Petal Shower

If petals were blessings I'd be in heaven. The cherry blossom across from us is shedding its petals and as I passed under it this morning I was caught in the face with a sweet soft drift of wet kisses.

Today I need kisses galore because I am hurting. My head hurts from not sleeping well, again. My heart hurts as I continue to grieve a few people places and things in my life that are no longer here. My health is playing hide and seek and I'm not finding the hiding places easily. I'm tired and weepy and when the weather turns gray and misty, my innate Celtic melancholy seems to lead me into sad and lonely places.

So thank you dear cherry blossom for your shower of love when I need it most.

Joy - To Bring It, Sing It

Last Palm Sunday's service included the glorious soulful sounds of Dominion, a local gospel choir, singing a capella (meaning with no instrumental accompaniment, to you non chorus types)their joys and triumph over sorrows and about the importance of faith and living fully in the present moment.

For me, it was better than any sermon or morality play. I snapped up ten copies of their cd, recordings made by well meaning amateur techies during live shows so the quality of production wasn't up to studio standards and my sensitive ear had to be coaxed out of pouting about it. Nevertheless, I played that cd over and over in my car yesterday, as the rain lashed like a rod curtain across the freeways and metal car roofs, adding a nice percussive line. I started to belt out along with the singers and sure enough, little by little, my heart was leaping to a new beat and I felt a surge of gratitude for the beauty around me, for the hills of my new little home town, for being alive and this side of the petal-strewn spring rain-sodden ground.

To think that what we do or say has no effect on others is a great error. To experience joy through song in this simple way was remarkably exhilarating, freeing tangled parts of me in surprising ways. I felt a shocking surge of forgiveness and love that nothing else has been able to bring about so quickly. So now I know: when I need to bring on a sweet dose of joy, on purpose, like an aspirin for a headache, I'll just sing out loud to a gospel cd. Not sure how the Highway Patrol will view it, but I'll take my chances on getting a ticket for driving under the influence of joy.

Survivor Report

I gave thanks recently to the fish, mostly kippered herring, and buffalo who gave their lives that I might be relieved of my protein deficiency. It's strange to be chopping up steak and onions for the breakfast omelet pan at 9.30am, but I'll just have to get used to it. And, important for an ex wannabe vegetarian, recognizing that indeed some animals were harmed in the course of my quest for energy and vitality, an ugly and inconvenient truth.

My friend Chris, an avid hunter and outdoors type told me yesterday that should I ever find myself stranded in the wild, and lucky enough to find easy prey, I need to boil it first to get it soft, then roast it to get it crispy. Now there's advice you won't get from Julia Child.

It's beginning to sink in, one bite at a time, that life really can be the dog eat dog proposition we'd prefer it not to be. Just because we might live in a house that we think we own when really it belongs to the bank, or wear clothes that are supposed to simply protect us from the elements but have evolved into status symbols, doesn't mean we're all that civilized. We're one flood, fire or earthquake away from cave dweller mentality. Or as is the case for so many families, one paycheck away from homelessness.

So I think it behooves me to get mighty grateful mighty fast for simple facts, such as I don't actually have to slaughter my food and that others are paid to do that, though it would be useful to know how, just in case. I would not survive on berries and roots for long in my present condition. I'm held together by pharmaceuticals, supplements, social security, alimony and the flesh of slain beasts. Loving friends and family are a bonus.
Today I am not complaining.

Fond of Fronds

The first palm trees I ever saw in real life were in the south of France as a teenager on a month's vacation with my boyfriend. That trip also introduced me to beer and salami at breakfast, good jeans, pushup bras and food poisoning from beachfront icecream. My life would never be the same.

Next palms were in Algeria, still in the Mediterranean basin with sun and sky unlike anything my London born and raised fair skin had ever known. Sun burn and beachfront trots repeated.

