THE WAY I SEE IT, she said...

TENDERLY

2011-03-12T08:42:00.000-08:00

It was difficult to know who was the elder of the two; they both had white hair, they both moved slowly, he perhaps a bit more slowly than she, so for purposes of telling the tale, I will say that he was the elder.

It doesn't really matter, and yet it does. Every detail of life matters.

Slow motion. Plastic bag, black plums, one at a time, hands shaking.

The slow motion of advanced age.

Confusion, mounting. "Let me..." he said, but he didn't finish: she kept trying to open the plastic bag, an act that can defy the agility of the youngest hands at times.

"Let me....hold....the bag!"
He was softly insistent.

It seemed to take forever for that message to reach her brain; she kept trying to open the bag, hands shaking, head bobbing, legs wrapped in thick stockings, a threadbare green sweater draped over her rounded shoulders, her hair wispy white, surrounding her face like so many tiny feathers.

He tried again. "Let...me...hold...the bag."

Their eyes met and it was as if the world stood still, for them and for me as the observer of this moment. For in that moment, she knew again, after all those many years, that yes, he loved her.

She let him open and hold the bag as she placed one, two, three, four shiny black plums into it.

It took both of them to work the twist tie to close the bag. And then, the best part:

His were on the handle of the shopping cart, and just before he pushed off for a very long journey to retrieve the other things they needed in the store, her soft, deeply veined hands covered his; he looked into her eyes and there it was again, right out in the open, for all the world to see: love.....so tender it made me cry.

Always Check For Comments...And Reply

2011-02-17T11:21:00.000-08:00

hi claudia - it's me susan pietrowski, i would love to contact you...so someday when you post a new post to your blog, you will see this message and say "wow",,,I remember her and then you will email me at lonestarsprite@yahoo.com! I love monarch butterflies and have a plant in my backyard that is covered with those wonderful green, yellow, black and white catepillars...they eat every leaf off the plant. Hello long lost friend!

December 13, 2010 4:18 PM

I found Susie's comment on or around January 6, 2011. I smiled deep and wide as my mind flooded with images, memories of our college years together, her soft nature, sweet smile, great wisdom....and i carried all that with me, gently, for days, imagining my reply, imagining how i would craft my hello after so many years. Susie was our son's Fairy Godmother. she had always wanted to be a fairy godmother,and with susie you knew that desire was for real. she even sent him a glittered magic wand for his first christmas! susie was special, loved, an artist, eventually a mother to two children her soul adored. she was not without her demons but even those she was gentle about.

So i walked and i remembered and i smiled and i thought and i prepared to write back to this dear dear friend from, basically, childhood. but i waited too long.

On the morning of January 24, 2011, I received an email from another dear college friend telling me that susie had died the day before.

Susie was gone.
I waited too long.
There would be no email to Susie, no reply to me, no phonecall....

I waited too long.
I have been in touch with her beloved son, Rivers; i cannot imagine his grief, nor that of his sister Sarah, only 13 years old. I want to scoop them both up and tell them everything i know of their mother, all the spots inside that maybe she only shared with me...all the memories that sparkle like gems....and maybe i will do that. Soon. Before it is too late.

I am so so sad that i missed the opportunity you presented me with dear friend: you must have known that you were sick, that it was ending, this life on earth. You must have been contacting me to say goodbye.

Goodbye sweet friend.
I will never forget you.

I love you Susie.

I'm sorry I waited too long.

2011-02-17T11:05:00.000-08:00

when i met my cousin Brendan last night, my Irish Eyes felt all soft inside, as if on the outside they may just have looked like this. my cousin, the first one i've met, with no memories between us from our childhoods due to stupidly stubborn Irish brothers who were our fathers...stupid grudges and disagreements, so we cousins never climbed trees together or learned to smoke cigarettes together or rode bikes together or layed in the last day of summer vacation sun together counting notebooks and pencils, talking about the teachers we hoped we didn't get.

but there is NOW. and brendan started it....and he is the first of many that i've now met. thank you brendan, thank you Divine Order of The Universe for allowing this to open up for us. Blessed Be.

