there is a wall in my kitchen which is the dog wall. pictures of the dogs who have visited, lived here, made me laugh for their mere presence and made me cry for the loss of them. there is a framed brown card on that same wall with the words, all knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained in the dog. these are kafka’s words (yes, kafka!) and though i love them for their simple message, i have looked at the words a thousand times and wondered, are they true?

which brings me to this week, and the past two before it. my lucy bean, the sweet dog i’ve been graced to raise and love, is at the end of her life. there is a mass in her abdomen that is large and bleeding sporadically, and at eleven and a half years, ricky and i have made the decision that surgery is not an option given her age, her arthritis and the fact that removing the tumor may buy her and us only a few months at best. no one can guarantee what the quality of her life in those months may be, and so the decision was not as tortured as it may have been. but it leaves us nearly at the end of a life cycle, lucy’s life cycle, and though a cycle completed is a beautiful thing, there is such earnestness and love and happiness in her still that the poignancy and anticipation and vast sadness of this time is almost unbearable.

up until a few weeks ago, lucy had slept on the end of my bed, but now she is too fragile to get on and off the bed on her own. before then, she had slept exclusively on the faded velvet chaise lounge that had become the dog spot regardless of how much i loved it; actually she slept on jaxson sleeping on the chaise. yep, all seventy pounds of her on top of jaxson, until she would slide off to sleep the rest of the night wedged between him and the couch back. maya came just weeks after jackie passed away, and i remember people asking us where lucy would go now that the baby was here. in the beginning rick and i would look at each other utterly confused, not knowing what the question meant, and why we were hearing it so much. over time we got it… the questions, that question, came always from a friend or acquaintance who had never had a dog, and try as we might, there was no sudden understanding or light in their eyes as we explained that lucy would be with us, where she had always been. on the couch, in the yard, in the back seat licking maya’s baby toes in her car seat, and on the bed asleep with the three of us as we got through the ups and down of newborn nights.

lucy sleeps now on a big, sassy doggy bed in the living room, and she has taken to it perfectly. me, not so much. i stretch out in the morning across my own big bed and there is no furry, warm lump to run in to and wedge my toes under. granted, not fighting for covers at 3am is a delicious relief, but i miss lucy being there more than i imagined. my bedroom is off the living room, so i still am privy to her rhythmic breathing, groans and mid-dream yelps, and now she has taken to a series of short, high-pitched barks to wake me up instead of the belly crawl she used to do, positioning herself right at my side so she could stare unblinkingly at me, two inches from my face, until the absolute creepiness of that stare woke me up.

just as i’ve had to adjust to lucy no longer sharing my bed, so have i adjusted to moving through the world in a singularly different way than ever before. my daughter is no longer a tiny girl. my parents are no longer the people taking care of me. my husband will soon no longer be my husband. casual acquaintances and passersby don’t hold the weight or import of friends and people that have been here, or close by over there, for dozens of years. history matters. heart matters. support and grace and dropping everything to be available matters. sizzle? only if deeply authentic, if the person who stirs can meet eye to eye with the goods and bads stretched out in front of them, and the courage to own both in each hand.

so the chapter is new. or the old chapter has taken an unexpected turn, at least for now, until it is really over. i am heartbroken and peaceful all at the same time, which is in keeping with much of my emotional barometer these days. the day i learned of lucy’s tumor was the day the paperwork for my divorce arrived from the attorney’s office. thud. two gorgeous chapters, filled with so much love and learning and spanning well more than a decade of years, coming to a close.

and now the future, the what-comes-next, is cracked wide open, pouring out sunshine and question marks and swoony excitement and butterflies of nervousness. here too though, are ribbons of joy and anticipation and the deep gratitude i feel, swirling all around me, my sweet house, my boxy old car, my gorgeous daughter, the trees, the stars, the sky. so i look up, and up and up, instead of looking down, and i see the beginning and the end and the cycle which contains both.

