I live in the moment as often as I can remember to stay here.
I work in a response to the exigencies of shelter and sustenance
I talk the way I write and it confuses the natives.
I wish that I could turn back that clock and make now then. Then, keep then forever. I know that now is where the living is done, but then is when the dying was done and I wasn’t ready for that. I don’t think I will ever be really ready for that.
I enjoy a cold beer on a hot day, a cuddly baby on a cool evening, an unexpected hug, an even more unexpected kiss.
I look reasonably well preserved for 60.
I smell the Irish Spring that I keep in the shower. I cannot use it because it makes me itch but it is the last thing in the house that still smells like Lane.
I hide Walker’s shortbread under my dresser.
I pray continuously–for peace, and family, and friends, and understanding.
I walk around Miramar Lake with a Yorkshire Terrorist in tow. I can forget that I am in the middle of the city when I walk the lake.
I sing loud country songs in the car and I dance as I drive.
I can survive. If I am alive today, I can survive anything.
I watch for the coming of the new best friend, for the possibilities that I may miss with inattention. I watch.
I yearn for Lane in my bed, whole and well–for his quiet laugh and the special way the love flowed out of his eyes. I yearn to love and be loved that way again.
I daydream about how retirement will be…about whether I will afford my house or take in boarders. When I daydream I am not living now. I try to pull myself back. My daydreams are pretty ferocious.
I want world peace, personal peace, familial peace. As Morrigan says “I want a piece of quiet.”
I cry less often now. I think I used up all the tears this year. There are not so many things left to cry about.
I read anything in print..from spirituality to cereal boxes..license plates to menus.
I wonder what the meaning of my life really is.
I touch the baby’s sleeping lips to see her kiss the air.
I hurt my daughter once–or twice–or twenty times. My tongue was sharper then. I think I told her things about herself I knew to be untrue and I think she believed me.
I fear that some day the governor that has taken so long to install on my tongue will stop functioning and that I will speak again without thought or concern for what is kind, what is true, what is necessary.
I hope there is another love for me in this life and that Lane is somewhere for me in another life. I hope I won’t be alone.
I break eggs and dishes in anger.
I eat too many carbs.
I quit apologizing for being.
I bathe the dog like she was my baby.
I drink a very strong gin and tonic whenever I can find a friend to have one too. I won’t drink alone.
I save just about everything. It is a sickness. I wish I knew how to throw stuff out.
I hug like life itself depends on it. I think it does. I believe it does. There is a minimum daily hug requirement. Mine is not being met at present. It leaves me feeling invisible and marginalized. Hugs should start at the shoulder and touch all the way down to the knees and you should not let go until the tension releases and each hugger says, “ahhhh.” That is when you know you have been hugged.
I miss Lane and Aidan and Joyce and feeling whole. I miss security and feeling–actually feeling loved and whole. I miss making love on Sunday afternoons and Monday mornings. I miss having my back scrubbed nd kisses in the hardware aisles of CostCo. I miss shrimp showing up on the barbeque when he would NEVER eat a shrimp. I miss birthday presents and Christmas presents and the hope of a valentine.
I forgive Lane for dying; the universe for making life so tentative; Bob for not understanding the nature of me and not believing that there is no between the lines between the lines; myself for knowing how much it hurts and not sharing nearly enough of the pain.
I’ve learned that love survives death; love expands to include new people and ideas; love has no limits.
I have another long evening ahead of me. I expect the phone won’t ring. I expect that the handsome prince is somewhere else plying the handsome princely trade. I have an inordinate amount of love to contribute to the universe, to the grand girls, and to the next best friend in my life. I have little patience to wait for the time and place and stars to align.
I don’t have time to be coy and giddy. My life is flowing through the hourglass at an alarming rate. I want to hold the sand back until I find a reason to live.
I kiss so seldom any more, I thought I had forgotten how–and then–I was reminded that a kiss could start all kinds of wonderful tingly things and make you hope hopes and dream dreams and see possibilities in the impossible. I cannot wait to be really kissed again.
I wonder if it is really all a dream and when we awaken we will really be Bob Newheart and Suzanne Pleshette after a night of too much wine and too many questionable oysters.