2010-09-13T21:54:00.001-07:00

It's been HOW LONG since I posted on here?

2010-09-13T20:57:00.000-07:00

as you can see, the caterpillars do get pretty fat and happy as they store their bodies with food...

let's see.....where does one pick up after taking such a long leave of absence? i mean what HAS the world been doing without my BLOG?????

(a quiet falls over the room. nervous coughs , squeaky little laughs.) it's okay. i know. you have just been waiting patiently. you knew i would be back! you believed in me!!!!! and for that faith you shall be rewarded!!!! i am going to start with What I Did For My Summer Vacation!!!......in pictures. See the pictures? Well, what you are watching is the birth of a Monarch Butterfly, slippin' right out of its chrysallis, right on time. this has been the most amazing project i've ever involved myself in.

i walk by the lake pretty much every day in the spring and summer and this , i decided, was the year i was going to do it, look for the tiny little eggs on the back of milkweed plant leaves.....and i found a leaf with an egg and thought myself to be quite fortunate. i was walking back to my house and ofcourse had to investigate OTHER milkweed plants too, and i ended up with a total of fourteen eggs AND one caterpillar, a fairly sizeable one, so he had been one of the earlier born ones and was eating and eating and eating those milkweed leaves until it was time to transform.

i was addicted! every time the opening of the chrysallis was imminent, i would get so excited with the anticipation.......to watch this truly is one of the many beauties of nature. each butterfly needs about two or three hours to dry out their wings and try flapping them a little bit. what i started doing was letting them come out of the tank they were born in and letting them fly from my finger to the screens on the windows in my studio. there were only two casualties, one of which was just so sad; i had no choice but to euthanize him. he was a wonderful flyer but he was a bit brainless. i noticed him hitting the screens really hard and that one last hit just took him down...broke his two front legs and he couldnt' walk. so you know what you do if one needs to be euthanized? you put him or her into a small plastic bag and put them into the freezer for an hour or so. they feel nothing, they don't think "oh my god i'm freezing to death!!!" no, they just go to sleep, and that way i get to keep a beautiful completely intact Monarch Butterfly.

and THAT is what i did on my summer vacation!

I Can Only Call It What I Think It Is.....

2009-04-06T12:04:00.000-07:00

(...The Grace of God.)

I have received a plethora of emails from them over the past few weeks, reminding me as a participant from last year that it is time.....time to submit another piece of work, should I choose, and time to pick up last years' submission. The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo sponsors submissions to the jury of their Collector's Gallery once a year; if your submission is accepted by the jury, they will display it in the Collector's Gallery for a full year; businesses can rent your work to have in their offices for a few months at a time , or your work can be sold out-right to an interested party. It is now the time of year where those of us whose work did NOT sell are requested to come to the gallery to pick it up; if we choose to submit something else, there is a later date in May for that.

When I submitted my photo last year, at the urging of a dear artist friend, I figured it was a long-shot; I mean what chance did my one photo have amidst all the other submissions that were accepted and on display in the Collector's Gallery? So many pieces, only so many visitors to the gallery...difficult , as always, to know who is in the market for what kind of art. But it was a good "next step" for me as I began putting my work "out there"; I had success with the photo at our Image City Photography Gallery's first and now annual juried show and from that I was encouraged to continue the building of my latest creative venture as a photographer. I have had success as an actor, a dancer, a writer, a voice artist, and an artist; it was time to move forward with my photographic "captures" of moments in life, and so I did.

NO ONE could have been more surprised than I when I saw the envelope in the mailbox..the envelope that announced through its thin nature that it more than likely held.....A CHECK.

SOMEONE BOUGHT MY PHOTO.
I have sold my first photography.
Someone liked it enough to buy it, to have it as their own.

YAHOOOOOOO!