which leads me to ask, how do we begin things and end things, open and close the circles in our lives? almost a year ago i wrote about transparency and letting go of the people and things that somehow don’t fit or have a place in our lives. it seems so clinical – a surgical strike of who gets to stay and who doesn’t – but really i think it’s about truth, and authenticity, and the beauty of saying no, or this doesn’t work, or i am not happy here. growing older and realizing how brief and task-filled life can be, the selectivity that comes necessarily i suppose could be construed as harsh or haughty, but i see it as beautiful. a natural part of moving within our circle and knowing there is only so much and so many that can be there with us.

i stop for a moment, take pause, consider my words. i’ve turned on the heaters and wrapped a scarf around my neck. judes will be here in a few minutes from LAX and we are going to share a few minutes together and try a small glass of this crazy wine from holland that is a chocolate cabernet. i’m wondering if all of the above is true – i think it is, at the very least, it is my true. perhaps though i should consult with my therapist and get her opinion, for she’s been with me through thick and thin. pregnancy, post-partum, losing my marriage, becoming a patient parent, regaining a sense of center, learning to ask for help, giving help, remembering to sleep and eat and throw my legs over the top of the sofa with a good book even though the work is piled up.

so i visit her in her office, and lay down. i rub her silky ears and kiss her cheeks and notice how her eyelashes, along with the rest of her face now, are white. there is a swirl on her chest where the fur comes together – jaxson had the same thing and i used to tell him it was where his universe began and ended – and so i mention this to my lucy also. her paws smell like fresh dirt and grass, her breath is sweet and smells like peanut butter biscuits. she yawns and stretches and licks my right eye and ear for an uncomfortably long time, but i take it as affirmation – i must be doing something right – and we snuggle in a bit more. i tell her i love her and am so proud of her for all of her sweetness and the unbridled love which has always poured out of her and i let her know my life has been wonderful because of her. she has been a constant anchor and source of love. so i whisper ”thank you lucy, thank you with my whole heart. i hope you can stay a bit longer, but if you must go, i am here to wish you a beautiful journey.”

and then i tell her, he was right. that kafka was a smart guy, and he was absolutely right.

listen.

beauty.

vintage.

trio.

belief.

believer.

bean.

pals.

bookends.

joker.

sparkle.

boy love.

balance.

owen.

discovery.

joy.

sunny.

leggy.

love.

this deep dive of seeking and purging and wondering if indeed there is a story somewhere in here – one that may give to you or to me a breath of air or moment of “oh that! i know that!” or a little bright star like an asterisk that even just hints at recognition – is both nurturing and exhausting. is it strange to note that when i write and write and write and then go back to read what is there, my experience is that also? as though i am writing first and having my experience of it second, so much so that i am in moments caught off guard when i read my own words. and therein lies that incredible deliciousness; the weaving of words can be so intimate and intuitive that all awareness of other things disappears. you go in one side and then out the other not really sure what happened in the in-between. it’s like the id really drops away for a bit, and in such a surrender of self consciousness, what’s left in the best moments are simple sweet words and candor.

it is dark out early now and the house is so cold in the mornings especially in the bathroom where the ancient porcelain tile is. the fans have been packed in to the garage and the heaters pulled out. trader joes has printed their thanksgiving check-off list and maya’s christmas list has already reached four pages. and there is an ipad on there, an ipad for god’s sake! (this i think because she realized there was not an iphone in her future, not even close.) family will be arriving in a month’s time plus a bit more and my two favorite holidays sparkle right out on the horizon in front of me. and though memory and nuance and layers of mental snapshots have been fodder for recent blogs, i admit this time of year isn’t helping to dispel this journey in to what has been.