The most memorable were the date palms in an Algerian family compound in Guardaia, an oasis town in the Sahara where we spent an overnight visit. A strict Muslim town where the men did all the shopping, the women hid behind doors, walls and veils, being of the M'zabite sect and forbidden to show themselves outside the family. As with strict Muslims, smoking and drinking were allowed only for foreigners like us at the hotel where our room was so thick with flies we were forced to buy bug spray from the local store, which is where we met our date palm host. In exchange for some French chat, a few smokes and a glass of wine (took him back to his days in Paris, he told us) he invited us to his home. We sat on rugs on the sandy ground of his garden, shaded with palms and grape vines, sipping tiny cups of sweet mint tea, nibbling dates and trying to be demure and polite, despite our infidel uncovered hair, arms and legs. I didn't speak French well enough to participate and allowed my sister-in-law to do the honors while I absorbed that incredible light through the palm fronds.

Years later, in Singapore, palms again, tattered beach front ones and elegantly tended ones in front of the Raffles Hotel. Later in LA, palms, tall skinny anorexic model types, like so many of the Hollywood crowd. Now, again, lining the avenue to our church where this Sunday we will hand out palm fronds to the faithful and remember Jesus' triumphant entry to Jerusalem, today a troubled and divided city still.


There's something mysterious about palms that alters my psyche in a way that makes my breath more relaxed. I find myself gazing and smiling at them as if they are old friends. It makes no sense that a Londoner would respond to such spiny charms unless I have a built-in sense memory from another lifetime. But I won't trot down that beach today.

May your entry into the next moment be triumphant and may adoring crowds lay palms before your donkey's hooves to make your way easier today.

Birds n Bees

Outside our front door, for about 2 weeks in the spring, we are treated to one of God's eternal miracles: a flowering cherry blossom of gossamer pink petals hot pink at their center. Standing beneath it, looking straight up, I'm always surprised to see that it's far from a peaceful arbor. Bees hovering like mini helicopters one minute and darting like pinballs the next emit a low drone of activity that plays bass to the soprano trills of a pair of robins in the next tree, flirting and fighting like tipsy lovers.

Spring has come, ready or not.

Today I will tilt my head back under the blossom once again, and speak aloud my joy.

Brain Powered or Pooped?

My brain seems to be addicted to adrenaline. I try to meditate and it falls asleep. I try to sleep and it starts to list all the undone things of past present and future.
What the hell's going on with this organ? Is it an organ failure or is it a screwed up mind or a bit of both?

I hate to bother you with this, but I've suffered insomnia since my life flew apart six years ago. It made sense to me that I'd be a little worried when chaos was the order of the day, but you'd think all that would be done with by now. Apparently not and it's a nuisance. I'm trying to do something about it without the aid of sleeping pills and have consulted a nutritionist, who ordered a panel of blood tests. Seems I am deficient in some areas that could affect the brain and my general energy levels, so I am embarking on a regime of vitamins and supplements because I have no other choice. It will take time, which doesn't please me to know because in some ways I'm still three years old and stamp my foot when I have to wait for anything. I've considered hypnosis to regress back to the age of three to investigate and resolve what you might call the real underlying issues. The biggest thing that happened at that age was the arrival of my sister, who screamed for the first two or three years of her life and snored loudly for the rest of the time. She was not a peaceful room mate.

I've been informed that my level of vigilance is abnormally high and is no doubt the real culprit, sending messages to my various organs to get ready to flee or fight. This takes a toll on my nervous system and according to the nutritionist my adrenal glands are fizzled out. That sounds grim. So I supposed I will have to correct this with some creative visualizations. I like the image of a cat, but I think I shall have to change that to something else because cats nap quickly but are nocturnal and that's part of my problem. Perhaps we're not really meant to have a full eight hours, though everyone says we do, that we are unlike other creatures in this regard.

Maybe I should just retire when the light outside goes dark and get up when it gets light and not bother about what happens inbetween. In case you haven't nodded off from boredom, I may keep you posted.

Scared Sacred

In a light, dry-mouthed doze this morning, the thought occurred to me that my life is a sacred experience and a privilege. I have taken it for granted, ignored its maintenance and am due for a good old spring cleaning.

For the past few days I've had to list my food and drink intake for an appointment with a nutritionist. Already I can see that I'm seriously low on water intake. Partly due to preference for tea or juice and partly due to a distaste for plain old water going back to my childhood. I can hardly remember drinking anything except milk in school and later tea and coffee, then wine and you can take it on from there. But plain old water is a newcomer to the desert that is my body, and hasn't been given a warm reception.

