that if you use the right ingredients and just don't mess 'em up, everything will turn out good, from bread pudding to meatloaf.

That principle holds true for me in my life. After putting thousands of meals in front of my family, I still enjoy cooking. But the older I get, the more I believe that the simpler the better. The more I believe in using the best ingredients and doing the least to them. I've become suspicious of processed foods (even the "organic" ones you find at the New Leaf) and my favorite meals come from our garden and from what my husband catches in the Gulf or brings home from the woods. He's a hunter and a gatherer and I love that about him.

Tonight I'm all by myself and I could just have a nice bowl of cereal with some of the fresh blueberries we've picked, but no, I've been boiling a pot of soybeans all day long. I'm going to marry them in a bowl with brown rice and barley. And I'm going to cut up some okra, tomatoes, squash and peppers and cook them with a little soy sauce. And that'll be my dinner. I'll have my protein, my grains, and my vegetables.
I have a ripe mango that will probably be my dessert.

That sounds about perfect to me.

I'm still cooking in the original iron skillets and pots I've had since I first started house-keeping (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth) and three pots of Revere Ware that were my grandparent's. These are OLD pots, believe me. My grandparents have been dead for over twenty years and I've used at least one of the pots daily myself for far longer than that. I have my knives I love and that my husband keeps sharp, I have my wooden spoons and my favorite bowls. I do use a food processor and I have a powerful Kitchen Aid Mixer that I use all the time.

That's about all I really need. In fact, it's more than I need.

I know in my heart that if I had to, I could cook in a dutch oven over an open fire and I'd be all right.

Hmmm. I'm hungry.
Let's eat!

Keeping the Sabbath

It's Sunday afternoon and I always used to hate Sundays. Sunday was the day that was the worst for me as a child. Abuse in the morning, followed by pancakes, sausage, then church, followed by the rest of a day set aside as God's. The All-American Grand Slam!

Then I grew up and Sundays held no abuse, no church, and pancakes only if I wanted them. And yet, I would find myself waking up on Sundays, sad and crying, weeping over some pain I couldn't locate, couldn't pinpoint or describe. Finally, I realized the pain was my inside-baby girl's pain; she was still there, she was still hurting.

Oh. Well. I see.

Got myself off to therapy which was wonderful, in the way that vomiting nails would be wonderful, because of the relief of not having those nails in the belly any longer. Still, though, Sundays were hard. I would tiptoe around the land mines always lurking there, no matter how thorough the digging had been to locate, disarm, and defuse them. Tricky business for me and for my family, too and I frequently bemoaned the loss of one seventh of my week to such ridiculous and needless sadness.

Then one Sunday, a good friend of mine died. She'd been sick for a long time and her death was as beautiful and grand a death as anyone could want. She was surrounded by friends who loved her. We held and stroked her, whispered our love for her. And she went like a rocket! onto the next level. Into the place where babies come from and where we will all return someday. Birth, in reverse, a tidy packet of here-to-there, instead of there-to-here. That's exactly what it felt like, including the joy.

After that I was fine for a long, long time on Sundays. It was if my friend had given me, with her profound gift of such a holy death, an erasure of the pain that day had always brought me. I could wake up on Sunday morning without the heaviness in my heart that foretold the heaviness in my eyes that preceded tears. It was beautiful. Divine, even. That was twelve years ago, and I am still mostly fine on Sundays. Mostly. That's how powerful my friend's gift was.

But there are still some Sundays that a trace of sadness can cast a tiny shadow over me. It's as if that inside-baby girl sometimes sighs on a Sunday morning. She doesn't wail anymore, or scream or even weep silently. She simply sighs a little breath of despair of ever being rid entirely of pain. But so what? We all have pain. How could we know the joy of release if not for the pain?

And I get up and make pancakes (real ones, not like the Bisquick ones of my childhood) and serve them up to the family I have now and we like to eat them under the trees in the back yard next to the bird feeder with the dogs lazing around our feet, hoping for scraps, panting softly in the building heat of a summer day.

No church for me, thank-you.