on my computer i have thousands of photographs of my daughter, separated in to files denoting years, and months within years. forgive me for exclaiming again how beautiful she is, has always been. for she is take-my-breath-away lovely this girl, and now she is 8.5 and her humor and particular brainy-ness and coltish legs describe her so much, even though her cake-batter smell is there in moments, and the lilt of her neck contains the same long line, and when the tears come hot and wounded, her face scrunches up as it did at two, and three, and four, those years of her being big and little all at once. in my mind and in my body especially i can remember her in my arms as a three month old; it was august and warm, and i danced on the porch of our first house with her, singing in to her ear and trying to get her to sleep despite the heat and discomfort. just months before i had walked the slow walk of eight months pregnant down our hallway to the front bedroom to lay down and nap.

it was april i believe and the windows were wide open. the front rooms were saturated with late afternoon light, and the gardenias planted in the brick boxes in the yard filled the front of our house with fragrance for months that year. we had a vintage shade that pulled down in front of the arched window like a projector screen, from top to bottom, and there was enough space at the bottom of the window to see the world move languidly by as i lay on my side trying to get settled around my big belly. by that point we had lost jaxson, but lucy bean was asleep at the foot of the bed and the two kitties were stretched out in their favorite spot in the sun. life was sweet and slow-moving in those weeks, and i remember with the oddest clarity giggling through her rib kicks as maya stretched and fought for room inside of me before both of us allowed for sleep at almost the same time.

and now the rib kicks come from the outside, as we stretch out on the very same bed we shared when my body housed us both. the pillow fights and friday night wrestling matches have resulted in more than a few shin bruises and kicks to the head, but they are worth every fleeting pain. for eventually one of us surrenders and we settle in to the twisted sheets and down comforter to read side by side, drink hot cocoa, and tell each other stories from the week which is winding down. at some point maya is mid-chapter and absent-mindedly reaches for me, wrapping her fingers around my wrist or balling them in to fists that sit perfectly in the palm of my hand. we turn off the light together or she gives in to sleep first and i sneak some time sinking deeper in to a book and in to the quiet. and always, always, asleep or awake, that little girl cheek of hers gets kissed and wishes of sweet sleep and perfect dreams are whispered in her ear.  i close my eyes to her even breath, overwhelmed with my love for this one amazing girl, while the faintest scent of vanilla cupcakes surrounds us both.

rest

balance

family

project

history

tulip houses

sisters

work

color

secret

soul

loss

energy

mantra

persistence

what drives memory? a landmark, a song, a smell, the yearning for a moment that came, lived, seared itself somewhere, and is now gone? memory is for me mostly the recollection of different places lived, for though certainly this side of chameleon, each city or town or continent i have lived in or on has by necessity or surrounding described who i was in that particular moment and place. less a function of age or maturity than the who, what, where of a time. and of course the subtler pieces of experiences that have lived and survive still: the way light can saturate the side of an old church or building, the smell of rain on city sidewalks, the bowls in that one little bakery that came filled with the perfect combination of coffee and hot milk, and how it was to wrap your hands around one of them. the rhythm of a place, its feel, the tone, its sense of itself. thunder showers in montreal came hard and sideways; thunder showers from inside the family farmhouse in iowa seemed to launch straight from above and the charge of them, what moved energetically and electrically through them, could fill your lungs.

but all of this is landscape, and still-life, and the flash of polaroids that record our lives. and for once, it is not past settings that gnaw at me and have me pulling up moments from long ago to look at and feel momentary longing for. instead it is the people within the settings, and if i could go back and kiss each and every one of you square on the lips, i would. though truthfully, some i would kiss longer than others.

i have a few friends who, for different reasons, are making amends in their lives. you know, going back to the people they hurt, or offended, or didn’t give enough to, and saying, i fucked up, and i am here to take responsibility. and me, over here in my life, well, you know the story. i work hard at love and gratitude, and i work especially hard to give a lot, as much as i can, in the ways i can. yet for all of my intentions of goodness and truth and the way i try to love with my whole heart, i am seeing there is movement i need to make. movement as acknowledgment, thank you, i noticed, i saw you. the need to address is stemming absolutely from this onslaught of remembrance; in each memory lifted, raised also is a desire to acknowledge what was, soaked in the who, what, where of those moments come and gone.

