I Remember...

Memories:

 *Splashing in huge puddles at the side of the road as we walked home from school in spring/summer. We would yell to the passing cars to "speed up" and "splash us! splash us!" laughing madly every time we got soaked to the skin. Truly a dirty little experience and dirty little memory, but a smile drifts in...

*The smell of fresh bread baking in Grandma's kitchen was enough to make any soul salivate, with little hands and faces plastered to the oven door to watch the golden goodness rise to its full glory. Any leftover dough (and Grandma always made sure there was a little left over for her googly-eyed Grandkids) was transformed into fried treats sprinkled with sugar. We thought we had died and gone to heaven...

*Staring up into my Mother's spent face as she explained that my Father had died. Our vigil was over. This was my time to say goodbye, before life moved on. Standing at the side of the bed I stared. My five year-old brain did not have the words to say a thing. I stared and stared. Life moved on...

*Sitting in the back of a speeding big rig in nowhere Namibia wondering what had possessed me to think that hitch-hiking was okay, and safe, and a good idea? Screaming to my guardian angels to please, please, PLEASE help me out of this one. "One day I would grow up and realize that I wasn't indestructible and if I could just get this little favour and end up outside of this truck in one piece mentally and physically, I would Learn!" One scary lesson to learn from those said angels. Thank you

*Having wave after wave of the worst pain I had ever experienced slam into me. Looking up into my husband's eyes knowing that just his presence alone was enough for me to keep going. Wanting release, but not wanting to give up for me and for the baby inside of me. The blessed bundle ratcheting my pelvis into a position it felt appropriate regardless of my physiology. Knowing that I could do it, despite everything my body tried to connive me into. And doing it. Breathing with wide-open eyes as the miracle of life was bestowed upon me. A shared moment of love with this man. This man that I had walked with, talked with and now created with. We made life eternal in the form of a tiny human girl. My touch with perfection and the pristine pool of pure love.

*Opening up the newspaper and seeing my face and my name perched beside an article written by my hand. Knowing that I had received my five minutes of fame by reaching out to touch the world with a picture that I could share of me to whomever was willing to read. And knowing that people read, cared and liked what I had to offer, even going so far as a brief TV time slot. Pride and fame are mine...

*Taking my two girls by hand and walking with them into the future. Approaching the building that represents their start of tomorrow, their independence. Breathing smiles into me and my progeny. We have been one. Love binds us together. Trust must let me walk beside them for a distance

    and then wave goodbye...

School starts September.

Change comes eternal for me and you

Never stand in way