So Much Sweeter

When I keep an attitude of gratitude, the day is so much sweeter.

You?

All The While Settling Onto Beauty

A flickering fluttering triangle of wing and body

Colors blurring, wind carrying aloft

During the seeking

Her goal, her sole existence is to feed for growing

To lay eggs for living

To continue the cycle endlessly

Of newness

Caterpillar

Chrysalis

Oh, what life to live

Flying on current’s edge

Constantly in hazard’s way

All the while settling onto

Beauty

Of leaf and petal

Of scent and color

Kissed with dewdrops left by

The Morning.

 

Advertisement

The Challenge

The Challenge of life is to welcome challenge itself, not for ego, not for attention, not for riches, but for the dim glow that grows into brightness, illuminating the person you were meant to be when you were only a small spark in the Heavens.

But Who Fears.

I saw him staring into the face of someone he never knew

or had no interest in knowing. With his hard eyes he taunted

threatened, and with the tight line of his lips he refused communication.

The facts were there, but he chose to look

away.

The truth was within him, but he would not hear.

The small, still voice begged to be heard

the face of honesty and honor wished to be seen

but fear of what is within blinds those assuming they see all.

Is it already too late? Does hate reign?

Does choosing to separate and divide, looking the other way rather than at one’s self

doom  all?

But who fears … but who fears.

I Have to Believe

When the grenade exploded, he never knew what hit him. The blast lifted him off his feet, hot shrapnel ripped his young body, and he fell. The snowy ground received him, wrapped him in a blanket of quiet, and except for the sound of blood gurgling in his own throat, the woods were silent.

Time stopped, a snowflake hung in mid-air, and at that very moment he wanted nothing more than to take it in his palm and watch it melt away, its soul transforming with death.

He blinked once, twice, and she called to him, I have to believe I’ll see you again, I have to believe I’ll see you again, I have to believe …

Quotes for the Week

Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude, what else is there?

When ears hear, but do not process, they are deaf. When eyes look, but do not see, they are blind.

Life is a fairly simple challenge. Live and let live, respect each other, and for peace and harmony, don’t break the law. If we do the first two, the third takes care of itself.

When perspective is a scarce as it is, it’s too bad we can’t swap bodies for a while.

When ego drives a person, honesty is not within them.

When the desire to improve one’s self is left behind for the desire for personal gain, all is definitely lost.

Quotes for the week

The scales of justice are empty for a reason, and it’s not so anyone can load one side with assumptions.

Perspective is not judging a person or situation before knowing a person or situation. And it works both ways.

If you think you know what happened because you saw it on the internet, with no other facts to back it up, you don’t.

It’s strange that so many judge before knowing, yet they expect others to not do so with them.

Instead of Scales, Lady Justice should be holding a lie detector. Assumptions are being believed before truth has a chance.

A leader listens to both sides, acquiring all knowledge before reacting, for to do otherwise defines him, or her, as an instigator.

A Thought for My Day.

Imagine how wonderfully humans might relate if they concentrated on being human first, without the self-imposed hashtags.

Intent

We never knew

or saw.

He’d been here

smiling, laughing

acting as if he were one of us.

Imaginations failed.

Faith in humanity tripped the wire to our

demise.

How could he?

How could another on this wonderful place and planet

which we call home

have such

Intent?

Intent has no finite definition. It

takes many forms.

And is what we must be vigilant against.

For when

Intent such as his lies in the minds of others,

no matter

who,

Intent is the worst weapon

imaginable.

More so than any

Thing

ever conceived.

 

I Love You, Daddy.

An attempt, with fiction that is surely fact-based, to honor the men and women, including the parents and children left behind, who war touches. And who we most assuredly owe a sincere debt of gratitude.

The small hand is warm in mine, and the fingers tighten as we walk closer. When he was born screaming, and I along with him for more reasons than were obvious, I promised myself I’d bring him here one day.

And that day has come.

I have tissues in my pocketbook. I’ll need them though he won’t as he’s still too young to understand. But he knows things are not as they should be. From his first birthday, with a single candle on his cupcake that I blew out as his eyes questioned mine, I think he knew. And those deep blue eyes continued to ask, with stares at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other family holidays.

His grandparents are here too, and they run their fingers along the chiseled edge of eternity. They glance at each other and she pulls her own Kleenex from a worn purse, veteran as it was of that time.

That day … it was horrible … like a nightmare but real. An old cliché I’m sure, but what better way to describe it? Is it necessary to tell about the hot tears that streamed down my face? Is it necessary to tell how my heart pounded, how I thought it would burst from my chest, how I wished it would?

But only for a moment, because of what was left behind, which was a blessing.

Now we’re here, now we hold hands, and now I have to explain. But I pause because he is pointing at the leaves on the old oak.

“The wind, Momma … it’s talking. Could that be him? You said he might tell me … tell me things if I listen?”

I nod and smile and squeeze his hand. “You never know, sweetheart, it could be.” Letting go of my hand and stepping to the tree, he touches the coarse gray bark with tentative fingertips, looking up again. Then he steps closer and wraps his arms as far around the tree as they will go, and closes his eyes.

“Momma showed me your picture, but I wish you were here.”

He walks back to me. “Can we talk to him now?”

I couldn’t answer. I hold the third tissue to my eyes. Should have brought the box.

“Give me a minute, sweetheart. Okay?”

He takes my free hand and holds it to his cheek. “Okay, Momma.”

God, how hard this is. How hard the first years were. I’m—we’re better, and I’m grateful. We have people we can count on, and that has helped. But what I wouldn’t give to not be doing this, not because of how it makes me feel, but because of the reason we must.

I swipe at my eyes one last time, I hope, and shove the tattered knot into my pocket.

“Okay, Momma’s ready.”

Or am I?

We step forward and I put down the quilt, which is full of memories, one of which is the night my son was conceived. With him standing in front of me, I kneel and hold out my hand.

“Give me your hand.” He puts his hand in mine and I place it on the first letter carved into the cool stone. “What’s this letter?”

Those eyes … they’re his dad’s. I want to cry again and I fight the urge, but the tears sting as alcohol on an old and open wound, one never fully healed, one exactly five-and-a-half-years-old.

“S, Momma, it’s an S.”

“That’s right. Can you tell me what the other two are?”

He traces each letter. “That’s a G … that’s a T … and that’s a period.” He looks at me, asking if he’s right with nothing more than his inquisitive glance, faint blonde eyebrows rising.

“Right again. Your daddy would be so proud of you. Of the big boy you’ve become and how you’re taking care of me.”

He leans against me, taking my hands, pulling them together, wanting me—with his familiar gesture—to hold him. And I do.

Though he’s not a baby any longer, his hair is baby-soft, and it smells of the shampoo I used last night during his bath—when he played and splashed—and when we laughed. His ears are pink, chilly against my face from the morning November breeze, which is crisp with winter’s coming.

We stay there silently. Until he glances back at me.

“Can I tell him something?”

I nod and his fingertip touches the white marble, where my head had lain, where my tears had fallen, and finally, where I had kissed goodbye.

“I love you, Daddy.”