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Trading out a life of convention for a life of creativity, autonomy, and curiosity. Visit our Blog Tag Cloud page for posts by related topic.
The Last Chapter
Beginnings always have endings. This is not hidden from us. We understand that there is birth and there is death but the understanding does little to prepare us for the day our loved ones depart this place. The last chapter of my care-giving journey must now be written.
That is where my story began and now I will tell you how it all coalesced into its bittersweet end. Did we find peace? Did we accomplish what we set out to do? Read More →
A Momster Calls
She’s calling for me again… I’m halfway through my coffee – argh! Drink it down like a shot of courage and get on with it. Coffee! It’s the most exciting thing in my life right now. One shouldn’t consume a stimulant when struggling with a ticker that ticks too fast all the time but when there are no life lines within reach you do the best you can to get through the day. At least I’m not adding an extra kick to my brew… not yet.
And so, I’ve become a coffee addicted hermit that lives with a spaghetti squash I call Mom. I know that sounds disrespectful but even she knows it’s true. She has stopped asking me the tortured question, “Why can’t I think!? What’s wrong with me?”. She is incapable of doing even the simplest of tasks. Read More →
The Language of the Heart
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about time. How memories begin to fade out and disassemble as life becomes more transparent. The promises of youth, once so full of life and expectation, now lay on the ground like spent leaves waiting in a vain attempt for the swirling wind to reanimate them or for the rain to quench their thirst.
There was a time when I danced in the breeze and felt nourished by the light of the Sun. Growing slowly, almost imperceptibly, longing to be reabsorbed back into its radiance and the vibrant arms that once held me and showed me how deep my roots go.
I wrote this some weeks back in a moment of reflection… I suppose it means, just like the young leaf on the tree, the time comes when your season is at an end. Once you’ve fallen from the heights and safety of the branches that nurtured you, a lot of time is spent being whipped around by forces that are not necessarily within your control. We slowly wear ourselves out until that organic part of us returns to the earth – but our Spirit ascends back into the embrace of the Light that made our life possible. Finally, the life you lived makes sense and at this homecoming everything you thought you knew will be shaken to its core in a loving and edifying way. Read More →
Time and Space
“Do you know why the barber’s pole has blue and red stripes?”. That was the question he’d asked us that prompted what turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable conversation. A conversation between four strangers, on a random afternoon, at an empty park, surrounded by relics that are themselves surrounded by a city they wouldn’t recognize. It was their town once but no longer.
The historic park we decided to visit that day showcases buildings no longer inhabited by the living. The interiors now protect mannequins in period dress locked and frozen in time and space. The props within try to tell a story but it always puts me in a strange state of mind. An uncomfortable unease of what was, what is, and what is yet to come. I wonder what the old wooden bones of each structure remembers. All the items once cherished by someone now stand alone and useless. What did they witness and how many stories are locked inside the wood, the cloth, the metal items that still retain the energy of the hands that once used them. How many different shades of memory are layered in place? Will the ravages of neglect and time turn even these energetic footprints to dust?
Sorry reader, my mind does like to ponder such things and I will get back to this story but first we must start at the beginning. Read More →
Shadow Lands
It’s been a few weeks since my last post. I swore to myself that I was going to do a post a week but life does make it difficult. Writing is my only outlet. The only corner of my existence where the fresh air of creativity breathes a little life back into the care-giving journey I have chosen. There are so many things I desire but cannot have and as I watch those in my life keep moving about within their relative freedom it is difficult to resist entering the dark places in my mind.
What can one do to banish such emotional darts? Write! And so, here I sit, back in the writer’s chair, and I find myself amused with the creative outcome. The story below came about as a means to introduce a new resource page to the website. It is definitely a doorway into the dark room of my developing thoughts. Snapshots clipped to a string in no particular order slowly revealing their truths to impress upon the viewer to look deeper into the images that emerge. Some will seem incomprehensible – too out of focus or underdeveloped – not yet ready to see the light of day. Read More →
Meat, Lies, and Cardiogate
As a child my diet was atrocious. I was raised on the Standard American Diet. It was packaged, processed, “fast”, and loaded with sugar and vegetable oils in all their inglorious forms. I rarely ate any type of meat. My twenty-something year old body was already showing some serious signs of deficiency but because of the resiliency of youth I was able to keep going in a seemingly healthy state. After all, I was lean, had a sharp mind and lots of energy. Those surface indicators of health allowed me to keep kicking the can down the road until the road abruptly ended. There I was, standing on the edge of a chasm I could no longer cross.
I had to find a bridge to health or I would most certainly go down hill until I hit bottom. My father had many idiopathic ailments and became addicted to pain pills. It was difficult to watch him deteriorate over the years – his drug induced exile took him away from us long before he was gone – and I feared my quality of life would be much like his until I succumbed as he did. Read More →
Of Mice and Chicks
Pangur Bán. An odd name for an odd cat. He was an unplanned adoption. I entered the hardware supply store in search of plants, pots, and soil and left with a beautiful white cat with magical eyes of blue and green. “It’s Pangur Bán! It’s Pangur Bán!”. Those words tumbled from my mouth with an unabashed child-like enthusiasm. My husband could not say no. As far as I was concerned he was a special cat and he needed me… and I him.
Pangur Bán (White Pangur) is the name of a 9th century Irish Gaelic poem written by an unknown monk. He records a playful observation of his life in which he compares his own work with that of his cat’s work of hunting and the happiness each derives from their own pursuits. His pursuit of knowledge and Pangur’s of mice. Read More →
I’m Sorry
[Ding] I’m here.
I grab my purse, tell Mom I’ll be back in about an hour, and run out the door. It’s ridiculous how excited I get when I have an opportunity to leave the house – to go grocery shopping no less. Not having a car makes me 100% dependent on others. The lack of independence gnaws at me. My whole life is one consecutive holding pattern with far too many days of confinement.
I open the truck door and hop in with a big smile reminiscent of a dog going on a car ride. The radio is blasting and I’m a bit surprised by this. My sister is checking her phone when I shout “Hi!” and she gives me a pitiful look. Her ear is clogged and painful. She turns down the volume and explains her predicament. Sadly, for some, it seems illness arrives on a monthly schedule these days like some other thing that men fear and women endure. Read More →
Oatmeal for the Soul
I hear her feet softly shuffle towards my door. I close my eyes and pretend I am still asleep even though I’ve been awake in dreamy contemplation for the last hour. My thoughts often float to my husband as the cold of the morning chills me and I allow myself a moment of warm reflection on the life I put on hold before flipping my internal switch to autopilot.
She slowly opens the door and asks if I’m awake. “Can you help me get dressed?”. Some mornings, she decides to let me rest and waits in the living room in silence. I feel her anxious helplessness stick to me like a dense fog. Each morning, each day, it’s the same. I look at the icon of St. Anthony I have hanging on the wall facing my bed and will myself to start another day. Read More →
Third Incarnation
Hello? Is it me you’re looking for? So goes the once popular 1980s song that popped into my head just now. Lately, my mind plugs in song lyrics for every situation I find myself in like some sort of AI directing and guiding my feelings to the appropriate material. What’s the frequency, Kenneth?
Seriously, two years into being my mom’s caregiver and I’m losing my sense of self only to find it again in the late evening hours when the house is dark, quiet, and still. I stay up way too late relishing the tiny slice of time I have to relax without interruption.