And I think ALL the days are set aside as God's, if by God you mean that net of life that connects us all- that web of quarks and sparks the universe is made of.

Or something like that.

Sound of the childhood bell...

My daddy was a drunk. A real, no holds-barred drunk. He was the kind of drunk who would go off and leave the family to really get into his habit, sometimes for days or weeks at a time. He was the black sheep of a prominent Tennessee family, trained and licensed as a lawyer (the family business) but unable to hold down a job. When he bought a gun and started threatening my mother with it, she knew she had to flee, which she did in the dark of night with me and my brother.
She took us to a tiny village on the east coast of Florida called Roseland where her parents lived in a small cottage across a sandy dirt road from a slow-moving, muck filled river. Granddaddy, who owned a little property, built a cement block, terrazzo-floored house for us to live in, my mother got work as a third-grade teacher at the Sebastian elementary, and my brother and I settled in to what would turn out to be the happiest part of our mostly shitty childhood. If there were any moments of magic and goodness in our growing up years, they were spent right here, in the snaky, jungly, hot, humid village of Roseland where I am visiting right now.
Yes, I've left my beloved home to come here to Roseland with my husband to celebrate his birthday. We're staying at a place on the river, a few blocks down from where my Granddaddy and Granny lived. I found this rental on the Vacation Rental By Owner web site a few years ago and as the description and pictures came up on my computer, I couldn't believe what I was seeing because I had known this place and known it well as a child.
When I was young, unlike today, kids were trusted not to get into situations where they might be maimed or die. We were sent off on our bikes, or on foot, to "play." Play was serious business in those days. We played war in the jungle, we fished for poisonous catfish on the community dock, we traced hopscotches and marble circles in the dirt roads with rocks. And we explored.
One of the places we found in our explorations was a piece of property on the river, guarded by a crumbling stucco fence and rusted iron gates. We pushed these open to behold the burnt ruins of a large house, a small stucco building still intact, and, wonder of wonders- a huge cement pool, empty, but still guarded by four lions, one at each corner.
You have to understand- Roseland had no pools and no grand houses. It was mostly small shacks that fishermen and their families lived in. There was one paved road. And so when we found that pool and what had obviously been some sort of estate, it was like we had discovered the ancient ruins of the Inca. Even seven and eight-year olds could see that this place had been something back when in its day.
And it was a place I had dreamed about, quite literally, my entire adult life- the once beautiful grounds, the house that had burned, the iron gates, the little stucco house with a tower, and especially that huge, empty pool.
So when the pictures came up on my computer, I sucked in a breath and said, "Lord have mercy. It's still there."
And here it is. Two very industrious and far-seeing men from Atlanta had bought the place and restored it. A different house had been built where the big house burned and they had fixed up the whole place, cut back the jungle, landscaped, built a dock on the river, and most wonderfully of all- filled the pool where the lions still stood guard, only now spouting water from their mouths into the sweet blue waters of a pool that is just as big as it had seemed to us kids back a million years ago.
And I have stayed here now three times. Last year, I spent a week by myself to celebrate my birthday. I had the entire place to myself- the big house was unrented. I spent hours on the dock every night watching the sky go through its sunset changes, watching the fish boil and feed in the river as the tide changed. I spent hours walking the still-dirt roads of Roseland, exploring like I had as a child, rediscovering. It was amazing how little had changed. Even the shacks were still here, looking somehow better than they did forty-something years ago, and each one of those little houses, each dirt road, each path through the woods, each bend of the river, held a thousand memories for me.
And here I am again, this time with my husband. He likes it here because it's beautiful. I had thought I grew up in paradise, but it's only been since coming back as an adult that I realize I truly did. So besides being a paradise here on earth (albeit a paradise that's still hot, humid, buggy and snaky), it's the place for me where there was magic.
Can't beat that.
We stay in the little cabana house, tricked out now like something from a magazine with a big open room, a sweet kitchen with Florida pink appliances and a terrazzo floor. Outside the kitchen window is a view that holds the lions and their pool and the beautifully landscaped lot that stretches down to the river.
As much as I love my North Florida home with its giant ancient oaks, to me, this part of the state is the real Florida. No condos in sight, just palms, mangroves, jungle islands, a railroad trestle crossing the river built by Henry Flagler, osprey, pelicans, dolphins that come up from the Atlantic, jumping mullet, bougainvillea, mango trees, blooming hibiscus.
And yesterday, floating in the pool with my husband, the lions, freshly painted startlingly white, spitting out cool streams of water, I thought that this pool is a a great metaphor for my life. At one time, my life, like this pool, was in ruin, abandoned, empty, and in great need of care, attention, and tremendous work. But there was the spark of great worth in it. And slowly and with sometimes little obvious progress, an amazing amount of work has been done, so that now, like the pool, my life is full and sweet.
It's an amazing thought that forty something years after I first saw this pool, stared at it with wide eyes, trying to imagine what it had been in its glory days, I can now slip into it, dive deep, eyes wide open, then surface to the blue sky and clear air.
Man. You can go home again.
Another miracle.

