Treats and Tears

What a week. I came down with an infected canal in my left ear. But I'm better now. That will teach me to put things in my ear! "Mineral oil from now on," said the very nice ER doc. I mean that. True kindness. A man was there ahead of me. He had dropped something on his foot. I did that last week. What is going on? The doc said he hadn't broken it. It was just sprained and he could go back to work in a few days. Sarah has been wearing a boot for the past five weeks after tearing a tendon in her big toe. But I digress. The ER doc was so helpful. He gave us both phone numbers to area clinics and even offered to put the ear drops in for me but I was shy and said I'd do it at home.

But I want to publically say here that I recognized that nice person's bedside manner. He truly cared. Which is what I try to do and have tried in all my jobs. To be helpful and to treat people as I'd like to be treated. It helps me sleep at night.

I've been reading about coincidence and it's magnificent. If you start noticing and becoming aware of signs, you will start to realize that the source of life is trying to help you steer through this physical life. I had a ball this weekend, noting it. Keep a notebook.

Amazing.

I was doing really good with week three of Sarah returning to school and Leila being in her own place until I decided to reheat some lasagna I had made that was in the freezer. I realized I made it when Sarah was here, and when I took it out of the oven and was placing it on my plate, I thought that where once I was eating this with my girl now I'm eating it alone. And then the tears came. Just like that. So I just cried and Russell, our black and white cat, just looked at me as if to say, "Cry, already, but give me my cat treats."

I swear the dude's addicted.

"It's just you and me, Russell," I said to him. This summer we lost our beloved orange cat, Oscar.

In a week my sabbatical will be over. So much has happened this summer and yet everything is just beginning.

Once again I am thankful to my mother for providing the funds to take four months off and to just be. I have learned. Gone deep into the layers of Sheela. I am writing again. I have several projects and the novel is still in motion, short stories pulling at my sleeve to be written and a column idea that is sticking to the wall.

And inbetween Russell cries for treats and I cry for my daughters and Oscar. And somewhere in all that there are nice doctors and life swirling happy.

Time to Plant New Seeds

Wow. I thought I was really taking this September 11th rather well. I always have mixed emotions since it's also my niece's Mom's birthday, too, and it just seems hard for her to see the whole Nation mourning when she's happy for her Mom. So I try to keep it all in perspective. That was until I went up on my roof and saw the twin lights in honor of those gone now six years. Sylvia Browne would say those departed are on The Other Side and happy. They probably wish we'd stop and get on with life. We will join them someday, as it is. Perhaps I'm being cynical, but today I also thought of all the people who had died from poor healthcare, not enough food, no one having their back when the wolf was at the door and I just said, "enough." National tragedy, yes, but it's also an everyday occurrence how huge groups of populations are ignored.

I do think it's commendable that this tragic day is being used to begin large community service actions. Good. That must make the precious ones killed six years ago feel happy, too. I think that is the point. We all have just a window of opportunity here on Earth. This day is a great reminder to do something so that when you are gone, you will know you did something to gave back.

Tears aren't enough.

Happy Birthday Josie.

Many more.

Music

Yesterday was pitiful. I wrote a long, sobbing note to friends, detailing my pain. The responses helped. I slept the day away, a pounding migraine over me from the heat and humidity of Boston and the freezing cold of the a/c back on the bus. Today I am okay. The realization that this could be my routine from now on pumps me up. I grow in strength and determination. There are many options and I refuse to keep closing those doors by panicking, thinking I have no other choice but to do what I hate.

Nope.

Last night after dragging my pitiful self around I ate dinner and in clearing the table found an old fortune left from one of Sarah's and my rare Chinese food take outs. The fortune read: "Do what you love and the necessary resources will follow."

I taped it to my computer and stare at it now.

I vow to do this from now on. To do what I love. It is me who is the problem. The way I dive into anything to pay the bills but never find it completely satisfying. My daughters have seen the calm that has come over me from this sabbatical, this time to be alone with my thoughts. I cannot go back and leave this anymore. So I must trust my instincts and continue to follow them.

That is where the resources are.

I plugged in an old radio from my days as a publications specialist at the NY Foundling. What easy days those were. I find great consolation in hearing 106.7 play as I work. Reminds me of being in an office and I need to fake myself out. But wait? This is my office.

My home.

No more working on the sly. No more lies. No more fakery. No more drudgery. Only doing what I love.

Only

Dedicated to my girl in Boston.

