Looking for a Sign

Venus and Jupiter are converging. The moon is almost full. The night sky so full of wonder, I don't know which way to look.


As I put some things in my hatch this morning after a Goodwill shopping spree, I heard a song that Dan liked wafting into the parking lot from somewhere. Just as I recognized the song, I saw that someone had scrawled a message in the dust on my car. "I heart u love." The confluence of those two things brought me to tears. The world seems full of messages right now. I'm watching and listening.

I know, of course, that it was probably one of my grandchildren that wrote the message.
Every message needs a messenger.

Whether you're looking for the messiah or love, there will be a sign.

The Hostage Exchange

The grandchildren are here.

All 3 are enrolled in watersports camp (sailing, kayaking, paddle boarding) from 9-3:30 this week. With care for my mom only in the mornings, this seemed like a good arrangement and so far it's worked fine. We won't be taking leisurely walks, running out for fro-yo whenever we feel like it, or using the yacht club pool. But they're here.

Of the many difficult things that go with caring for a frail elderly person, one is that I can't travel to see them. (Tried it once...nope.) Hooray for M. and hooray for their mom who met half-way (200 + mile drive for each of them)  and performed what M called the hostage exchange. Some motherly free time for their mom in exchange for 3 children for us.

Anyone like to make a different sort of  hostage exchange here in Pillville?

Report from the Love Shack

Thank you for your comments on my previous post about love. I've been reading them over and over again. I appreciate your wisdom, your stories, and your honesty from the bottom of my heart.

It's not too late to leave a comment if you haven't done so already. I'm listening. Tell me what you know.

Just scroll down to the previous post.

Love: I Need Answers

My parents.  I think they really dug each other. Look at my dad. Don't you want to be looked at like that?

I've been thinking a lot about love lately. Why we use the phrase fall in love instead of soar into love, melt into love, expand into love. So many possibilities. Fall out of love seems right. But why fall in?

How is it that you can commit your life to being with someone and then it doesn't work out? You promised. Now you're un-promising? How is it that you can laugh hysterically with someone for an entire summer and then just up and decide Nope. How can you waste weeks trying to convince someone that you really have nothing in common when you're so attracted to that someone that the house burned down every time he walked in the door? How can you love one person and then find that you also accidentally love someone else but you still love that other person too? Can you fall in love just by reading a person's words when you've never even met him? What if you never meet him? Will you go on loving him? 

I fell in love when I was 15. Does that even count? Does it have more traction because we had a baby? Why don't I ever think of that man I was married to for 30 years? Am I a psychopath? Is it pure survival? Can you survive love? Can you fall in love with someone so gradually you would have never predicted it? How slow can love go? How fast?  If Train A leaves the station at 4pm and is traveling 40 mph and Train B leaves the station at 8pm, traveling 60mph, how many hours will it take for Train B to pass train A? If there are lovers on those trains, what will happen then? Can you fall in love with someone when you don't really ever talk? How in the hell can a person go to work in the morning, come home in the evening and have nothing to say? (This last question courtesy of John Prine)

I'm asking. Just asking. Tell me. Tell me what you know. I'm listening. Tell me a story. Your story. Tell me everything you know.