As if God wanted to drill home the message even harder, this morning I also got an email comparing coke and water listing the pros and cons of both and though I don't really believe that a steak will disappear in two days if you soak it in coke, it got my attention. It's late morning and all I've taken in since I woke up around 9am is a few gulps of decaf black tea. My brain and other major organs are no doubt fed up with me. Not fed at all, in fact.

So if my body is sacred what about the space I live in, the clothes and condition of my affairs. Are they not equally sacred? I have a friend who has kindly agreed to phone me with reminders that I am the one who can create order and beauty in the sacred space that is my home. Lovely as that sounds, I just want somebody else to do it please. So turns out that not only am I extremely ungrateful for just being alive, I am lazy to boot. I'd rather not get myself up the ladder hoisting boxes of stuff into the attic, but I don't mind watching you do it, especially if you follow my specific instructions.

So this is a morning of some reflection on how I've been a bit of a spoiled brat and it's time to grow up. Spring is the time for growth, so that's on cue I guess.

The Wearin' O' the Green

I remember the line in rental ads in London in the '50's and '60's, "No Coloured, No Irish" I don't honestly remember feeling any sense of social outrage, but I also knew it made things difficult for some people to find a place to live and I wondered where else they would end up? My mother explained the Irish reputation for being drunks, but she never elaborated on No Coloured.

It came out years later that my mother's family was half Irish and my Dad's was Scots Irish (meaning Scots who had emigrated to Ireland hundreds of years ago and were Protestant, and considered loyal to the English, whether Cromwell or royalty, I think, though I'm no historian, check my facts). So the wild side of my mother's family, the Irish side, the Clarks, who loved drinking, singing and dancing - ok, partying - were also the source of lively stories. I remember the names more than the stories: Paddy Clark, Nellie Flanagan, Mary Fleming Clark. All Catholics, fond of story telling, drinking and who knows what they did to earn a living?

In England, the term Irish Navvy referred to the great numbers of Irish manual laborers, digging up the streets, working on building sites, and goes back to the days when the canal system in England was used to transport goods inland via barges pulled by horses, or Irish "navigators". I remember thinking of these men as dangerous when drunk and strong and silent when sober. On St. Patrick's Day they wore sprigs of fresh shamrocks on their lapels and got drunk.

One of my mother's uncles was a member of the Irish Republican Army and was shot and killed by the Scottish police. When she was a child, she used to sing along to the old Irish loyalist (rebel) song "The Wearing of the Green" lamenting the fact that the English were hanging men and women for wearing the color green. Being a child she thought that meant wearing out lawns by walking on them, inspired by signs in the parks "keep off the grass". A timid child to begin with, no doubt this didn't help her budding opposition to authority, especially that of the English.

We passed as a Scottish family living in London. The Irish was never mentioned outside the house. In her seventies, my mother decided to tell me that I was half Irish, and chuckled a little malevolently I thought. I knew the family names were Irish but had never identified with The Irish and certainly never supported the terrorism of the IRA setting off bombs at Christmas time in London department stores and underground subways or the religious sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

It was enough to be challenged as a child about which religion I followed, when I visited a playground in Glasgow. I hadn't understood the word itself, religion. I replied that we were vegetarian (true) and ended up playing on the swings alone because nobody knew how to categorize me.

This separation among human beings starts early, in the home, in the mind, down through the ages. And it's time to stop. Since I know he wouldn't mind, I declare myself, along with that greatest of men, Mahatma Gandhi, to be a Christian (all types), a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist and anything else. I am One with everyone, not special, separate, better, different. I wear all colors on any day of the year, and the blood in my veins is shared via a common ancestor in Africa with all humanity. Today I am free and I celebrate.

Lunch on the Fly

When my mother was a young child during the 1920's in Glasgow, it was the custom to shout up from the street where the kids were sent to play, whenever they needed something from their mothers, instead of running up flights of stairs. Snacks and keys would be tossed out the window to the kids below and nobody bothered about the noise bothering neighbors because everyone did it. My parents would have done the same thing for me in London except our neighbors wouldn't have tolerated the custom of street yelling, so common in the poorer neighborhoods of Glasgow.