Desperada

I am dying.

Big hot shot me. Big I got a sabbatical me.

My baby is leaving for college and I am dying. And it's only Thursday night. I have her one more day and then a bus ride up to Boston and a hug and kiss good-bye, and then me riding that same damn bus back.

Alone.

This time last year, I was broken. Broken. Leila found me on the futon, my lower lip out, something on tv but it didn't matter. "Oh Mommy," she said.

Tonight it's back but even Leila's not here. Got her own place.

You don't understand. I'm a runaway. I feel like packing up and moving to where? where?

I'm here.

Then I'll dismantle the dining table, stuff it in the bedroom and put a big palm tree there. Move the Blue Whale, shift the futon, buy new curtains. Take down the kitchen divider. Buy booze. Start smoking. Find a lover. Sugar Daddy.

Something.

Something.

Something.

If you'd heard me spouting how great it will be to be alone, to write all day, all night, one into the next, you'd laugh now to see me, biting my lip and wondering when Sarah will come home tonight? Wondering how I will get from this to next week? Last year I nearly got fired for having a complete separation anxiety meltdown in my class the night after coming home from Boston. I let the class go early and sat and read the newspaper. A weasel caught me and sent my boss upstairs. Like I said, I was nearly fired.

Now I'm on a sabbatical. Three weeks left. I can read my newspaper and blubber into it with no one to catch me.

When Sarah was a teenager, I used to tell Leila that if we humans knew how gut wrenching it'd be to be the parent of a teen, well, that'd be the best birth control.

This tops that.

This hurts too much.

Big shot me is broken again.

But I will use this time to transition. Watch me. I'm going to reinvent myself. First time since 1982 I've been alone.

Alone.

Alone.

Alone.

That's too long.

Dedicated to Sarah Nancy and Leila Sandra, my goddesses. I'll show you a woman can fly. I will do it, darlings. I have not yet begun to show what I can do.

Thank you for 23 years of divine presence. It has made me who I am. I shall go forward now.

I shall.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOOXOXOXOOXOXOXOXOOXOXOXOXOXOOXOXOXOOX

Seeing the Light

The other night I had a huge epiphany: The person I am is because of what I have been blessed with in spite of all the hardship and suffering ie thank goodness my path went the way it did, otherwise I wouldn't have my beloved daughters, and they, my friends, really get me, and moreso, understand the heart that beats inside my chest.

I love that they also have lives and are finding success. I love that I don't ask them to forfeit those dreams for me or vice versa. I love that they want for me what I want for them: self actualization.

This is a precious realization and endowment.

The rest, gravy.

Gravy.

Back Aches and Memories

The weather is lovely right now in New York. Inside the City, it's just the few of us who didn't go out of town and a slew of tourists running wild in the cleaned up, spiffed up borough of Manhattan. I remember apartment sitting for my brother and sister in law in the Wall Street district ten years ago this very weekend. The girls and I watched the organism of tourists going up and down the street headed for Battery Park and the Statue of Liberty. Every other sign of life was gone. Very eerie. I was resigned to their black leather couch. My back was morbidly wrenched from three sublet moves. I took Ibuprofen like an addict. That's the night I heard Princess Diana had died. I laid there in pain, and everything was surreal.

But I had my girls and we were planted in a new World. Ten years later, the younger one is packing to return to school. In a week, I'll be sitting here posting, alone. Weird. I've been alone plenty since she went away a year ago but now my older girl is in a sublet of her own.

Everything changes. I have one month left of my sabbatical. I'm going to work it, girl. Nothing else left to do. I believed decades ago in the following quotation by Wassily Kandinsky and I breathe it now:

"I value only those artists who really are artists, that is, who consciously or unconsciously, in an entirely original form, embody the expression of their inner life; who work only for this end and cannot work otherwise."

Last night Sarah, Lexie (her friend from school) and I went to Coney Island. It was grand fun. I was aghast that it was my first time except for a trip to the Aquarium way back at the beginning of our journey. We rode the Wonder Wheel and they laughed at me, a big chicken. Then I watched them on the Himalaya. Took me back to when my girls were little and we'd go to Western Playland in El Paso and ride the Himalaya.

I stood there watching them go around, blips of face, teeth, laughter. I roared and shook, laughing, until I caused the workers to chuckle, too. It thrilled and stunned me. It's all gone so fast. Bring my babies back. I'll be good. I promise. I get it now. I get it.