Post Winter Post

 I know winter isn't over yet, but in the frosty mornings and the dark evenings, I still feel the faint hint that spring is on her way.  I've been cold and dark physically too, avoiding, for years, the fact that my aches and pains are bigger than just the simple aging process I have been blaming it on.  Then a couple things happened that pried my blinders off.

 My good friend is ten years older than me, and has been taking care of aging parents, so as I struggled to get up from my seat, she automatically offered me a hand up. I realized, she doesn't limp and moan like I do, even when I'm trying to insist I'm fine.

Then I was loving Black Panther, for its gorgeousness, at the local theater, when people began discussing the release of A wrinkle In Time, and my first thought was that "I have to live to see this movie!" and I wasn't being at all ironic. Somehow my brain had accepted that I am dying.

 So I made the dreaded Dr. appointment, and things are scary, but not as scary as dying.  My blood pressure on a normal day reads about 168/102.  My ANA blood test was positive which could mean Lupus or Lyme disease or be a false positive and I won't know until I follow trough at the Rheumatologist, I have to drive 127 miles to see, and wait until April 26th.  But all the symptoms point to some type of Rheumatoid arthritis. Things like the pain of pressure in my wrists from turning a steering wheel or spreading peanut butter on toast.  Things like loss of the ability to get out of the bathtub or to put on my own shoes.  Simple things are impossible on some days and cutting my toenails might mean I nerd to sleep for 12 hours to recover from the exertion.

 but life doesn't suck.  I had a good day driving through beautiful trees to go with my husband and daughter on a shopping/dentist trip, and I didn't feel too horrible by the end of it.  Now it is pouring hail on my house and Im loving the snuggled in feeling by the fireplace.

 there will be better days.  Spring is in the air.

Another September, Another Chance

I love September, especially when we're in it.
Willie Stargell 

We know that in September, we will wander through the warm winds of summer's wreckage. We will welcome summer's ghost.
Henry Rollins 


I also love September, and yet I find myself often depressed by it. As one who has lived 45 years on an American school schedule, I feel September as my true New Year. This is when I evaluate how the last year went and promise myself that I will change the things I didn't like and hold on to the things I loved.

After 45 year it becomes easy to see that doing that isn't easy. The resolutions each year sound a lot like the resolutions of the years before them.  So hope and depression mingle, like the perfection that is my home area in September, when the fruits are ripe and scenting the air and free for the taking. When windows hang open and the temperature both mid-day and mid-night is comfortable without air conditioning or heaters. Life is perfect but also tainted by the knowledge of how quickly things must change, and when they seem perfect, even a small change feels like a loss.

Yet This picture of my Son reminds me that the more things change, the more they stay the same.  As a toddler he wanted nothing more than to be on a boat with a line in the water. So when grandpa took him and his brother out, he was in his element, and now, when he thinks I'd  rather have him in college like his brother, 

he is a commercial fisherman with a lot of hard dangerous work and he is not always happy, not always content, but he is where he was born to be and he is true and loyal to who he is in a way that makes me proud of him.

 Wouldn't it be boring if everyone made the same choices?  If the world had one color, or one species or one religion or one dream?

I find my dreams and hopes in my family and my students and in the books I write and the books I read. I don't think my way is better than yours though, if you never want to have a child, or write a book, if exercise delights you, and you like to get physically tested, I love to hear your stories and watch you work out.

At 50 I have lost enough loved ones to know that the sadness I feel in September is the knowledge of things slipping through my fingers and away, no matter how tightly I grip.  I know my enjoyment of the vivid sunflower will be bittersweet for the knowledge of the grey rainy winter on the way. I know I play with the young dog, and already see him old and limping and grey muzzled now that I have had a series of wonderful dogs live out their life as my friend.

 But I can anticipate more than pain and loss. I also have lived long enough to know the death in the family, is followed by another birth, that the withered sunflower stalks drop the sees that volunteer next springs green shoots, and next Septembers glory.

So I have been thinking about what I have and what I have not done. I was going to make the bucket list of the things I wanted to visit, and do, and own, but while it is true, I want to see and do more, I'm not too concerned with owning THINGS anymore So this is what I really want for my resolutions

 I want to get rid of the clutter the way my neighbor has spent the summer removing the old junker trailer.

 I want to enjoy the gifts of life, like free blackberries

 and beautiful friends
 and bright
vivid
blooms

When Life Seems Colorless

When Life seems dull and slow and grey, and the rain keeps falling and the clouds won't go awaySometimes what I need is a Visit from a friend and a good dose of color to show that the world is full of wonder, warmth and welcome

 Then suddenly I can remember that there is such a thing as JOY

And that living in my reality

includes a lot of it.

 Hope springs eternal they say, but I say sometimes you have to clear away the deadwood to see the spring welling up

 Then that which seemed frozen and dead suddenly opens the buds that were there all along

 and lets you realize that you can make a wish and follow it and that the rain which seemed an assault of bleakness was really a refreshing rest before the spring rises up and floods the world with color, light and HOPE

Spring Again

The winter was long and extremely stormy here.  Wet, grey day followed wet grey day until we forgot that the sky was ever meant to be anything but a place where the ocean gathered over our heads.

At last the sun has begun to make brief appearances and the spongy earth has yielded a host of blooms, eager to grow as soon as they felt that first flush of warmth kissing their sleeping cheek.The darkness lingers in my house but the sun beckons me outside, the beaches and trails are scrubbed clean from a barrage of winter storms, except for the fallen branches and driftwood.

Easter season always speaks of rebirth and new life, but this year, more than most, there was a need in me to see the newness, to feel the warmth, and hear how silent it can be when the wind stopped.

The Azalea in a pot in my house has bloomed pink every year, but this year and last, it has featured one albino bloom as well.  I don't know why that one snowy bloom amid the rosy others, seems so promising, but I keep coming back to stare and feed my soul on its beauty.

I wrote last fall, of the death of my beloved yellow cat, and how I buried her in the rain, with daffodil bulbs.  Now her grave has become a flower bed and I find peace in that as well.

My only remaining cat has found himself wanting more companionship and is often under my feet when I haul firewood or work in the yard.

Even down at the Crescent City harbor, so recently devastated by the Tsunami and the loss of a fleet of commercial boats, There is a renewal and a sense of hope.  The enormous floating crane, hired to raise the sunken boats, has completed the task.

The animals have survived without a one being found with oil on its fur or feathers.  The city is pulling together to cheer for Crescent City on the Reader's Digest, We Hear You competition and life resumes where chaos reigned for a month.

 I find it easy in the spring, to be an optimist.  I choose to remember that it is the simple, inexpensive, treats in my life that make me the happiest.  Talking to my teenagers, typing on a story, focusing my camera on a beauty; I find it imposible to feel the cold, grey of winter anymore.