The most common snack was bread and jam. They called it a piece and jeelly which would be wrapped in newspaper and tossed down. My mother told me it was also what she took to school for lunch and she sat on hers during class to warm it up for the break which was usually outside in the typical cold of Scotland.
Despite a diet of bread, jam, soup bones and sausages, she somehow grew to five and a half feet, much taller than her friends, and was smart. I marvel at how her bones and brains were built on such poor foods and how she was spared the rickets and other maladies of similarly undernourished youngsters at that time. My father grew to just under six feet, very smart too, and managed to survive on a similar diet though recalls that on Sundays they sometimes had bacon and eggs. During the week, he and his brother would gang up with other boys to run past the greengrocer stands and grab whatever they could, then share it later with their friends. My uncle Jack, even later in his life was nicknamed Anaka's midden, because he ate anything and everything my grandmother saved in her leftovers pot each week. Anaker's was a famous sausage factory and a midden was the name for a dumpster. I can barely imagine what was considered unfit for a sausage and dumped out. Uncle Jack's height was stunted if his humor and brains were not, however.

It makes me wonder why we are so fussy about what we eat when we have evidence of the most amazing development of some of us, despite the crap we eat as kids. Frank McCourt's childhood wasn't exactly brimming with nutritious meals, as with Kirk Douglas and yet they were smart and grew up in tact, enjoying fame and fortune to boot.

I'm about to have a nutritional workup and I think I'm gong to resent every second of it plus the expense. Can't wait to see what she has to say about a piece and jeelly for lunch and let her know my mother lived to her mid 80s and probably longer if she hadn't smoked. As Stanley Kowalski put it: Hah!! I say Hah!!

Down to the Bones

Just got off the phone to my 81 year old Auntie Eileen, her razor wit in tact, wishing her a day late Happy Mothering Sunday. Her responses are always the same when I ask what she did for any occasion, special or otherwise, "There's just the two of us, pet, your uncle Geoff and I. We don't bother with anything much, it's just us." After this, I could just let everything go, send hugs and kisses and hang up, but instead I hang on. I hang on because I know she's just getting warmed up and there'll be some nuggets of family lore around the corner as long as the battery on the phone lasts.

Auntie Eileen and uncle Geoff were pub landlords years ago at the Wheatsheaf in the remote countryside of Kent where she was the one woman barmaid-cum-cabaret hostess, never short of a funny story or saucy quip. Her son, my cousin Steve inherited her gift for words and became a newspaper reporter who's probably heard all the old stories before, but I haven't and now my dear old Mum is gone, Auntie Eileen is the family lore keeper, whether she likes it or not. I'm hungry for it and I think she relishes any excuse to natter, make someone laugh, have a connection. We all need that. That's why I call.

She confesses she's losing patience with poor old uncle Geoff who has early stage Alzheimers at age 84. He forgets things like where the dishes go and she's afraid to take trips in the car, so they don't bother driving anywhere nowadays. Luckily they can walk to the shops easily and she sends him out for things like bread and milk and he comes back with them instead of shoe polish, and doesn't end up in the neighbor's house by mistake, all good signs. They both still smoke and I can hear the failing breath power, as if she's speaking through a veil and I know it's a waste of time to mention the benefits of quitting to someone her age. Her energy is waning, she tells me: "I'm awful tired of housework. I don't do the dusting as often as I used to. Don't have any kids' sticky fingers to worry about." This may be code for letting things go. I tell her about my own domestic lapses and we laugh about going without underwear if we're behind with laundry and how we like the freedom of skirts instead of pants. She's petite in build and says wearing trousers made her feel she walked funny, "Like Charlie Chaplin. Next thing you know I'd a been acting just like him and a'".

I bring her up to date and describe some of the highlights at my father's memorial service a couple of weeks ago. She said she's sure he would have enjoyed himself if he'd been there and wondered, too, if his widow might have been feeling a bit unwell that day, serve her right... I tell her about all the wonderful music and dancing we enjoyed, with bagpipers and Benny Goodman recordings. She called it a reverse wake.

