Finding your Path.....

Just a simple thought....

Sometimes we get lost trying to find the life we want to live and in so doing miss out on the life we were meant to live...

Dreams... Endless Possibilities 11/29/14



 

When we look outside on a dark cloudy morning what are we thinking? About the chance of rain, what we won’t get done or what rotten weather for the weekend? Will we have to change our plans, cancel the camping trip or postpone a planned meeting?

What happen to that little girl or boy that didn’t care about the weather because there was a hundred different things you wanted to do! Didn’t you play baseball in the rain, get muddy and when you came home mom was mad but she smiled and kissed you anyway. Hopscotch or jump rope didn't end with a few sprinkles and you kept playing until you hid under a tree or were called inside. How about riding your bike, playing in the park, walking the beach, the weather didn’t stop those activities... Have we really changed that much?

Did I hear "Yes, I have grown up"?

But what have we lost?

Dreams... The endless possibilities we believed in, wanted to reach for.. Many of us just quit trying.

"Life has gotten in the way" "I have too many responsibilities" "There is no time for dreaming"

Perhaps those responses have crushed the child within.

Does not the splendor of a Christmas tree, the first winter snow, a thunder storm bring to surface the excitement we felt so long ago?

Have we forgotten the power of dreams... They can inspire us to go beyond the possible, push further than we imagined, to find a strength long forgotten.

The sun is always shining, even on a rainy day. We must soar above the dark clouds, remember the joys of dreaming and let them lift us to a forgotten plain. Where we can remember lost dreams...

To achieve... We must believe



 

Star Light Star Bright 11 / 2012

When you are creeping closer to sixty that fifty, hope has a different meaning than when you were young.  Looking back for some is painful, hopes and dreams slipped through our fingers, often out of our control.  But somehow, after the broken dreams have burned to ashes we become like the Phoenix, and a different person emerges.  Sometimes that person may pull us down a road we don’t want to travel. Then the cycle repeats it’s self again and again, even when we don’t want it to.

A wise friend once told me “If you always do what you have always done you will always get the same results.”  To change those results you have to realize that you are NOT the same person you were before your world fell apart.  You have learned what you DON’T want, so look for what you really do.  Believe in yourself.  Perhaps try the H.O.P.E. plan of action.

Heart – Be brave and knock down the wall around your heart (One brick at a time)

Open – Be open to new ideas, dream a little

Possibilities – Thinking ahead, seeing different options, open minded

Endless – Realize this is a big world.  Think outside of your little box!

Hope can be renewed if you just believe in your new self, wiser for the years you have traveled the road of life.  With a new year approaching it is a great time to make a difference in YOUR life.  Giving up is not an acceptable option!

Go ahead... wish upon a star!  

 

 

Where Is The Magic 11 / 2012

We all know those lucky or some would say blessed couples that have been married twenty, thirty, forty even fifty years.  Their lives have not always been easy, but there was a special magic that held them together. Alas, I am not one of them, but not for the lack of trying.  The fact is I have been married 4 times for a total of 28 years. The magic was never there.

Born with a heart the size of Texas, it has been broken more times than I can count.  Always listening with my heart, and ignoring the “wiser” council from my head, has left me settling for less than I truly wanted.   Don’t get me wrong, there have been many happy years and lots of love shared.  However the deeper, enduring, forever kind of love has always been elusive and the magic was not to be found. 

 

Emptiness at times consumes my soul.  Unstoppable tears fall like an angry tornado.  Eventually both the storm and the tears dissipate and life moves on. Questions flood

my mind.  Where is the joy?  How did I end up like this?  Will I always be alone, unloved?  Seemingly powerless to change my future I have drifted into a state of numbness.  Going through the monitions of daily life but detached, as if watching a movie of someone else’s story.  A fog of despair thickens and I withdrawal deeper into myself, lost like a child surrounded by strangers. With out love…. there is nothing.  Magic… forever lost. These thoughts dance across the windows of my mind and leave me wanting. 

 

The good news…those scenes are only imagined.  Will I allow the sunshine of hope to

burn away the fog of despair?  Slowly, ever so gradually, my heart warms, and I see once again the blank pages of my future. I realize they are yet mine to write.  Stepping boldly forward I try once again.  Gathering strength of will and a determination born of despair, my quest for the magic begins anew.

 

 

 

The Invisible Pen 10 / 2012

My journey as a writer began before my first memories.

Born into a family where mother read me stories before I understood letters and father challenged me with Reader’s Digest “Word Power” and crossword puzzles I was surrounded by words from the day of my birth.  “It’s a girl!” the doctor declared as he tapped the ashes from his cigar.  To some that declaration would have been good news to my family it was a miracle.

It seems highly unfair that you have no control over the ultimate beginning of your life. Sometimes the situation is not ideal, such was my case.  My parents were married less than three months before I appeared in the wee hours of a cold December’s morning.  None the less, I was welcomed with smiles from all around, or so I was told.  Both my parents had previous families with older children, all boys.  Thus said, I was spoiled from day one being my aunts’ only niece and grandmother’s only granddaughter. (They were readers also.)  In fact one grandmother had been a school teacher and the other a librarian.  I was destined to be surrounded by the world of words.  Words that protected the shy little girl when no one wanted to play, the lonely teenager with a hundred broken hearts and the wife and mother that needed to escape from reality, words were my defenders, the real hero’s of my life.

