I CAN SAY NO MORE......

My Son The Triathlete

The Best Gravestone I Have Ever Encountered....

Nantucket graveyard walk. we sat for awhile on top of the dead, eating chocolate. it was weird. then it got weirder when we found THIS...

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of..........

GOOD ADVICE ANY DAY.....

I Love Pancakes

i , lucky woman that i am, have inherited my daughters' hamster....she was missing having pets last spring at college, so she went out and got herself a teddy bear hamster....then she went on the adventure of a lifetime as a driver for Van's WARPED TOUR over the summer, so i took care of little , uh, BIG Pancakes. what can i say? it was love at first bite! now he lives with me and he is a daily reminder of what it means to just BE.....

I LOVE PANCAKES.

The Last Flower of Summer

my mother dressed my sister as "the last rose of summer" one year for halloween. sometimes i forget that part of my mother, her creativity....she did have that as part of her. i usually credit my father with giving me that gift: he played the drums, he liked poetry, especially that of alfred lord tennyson. amazing the things about mom and dad that can pierce your otherwise healed heart years after they are gone. for some reason today i am feeling the loss of them very strongly, almost a sense of sheer disbelief that they have been gone for so long, my father since 1990, my mother since 2000. my parents. hi mom, hi dad. here's the last flower of summer for you.....a lone verbascum found growing on the side of oakridge drive. it still surprises me that i even saw it; it was the end of a walk by the lake, almost dusk, but i found it...or did IT find ME? was it YOU saying hello mom? are you there dad? hello/goodbye, again.

I may be almost as happy as they are....

And so it came to pass, that America spoke and in its' speaking said, "Yes, this is what we want", and America elected its very first African American President of the United States of America.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA. Let the healing begin.

final thoughts on autumn as i watch the first Flakes FALL

THE LEAVES ARE CHASING EACH OTHER

LIKE CHICKENS AFTER FEED.


oh but I do love this wild and wooly October time, even though entry into it does rearrange my hair when i venture out into its' embrace and whole conversations can fly away, suddenly becoming the words that are spoken between others someplace else. imagine their surprise!

Where are their manners?

Just LOOK at them! Throwing, hurling, catapulting, jostling, flinging, themselves at each other! In Late October all manner of manners are gone with the wind!!!

Just a Few More....

More Ways of Seeing

So there I was just walking, the cool moist morning mist making cotton candy of my hair, just walking and taking it all in, trying to expand my thought on a particular subject, trying to move out of the small corral my thoughts had been running in into the larger more generous arena of contemplation, when I saw it: not just "a sign" but THE sign, right up above my curly head: the street name was LITTLE WAY and the sticker on the sign pole said "DEAD END"....absolutely! My "Little" thinking on the subject I was kicking around was a DEAD END!; my attempts at more expansive thinking were right on! But wait.....another street sign, a mere twelve paces ahead.....what's that? OH MY! THE ULTIMATE MESSAGE, THE ULTIMATE "SIGN"!!!!......
SUPREME WAY....My expanded thinking was taking me toward the SUPREME WAY of thinking!!! Ah the SIGNS are everywhere; you just have to take the time to LOOK.

CAPE COD

OCTOBER....
flameful trees
attending streets
far more quiet
than July
ever knew
they could be.

when they were tender little shoots, i so easily tended them, knowing always what each look meant, each sound, each word, each sigh, always able to know when to water, when to fertilize, how to protect them from winter winds. now they are grown, each with their own shiny leaves and their own thorns too, having grown into their fullness, leaving me standing, heart in hand, still offering yet not really needed, and i am lost....

when they were tender little shoots, with all possibilities stretched out before them in brilliant array, row after row of dreams sparkling like gems in the high morning sun, it was so easy to believe they would always know the right road to take and, if not, that i would always know how to guide them to where they needed to go. but now i find it is not so. we stand on this road now together, dust in our hair, the horizon escaping our penetrating gaze, not knowing...suspended in the space between questions, my children and i, suspended......i still can see their tenderness, still can recall days of thinking i knew all i needed to know to be that guide to guide them....never has wrong tasted so bitter to the tongue.