my father, in just the past year, is a different man than he has been before. his memory has shifted, his center of power diminished, and there is now a duality there that bounces between ego, clarity and humor (who he has always been), and the other side which has him confused, slowed down, un-anchored, un-remembering. it is age, the dulling of mental prowess, or maybe something bigger, and as much as i know it is simply that tough, unsavory piece of a life grown older, witnessing the shift from too much of a distance and in dozens of tiny moments has this hole in my heart helpless and ever-widening.

this is the man who has moved through my life with me, more than any other. given me countless opportunities and unsolicited advice and a flowing stream of love, more than any other. had my back, more than any other. and for the countless memories to draw from, the one that i always come back to is owen, and me, after he skipped a meeting to take me to the dentist. i was ten years old maybe, and he had on a suit and already then his hair was silver and he was handsome. we went to a restaurant after the appointment and ordered fresh peach pie, huge slabs of it, oozing chunks of fruit and that cinnamon sugar-y syrup it sits in. it was very anti-post-dental appointment, and our secret, right before dinner. he drank decaf and i had milk, and i remember glowing in that hour, just my dad and me, talking about life between bites of pie.

i want to eat pie with everyone. everyone that is, who has figured in somehow, somewhere, and so graciously. but there isn’t enough time, enough pie, enough reasons any more to carve out time with a handful of people who figured in so big, so importantly in different series of moments. some are still here, with me for the long haul, and if those people don’t know how deep my adoration of them runs, i have failed. and for the others, those who have separate, full lives that don’t intersect with mine but occasionally if at all, than i can only offer a few words – a sort of virtual pie eating date – to say thank you.

thank you to the women who show up in all their gorgeous depth once, and again, and then again. thank you to the handful of men who are here in enduring friendship. thank you for yellow cuffs and yellow daisies. thank you for traveling a continent-length to visit me with your heavy heart bared, your own walls at half-mast while you built me a real one so i would have a room of my own. thank you for rhinestones on my thirtieth, tree branches on my fortieth, and purple butterflies leading to my front door. thank you for showing up in my work day with a latte in hand, for the perfect cashmere sweater, for my feet in your lap before we even really knew each other. thank you for lust, for love, for longing. thank you for witnessing my vows though i didn’t witness yours. thank you for encouraging the stalking of postmen before the perfect gift arrives. thank you for wendy’s frosties before i could drive. thank you for protecting me while thousands of cappuccinos passed hands. thank you for a gray-brown belly and dog-paw love. thank you for the jokes i never thought i could laugh at, and a decade of breath on my neck.

finally, thank you for laughter moving like water over stones, for friday night book fests in bed and living room dance sessions and the pummel of kid-love. for calling my name when the monster seems huge, for eyes wide open in moments of joy, for bringing me water and blankets when you think it is me who needs to be parented. thank you for choosing me, in all your green-eyed complexity, to guide and love you.

this year is no different, and like a few of the past years, events at this time unfold with the strangest and most surprising twists, and i am knocked to my knees. except this year, unlike some of the past few, when knocked down, i tucked my chin, crossed my arms over my chest and folded in half, so the fall wouldn’t be so brutal and the righting of my self to standing would come easier than years past. this could be bad news. for i have learned to fall properly, having been stomach-punched and heart-swiped a couple of times. or it could be a beautiful piece of growing older and wiser and learning to roll – quite literally – with the punches when they come. in either case, i know only this: it has everything to do with stories. the ones i hear about, can’t help but notice, long for. mostly though, this is about the stories, the ones in my heart, that i write.

