Oh those days of Jesus following me with his eyes and bloody thorn crown, with the fan in the window blowing sticky Brooklyn air onto the bleach scented sheets.

I was 10, spending a week with Grandma Mary and Grandpa Pasquale, squeaky clean and suburb reared, about to be educated into the glories of love.

Could I know then how a man impossibly old and a woman plump and lined could have a passionate love affair? No, never...

Grandpa called me monkey, and let me climb out the fire escape to get his bottle of ruby painted wine. I was exalted by the black wraut iron filigree and the height from the 10 story apt. building, clothes strung across the brick alley. As I grabbed the heavy green jug, I looked both ways to make sure the Jesus picture and my grandma didn't see me, and spit over the side, just to see how far it would go.

Grandma's hands were tiny, with long fingers and oval nails. She took two glasses from the enamal cupboard and sliced peaches into them. Grandpa poured wine over the peaches and daubed a bit on my tongue.

Busy day at work today. Getting myself ready to go in now. Already made a yummy chicken soup with chickpeas, spinach and orzo for lunch but have a lot of prep for pickups this weekend. Not looking forward to coming home and taking a trip out to the farm with more stuff. Just want to be moved and in one house! Later...

Step by step, inch by inch. That's my attitude as I have changed course and decided to cook again for a living, working in a hot kitchen 6 days a week as I pack boxes and take carloads of stuff to the new house I'm moving into in less then 2 weeks.

Step by step, inch by inch.

Okay, I haven't posted in a long, long time. The daffadils have come and gone and the corn is already growing an inch a day here on Delmarva.

Best news is my old beat-up computer has been magically resuscitated with my novel in progress, my poetry AND my 3 years worth of newspaper columns intact. Yippee!

I think a year's worth of writers block is quite long enough and I can feel the pull to write curling around me.

Of course, lots of other things happening too. Did I tell you about?

Hmnn...will have to wait til tomorrow for THAT story.

It is the morning of the second day back in my little cottage by the lake in Michigan. I have slept deeply, with contentment, as if the very walls and sugurpine floorboards welcomed me back.

Though my name is still on the deed, when I left it to my then 22 year old son 5 years ago and moved to Maryland with my youngest son I knew I had passed the baton of ownership on. I walked my gardens and caressed my lilac tree and rested my cheek against the hundred year old maple in the backyard. Deep inside I knew it was time to journey on.

And here I am, home but not home, because my son and his wife and her two children and their baby they made together have loved this little house into a sanctuary of their own design.

They honor me as a respected Mother, and greeted me with homemade cookies and sweet smelling sheets and the arms of my grandchildren.

It has just occurred to me that there is a reason that we all get along so well~my son is a Pisces, my daughter in law a Scorpio, my grandaughter a Scorpio, my two grandsons Cancers, and me? I'm a Cancerian too.

There is a synchronicity and flow to our relationships that is as soothing as a calm still lake.

Tomorrow I will head home to Maryland and only the crashing of the sea with its ebb and flow and endless horizon will catch my tears.

I don't want to leave this family of my heart.

I find it amazing that I am sitting in the Philly airport writing on my laptop. Now I know how my grandmother must have felt with those newfangled cars and the advent of electricity and the telephone.

All around me people have computers and phones and gadjets hanging off of their bodies.

It feels eerie in here...no music at all, just the vibration and growl of the jets out the wall of windows. I don't see very many smiles on faces either, but I can hear all the thoughts constantly spinning in their heads.

Seems like a perfect time for a little sneaky breathing pick me up....

The morning didn't go so well...as a matter of fact I missed my early flight. I could blame my son for not coming home all night and then finally showing up redeyed and goofy after a night of partying, but when you start to take responsibiity for all your experiences it just doesn't have the same zing to it.

I went up to the ticket counter anyway, and the man put me on the next flight for free. I'll arrive 5 hours later, but I'll still arrive:)

An hour ago I had myself all cosy tucked into a corner of the airport, playing solataire and drinking coffee. There was a tiny Muslim woman dressed all in black and she asked me if I was going to Portland. I thought she was lost, but it turned out she was an airport employee. A few minutes later I heard her arguing politely with an elderly woman in a wheelchair. Apparently she had missed her flight, and she was blaming the Muslim woman for not having the plane back up to let her on!
She insisted that the employee give her money for food at the very least, and she said she was depressed and hungry.

Everybody within earshot was very careful to pretend they couldn't see or hear the two women verbally duking it out.

I didn't have enough money to give her, but I had a bag of nuts and m&m's. I got up and said "here. you're hungry. This will help." She looked at me in amazement as I opened up the bag.

Moral of the story: She was just plain hungry and scared and alone. It was so easy to reach out to her.

Oh boy I get to board in half an hour!

See you later:)

Today is misty and cool with bare trees topped with redbuds and white pear blossoms getting ready to burst.