Excuse Me While I Melt The Sky

If you don't care to read about the trials and tribulations of late-middle-aged womanhood, skip this.

Thank-you
Shall we proceed?

I think I have less estrogen in my body these days than Arnold Schwarzenegger. He certainly has bigger breasts than I do, although that's not a medically-recognized test for estrogen levels.

Having hot flashes is, however, a general indication that those womanly hormones are running low. I've been having hot flashes for about seven years now. Seven years. Maybe longer. I'm not sure because another one of the side effects of menopause is memory loss.

Yes, there. I've said it. The "M" word. I hear that back in the old days (like three years ago or something), polite women didn't mention menopause. They went through it, they suffered in silence, or they went to the doctor, they got on hormones and all was well. Prescription estrogen made from the urine of pregnant mares flowed through their systems, bringing them relief from hot flashes, hair loss, memory loss, and so forth. Eternal youth thanks to pregnant horse piss!

Then they did a study which showed the women on these hormones suffered high rates of heart disease. Women were taken off hormones in droves. Some women (like me) never got on them. As anyone who's read my blog knows, I am not one to embrace technological answers to life's passages. I had three of my four kids at home. Now, if there had been some sort of complication in my pregnancies and births, I would have been in the hospital quicker than you can say internal fetal monitoring. However, there wasn't, and so I didn't go to the hospital and I was very happy with that decision. So when the "change" started to occur, I decided to just go with it. Let nature take her course. How bad could it be? My own mother never had a hot flash in her life. Probably all in the head, and all of that.

Yeah. Right.

I must take after my father's side of the family because as I said, I've been having hot flashes for over seven years now. Not the horrible ones that make you have to change your sheets at night, but they are certainly bad enough to wake me up sometimes as often as ten to twelve times a night to throw off my covers and lie there sweating, which I think is highly unfair, having finally gotten to the point where my kids (ages 18 to 31) all sleep through the night on their own, thank you very much. I also get them during the day. All day. I get them in yoga class, while I'm cooking, while I'm walking, while I'm eating, watching TV, writing, reading, driving in the car, taking a shower, talking to people...okay. You get the point. They frequently come during emotionally intense situations as well as in physically intense situations.

If you've never had a hot flash, they're hard to describe. Sort of like someone suddenly set your internal thermostat at 1098.6 rather than 98.6. But first, before the temperature change, I get a sudden feeling of complete and overwhelming despair and anxiety. What is wrong with me? I think. I must be going crazy! Or maybe the world is ending! Then I become insanely thirsty while at the same time I have a sudden urge to pee. A bad one. Sometimes I also feel as if I don't eat something right that second, I'll die. My stomach clutches in emptiness and that blood-sugar-hittin'-the-floor feeling comes over me. And THEN, I start to feel as if someone had thrust me into a blast oven.
Oh yeah, I think. I'm having a hot flash.

You'd think after seven years of this, I'd have a clue when I get the feeling of despair, but no, it always comes as a shock, the whole entire sequence of events.
It's just the weirdest darn thing.