i have written a small handful of stories in these five years of singularity. i imagine the reason is to grab on to something – like i grab this month of soft winds and gray skies – in order to see a line like a path curling out in front of me that i can walk on. the line isn’t necessary – for i am surrounded by so much – beautiful friends, family, my health and maya’s health, a work life that is simple and mostly fits my immediate needs and brings me to other like-minded, like-hearted souls. strong coffee, strong legs and my strong beating heart. a sweet house with a studio in the back on a sweet street where my daughter can run with her hair and her laughter flying out in languid waves behind her.

all these things are here to support, but still, the stories exist. first in my heart where i feel them but can’t discern yet what they will be, what their inherent meaning is. then in my head where i analyze and roll them over and try to get an understanding of how they fit and how i can glean from them what i am supposed to. and finally, sometimes, they land here, from heart to head to a small piece of writing sent to a tiny audience in a vast field of words and pictures, definitions and explanations.

so what is the story, the one that keeps thematically showing up here in words and in my life? last week – against my loving-est heart and deepest intuition, i said goodbye to The One Who Absolutely Could Have Been Except That He Wasn’t, and the bungie-jump plunge of loss sent me swaying and then diving to that familiar place where the songs our hearts sing don’t line up with the world at large. days later i curled up on my couch with a glass of wine and the long-familiar and comforting voice of my dear sara, and sang her my sad song. sara listens with her whole heart – always - and asks the most intuitive questions; you know, the ones you don’t want to answer and fight against yet in the end you’ve answered them wholly and what you’ve happened upon is so telling and timely you can’t not look at the answer. yeah, those questions.

here’s what i saw: the two great loves of my life, the ones i would have thrown myself in front of a train for, showed up. i wasn’t looking for them. quite the contrary, i was purposefully not looking for anyone, and they were on my door step anyway, there to be next to me. i’ve always believed we crash in to the people we are supposed to know regardless of whether we want to, are looking to, need to. that is the rhythm of my universe, and looking back upon the people i’ve known and been shown, there is an almost mathematical precision to the part they played in my life. it may be that i didn’t ask for them or even want them, but in the end, what would i possibly do without them?

and in the years on my own, as a working, single parent trying to keep the wolf from the door and create a business for myself again, i started to feel the overwhelming bigness of  doing what i am doing. the loneliness of it, the questions that come in the early morning hours before the sun is up because there is only one person to answer them, and somehow i think i made a switch to manifesting rather than allowing. and in that switch, the one i didn’t even realize i was making, the organic nature of  intersecting where i am supposed to may have been lost in the weaving of stories.

stories that bring comfort, hope, desire. and yet… instead of allowing for synchronicity and connection and the butterflies that flutter through your whole body when the crashing introduction of love happens TO you (simply because it is supposed to), the stories mean the introduction happens BECAUSE of you, and the recipe that follows is built on expectations, scenarios,  projections, and maybe even a few gyrations. and so forms the question i must ask myself: how does the story write itself naturally, when there is a story already in its way?

my answer? i don’t know for certain. last week’s plunging sadness happened after connecting with someone i felt i opened with immediately. and in that opening, and the delicate beginnings of trust, i let myself sink in, because of who we were beginning to be, but also because of who we may have ended up being. and that is a story. it doesn’t mean my sadness is not here, it is. and it doesn’t mean i don’t miss him already, i do. but am i missing him solely, or am i missing the possibility of him – of a shared story, an us? my heart tells me it is both. and so i sit down, try to learn, separate fact from fiction, and flip the switch back to allowance. i breathe in and out, try to release the urge to manifest, and allow again for the right sort of crashing introduction. the one that shows up – simply because it is supposed to – and writes itself.

this year was different. my sissy was at long (and gloriously) last exiting her forties, and there needed to be something really special about the passage to her fifties. plans started not long after the first of the year and thank god, for i felt like i was planning my wedding again there were so many things to consider. for those of you who heard me say that more than once since about the middle of february, let me apologize for doing it again here.