I'm getting ready to burst too. Saturday morning before sunrise I'll be at the airport, ready to fly home to Michigan to see my firstborn grandbaby.

This has been a yearning for almost 2 years now, as he'll be 2 in July.

My son and his incredible woman bought me a ticket with their tax return! It was completely unexpected, and work and home and time seemed to flow effortlessly to make the trip happen.

All I have left to do is attend a company gathering this evening, go to work tomorrow morning, and dress up as a mysterious gypsy and read tarot cards for the local parrothead fundraiser tomorrow night. I like to play dressup and read cards, so it ought to be fun.

Then into the sky and into my family's arms!!! I'm so thankful I can feel my heart swelling in my chest.

Somewhere in the middle of the presence process I became fascinated with the game of Solitaire. I now think that in itself is hilarious, because solitaire, of course, is a game played by and for oneself!

Astonishingly, I would win game after game until the point became not how many times I won, but how fast.

It then became a game a game of strategy and I forgot to check my time score. Even the winning lost its luster as I realized it was the game itself I enjoyed.

The cards started to impact me with symbolism..~if there was a dearth of Queens, I know I wasn’t getting anywhere with no mommas in the picture. Kings became dads and jacks became sons and daughters. All had important roles to play and unless they were there the game was over.

Even the number cards started to weave themselves into endless patterns of interconnectedness.

I know I am on to something here.

In the meantime, Solitaire, anyone?

The Case of the Missing Cat



Three weeks ago I agreed to foster-mom a 5 month old orange tomcat for our local cat rescue league. I already have a year old gray female cat named Sassy, and she didn't like the newcomer ONE BIT. I named the newcomer Hugsly because once on my lap, he was a cuddly little lover.



Once he was off my lap, he was so timid he hid in the oddest places...squeezing behind the fireplace, under cupboards and behind the dryer. His nightly skirmishes with Queen Sassy didn't help matters, as she defended her spot on my bed with the ferocity of a tiger.



Now he is just plain invisible. I haven't seen him in a week and I know he didn't skip out the door. I have been telling myself it will just take time for him to feel at home, but where the heck is he??? I know it's really starting to bug me because last night I dreamt I got up to get a drink of water in the middle of the night and he was in the kitchen.

Where is that cat?

Spring is making it's way here with wild winds scrubbing the trees clean of dead branches and blowing away last year's crumbled leaves to reveal green daffodil shoots. Kneeling in the earth and feeling the soil through my fingers is God's chapel for me.

The first day of 2009 was a shocker. I lost my primary job when the business closed without warning. Did I mention they owed me a month's salary?

On January 12th I decided to once again participate in my my life and attempt the presence process. My 4 previous attempts crashed and burned by session 6.

This time I seem to have one thought burned into my forehead..."NO MATTER WHAT, breathe twice a day."

It's been quite unpleasant and quite glorious and I have no idea where I am going if anywhere at all.

Last week my landlord, who has really been patient with my late rent, asked me to pay in full or leave. I recognise that my lack of moolah is an emotional blockage and as these circumstances come up they are brought in love to help me integrate my childhood.

Happy about a possible eviction? Strange, I knew it wasn't to hurt me, but for my highest good. I looked around at all my stuff, walking from room to room, and mentally cleared it all out. Bunches of twitches and tears and aches bubbled up from the depths during my breathing exercises.

This week it turns out my tax return will cover the back rent with just enough left over to pay the accountant and my landlord is graciously willing to wait until it gets here.

I really don't think there are coincidences anymore.

Spring cleaning has a new meaning for me now.

this is the other one...they were written in 2005.

Poisened
Poisened,
I
Scrape the skin
tender skin
Burning, itching skin
(i told everyone it was)
(an allergic reaction)
to an evergreen.
I know better..it was my heart
trying to protect
The
best of filet
inside my arms.
My mind won't protest
So my body does
Producing Disease,
And
Boils rise,
poisened,
from the tree
tree i pruned
keeping you
from me.
Poisened,
I
Weep.
Like my skin
Poisened from
the touch
of you.
Cryptic,
i know
I speak not
of your death mask
your
deadly grin.
As you touch me,
love me,
poisening
my skin.

When my last computer crashed I lost 7,000 words of a novel I was writing and a few dozen poems. I just found these two tucked away and I'm sure it's not an accident that they appeared in week 5 of my journey inside with the Presence Process...

Poetry,
that boring, hateful word,
Endured, dreamed thru,
in required education
Is no more to be feared
Then clouds,
watched on your back,
Dreaming
Just a thought rhytmn,
undulating
as you let go of necessary
and fall into
being.