Here I was, just minding my own business, preparing another image for submission to the Collector's Gallery, actually kind of looking forward to picking last years' submission up on the fifteenth of the month, a reunion with a much-loved image, all matted and framed and beautiful in its presentation...but no....SOMEONE BOUGHT MY PHOTO!!!! Oh, but I already exclaimed about that, didn't I? Heck, YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO again!~ It is, after all, "a first". I mean how many more of those will I get in my life?? (smile)

And there's a copy of the photo: I called it "Watching the Watchers"; I took the photo aboard a whale watching ship in Cape Cod last fall...it is an image of the silhouette of people on the upper deck in the huge white foam created by the ship in the deep blue of the Atlantic. I had been on my way to the side of the deck fearing that I may..well, you know, toss my cookies, but then I saw this image...and the rest is history.....it saved me from feeling sea sick too!

The Grace of God brought me this gift and I am grateful.

All Grown Up...Or Are They?

2009-03-24T07:16:00.000-07:00

"Are you going to wait or will you be coming back for it?"
"How long of a wait will it be?"
"At least forty five minutes..."
"Hmmmm.....I'll wait..."

With that part of the decision made, I decided how I would spend those forty five minutes in the hospital while waiting for a prescription to be filled at the pharmacy; our insurance offers a nice discount on medications if we make use of it, so we do. I decided to go up to the gift shop and do some browsing. I'll say!....I was in there for the entire amount of time I was told I would need to wait. I think I touched everything in the small shop at least once! I actually took the time to read cards, a luxury I never indulge in as I am usually on the move: I see the heading of a section, "birthday for HIM/HER" or "encouragement" or "sympathy", thumb through a few and quickly make my choice. But on this day, I read and enjoyed many cards BEFORE making my choices.

I was making my way to the stuffed animals, just because I wanted to, and the "text" feature on my phone began its chiiiit chitttt sound; it was my son...he just needed to talk; he is 27 , lives down south, and is struggling to make sense of the economic meltdown we are living through, struggling to keep his thoughts positive as he waits even longer to really get his career back on track. One more time, for emphasis: HE IS STRUGGLING, and he was looking for a place to vent and get encouragement. So for the remainder of the wait-time for my prescription, I listened to my son and thought about how odd it suddenly seemed that I think of him as "grown up" at 27. I thought about how even without the global crisis we are experiencing, he still has much growing to do and that the same could actually be said of ME. It was with that realization, that basically we are ALL always "growing up", that I started to lose my footing a bit: here my son was turning to me for a listening ear, maybe for a bit of guidance, in the grip of a situation that is bigger than anyone could have imagined, and I suddenly felt very young and ill-equipped to help him hold his sorrow and frustration, even though that is really all I CAN do, help him to hold it: I cannot fix it, and to realize that I found myself to be basically bereft of words of wisdom on the subject, well.....it made me feel like I am in need of as much "growing up" as he is!

He did not know of my hesitation, did not sense it; I don't think he ever does: no matter what the topic, the struggle, the disappointment, I am first and always Mom to him: just the sound of my voice, in real-time or through my thoughts appearing in text on his phone, I am just as grown up as he needs me to be.

How come my soul was ever-so-slightly shaking when we disconnected then?
Parenting never ends, even when the children look for all intents and purposes like adults, like grown ups.

Some days I sure do wish MY parents were still here to talk to; I doubt that we would be texting each other, but I sure would like to ask them if THEY ever felt this way.

God-speed my son.....all will be well.

SOME PHOTOS

2009-02-16T07:24:00.001-08:00

Hunger

2009-02-01T08:25:00.000-08:00

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between two "wolves" inside us all.

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

And To Think He Was Criticized For Not Wearing One At The Beginning of The Campaign!!!!

2009-01-23T08:05:00.001-08:00

HA!!! Look at that LAPEL FLAG PIN sparkle NOW!
I was oddly thrilled to find out that CNN has a page dedicated to folks posting THEIR inauguration images captured from the TV screen in their homes. I didn't really imagine I was the ONLY one doing it, but still...to see how many people captured images of their families sitting together at THE MOMENT the Oath "took" just brought fresh tears to my already overworked tear ducts!

LOOK at that flag pin SPARKLE as the sun hits it.