So I've tried all the "natural" remedies. Soy, plant estrogens, Chinese herbs, exercise, flax seed, thinking cooling thoughts, etc. Alcohol and caffeine are supposed to exacerbate the situation but I don't generally drink during the week and have noticed no relief Monday through Thursday and I will probably never give up caffeine so let's not even discuss that.

Honestly, nothing seems to help except hand fans, which I keep stashed in every room of the house, the car and in my purse. There's a certain sound I make when I'm about to have a hot flash. My family knows this sound and, bless their hearts, start immediately searching for the nearest fan to hand me. Then I flail the fan as fast as I can while simultaneously ripping whatever clothing I can spare off my body. Pretty sight. Also, my skin turns red, especially in the upper areas and sweat begins to pour off my body.

My doctor, trying to be reassuring, told me that only fifteen percent of women have hot flashes into their eighties. This is reassuring? I mean, how many women make it into their eighties to begin with? I had no idea until she said this that there was even the vaguest possibility that these moments in hell could last forever. Now I know they can and IT DOESN'T HELP.

What I really wonder is how women managed to get through menopause without killing themselves, their husbands, children, or random strangers before air conditioning. I think about the women who lived in this house back in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and all the clothes they had to wear and all the work they had to do. I garden, but if I don't get a crop in, no one starves and I don't have to wear flannel underwear in August while I'm hoeing. I have water at the turn of a tap. I don't have to haul it or chop or haul wood. I don't have to milk the cows or take them out to the pasture. I don't have to make preserves or can food and if I do choose to, it's not over a fire and I can turn down the AC while I'm doing it. I don't have to make my own soap, walk to the store or wash my clothes by hand in water that I hauled, heated on a woodfire, and then poured into a washtub. I don't have fourteen children.
But women, back when this house was built, did.

Actually, I have a theory that women aren't supposed to go through menopause at all. We were supposed to die in childbirth with our seventeenth or eighteenth child. The women who survived having all those kids and who made it to their fifties were tough old birds. Tougher than John Wayne ever was, I'll tell you that. They didn't need no stinkin' hormones.

And speaking of hormones, I just heard that the most recent, recent study disproves the whole heart disease hormone connection. In fact, hormones may even protect the heart.

What the fuck???!!!

At this point, I think I'm just going to trust my instincts and try to tough it out like those women of old. So if you see a woman in the grocery store, turning scarlet and perspiring like she's just lifted a burning car off a child, it might be me. Or it might be some other woman who is going through menopause.

Be kind to her. And by be kind, I mean, ignore her. Try not to stare if she suddenly takes off her blouse in front of the canned vegetables or runs to the frozen foods section and sticks her head in the ice cream freezer. Just know that she is using more restraint than most of us will ever know in simply not screaming her lungs out in frustration.

I actually have another theory which is that all us baby boomer women having hot flashes is contributing in no small way to global warming. So maybe, if I went on hormones, I would actually be doing the planet a favor?

I'll think about that.

Goodwilling

I had a yen to go Goodwill shopping yesterday. I love Goodwill and thrift stores in general and I take this as being driven by my god-given gathering gene and since it's thrift stores and not the mall, I only feel guilty about the time I'm wasting, not the money.

Lately, however, I've felt as if I honestly have everything in the world that I need. From yard implements to clothing to kitchen utensils to funky artwork- I'm pretty well stocked and my gathering needs are generally satisfied between Publix and my garden and a local U-Pick blueberry patch.

Still, though, every now and then I get the urge to go treasure hunting. Who doesn't? Don't we all dream of finding treasure in unlikely places? The mall is no good for this. When I go to the mall, it's with a specific item in mind to buy and I hope to find it quick and get the hell out of there. And if you go to Gap, you're only going to find Gap brand. If you go to a department store, you're still only going to have so many labels to chose from, but honey, thrift stores have ALL the brands.
Of course, you have to look to find the good ones, but there's just a real thrill in finding a dress that you know sold originally for $120, nestled in there with the Walmart crap, all of it going for the same low price. "Come to Mama!" is what a friend of mine says when she finds something like that and I tend to scream a silent SCORE myself.

