The Greatest Promise Anyone Has Ever Made to Me

From Jenn: “I promise, I will never leave you alone with my children.”

I don’t know if this is more for my benefit or theirs, but either way, I like this idea, and I will hold you to it, lady!

How I Love Being a Girl!

I can take an old skirt and an old sweater and pair them together with some sexy heels and give each piece a breath of new life and look fabulous. If pressed for time, I can apply only mascara or lipgloss and feel done up and sexy. I can strategically place vases and flowery things about my abode. I can leave my bed unmade and pretend it is mussed due to a frantic tumble with a handsome stranger with golden eyes. I can have piles of clothes on the floor and know which ones are clean. I can smile at men when I’m feel temptuous, women when I’m feeling generous, and babies when I’m hormonal. I can justify spending twenty dollars on groceries but $175 on a pair of shoes. I can spend an hour in a department store and leave empty-handed. I can twist my hair up and secure it with nothing but a pencil. I know that the only good tan is a fake tan. I can use a different perfume every day and use shampoo that smells like cinnamon rolls. I can eat spicy garlic chicken wings in a chiffon blouse. I allow myself a small moment of panic in front of the women’s room full-length mirror when I realize one can see through my white skirt to the pink underwear underneath, and I can artfully rectify that by tucking in my shirt to cover. I love Gone with the Wind just as much as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. I can spend one minute or one hour fixing my hair, depending on the occasion. I can do everything men can do, only better.

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them
They think I’m telling lies.
I say
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips
The stride of my steps
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman.
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please
And to a man
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me
A hive of honey bees.
I say
It’s the fire in my eyes
And the flash of my teeth
The swing of my waist
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman.
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can’t see.
I say
It’s in the arch of my back
The sun of my smile
The ride of my breasts
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman.
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.

Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say
It’s in the click of my heels
The bend of my hair
The palm of my hand
The need for my care.
‘Cause I’m a woman.
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.

Maya Angelou

Time Heals All Wounds

If time is a healer
Then all hearts that break
Are put back together again
Cause love heals the wound it makes

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day.  Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel.  None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch.  And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones.  And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

               -- Elizabeth Bishop

All The Things We Think We Know

“People get the idea from books that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on ‘being in love’ forever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they made a mistake and are entitled to a change – not realizing that , when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one. In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last. The thrill you first felt on seeing some delightful place to live dies away when you really go to live there. Does this mean it would be better not to live there? By no means! If you go through with it, the dying away will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest.” – C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity

I’ve been questioning lately the nature of a lot of things, but none so much as love.  Though it’s been a while since I’ve read Mere Christianity, I think Lewis is right; that real love is what’s left over after the starlight and moonbeams fade away.  That’s nothing new.  But what is the nature of those leftovers?  Is it complacency?  Is it friendship?  Is it mutual respect and compassion?  Is it nothing more passionate than mere companionship?  Or is it just different for everyone?

Sometimes I think maybe we skipped the whole starlight and moonbeams phase and just went straight to the leftovers.  We’re exceptionally honest with each other.  And comfort, a lot of comfort there.  I don’t know the sum of comfort and honesty.  Whatever it is, it’s a relief just to have stopped looking and not being so lonely all the time.  I think we both definitely need a break from lonely.

This is not to say that I’m progressing through the whole psychotically-clingy girl  process of pondering “where we’re going” or “what path we’re on.”  I’m not looking any farther ahead than this night, right now.  But just to have something to put my back up against, someone to care about, someone I can pick up the phone and call, is nice for a change.  Lonesome = bad.

Maybe that’s all it is, and possibly that’s all it will ever be.  But it’s enough for now, and for now is all we have.  No day but today.

Into the woods. . .

Into the woods,
It’s time to go,
I hate to leave,
I have to, though.
Into the woods-
It’s time, and so
I must begin my journey.

The way is clear,
The light is good,
I have no fear,
Nor no one should.
The woods are just trees,
The trees are just wood.

Into the woods
And down the dell,
The path is straight,
I know it well.
Into the woods,
And who can tell
What’s waiting on the journey?

Afraid Again

 ”There is nothing wrong with being afraid.  But there is nothing more wrong than allowing that to be your master.”

Deluge

Let it first be said that I love the rain.

I love the dancing sound of the drops as they slam here-and-there on the roof of my car or the walls of my apartment. I love the slap-tap-flop of thousands of drops falling onto thousands of leaves that then shake-swish-whirl outside my open windows. I love the metallic smell of rain on hot asphalt, the refreshing feel of a cool autumn rain on my face as I stand motionless, face turned to the sky in a stoic act of defiance, the hypnotic sight of sheets of water floating ghost-like across the street, and the taste of the air after a torrential downpour, still humid and sweet with the cleansing waters as I prance around barefoot and young in the puddles collected ankle-deep in the yard.

Ah, the simplistic beauty of the five senses and the endless power we have to experience the mundane.

Now let it be known that I love the sun, warm and buttery as it filters through the clouds and swims over my skin on a day at the park. I would be apt to say I love the sun slightly less than the rain, but I get to experience the rain much less, and that makes it a much more valuable commodity.

The other day, at the end of the three days of torrential downpour, just as I was about to start building the ark, I was driving to work (late) across the Sherman-Minton bridge. There in the sky, heavy with dark clouds that leant a misty musk to the air that sprayed my windshield with a quick-drying mist, was a break in the clouds. A relatively small “hole” in the massive ceiling of darkness that hung over New Albany. Through that hole, I saw a marked contrast of brilliant blue against the black clouds, and the closer I got, the more I could see the sun shining through it like a. . .well, like a beam of light. Right on the bridge.

I guess it struck me then, because a line popped into my head that I hadn’t thought of in a long time. Longfellow.

Behind the clouds is the sun still shining.

Ah, he’s one of my favorites. From “The Rainy Day.” I had read that poem and that line thousands of times, can recite it if need be, and I knew academically what he meant in that line. Understood the symbolism, knew the meaning, been there, done that, wrote the paper.

Yet during the time in my life when I most needed that line, that poem, I had forgotten it. How much would it have helped to remember that line during the cloudiest days of my life? Perhaps none at all. But maybe it would have saved me a scar or two.

Funny how the simplest things are the most impactful, and the ones we most often miss out on. That tiny, simple experience changed my whole perception of the rain that day. I stopped looking at it as a burden, a hurdle, an obstacle, and started looking at it from the eyes of my youth again. Cleansing. Baptismal.

The world (at least as I know it) washed clean. Starting all over. Healing. Soothing. Purified.

Until next time.

This is why I love me!!

Conversation I just had on Mojo:

lawmanrock: nice 2 meet u wut do u like 2 do 4 fun
Lesil: Correct people’s grammar and punctuation.

I laughed out loud at myself.