for the truth is, making decisions and deciding details was lovely, and back-to-back parties for my one and only sister was an amazing gift to be able to give. the sweetest chef and her man traveled from far away to make loreen and a glorious handful of her closest friends a beautiful meal. myriam wove tissue in to oversized white roses hanging in the air, and the table which stretched forever and held us all in two teeth-straight rows across from each other was laid with the real and very fragrant thing. old silver and delicate glasses and pretty faces were lit with candlelight and an abundance of wine, and loreen in the midst of it all was simply beautiful. fifty, and beautiful.

two weeks later it was my turn. 46. forty six, hmm…what to do? after the weekend-long extravaganza for loreen, it felt perfect to be still and be quiet and keep my own festivities sweet and simple. an early morning coffee date and yoga and perfect thrift shopping and a nap and a tiny, dreamy gathering with my sissy lou and two friends for food and cocktails, and i felt sated. happy. loving. loved.

that warmth, the sated and loved warmth – for me it creates or allows us to witness beauty in ways that we don’t in our day to day. perhaps it is just the love of birthdays (my own in particular), and the joy that my friends are mine that i feel, but sinking in to the celebration of birth and existence, however small, is a singular moment amidst the chaos of a crazy life that takes me right back to being nine years old. i had a new schwinn with a banana seat, dinner at martinez’ mexican restaurant, and my mom’s spice cake with cream cheese frosting that was not to be beat. it is the cluster of such moments (felt now but also remembered), when the walls of our lives don’t push in and they don’t push out – they just surround us seamlessly, languidly, gracefully - that sweeps me in to that center space of what i can only see as not balance, or harmony, but beauty.

of course i don’t mean beauty in the physical sense, though it has its place and import too; i’d be lying if i said it didn’t. the beauty of youth, and innocence, and being on this side of all the important moments to come, what a glorious space to occupy. but there are other kinds of beauty which i am beginning to see and feel and understand and they are so much deeper and calming and tender-hearted at their core. the beauty of letting go, the beauty of your child’s opening moments of real independence, the beauty of friendships spanning ten, twenty, thirty years. the beauty of laugh lines, of a lifetime of thanksgiving dinners, of the first leaves on the branches of a century old tree. our crepe myrtle is covered in the tiniest leaves and buds in the youngest green of green (the one infused with all that delicious yellow), and maya and i marvel that just weeks ago its most sublime display was gray-brown twigs against an evening sky.

i am now officially closer to fifty than forty. and as the path continues to unravel in front if me, as if a golden carpet is unrolling just steps before my feet hit the ground, i look for beauty. and where i can’t find it, i create it. it is what i do, what i’ve always done, and i never even knew it, or understood it. someone asked me recently what i do for a living, and i answered, without thinking for even a moment, “i make things pretty”. saying it, hearing it, knowing the simple words came from me, it was this silly but epiphanous moment of “okay. okay, then. i think i just figured out who i am.” and it only took forty-six years.

there is much about our world that isn’t pretty. but this planet we live on, the one that existed so beautifully before our unyielding consumption of natural resources, wars that kill in the name of money, land and religion, and a blatant disregard for the finite balance of nature and the necessary delicacy of its coexistence with humanity, is a gorgeous place. and i have this girl, my daughter, the willowy one with the golden hair and narrow ankles and tiny sprinkle of freckles across her nose, that i have to explain things to, like where beauty begins and ends, and why.

so if march, the month of births celebrated – my sister’s, my friend’s, and my own – illuminates nothing more than what my job here is, to embellish the life of my daughter and the other lives i touch, with some sort of beauty, i accept. i like the job description, and hope to be rewarded generously for my work.

there is someone i know who has used the word transparency quite a lot in the times we have spoken, and based on the strange ebb and flow of our interactions, the word has stuck with me, mostly because it is so contrary to my experience of him. but i like the word, what it stands for, and i have been looking a lot in to my own heart to find my most transparent self. mind you, i am very reserved in some ways and quite private and can be surprisingly vain. all of this to say: transparency is not a place where i have wanted to live, or even pay a short visit, until recently.