She asks if my kids are musical and tells me her mother, (my Grannie Mac)was famous for yodeling though she herself had never heard her, so we guessed Grannie must have scaled the vocal alps for friends at the pub, though people didn't used to sing in the pubs in those days she tells me. So either Grannie was so oiled that she didn't care (most likely) or sang in other people's parlors (wakes and yodeling sounds unlikely). Grannie Mac kept alive the old tradition of making your own entertainment at home and said there was no excuse for not having a musical instrument because no matter how poor you were, you always had the poker and the fireplace grate to riff on. She tells me how they used rib bones for making soup and afterwards Uncle Johnny would play the cleaned off bones like clappers, the way others sometimes played the spoons. My son might like to know the rhythmic family history since both my father and he played drums in bands. Proving yet again that genetics account for more than you care to imagine.

By the time we were nearing the end of the call, as my low battery signal was beeping, she was livelier and had a lilt in her voice that hadn't been there at the start. My inner nervous feline was purring as if something in my bones had righted itself. She's not a religious person, avoided and shunned the old faith of her ancestors for most of her life, so I was touched when she said God bless you. I'm thinking I need to call her more often.

Mothering Sunday

In England and other countries tied to the ancient Christian calendar, the fourth Sunday in Lent is traditionally called Mothering Sunday. It is not the same as Mother's Day as held in the USA in May, created perhaps by the Hallmark company.

As in many countries throughout the world, in Olde Englande, children were often presented to wealthy households as domestic slaves when their poor parents were unable to provide for them. I use the term slave because I don't believe the children went willingly into servitude, nor were they compensated apart from basic room and board. They were, however, allowed to return to visit their mothers, once a year, as an act of Christian charity and during the spring season, often picked wildflowers to present their mothers. So the custom has expanded and evolved in different ways over the course of centuries to the point that it's becoming commercialized and a day of suffering for some instead of an honoring of one's mother.

The suffering has come up for me when I think of the misdeeds I held against my poor old Mum, whom I loved dearly, and resented bitterly at times. I was inclined to complacency around my attitude, since so many others also had difficulties in dealing with her. She no doubt suffered from a form of personality disorder that today would be alleviated with therapy and antidepressants perhaps. However, once I became a mother myself, the entire picture of my own mother changed. Nothing like labor pains to break one down to levels of understanding with other mothers, related or not. Nothing like a fight with a belligerent teenager or a squawking wriggling toddler in the grocery store to impel one to the phone and unleash a torrent of apology to Mommy Dearest.

Mothering Sunday was a struggle at times, as I didn't feel like buying flowers for the old biddy, as I then thought of her. This year as in the past 4, I miss her smoky voice and rolling Glaswegian burr and wish I could have a cup of tea and give her some freesias and candy. She deserved those, at least. Thank you my darling Mother. May you be resting in peace, God knows you earned it.

New Neighbors

Today there's an open house at the unit across from ours. Lots of loud female laughter, cell phone conversations that, as usual, sound as if the caller is trying to connect with the other person without the aid of a phone, in other words by the old fashioned method of SHOUTING to reach across the distance. It makes me think about who the new residents might be and if they will have bought or rented the unit and what difference that might make to their level of activity and noise.

We've not missed the previous resident's noisy motorcycle revving and outings always perfectly timed for our weekend afternoon naps, nor his surly attitude, walking past without greeting or eye contact. When I saw he was remodeling I joked that after he'd fixed it up he'd like it so much he'd never want to move and he assured me that wouldn't be so, giving a hard little laugh. He was in his fifties, had four cars, including a red Corvette, which, according to my son is a sure advertisement for "limp dick". He also had another house where he sometimes parked his cars. The economy must be pressing down on him if he's selling the condo before the house and cars, the rumor being that condo sales are moving better than single family homes. As a renter myself, I'm not particularly sympathetic to luxury problems like which piece of property to sell off first. As a renter, I'm aware that my landlord could put my home on the market at any time. So, bottom line, nothing is all that secure, and as my wise son reminds me often, ownership of property is an illusion anyway. Still I must say I liked that illusion when I had it, and enjoyed the option to plant and grow a few things and make changes if I wanted to.I miss that much and the view and wild animals who visited the backyard at the old house, the herd of stags resting under the old oak.