There's a certain meditative peacefulness that comes with thrift store shopping. Goodwill employees never ask you if you need any help and the day I'm at the cash register with my goods and the girl behind the counter asks me if I've found everything I need is the day I quit going to Goodwill.

I always start out on the outlying areas of the store, breezing through the furniture and books and kitchen goods because you don't have to be in the zone to go through those things. But that's where I start getting concentrated, focused. And then, I move on into the clothing. I like Goodwill because they arrange the clothing by color. This makes things a lot easier. If you're not ever in your lifetime going to wear a hot-pink shirt, no matter how fine the fabric, no matter how high-faluting the label, you can just skip right over that color and get on into the crimsons. Frequently though, I find myself getting into a zone with it and go through the beige (life is too short for beige, folks) and hot-pink too.

I love getting into that zone. It's the meditative part of the process. It takes a few minutes to get there, but once you do, you can zip right through an entire rack of clothes, pausing only when you find something that might be interesting. I have to touch every garment. I know in this day and time of having to disinfect our poor skin every time we touch something that another human might have touched, this sounds nasty but I've not gotten sick yet and I won't buy any garment that doesn't feel good, so touch them all I must. Sometimes I'll stop and examine a garment because it's just so damn ugly I can't believe it and I shudder with shame for the human race. There are certain labels I see in every thrift store I shop in, although I'm not sure where they're originally sold, making me suspect you can only buy them in thrift stores. Here's another mystery: you will always find something that has an owl on it in thrift stores. It could be a macramed owl, it could be a laminated-on-a-board owl, or a plate, pillow or mug with an owl on it. You can bet your bottom dollar on this, which I find strange since I don't see that many owl-related items in real life.

So anyway, yesterday I went to that big Goodwill on Pensacola, which is way out of my way, but it's the biggest and I have found some tasty items there in the past. I found some nice cloth napkins, I found a great apron, I found a terrific cigar box still smelling of tobacco, wood and shellac. All of these went into the cart. Then I hit the clothing. It was sort of disappointing, although I did overhear a few interesting conversations, and this is another thing I love about thrift store shopping- eavesdropping. I heard a woman tell another woman that she was a "dead-on size six." I raised my eyes from the rack of dresses I was going through to look at her and I truly wanted to say, "On what planet would that be, lady?" but I did not as that would have been impolite and I try my hardest to be polite in most situations. I've heard some great conversations at Goodwill. Far, far better than anything you'll ever hear at Banana Republic, believe me. In fact, I think one of the things I like about thrift store shopping the most is that it's a great place to be around people without having to actually interact with them.

So I ended up yesterday with the napkins, the apron, the cigar box and a dress that I may have actually donated in the first place. I don't really think so but God, it seems so familiar and with my memory, it's quite possible. I was a bit depressed, not having found any real treasure, but then ducked into the Good Cents portion of that Goodwill where they sell things by the pound. Seriously. And what did I find? A pair of brand new men's cargo pants, exactly my size, and in a style that I know for certain is still in the Gap store. Ha! I love men's cargo pants. They're the ultimate pants for me, comfy and with lots of interesting buttons and fastenings and all those pockets on them. And I love how men's pants come in sizes determined by inches, not that fake women's sizing where one label's size six might actually have fit that self-deceiving woman I overheard and another label's size six that would be too small for Kate Moss. Okay, maybe not Kate Moss, but you know what I mean. No, a 28-inch waist is a 28-inch waist and that's reassuring somehow.

So I was happy with my pants and my other booty, too. It wasn't a great day at Goodwill, but it was a good one and it got my gathering ya-yas taken care of for probably another month, at least, leaving me free to stay at home and waste my time here, with the added benefit of spending absolutely nothing.

Reality Check Please!

After those last few posts about child-bearing and how amazing and holy and wonderful it is to be a mother, I had a real reminder of what it's like to actually have a child (or children) around the house 24 hours a day and the experience sort of kicked my ass.