You might rightly believe that reading brought me to writing and in part that is true.  However, it was the invisible pen that started my journey.  I will explain…

I learned to make coffee in an old fashioned percolator. Carefully I measured the dark brown coffee into the little silver basket, placed it on the stem, then into pot already filled with just the right amount of water and added the lid.  It was a little heavy so mother put it on the stove and turned on the burner.  I sat, somewhat impatiently, on the old red step stool chair waiting and watching for the water to boil and for the perking to begin.  The little explosions in the glass top lid were at first light brown and turned darker and darker with each small blast.  The aroma filled our bright little kitchen and I knew it was done.  Mother poured the rich brown liquid into a white glass cup.  I lifted the lid of our cherry red tomato shaped sugar bowl and added three heaping spoons of the white granules into the cup and stirred. Mother put a saucer beneath then slowly and carefully I lifted them together.  My mission, deliver the coffee to daddy without spilling.  Rarely did I succeed as I maneuvered out of the kitchen, around our huge red brick fireplace, through the living room, down the hall and into daddy’s room.

“Thank you!” he always said.  “That smells delicious.  Did you make it yourself?”

“I sure did, but I spilled a little,” my usual answer.

“Come and sit on the bed” he invited.  “It is too hot to drink.”

Mother would bring her own cup as we shared the mornings together.  The best was yet to come.

“Can we tell a story while it cools down?”  I would ask.

“Okay.” Daddy says. “Whose turn is it to start, how about mommy?”

Mother smiled and a faraway look grew bright in her eyes. “Once upon a time…” 

They were wonderful, unique stories, created on the spot, limited only by our imagination.

Mother’s “chapter” was drawing to a close.  The characters were in an awful state, destine to perish at any moment. 

It was my turn.  I bounced up and down for the hundredth time excited to have my chance.  “Then into the woods came a….”

Thus it went, round after round until the coffee was gone, the characters victorious, and time for breakfast.  It was a tradition we carried on for many years, until the lure of the outside world became irresistible. 

I sit here at my computer, tears slide down my cheeks, the last story left untold.

Today... My First Words 10 / 2012

Another 24 hour period passing by, unstoppable like the waves of the sea…Seemingly helpless, I have watched not only days, but over 50 years slip by, often feeling defeated by the circumstances in which I find myself. 

There have been husbands, children, and now grandchildren.  Vital parts of my life cut out by irreversible choices. The fault is not important, but the hole left behind is real.   As the years pass the wound grows wider.  Can there be healing?  My door is always open, my heart seeking for a reunion long past due. But choice, personal decision, can not be forced by another so I wait, hoping, begging, bargaining with unspoken prayers.

Life moves onward like the passing of the seasons, the spring of youth, the summer of choice, the fall of regret, and the winter of lost hope.  The cycle repeats year after year. 

The successful find fame and fortune, the persistent make a name for themselves, the evil doers find space on the news. The lost, lonely, and forgotten are erased from our conscience like waste tossed in the basket of life.

Where do I fit in?

I can wallow in self-pity, spew out blame, make excuses, find a scapegoat, but ultimately my life is what I choose to make it. Armed with the tools I am given or make the effort to acquire, I build my own house one board one nail at a time. I apply new paint, but eventually it chips away.  Adding a new room makes it bigger but lonelier somehow.  Filling it with objects has little appeal for they offer no comfort.  My house lies empty. I rattle around inside, searching for meaning and purpose.  Escape is desirable and attainable. But the longing to try is declining, the effort seems too much.  

What difference would it make?  I am not successful, persistent, or evil no one would even notice.  Giving up is so much easier, until I find myself in an old folk’s home, feeble, weak and memory fading.  No longer able to lift the hammer, to pound a single nail, my chance to remodel is lost forever.  

That picture horrifies me!  I race to find my misplaced tool box, surly there is work to be done.  Disappointed I fine only a pen and a pad of paper. The pen is ordinary, holds no magical powers, but in my fingers thoughts flow and materialize line after line.  “Who would read this?” I wonder aloud but it matters not.  The walls of my house go un-noticed as my stack of pages grows taller.  The visions that fill my head take me from this world to one of childhood memories.  I laugh and lost joy is relived.  The pictures, long packed away, rush through my mind like autumn leaves on a windy day. I can’t stop as I visit memory after memory.  The years fly by.  Gradually the images slow as does my writing. These are painful times.  I don’t want to visit those houses, I want to burn them to the ground. Long pent-up anger surfaces and I cry out just one word “Why”.  Why did it have to happen?  Why can’t I change the past? Why didn’t my dreams come true?

I stand, throwing the pen across the room.  With one well aimed blow the pages scatter in a cluttered mess and drift to the floor.  My heart pounding I move to the window and consider my thoughts.  I realize, at this exact moment, I feel more alive than I have in years. I don’t want to let it go.  I walk across the room, pick up the pen then carefully re-stack the pages of my life.