I think about what was important to me when I was last looking at places to rent three years ago. Location, landscaping, privacy and noise level were very important. Got suckered on the last item, however, as the landlords deliberately lied about the crazy screecher mom with a mentally ill child in the adjacent unit. Her rants are also synched to our weekend naps. But I am used to them now and honestly my heart goes out to both the mother and the child. Once when she was ranting on her deck and the child was hiding from her in the bushes, I called up to her clearly but softly, telling her that she needed to stop being so loud because she was scaring her child and she quieted down immediately. She was quiet for a long time after that too, so something must have penetrated. She knows that I will speak up, and that's important to both of us. I resolved this year to blow whistles when necessary and I have kept my word.

Lifestyle and noise levels go together so it seems and part of me longs to be out in the country, ostensibly "away from it all" yet when I was relegated to a converted barn-cum-cottage for a couple of years, the stink from the dairy farm and the whizzing droves of cyclists along our little formerly quiet lane turned me off. But the idea is creeping in again. I wonder what fantasy is developing, or is intruding, about the peace of mind that absence of noise will achieve. Meditation teachers will be holding their splitting sides by now at the notion that absence of people guarantees peace of mind.

The realtor is trooping another set of clients through the unit as I write, this time a man's voice is included. Part of me hopes the new people will be a young couple as I'm at the age where I really enjoy the outlook and energy of those in their twenties and thirties; it's as if I'm a youth vampire. Maybe that's it. My encroaching years may be sending out signals that warn me of how I'll feel an urge to feed off the energy of others when my own is waning. Well, I say poo to that! May we be, instead, a resource to the young, for those who want it at least. Come and get it kiddos, wisdom(my own definition of course)and funny (to me at least) old stories await. Or is that just the misguided bravado of the elderly speaking?

So now the realtor is talking about someone being sent to the local drying-out place instead of some other rehab and now I'm thinking, great, we could get drunks as new neighbors, drunks who fight and are then filled with noisy sniveling remorse. Well, poo on that idea, too. I'm the whistle blower, right? I'll know what to do. And maybe, if we're lucky, the unit will be empty for a while and we'll just enjoy some absence of gate latches banging, engines, late night electric guitar solos fueled by summer beer. That'd be nice for us, if not great for the economy. Maybe we can split the difference here and accept what and who is to come.

Prospects

Prospects, and having them or not, has been a topic of concern lately. It used to be the old fashioned term applied to the future state of wealth and security that a man might provide for his family. And prospectors were the old geezers who scrabbled for ore in the Wild West. Students looking for colleges would ask to receive a prospectus.


Today I came up with Prospects as the acronym to describe the support group for parents of special needs adults that I have helped to organize recently. It seems fitting because sometimes I think the prospects for my daughter are grim, especially when I wonder, in my arrogance, how she will manage without me when I'm gone (well okay, dead, actually). I think, too, that some of the other families I know with a loved one who doesn't fit into whatever "normal" society is, worry about the same thing.

Our group has been meeting on and off for about six months now, a half dozen families so far, in a church's classroom, for privacy that Starbucks can't provide and to be away from our own homes and the loved one whose prospects concern us. I'm one of the most fortunate because, for now at least, my daughter has a wonderful team of young women who support her, escort her, teach her, talk to her, soothe her, and do things I could never do as well as they do. I am trying to fade out of the loop of her care, though not the loop of loved ones, and it's bloody hard to do. Claw marks all over the place, not pretty.

So far, two of the other families have been encouraged to bring about some changes in their loved ones' lives by expanding their social contacts in different ways because of networking in this wonderful intimate parent group. It's a beautiful thing and if that's all we accomplish, it's enough. Though there's more to come. Our prospects are looking up. An article to be published very soon is going to have our name listed in the resources section and things will change.