(SMILE)

The Nature of The Louse

2009-01-19T09:19:00.000-08:00

i like facebook, i really do. i like running into theater friends from years ago, revitalizing memories long stuffed away in the archives....i suppose it's pretty amazing that it took as long as it did before someone came 'round trying to stir up political mayhem....someone who disagrees with my stated politics, slim as that statement is on facebook, who decided to try to rub me the wrong way....so i deleted the louse. what an incredibly stupid thing to do on such a flimsy, cream-filled website as facebook: people go there to post thousands of photos of themselves, to reunite with old friends, to PLAY.....why this guy thought it would be good to get confrontational in honor of the upcoming inauguration of our 44th president is beyond me. i ditched the louse and yet i feel oddly prompted to make a statement out into the ether: i do NOT think Obama is the New Messiah; i do NOT look at the inauguration as the CORONATION; i fully expect more of the same....i'm just glad we as a country saw a sweeping victory for african americans....IT WAS ABOUT TIME! that's all. and i like him, true enough: and i wish him well, our new president. i don't expect him to change the world as we know it, but i believe he will give it his best try......i know he won't wear a crown as he goes about his business as president....it would only get in the way when he has to scratch his head and rub his aching brain as he tries to fix our nation...

good luck President Obama.....and good riddance to the louse who tried to start it up on facebook.....really: that's like picking on a small child, taking combative politics to facebook.

GET STUFFED you LOUSE...

2009-01-19T09:12:00.000-08:00

just when i think i see, when i think i know, when i start to feel comfortable, some small little rug of consciousness gets ripped out from under me, and down i go....never really knowing why, or how.....i seem to be perpetually slipping on well-oiled wood floors...sliding down hallways not of my own choosing.

why am i drawn to that which will eventually and inevitably bite me?
is my life like that of the moth, drawn to the brightest light only to find that it will be a bad burn from which i may not recover?

or is it all just emo-muscle memory, from which i cannot escape?

Silent Night

2009-01-12T08:31:00.000-08:00

The sound that comes when they go is filled with echoes, soft wrappings of "Mom?" waft through the rooms, suddenly, out of thin air, snippets of a conversation, moments in time left in my lap to caress, to marvel over, like beautiful, shining gems. I replace the stuffed animals I got out for my son's dog to play with and I feel sad. It's a big cardboard box full of eager faces that greets me down in the basement, where the remnants of their childhoods sit, wating to be reclaimed when my son and daughter, perhaps, have families of their own. I can remember the story surrounding each and every one of those stuffed animals, how much they were cherished, and still they seem to smile expectantly, knowing that some day they will be called into service again. I don't think any of them had imagined becoming a chew toy for a young yellow labrador pup, but they don't seem to be any worse for the wear.

The sound of their voices, aloft in laughter....yet they are no longer here. They have returned to their homes. My children have grown and are gone from me. Watching them adjust to the adult world is, at times, far worse than watching ANY bicycle accident either of them EVER had.

Watching them hoist their belongings up over their strong shoulders as they hug and kiss us goodbye...goodbye Mom, goodbye Dad...goodbye Alex, goodbye Chloe....please come back to see us soon. And they leave us.

Our children are grown and gone now: one is in love and speaks of marriage, the other is still sailing alone.

My children have been raised, the raising is done, and it just doesn't seem right at ALL. You can't possibly realize it while you are doing the raising but there really IS just a very short period of time that we all have together, for wishing and dreaming, loving, teaching, learning....Before you know it, VOILA...your kids, as I keep saying, have grown, your life has changed. And sometimes, like after Christmas, it just seems wrong that you have to let them go.

It's A SIGN!