Let me just say that my youngest is eighteen so it's been quite a while since I was the actual mother of an actual baby or toddler. We can all do that math. And I remember it as being fairly difficult and thinking that if I didn't get some sleep pretty soon I might die. And I do remember having a very real fantasy, detailed and rich, about what I'd do if I could get away and spend a night all by myself in a hotel. I mean, I knew what the bed would look and feel like, I dreamed about those curtains that don't let one slip of light into a room, I even knew what the soap would smell like if I got oh, say 18 hours to myself to bathe in privacy and sleep an entire night.

I'd say this was strange, but I've heard other mothers report the same fantasy. Forget Brad Pitt, if most mothers of small children had the opportunity to spend the night in a hotel without their children, they'd opt for the time in sweet, sacred solitude.

So I know it's hard but like they say about childbirth- I had sort of forgotten the pain.

A friend of mine who has two children, however, stayed with me this past weekend while our men went off to the Father's Day fishing tournament and all of a sudden, the whole business of what it's like to have little ones came back to me with startling clarity. And let me just say this- it's harder than hell!

This friend is an amazing stay-at-home mom and her children are two-years old and five months old and boy, does she have her hands full. Her husband is out of town more than half the time with work and she is mostly alone with the children. Frankly, I don't know how she does it and weirder yet- I don't know how I did it.

Her children are darling and smart and cute and wonderful and I love them so much I could die, but the amount of care they take is positively mind-blowing. If the two-year old isn't crying because she needs a nap but thinks she wants to watch Shrek for the eighteenth time in three days, the baby is crying because he can't get his hands and mouth on everything within eyesight. And babies have really good eyes, let me just say. And a much longer reach than you could possibly imagine that anyone with six-inch arms could have.

Over the course of the weekend, we made about a thousand snacks, cleaned up about fifty spit-ups, cooked about thirty regular meals, did about twenty-two loads of laundry, got the dogs off one child or another (my dogs love babies) at least once every ten minutes, sang songs, read kid books, filled the kiddie pool, went blueberry picking, went to Lake Ella, experimented with what a five-month old could eat, watched the aforementioned Shrek over and over and over, and went to see a production of The Three Little Pigs in Monticello. And I was totally exhausted and the mama did at least ten times the amount of all of the above than I did, plus nursed the baby and changed the diapers. One or both of them would be in tears and she'd look at me and say, "Who knew?"

I think that's the thing- if anyone really knew what taking care of babies and young children was like, they'd say, "Uh, not for me. Thanks!" I mean, this friend knows what hard work is. She worked in the very real world for years before she had children and handled that fine. Now, however, she walks around from one crisis to another with a look of baffled exhaustion on her face, wondering how in the world she'll get to bedtime without jumping off a bridge. And yet, nothing in the world makes her as happy as the sight of one of her children smiling and she thinks (she thinks she thinks, anyway) that it's all quite worthwhile and she wouldn't trade a minute of it.

I kept telling her that it would all get easier and it does. Sort of. It gets different, anyway.

And as they grow up, you do get more sleep.

But the whole experience reminded me of why I prize my time alone so much and fight for it so fiercely. Why I am still exhausted. Why I can't always follow an entire thought through from start to finish. I mean, I had FOUR kids.

They left yesterday when the men got back from fishing, to go home to Tampa and my house is once again relatively quiet, the dishes are all washed, there are no bits of zwieback glued to my shirt, and once again I can be ignorant of the line-up on the Disney channel and can cook a meal without worrying about stepping on a baby playing on the kitchen floor. I miss those babies and I'm so glad I got to know them and hug them and love on them and be with them and their mama for a few days. It was a wonderfully chaotic and terrific few days.

But boy, am I glad I've been there and done that and that it's someone else's turn now.

Birth Day

It’s the thirty-first anniversary today of the day I became a mother. Which means, of course, that it’s my oldest child’s birthday today. Happy birthday, Hank! How in the world did you get so old?

My kids’ birthdays are very important days to me. In some ways, they are more profound than my own. I can’t remember the day I was born, so when I celebrate that, I am celebrating a rather fictional event. Of course I WAS born, and of course it did happen and I have heard tales (my grandmother was so excited on the day of my birth that she walked through a plate glass window and the woman never had a drink in her life as far as I know) but I have no memories of the event myself.

