11.23.15 Maui Wowie

Feeling pretty cranky. Pretty hemmed in. Usually I don't mind fall, winter, rain, snow. Somehow being a bit less well, the combination is not a welcome thing. And yet, all things change. And then change again. So we can sink, or we can learn the backstroke. The sidestroke, resting as we move, graceful in our struggle, to keep moving along with the inevitable.
     Here is a house in Hawaii my oldest and his beloved rented for their wedding, a few years back. It was lovely, had a vast vast view of the ocean and the islands and the endlessness. I'm not one to lust after elegant homes.
     But get this- the whole front of the living room/kitchen was open all the time. Little lizards but few insects.
     You could wander out and slip into the pool or walk along the rock paths, past beautiful sculptures, and elegantly manicured gardens. It was quiet, with ocean breezes, and there was a small canopy over a table and chairs, to eat outside. All the time. As much as you wanted. So yeah, it was beautiful and glorious.
     We stayed in a rented house farther down, with the friends and our kids. There were lit paved paths curling alongside the ocean, that you could stroll along come night. Thick rich forests of steep nonsensical hills. An endless lava bed, and beaches carved out of lava beds.

     The whole end of Maui filled with incredible homes with falling values, as the volcanoes on that end of the island were awakening.
     The air warm and beautiful all the time.

     No, I wouldn't want to live there. But yes, what a dreamy dreamy place. A gift, of a time, all together.

11.23.15 I used to call him Baby Humungo.

 

I think 5 months, here. 

Turns out, yeah, he is really tall. 

27 today. 

What an amazing time it's been.

11.23.15 Living the old ways, all over again

     I was reading an email from my wonderful wise sister-in-law today, us contemplating how much changes. How easy it is to feel out of control, feel loss, as what we have enjoyed and valued, that then is no longer. It seems to me this is one of those trick questions, right? Where you can either spend your time miserable over and over again, as things change (which they always do and always will do), or filled with the sadness and then the pleasure of what we have been filled with , in our lives.

     Trick question; trick pony, it's not easy. Especially when things become older/more challenged/ more limited. Especially sooner than we had 'planned' or thought or imagined or hoped. But still, here we are, in our lives, empty lonesome days or days with a little spark right there on the precipice of our own awakening. To how it simply is like this, and always has been.

     The old ways, of resting in what is. Resting in your breath, right now. Resting in the sadness and the loss of the every coming and going and gone.

     Filled with the richness and the aloneness and the would have/could have/should have, and then settling down into the gift we are given today.

 

11.22.15 The thing is.....

This morning I found myself thinking about things.

How sometimes things work out, and often they don't.
How often things are just not fair.
How sometimes things are going kind of well
and then again often they are not.
How things can be really too much
and then just as easily incredibly fulfilling or funny.
How we may not choose when we come here, or when we leave,
but we can choose how we want to dance along with our consequence and circumstance.

 

11.22.15 How love looks and breathes and sings.

     Sometimes it's a pretty tough thing, coming to terms with what we can and cannot do.
     And somehow, despite spending a lifetime in the helping position , and really truly believing its fine to accept help.....
     Still, when that deal goes down. Of actually and really needing help. And you're not even old yet. Just... challenged.
     Why then, it's time to let it unfold inside of us, releasing that which we hid from ourselves .
     The reality. It's come to this. Then ditching the mellow-drama. And learning to deal.
     A dear friend came by after being very busy for months . Embraced me, looked around, took stock. Brought with her plastic for windows .washed the big living room window , taking care of all the spider mothers carefully clutching their precious egg sacks .
     I rallied to help put the storm windows in place , and then napped while she attacked the huge pile of dishes that, truly , proliferated on its own since the Monday Boston day.
     She politely oohed and aaahhhed at the new furnace, surreptitiously checked out the upstairs , and said she'd make sure 'we' could clear out the dining room in time to have all the kids in there for Christmas dinner.
     Then she was on her way, turning and calling goodbye and go rest and see you tomorrow , I know how sad she was gone so long, and digging in to help me the same way I had once helped her.

     How love looks and breathes and sings.

11.22.15 All over again

I went round the 

back of the house

and there it was

the sky, as confounding and endless as any ocean