So today I'm wondering about my own prospects and what a 66 year old woman could do to make a bigger splash in the pool of her life. Not being much of a swimmer, I've stayed close to the steps at the shallow end. I'm thinking though it's time to leap onto a kickboard and have a go in the deep end. Cheer for me please, will you?

The Heart Locker

What is it that locks up the heart? Is it all the hurt?

Forgive me for riding the coat tail of the Oscar sweeping movie title Hurt Locker which set me wondering about the effects of all the emotional scar tissue we accumulate over a life time. It makes sense that it might naturally create a contracting effect, or a reduction in capacity, or even thwart the desire to expand, to ever open again. Logic tells us if your guests trash the house, you're more likely to not have them over again. At least not the same ones. Problem with that is that sooner or later, the heart gets lonely for company and you get the courage up to invite someone over again. But next time your heart may be a little more vigilant and start watching the guest closely for signs of imminent trash tossing. Maybe your heart's healthier than mine but my heart hasn't always read the signals correctly and I've let some guests linger way past the proverbial 3 days smelly fish limit, or been offended when others left before the 3 days were up. No pleasing my heart some days.

So the question remains: is the problem within the heart itself or the guests? Or the way the heart is managed? And just who is the management company anyway? And do they hold extra copies of keys and change the locks between guests?

My friend, a wise woman in her nineties, tells me the heart has its own brain. Another person told me recently about the magnetic field of the heart being so much greater than that of the brain. While some of us can't tell our arse from our elbow, perhaps others of us just can't keep the brain/heart thing in decent order. I'd like to get it straight once and for all, but I'm afraid it just isn't a matter of getting things straight, more a matter of watching what's going on, a circuitous matter.
So here's what I'm thinking, finally. My heart has actually grown much bigger, not smaller, because the heart is the storage locker of hurts and joys. Even if your albums and letters perish, the spirit tucks away all the stories and people, without a padlock. If my heart has a door, it's the revolving kind and the hinges are oiled with tears and laughter and there's no place for a keyhole.

Today, I am noticing how much fuller my heart is feeling after a few moments with my loved ones, some hand holding, back and shoulder rubs, a smoothed over tiff, a prayer and some silence together. As we think about a walk we see the rain and sun are playing tag so we decide to wait a while. The photo display from my dad's memorial service is still in a corner by the front door next to the umbrellas. I haven't had the heart to put it away yet. The weather report from my heart seems to be that my smiles and tears are also playing tag, so I'm looking for my brolly to take on a stroll outside and we'll take what comes. No locks necessary.

Retreating

I'm about to leave town for a long weekend with a group of people I am supposed to love, no matter what. I'm afraid I won't love them, no matter what. And when, not if, this occurs will I hate myself?

I notice that I've been very critical and irritable lately, and put it down to lack of sleep, which has plagued me on and off, mostly on, these past 5 years. (Caring doctors have prescribed sleeping pills and antidepressants, whose instant side effects were more aggravating than insomnia, so we have all agreed to dispense with the drug solution.) My recent bereavement seems to me the most likely culprit in my reactivity to certain people places and things. Rather, the way I am coping with the bereavement. It has opened old wounds and I'm sensitive to the touch of others, mostly others' attitudes, sometimes their physical appearance. I'm being unfair.

Yesterday I attended three meetings of completely unrelated groups and found fault in every single one. So I am exposing myself and my thinking as the real villains in the plot of my life. The personal experiment this weekend will be simply to observe myself and be quiet, if I can remember. This might be more easily accomplished as I won't have to cook, clean, answer the phone, check emails, pay bills, make plans, do laundry. I just have to listen to what others are saying and show up with clothes on.

I think I can do that, but knowing me, if there's a way to complicate this weekend, my mind will sooner or later impose an interesting idea on my serene mental screen, and I will trot along after it, dachshund following a sausage scent failing to notice how the dog of my being resembles the sausage of my mind. This is based purely on past experience, which, granted, is often the most accurate predictor of future behavior, yet my hope is that this time is might be different and I will stay true and present to the blank screen without having to chase anything.

As my dear old papa used to say, light a candle for me.