But I can certainly remember my own children’s births. The cliché of I can remember it like it was yesterday is not a cliché here. It’s only the simple truth. My first memory of after Hank was born is of the doctor holding up my child after my 28 hours of labor and me, understandably, reaching for this miracle I’d produced while the doctor screamed, “Don’t touch me! I’m sterile!” Of course he wasn’t. You can’t actually sterilize a birth field, but he was pretty convinced that if I touched his rubber glove, something awful would happen. I did touch him, trying to grab my baby, and he swore a bit and had to change gloves after he handed Hank not to me, but to a nurse.

Bah! No wonder I had the rest of my children at home.

I took that baby home just a few hours after the birth, which was unheard of in 1976. They brought the head of the nursery in to dissuade me from such a foolish and irresponsible decision. She leaned over my bedrails and said sternly, “Now listen. You’re fine. You could go home right this second, but we need to keep watch over your baby. A lot of things can go wrong in the first twenty four hours.”
“I know,” I said. “But we’re going home.”

Next my OB came in. “Now listen,” he said gravely, “That baby is strong and fine and could go home right now. But I’m worried about you. You bled more than you should have. You need to be watched closely for the next twenty-four hours.”
“Whatever,” I said. “We’re going home.”

And we did.
And I didn’t bleed to death and friends came over to meet this new baby of mine and Hank actually laughed outloud when the young daughter of a friend of mine tickled him and talked to him in kid-speak.

All was well.

It was a beautiful day, that day. Every day that I gave birth was a remarkably beautiful, holy day and I remember every one of them and I like to celebrate them. I’ve made a lot of birthday cakes for these celebrations. By my estimation, I’ve made well over eighty, just for the four kids. And that’s one way to celebrate.

But I like to celebrate by myself some, too. I like to dress up, put on some pretty jewelry, spray on a little perfume, honor myself for bringing a life into the world. I remember well the feeling of being reborn myself after each child’s birth- a most amazing feeling, as if I’d come back from a perilous and hazy place to find myself whole and safe with a precious new life that I’d retrieved from that place.

Today I’ve found myself with a few moments alone, which hasn’t happened much recently, but something that I prize immensely. I’ve hung the clothes on the line and done a little yoga. I’ve read a bit of a magazine and had fresh blueberries on my cereal. I haven’t taken a shower yet or made the cake or started the bread for the birthday supper, but I have time. Just sitting here in my office, writing this with the doors open and the fan on, my dogs napping on the rug behind me- that’s a luxury and a joy, albeit common ones and giving birth is the most common thing in the world. We all got here when our mamas had us. Duh. But it’s like I always thought when I was in labor- how can the regular, normal world be going on it’s normal, regular way when this, this, is happening? This unbelievably painful, powerful process?

And yet it does. The world is going about its business right this second as thousands and thousands of women all over the world, in city hospitals and in mud huts and in jungle clinics and in European bedrooms and in boats, in beds and on floors, on straw and on fine linen, awake, unconscious, in pain, in bliss, in joy, in fear, in complete awareness and in complete ignorance, struggle and breath and bleed and labor to give birth.

Right this second, there is a cry and a woman is reaching out for her baby.

I would wish for her that whoever is holding that baby smiles at her and hands her the child so that she can feel him, smell her, welcome her with kisses and with sweet milk and loving gazes to the planet.

I honor that woman and her child, just as I honor myself and Hank and I say, Welcome to the world, newest life on the planet! Let it all begin again. Birth for the baby, rebirth for the mother.
I celebrate you. I celebrate us all, each and every one of us the most common, prosaic, amazing miracles you'll ever see.