When I was 6 my youngest sibling, the only boy and aged 2, received a toolbox for Christmas.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved my dolls and clothes and perhaps an “easy bake” oven but I was obsessed with that toolbox. It had a hammer with a wooden shaft and a bright blue head. There was a little craft table that held cutouts of circles and triangles and squares. The object was to take the color coded blocks and fit them into their proper mates and hammer like hell until they sat perfectly. It was a hands-on jigsaw puzzle for the future male engineers of the world.

In the guise of a good big sister entertaining her baby brother, we played carpenter together.

Valiantly I would hammer a circle into a square with all my heart, twisting and turning the block to make it fit, but even at that young age I real-eyesd you couldn’t fit a circle into a square without bludgeoning it to death. Mine never fit until at least the fourth try, when I finally got the idea to try a circle with a circle, a square with a square.

I had just learned the art of futilely manipulating a person, place or thing, pretending I was helping them in order to get what I secretly wanted.

I guess I’m slow, because it has just come to me that I still have that bright blue hammer and no matter how hard I hit with it, a circle will NOT fit into a square.

You can’t live your today with yesterday’s hammer, no matter how seductively it’s painted.

I woke up this morning with the bare branches of the trees scratching against the skin of the house. The winter wind is strong here, and early mornings are often cushioned in fog. Not this morning though, because the white was falling in glorious snowflakes instead. I sat at my little table by the window, sipping coffee and watching the snow. All was black and white with a touch of green from the holly shrub that peeks above the windowsill. A redbird came to visit...and it was all so perfect and beautiful I thought my heart would burst.

The current took me out so far this time I think I've landed in South Africa or perhaps resting in the South China Sea.

That is the first sentence I've written for my own pleasure in a year, when I stopped writing my newspaper column.

My muse picked up and left, just like Mary Poppins with an English sniff of her aristocratic nose and her umbrella under her arm.

My soul knew I had to stop writing the column, even if my head (and everyone else) thought I was nuts.

Feels good deep inside to write, though this post is just a baby post relearning how to walk.

Once again, I'm back

I seem to be awake more; the hours between 2 and 5 a.m. spent with my eyes wide open, reluctant to lose the luscious warmth of my quilt, yet brain on overdrive.
Oh, well. I used to punch the pillows and toss and turn, and now I take the time to dream, dream big and well, to touch the soft contours of my body in thankfulness, and not worry about it.
I am wearing boots, leather that smells good boots, and a red sweater. I am on Oprah, and even in my daydream I blush, because I am being vain. She interviews me about my latest book, and gushes over my metaphors and deep mysticism.
I blush again, knowing that is all crap and all I want to do is tell stories, and make enough money to travel about like a Celtic fairy and tell more stories.
I laugh at myself, liking the boots and red sweater, and fall back asleep, right on cue, at 5 a.m.

The world is not linear; it is circular, always breathing in and out, a rhythmn, a pulsing, wheither we choose to realise it or not.

This week marks the return of autumn here on Delmarva, and it was quick, harsh, and in the breadth of a week.
I guess I was in denial. I love my beach day. I put on my trusty black bathing suit and filled my beach bag with oils and books, and when I settled in my chair this Sunday, it took me an hour to register that the air was chill and I needed a sweatshirt.

I picked up my things and felt sorrow pass through me like the waves on the beach. Time to say goodbye, to summer.
Now I will look forward to sweaters, boots, and autumn leaves.

It's 3 weeks today since David died. Last Saturday,in the hours between his wake and a final gathering of close friends, I found out my tiny nephew Hunter, only a month old, died of SIDS.
If I am a mermaid, I am swimming in a sea of sorrow. David was, in his words, "part of my soul fabric". If it wasn't true, I would have thought it to be a great pick-up line.
For anyone that reads this and wonders if life exists after death, I will tell you the last gift that David gave me. He knew well the trauma of my father's passing when I was a little girl. He knew he reminded me of him. He died just after 1 am, 3 weeks ago, and I woke that morning with the following dream..
I walked into the hospital, and there was no name on his door. I was filled with dread, and walked back to the nursing station and said, "I'm here to see David Adams." The woman behind the computer was black, with high cheekbones and a full face. She typed for a moment, then wordlessly shook her head with eyes filled with compassion. "It's ok," I said, "I know he's gone."
The next morning I went to see David before work. I told the volunteer downstairs "Room 227". I went upstairs, past the nurses station, and walked to his door. There was no name on it, and I walked to the nurses station...
My dream unfolded in front of me.
I know it was David who sent me the dream, just to prepare me. I know he is still part of my soul fabric. I cannot talk to him in my world anymore, but he still exists.
I wish I could give comfort to my niece, and my sister, about Hunter. I didn't see his sweet little face, or smell his baby scent. I don't know why he left the earth. Tomorrow is his funeral, and I am haunted by the image of a pristine white coffin, so infinitely small, sealed with a blue ribbon.
I will go to Assateague, where the Indians believed souls ascended to Heaven, and throw white roses into the waves.
Rest well, David & Hunter.