2009-01-11T11:09:00.000-08:00

just when you think you know everything there is to know about your child, you learn something so totally unusual that you simply have to document it.

we lived in orleans county for two years when my son was a little boy, so he saw perhaps more than the normal number of road signs declaring either the beginning or the end of ROAD WORK. it seemed that something was always under repair and we needed to take a detour. the detours were always fun with a three year old because out in God's country there were always steel-decked one lane bridges to cross...three year olds love that.

now this son of mine is a man, he lives in maryland, and he is surrounded by m ore signs than we could ever have encountered in tiny little orleans county. he called me one day with a memory burning so brightly in his adult brain that he had to tell me: he used to think the signs that stated

END CONSTRUCTION

were signs of PROTEST...that the residents of the towns along route 104 west had just had enough of the chaos created by change and were stating their feelings for all to see!! now how about THAT?

just when you think you know everything about your child.....

1966

2009-01-11T10:59:00.000-08:00

the eighth grade year was a year when things mattered: who was smartest mattered, who was taller, how happy you were mattered; your hair mattered, knowing if your friends' parents argued as much as yours seemed to mattered as well.

it was a year of wonders, as in "I wonder when MY breasts will arrive?"

eighth grade was the year i discovered sexual attraction, without having a name for it, when i was stopped dead in my tracks quite suddenly one day by the way bobby miller SMELLED.

best friends mattered in the eighth grade, and marion was mine. she had gold-green eyes and teeth that were as straight and blunt as her unenthusiastic red-blonde hair. marion's hands were always moist and cold.

she loved george and i loved ringo. too many other best friends BOTH love paul, and those friendships rarely lasted for long.

marion was in trouble on a regular basis. at least the things she was nailed for were BOLD things. marion was FRESH and i liked that about her....i liked it alot. she blushed easily though, and the reprimands she received in school were never easy for her because that facial red alert would sound off on her cheeks immediately and she hated that. but it never stopped her from perpetrating further catholic school girl acts of rebellion.

there was one day, however, when marion detached from every bit of the usual embarrassment when nabbed by a nun and held up for public humiliation. i don't recall what her infraction was, but i remember staring at her and thinking maybe, just maybe, she was having one of those highly-touted beatific visions right then and there and that she was, understandably, distracted, not able to absorb the insults being hurled in her direction.

it just didn't make sense that she didn't react to being called STUPID.

but later, after school, i understood when i asked her why she didn't respond. marion grabbed my arm firmly, the noticeable nascent warmth of her hand penetrating my navy blue blazer, a moment as poignant in memory as it was in thirteen year old reality, looked me in the eyes and declared:

"who CARES if she called me STUPID....she called me a stupid WOMAN!!!!!"

in the eighth grade, that mattered.

The New York Times

2009-01-11T10:53:00.000-08:00

following the storm, i sit and watch the snow fly while rearranging, again, some of the inside of my house, my shell that cannot hide me from anything, not really, and i want to climb to the top of the trees and sway and blow crazy, kick up a fuss, in that white wind.

i am so lost in the past in my heart, amazed at the imprint of my mothers' head, and the roses, on the glass that covered the New York Times poster, covered, past tense, because today the glass broke and i had to throw it away, wrapped as carefully as possible in a white flurry of fiberfill, wrapped so no one gets cut when they touch it, as i get cut when i touch the past.

the times in New York, when some photographer guy asked to take jack and barbara's picture because they were so very beautiful and with that photo they got to stay beautiful, always young and perfect, strolling on a street in new york, before time slapped them around and snatched it all away from them, jack stuck in a nursing home chair, staring stupidly, a prisoner of alzheimers disease, barbara stuck in sadness and sighing "I DON'T KNOW...I JUST DON'T KNOW..." and she didn't, nor do i, so i frame them and try to think of The New York Times and the beauty that got left behind.

I CAN SAY NO MORE......

2008-11-06T08:16:00.000-08:00

My Son The Triathlete

2008-11-06T07:47:00.001-08:00

The Best Gravestone I Have Ever Encountered....

2008-11-06T07:18:00.000-08:00

Nantucket graveyard walk. we sat for awhile on top of the dead, eating chocolate. it was weird. then it got weirder when we found THIS...

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of..........

2008-11-06T07:15:00.001-08:00

GOOD ADVICE ANY DAY.....

