Yaawn - What to Do?

Tonight, I'm bored and overheated. I took my living room air conditioner out of the window too soon, and for the past few weeks, have truly suffered, but the dang thing is too heavy to put back in, and I like saving money on electricity bills. I have to smile; it is so sounding like my mother. But on this last night of August, I know by Saturday the tide will have turned with 77 degree weather and rain thanks to Hurricane Earl. So that takes care of the heat, but what about my boredom?

Let's be real; how can I be bored? There is so much to do! Writing on my memoir about my mom and me and two workshops, one way overdue, the other, brand new. Not to mention the novel with characters still sitting on my stoop, shaking their heads. But here I am, blogging and watching "America's Got Talent." Oh it's hot in here on several levels!

I took this in my apartment and there weren't any rays of light coming in...I tried to recreate it. My mother is with me.

Last Friday, I sat in this very chair, watching television, late into the night, until - I swear - I heard my mother say, "Shut that TV off!" and I did. And I felt her with me, nudging me, reminding me of incident after incident, and I wrote, stopping only to cry softly, and then harder, as the pen moved. "Thank you, Mom," I said, "thank you."

My mother and I had a turbulent time when she was alive. I miss her so much, and as my friend, Rhonda said (http://www.rhondadore.com/) and was right, my mother is, I can literally feel her, with me, co-authoring this work. I used to feel so angry that my mother said to me when I first decided to be a writer, "Do you really think you can make a living as a writer?" and for many years, she was right. I couldn't except in shadow jobs in public relations, development, and education. Now, she kicks me in the rear, tells me to turn the "boob tube" off and to write!

I'm not bored anymore. And I'm not angry. I understand. What I need to write is now. Thank you, Mom.

Dedicated to Nancy Lee Powell Hastings who loved this song:

Taking Baby Steps

My sister and I were talking on the telephone about my new fascination: psychic abilities. She is wide open to it and has been since a little girl. I long ago announced I was "too scared and to please go away" whenever anything beyond this dimension came to call. "You just need to relax into it," my sister says to me. "See it like it is a movie. All you have to do is watch." This both excites and frightens me. Why am I such a scardey cat?

Ft. Bliss Cemetery where my mother and father are buried.

It happened to me immediately after my mother passed. I had been so good before, talking to her about the next life she was going to, how wonderful it would be, and then, when she actually did take her last breath, and sadly, when her body was taken away, I began to get the eebie jeebies. I couldn't sleep that night in her former room. I kept the lights on. Where was my fear sourcing from, and coming as fast and unleashed as the recent oil explosion in the Gulf? All I knew each of the six nights remaining in my mother's room before I left for New York was that I was scared to death.

On September 12th, I will go to my first psychic workshop and am I ever excited! It is led by John Holland, and I cannot wait. I pray this gets me over my irrational fear of the other side. People walk through my sister's bedroom at night while she sleeps, often interrupting her REMs; she even has been shaken awake when she won't wake up fast enough for the person trying to get her attention. I told her she may have to be as Lisa Williams and develop a sign that she is off duty as Lisa does by putting on a cap, signaling no more. The night our mother passed, my sister awoke to see my mother and a man, my mother looking around the room, waving her arms, colors bursting with each wave. In life, she was legally blind. Our mother was so happy, my sister recounted to me the next morning. I listened in absolute awe. I am not afraid of my mother and want to talk with her. I want to. I really do.

"Oh, I am supposed to tell you this," my sister says to me. I feel goosebumps rising. "You need to start writing everything down that has happened to you spiritually because you are going to need it for material when you are giving your public talks when you have written the book you need to be writing," she says to me, as if she is reading a note left on the refrigerator.

Baffled and pleased, I tell her, stammer out that "I will." We talk a bit more, and then say goodnight. I sit in my living room, recounting what my sister has just told me. I pick up a journal, one of the many I have around, and I write out a list of chapters I will write about. The same old tightening in my chest comes on again, as it has for decades when I try to write. I beg it to settle down, to let me create.

I feel my mother around me - as best as my recent fears will allow - and I thank her, thank any and all guides who have not given up on me, and I continue jotting down my thoughts on the progression of my spiritual journey. I finish and the list looks pleasing, pertinent to my continuation. I am reminded once more to trust the process. This statement should be written on my tombstone. I breathe, close the journal, and go to bed, staying on my back, as instructed by my sister, staying open, relaxing into it.

I realize September 12 will be six months shy of  the day since my mother crossed. I am ready to open my eyes. I am tired of being blind. I am ready to talk to my mother; to talk and witness what always has been around. I no longer want to be a scardey cat. I accept my gift and declare its value. My mother used to say it is sinful to look and ask for signs. Now I know she knows the truth. It is time for me to know it, too, while still walking around in this silly, superficial skin.