Baby Birds

A pair of Carolina wrens makes a nest and raises a brood in a plant on my back porch every year. I guess it's the same pair. I can't really tell. They enter and exit the porch through a tiny dog door and of course it's an event every year for us to watch them making the nest, sitting on the eggs, then feeding the babies when they hatch.
But the biggest, most fun day is when the babies leave the nest. And today is that day. Luckily, I saw what was happening and closed off the porch to the dogs because they've been known to scarf a baby wren if given the chance.
So right now I have three babies, clustered up next to the dog door, although I have opened the big screen doors wide to allow them easy exit. There were four, but one has already figured it out and has flown off into the big wide world. The parents are still bringing the other three tender bugs and are trying their best to coax them on outside.
It's a process.
And one that I, as a parent, certainly recognize. I keep wondering if all of this is making the mother anxious. Does she worry that at least one of them will refuse to leave? Does she secretly wish that all of them would stay right there where they're safe and where she can continue to ensure their good health and nutritional well-being with tasty bugs? Does she worry about their safety once they leave the porch and thus, her ability to watch over them and care for them?
Or is she thinking, Damn, I wish these kids would come on and figure it out. I'm ready for a stiff drink and a long nap?
Oh wait, those are all my thoughts when my babies are trembling on the verge of leaving the nest.
It's exciting and it's stressful. For all concerned.
And it can be extremely entertaining to watch.

Crazy or Not? Talk Amongst Yourselves

I have always been a home-body. I am happiest at home and that’s all there is to it and I have a home that’s worth loving and easy to be happy with. It's almost 150 years old, built of the kind of wood you can’t find anymore, and my feet love its floors and my eyes love its lines and my soul loves its porches where I sit and ponder the ancient oak trees that certainly fulfill my need to be in the presence of something holy; something far older and bigger and more important than I am. I also have my yard and my garden and I like to walk the roads around the neighborhood and through the woods. I see deer and I’ve seen foxes, hawks, Mississippi Kites, rabbits, snakes, and possums.

I like my neighbors, the ones I know and the ones I just sort of recognize. We all smile and wave here, in this little village. Smile and wave and say a “how-you-doin’?” “Good, me too.”

Really, this is just about all I need for entertainment and lately, it’s been harder and harder to leave home and go out into the world. Sometimes when I do go out, I get a little anxious, wishing I could be back home, surrounded by the things I love. Of course, I still do go out into the world. I shop, I go to parties occasionally, I meet my kids for lunch, I go out to supper with my husband, I go to yoga, I go to the library.

But I'm just so content, right here, that I’ve been wondering if I’m suffering from a sort of agoraphobia or if I’ve just become enlightened and realize that everything I need is truly right here at home.

I don’t know. Have I allowed my life to get too small, too bordered by my walls, too protected by my trees? I think life is all about balance and I don’t want to get too out of whack. I don’t want to be that crazy old woman who never leaves her property. I want to see friends and be in plays and go visit Wakulla Springs and Dog Island, and maybe go shoot pool with my kids or at least play the jukebox and drink a beer while they shoot pool.

And I’d like to visit other countries and other cities with my husband. We’ve had those dreams for a long time and I need to hold on to them.

But Lord, it’s hard for me to leave this place. I sit on the porch and listen to the wind in the pecan trees and the owl hoots from somewhere in the yard of the church next door and I'm just so happy.

I guess the best thing is to go off once in a while, to have adventures in strange and beautiful places, to meet new and interesting people, then come home again where I am most comfortable, where the spirits of all the people who have lived here keep me company as I go about the life I've made here.

There's nothing wrong with that. I just have to remember that the going away makes the coming back even more precious.

And then go.

So I can come home again.

My God, it finally happened. It's really rained. I haven't heard the stats yet, but I'm guessing an inch or two, which is wonderful. It took a tropical storm, or perhaps a depression, but that's all right. I'm thinking that in a day or two it's going to look like a newer, greener, world. And in the meantime, it's cool, it's damp, and the sound of rain falling on the tin roof is music to my ears.

My greatest wish is that we can stop making rain (or the lack of it) the main focus of our lives and find something else to talk about. But in the meantime, while it's still a huge and delightful novelty to have water falling from the sky, let me just say that none of us should ever take "normal" rain patterns for granted and yes, this could be a metaphor for much of what we experience in life.