this is me. last night, in my little house, at the end of a long day of taking care of my sick daughter. no makeup, no soft or forgiving  lighting, and with a blemish the size of the north star just to the west of my left eyebrow. i told ricky when he was leaving with our sweet and feverish girl yesterday to feel free to use it in guiding him home if he needed to. he liked that one. and i like to make him laugh still. in any case, this is me, stripped down, visually…transparent. at least i think so.

i am forty five years old and for all intents and purposes, a single mom. i’ll turn forty six in march, a month that will also mark the five year point of being separated from my husband. my husband who is an amazing father to my daughter, a dear friend, and a lost love. these losses happen, and though we must allow for them and learn from them, they are still steeped in the heartbreaking-est sort of sadness. the other side of that, gratefully, is my  appreciation for all that i learned with rick, how deeply i was loved by him, and how hard we have worked to create a safe and loving life for maya and for us, whatever the us that is us, is.

the last year of my life has brought incredible joy. i have a beautiful house to live in. i work with wonderful people. i have started to catch up on sleep at long last and feel my energy and my body coming back. my mind is filled with things i want to do and musings and imaginings and daydreams even, of what will come. my daughter still thinks i’m the cat’s meow. the sun shines. the plants grow. rain falls. my friends love me well, and i try to love them better. my sister cracks up with me daily and is there when i can’t stop crying. my parents are alive, and they love me as they did when i was five. and ten. and twenty. just as i love maya. with my greatest and most tender heart, the heart that continues to expand exponentially as the days and months of parenthood zoom by. who knew a heart could grow so big? certainly not me.

the last year has also brought men. an overflowing handful of them. they show up and introduce themselves and weave themselves in and around my life. they are there but not there. some of them are solid. are friends. are lovely to know and i am grateful for the…men-ness they hold. others are watery, they come and they leave and they come again or maybe they don’t. they desire, and express, and do their best. but they don’t fit. or their lives have no real way of overlapping with, or becoming a part of, mine. and in this fresh chapter of losing my opacity, at least in this moment, i am forced to see them, even long for them, and let them go.

that’s me over there, too. last year a very tall man with the most beautiful heart became my friend for a time until it was clear a friendship wasn’t really a workable thing for us. but he graced me with a week of birthday celebrations and the sweetest gestures and the loveliest gifts, and i felt like a quiet princess in the midst of it all. i miss him, and i miss our friendship very much. he may have no idea. but it is the truth, the one i would only say to my closest friends and to the world at large right here in blog-land. and this was me in my pretty party dress that i wore for a perfect birthday dinner, and the dinner was over, and i knew i wouldn’t get to see this friend any more. sadness. and lessons. ugh. those two things when they are hand-in-hand can be so tough.

i have let the men go. and the main man, the husband who is soon to be my wasband, well, i am preparing to let him go in the big way soon also. we’ve known for a while we will be jumping on the d-train, and with the five year mark approaching, it may just be time.

and if it is time, and the door closes on the us that was us (and isn’t the us that we are now, because truly, there is still joyfully an us!) what happens then? do the peter pans who have been flying around find another flight path? do i come crashing in to the person who will be mine, or will i find myself walking slowly on a different sort of road toward a different sort of person? i don’t know, and i wish i did, i so wish i did. for there is gardening to do, and food to make, and wine to drink, and couches to get wrapped up in each other on. and there are doctor’s appointments, and christmas dinners, and rainy sunday mornings, and school plays to attend. there will be crushing sadness and explosive happiness and all the in-betweens that will be, well, in between.

so goodbye flyboys. i will be here, with my feet on the ground, parenting, and painting, and cooking, and working, and watching my daughter become more of who she will be. i will wrap my arms around her as long as she allows, and wrap my arms around the people i love. and trust that as i look in to the faces of people whose paths i cross, there will be recognition in many of them. and love, in one. because this is who i am. and so is this. and this, too.