How many times have you felt brush of childhood while snuggled deep in blankets at night and the sea of fantasy washes up? I woke this morning feeling as if I went back in time to where life was simpler and more dastardly.

This is a world that takes my breath away. It’s where little fey creatures take offense too easily. It’s why I was trying to save my sister/daughter/niece/friend from the wrath of Bugaboo Prince. She called him a sweet little girl. But it wasn’t her fault. He was merged half in and half out of Faerie land. I suppose any one of us could assume a wisp of fancy floating on the breeze in decorous otherworld fabrics might be female.

And, oh so many faerie creatures floated on the wind this morning. I watched transfixed! This garden is where the colors of flora transcend into more than sight and smell and feel. It’s where the green and flower colors explodes throughout your very heart and cross-links every cell like a warm internal hug.

I didn’t realize how much I missed the giddy free sensation of floating weightless and it’s strange that I questioned its logic. I wouldn’t have when I was eight years old. I think that was the age when I floated weightless for the first time. I turned somersaults in my parents’ living room before I floated out to the garage. I would soar into the sky and travel to Venus but my mother stood before the door like a Samurai warrior, broom in hand and even though I flew and became invisible, I could not pass. She saw me despite the fact I defied reason.

This time traveling to a place where I could float, I wobbled at first but the more I breathed in the dew-drenched morning air, the more I lost my reserve. I sailed between tree branches, brushing dainty petals and smooth leaves, weaving around the bumbling bees. I sailed up into the blue, blue sky and I lost myself for a time. I became sidetracked, I think, by a warm bath sitting in a crystalline room with little songbirds trilling on spindly vines wrapped daintily around the walls. The water called like a siren song. I could see out a tiny window above the enchanted garden but I hesitated, uncertain of what I wanted to do first and in that hesitation, I woke to see a little cherub’s face grinning up at me.

I’ve had versions of this dream countless times. It’s one of two reoccurring dreams: the weightless floating and the door that isn’t always there. And when I wake from these particular dreams, sometimes I leave a part of myself behind unintentionally. But the sea of fantasy deposited me gently upon reality’s door when I opened my eyes. I sit here typing, occasionally looking out my backdoor window to April’s green.

Dearly Almost Departed

 Time spills out like paint across a canvas in rich and muddied colors but we never know how much canvas we are given, do we?  Live life to the fullest, live life to the richest, die well with no regrets.  Cavalier words in a cavalier world.  But a grain of truth still resonates within these almost insensitive words. 

I don’t live life to the fullest.  Do you?  Do any of us?  Perhaps a small percentage, maybe.  Perhaps my life is not lived to its fullest but it still feels pretty busy.  My husband recently said so many people fill up their time with thin things but I know it isn’t thin things my life is full of – it’s full of responsibilities that aren’t totally my own. 

I wonder what life I would have if I had the selfish life where all I had to do was go bungee jump into all my hopes and desires, all my aspirations, but I am no island.  I am a candlestick maker.  And I remain connected to many souls.  They both buoy me and weigh me down like I’m sure that I both buoy and weigh. 

So what is living life to its fullest?  What is its definition?  Is it the people we touch?  Is it the goals we achieve?  Is it how people remember us when we die? 

I sit here on a deathwatch and ponder a life that could have been close to mine, perhaps should have been close to mine, but never was.  A life I heard about in snippets and secrets and I don’t know what I feel except a gentle sadness for what will never be known. 

Written on Tuesday, January 26, 2010.  I had just been told that my grandmother, my mother’s biological mother, has gone downhill quickly.  Instead of the miraculous recovery after 10 days in a coma, respirators and feeding tubes, coming to, consciousness and no brain damage, she has a matter of days at most. 

I discovered on Wednesday morning that she didn’t even live out the night.  It was 12:30 am Tuesday night/Wednesday morning when she left the world.  The funeral was Saturday, January 30, 2010, the coldest day so far this winter.  Standing at the gravesite when its 2 degrees is strangely appropriate.  I wonder now was it possible for tears to freeze?   At the time, I only wondered if my feet would.

I did get to meet family for the first time and reconnect with others I hadn’t seen in some time.  Its been a long weekend.  Between this and other stress which is my life, I’m out of sorts today.  I wrote this (below) earlier today.

There’s a fang laden beast dwelling about three inches deep on the left side of my chest and no good intentions seem to have any affect of purging him.  I want to pull my Pollyanna mask back on but it seems to be missing and my fingers aren’t cooperating because they are balled up into fists.  I don’t know if I want to don on hard skin and go charging out into battle.  The hit, either giving or receiving, would almost be a relief.  Or do I want to hibernate into the furthest reaches.  So, like a lumbering bear I vacillate at the entrance of the cave, neither coming or going, attacking or retreating.  Only one thing is certain.  I cannot escape. 

Ah, the Pollyanna mask…a little torn, a little worn.  Tomorrow is another day.

Our bodies are the physical containers for the souls within – like a cauldron full of stew.  Our cauldron can be full of juicy delectable things such as a birth of a child, a happy marriage, the joy of attaining a goal, satisfaction in our hobbies, family, and friends; and of course, a few tart undesirable things will swish about like our pet peeves, disappointments and regrets but when life is simmering in a gentle warmth, all is good. 

 But life never remains simmering only on a low and gentle setting.  It flares at times.  It curls around us.  It threatens to melt our very being.  And what happens when it rages too hot for too long?  For a lower-grade pot, perhaps it warps and cracks but for the higher-grade pot, it “bakes” the contents into our very being like the scorched bottom on a Dutch oven, that kind of blackened debris that we must scrape out with a spoon.  But we don’t scrape it out, do we?  Scraping is painful and after a burning, it’s easier to forget and let it be, to never pull that blackened mess up to the surface.  We might not even realize that we never stir near the bottom of our cauldron. 

 I used to say that “the monsters in the closet” only got bigger each time I tried to shove them back into the closet, that closet each one of us have in the corner of our minds where we stash those awful things away.  I thought I had battled and attacked and vanquished each and every one of them but I forgot about the baked coating sticking to the bottom of the cauldron.  I forgot that that baked-on cauldron bottoms soften over time and small flakes and clumps bubble up to the top. 

 I wonder if I should reach for a spoon to sift and sort, to pull these repulsive clumps out but as I touch upon each one, I find a mixture of both bad and good.  The bad, so easy to throw away.  No second thought.  No regret.  What I didn’t expect to find was good mixed in.  What do I do with this tainted good?  Should I recoil away?  Should I look closer and embrace this blackened clump that once was my life?  I find myself perplexed and I don’t know the answer.