2008-11-06T07:12:00.000-08:00

I Love Pancakes

2008-11-06T06:59:00.000-08:00

i , lucky woman that i am, have inherited my daughters' hamster....she was missing having pets last spring at college, so she went out and got herself a teddy bear hamster....then she went on the adventure of a lifetime as a driver for Van's WARPED TOUR over the summer, so i took care of little , uh, BIG Pancakes. what can i say? it was love at first bite! now he lives with me and he is a daily reminder of what it means to just BE.....

I LOVE PANCAKES.

The Last Flower of Summer

2008-11-06T06:45:00.000-08:00

my mother dressed my sister as "the last rose of summer" one year for halloween. sometimes i forget that part of my mother, her creativity....she did have that as part of her. i usually credit my father with giving me that gift: he played the drums, he liked poetry, especially that of alfred lord tennyson. amazing the things about mom and dad that can pierce your otherwise healed heart years after they are gone. for some reason today i am feeling the loss of them very strongly, almost a sense of sheer disbelief that they have been gone for so long, my father since 1990, my mother since 2000. my parents. hi mom, hi dad. here's the last flower of summer for you.....a lone verbascum found growing on the side of oakridge drive. it still surprises me that i even saw it; it was the end of a walk by the lake, almost dusk, but i found it...or did IT find ME? was it YOU saying hello mom? are you there dad? hello/goodbye, again.

I may be almost as happy as they are....

2008-11-05T06:56:00.000-08:00

And so it came to pass, that America spoke and in its' speaking said, "Yes, this is what we want", and America elected its very first African American President of the United States of America.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA. Let the healing begin.

final thoughts on autumn as i watch the first Flakes FALL

2008-10-29T11:49:00.001-07:00

2008-10-29T07:37:00.000-07:00

THE LEAVES ARE CHASING EACH OTHER

LIKE CHICKENS AFTER FEED.

oh but I do love this wild and wooly October time, even though entry into it does rearrange my hair when i venture out into its' embrace and whole conversations can fly away, suddenly becoming the words that are spoken between others someplace else. imagine their surprise!

Where are their manners?

2008-10-29T07:27:00.000-07:00

Just LOOK at them! Throwing, hurling, catapulting, jostling, flinging, themselves at each other! In Late October all manner of manners are gone with the wind!!!

Just a Few More....

2008-10-23T06:20:00.000-07:00

More Ways of Seeing

2008-10-23T06:01:00.001-07:00

So there I was just walking, the cool moist morning mist making cotton candy of my hair, just walking and taking it all in, trying to expand my thought on a particular subject, trying to move out of the small corral my thoughts had been running in into the larger more generous arena of contemplation, when I saw it: not just "a sign" but THE sign, right up above my curly head: the street name was LITTLE WAY and the sticker on the sign pole said "DEAD END"....absolutely! My "Little" thinking on the subject I was kicking around was a DEAD END!; my attempts at more expansive thinking were right on! But wait.....another street sign, a mere twelve paces ahead.....what's that? OH MY! THE ULTIMATE MESSAGE, THE ULTIMATE "SIGN"!!!!......
SUPREME WAY....My expanded thinking was taking me toward the SUPREME WAY of thinking!!! Ah the SIGNS are everywhere; you just have to take the time to LOOK.

2008-10-22T16:48:00.001-07:00

CAPE COD

2008-10-22T16:42:00.001-07:00

2008-10-19T10:27:00.000-07:00

OCTOBER....
flameful trees
attending streets
far more quiet
than July
ever knew
they could be.

2008-10-17T08:48:00.000-07:00

when they were tender little shoots, i so easily tended them, knowing always what each look meant, each sound, each word, each sigh, always able to know when to water, when to fertilize, how to protect them from winter winds. now they are grown, each with their own shiny leaves and their own thorns too, having grown into their fullness, leaving me standing, heart in hand, still offering yet not really needed, and i am lost....

when they were tender little shoots, with all possibilities stretched out before them in brilliant array, row after row of dreams sparkling like gems in the high morning sun, it was so easy to believe they would always know the right road to take and, if not, that i would always know how to guide them to where they needed to go. but now i find it is not so. we stand on this road now together, dust in our hair, the horizon escaping our penetrating gaze, not knowing...suspended in the space between questions, my children and i, suspended......i still can see their tenderness, still can recall days of thinking i knew all i needed to know to be that guide to guide them....never has wrong tasted so bitter to the tongue.

