"Are You Alright?" - Lucinda Williams

Good Lawd, must make coffee. Got Lucinda Williams playing and looking at one more class for the week, posting for the online classes and then a blessed day and half is MINE. Tired. I wanted to go out tonight with some friends but looks like it will be just Eileen and me grabbing a beer before rushing away from downtown Brooklyn or simply none of it will happen. That's what you get when you are a recluse year in, year out. For some reason I simply loathe coming home alone tonight. Probably means I have something powerful to write, and of course, I'm avoiding it. Damn mind. Hush up and get still!

I read or heard Sylvia Browne say that those who have gone on before us can send little signals to us such as dropping coins like pennies or in my case as of late, dimes. Sarah made this adorable oversized ladybug pottery piece that serves as a bank and I have been dropping pennies and dimes in there for about six months. It's filling up. I find these two types of coins at the strangest times. Yesterday I was standing inside one of NY's Mexican/Chinese eateries where you can get a bean taco for a buck and I thought a gentleman behind me had accidentally brushed the metal button of my jean jacket in the back. I turned around to see who was so close up on me and there was no one. No one, and not any one even moving. I looked down and there was a dime.

I tend to think it's Ed. He plays with Sarah all the time. Leila dreams of him and her renditions are spellbinding. I get pennies and dimes. When I find them on the street, I just smile. That's a toss up but I choose to take it.

Maybe it's my buddy, Dennis. Or Dad. Or Grandma Hastings. Or Grandpa Powell. Or Violet. Or Aunt Shirley. Aunt Helen. But I sense it's Ed. It happens most when I am doing the dishes, especially back when the girls were in high school, and I'd be at the sink scrubbing something and I'd sense the words, "You're doing a good job," come to me. I used to hear that a lot in raising the beautiful young women Ed and I produced. Lugging a heavy bag of laundry up five flights. Juggling the bills. Crying softly when it all got to be too much. I'd hear those words.

The dime was such a surprise. I was placing a call to two dear friends and colleagues, asking for reprieve on Saturday night. A whopper Martini and good conversation. I need it.

For now, it's coffee, a bath, grade 30 written responses for today's class, and hit the streets for downtown Brooklyn. Then at 6 pm, the night is mine. It is mine.