As the ocean rises, I see roses

2008-10-09T06:11:00.000-07:00

The air was cool but clammy, the sun was struggling to burn off the early morning fog, succeeding quite nicely at its task, and we were waiting in line to board the ferry to Nantucket, bicycles in tow, waiting, waiting, waiting, for this new adventure to begin. I thought about our children, as I always do when we are on vacation in this just-beginning new phase of life, this post-raising children together phase, this back-to-just-the-two-of-us phase, this phase that can find me teary eyed when least expected, not sorrow promoting the tears, just the melancholy that often accompanies the POW! realization, over and over again until I really get it I guess, that yes, our son and daughter are GROWN....and our vacations no longer include them. It is a powerful realization whenever it nudges me, and it nudged me this clammy- but- clearing Cape Cod morning, and as it nudged me my eyes landed on an ocean rose bush. I don't know if this is what they are really called, but it's what I call them: they are petite roses of a distinctly pink hue, a color I only find by the ocean; and on this morning, during this waiting, as my eyes surveyed these roses, Spirit spoke to me, loud and clear, and reminded me of something important.

The roses I was looking at were four to a branch, and it seemed that every branch, every bunch, that I looked at held one sweet tightly wrapped rose bud, just beginning its journey, one that was in full bloom, a rose that had bloomed and was beginning to lose it's petals, and one that was in its final stages, yet still full of unique beauty and life energy...and I got the message: even though our children are grown, even though our vacations are now just the two of us again, the family we were is still within each of us, an energy that will never leave. Our memories may vary, each of us recalling different points in our time together AT different times, but the four of us still stem from the same branch...we always will...and always, always there will be the beauty, no matter what stage any of us has arrived at in life.....always there will be the beauty of who we were , who we are, and who we will continue to become.

It is true: a picture is worth a thousand words.....but I'll stop here.

A SIGH The Size of Texas

2008-10-09T05:57:00.000-07:00

So what the heck is a "creative person" supposed to do when it feels quite as if creativity has dried up, leaving behind only a soft, grainy powder on ones' finger tips... blow softly and POOF it is gone, Gone, GONE? I wish I knew the answer. Take a walk, take a shower, stand on your head, stare out the window, go serve up meals at a soup kitchen, stand in the middle of a room , a field, your mind, and scream? I do wish I knew. I know that in the past I have forced myself to just sit and look at photos, some of mine, some belonging to others; sometimes an image can provoke a bout of creativity. How could this photo NOT urge the creative juices toward flow capacity? Well, all it does for ME, besides making my jaw drop two stories in amazement, is make me want to go sit on the beach. Maybe that is the message of the moment: maybe this is the voice of GOD speaking to me: GO SIT ON THE BEACH, YOU NINNY. Well, okay, maybe GOD wouldn't call me a NINNY......I think I will take this internal advice though: eat a bit of breakfast and walk around the corner to the lake, to the beach....and sit. Is this what a blog is supposed to be, me peeling back the layers of my internal meanderings and posting them for anyone to read? Stream of consciousness streaming? I can't say as I really know. But I will keep trying.

When Is A Blog NOT A Blog?

2008-09-22T06:44:00.000-07:00

.....when I SAY it's not a blog! muahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Many's the friend who has nudged me to do this, so alright already, here it is, the bare beginning at least. I don't like the word BLOG at ALL. Who says everything has to have a NAME anyway? A little pet peeve of mine..."If not a name, then what?" you might well ask. I suppose that does present a unique problem, one that I do not have a solution for. But I will work on it. In the meantime, I will post some of my writing and my photos, for your entertainment and enlightenment. PHOTOS ARE AVAILABLE TO YOU, by the way, for reasonable prices. I would sincerely hope that you wouldn't even THINK of just copying them to make them YOURS. Let's all play nice, okay?