Warm blue...and endless love

Warm blue seems a contradiction of terms, but not when you talk about My Fathers eyes. I feel him near these days, wise and rooted to all of creation, like a great oak tree, boughs reaching to the heavens.
Nothing seems as daunting when I can feel my soul being hugged and held by another soul. The awareness that love endures after life has been extinguished, was not so much a realization, but recognition of what my spirit had always known, we are all our pasts and all our futures. The body is just an empty sock after all, and our 'mastery' of this life is everything and nothing in the grand scheme of things, but love is abiding.

Mothers are given an estimated due date before their babies are born, but we never really know when our book of this life will close. All we know is what our odds are, and as we grow older and perhaps wiser, we are closer to the epilogue.

My last birthday cake, had thirty-five candles and one for luck. I know I got them all on there, as Dovi was counting aloud as I put them in, and laughing. We all were laughing, which made my hands shake a little, so I had to straighten those candles a bit.

First I had started with the perimeter. Twenty-seven equally spaced candles fit like a picket fence. The next few went down the middle in a row, through the hastily written "happy birthday" then horizontal... "Thirty three... thirty four... thirty five... and one for luck.. thirty six", he counted. As I lit them up, I became aware that the candles now looked like the glowing cross hairs of a rifle. Adina left the room as the cake blazed and went to call Rikal who was on the computer, with instructions to tell her right when I was going to blow out the candles, because then, it would actually be time to eat the cake.
Dovi stayed put, looking anxiously at the miniature crown fire on the plate in front of me. It was quite magnificent. I blew them out speedily. Anyone who knows me, knows I have 'big lungs' or so I have been told, right before they say "shhhh".
Just like that, they were out, the fire returning back to its source like it had never been.
I pulled the candles out and they piled up on the side plate like little ribbed blue logs. They had done a good job.
I glanced at the faces of the few people in the room through the haze of dissipating smoke and smiled to myself.
These were the souls I would love for all of eternity.
My wish was lost in silent prayers for their well being.
Then we had warm, buttery cake with vanilla frosting.

Snow and slush

Look at the snow after a day, where it gathers in the ditches of the city, stained by gasoline, dog urine and the scurrying, hurrying footsteps of the busy masses. Formerly pristine, it tempers the edges of anything it touches, flake by minute flake, it keeps falling until sheer will brings it together and it gathers and covers, like the Mothers who pull the blanket over tired, restless infants... The world rests for a moment, sighing in sleep besides an odd twitch of fingers or toes as dreams float free.

So quickly it turns to slush and mess, plaque in the arterial heart of the streets, something to slog through, slip on and step in...

But instead of seeing the necessary desecration days bring, be amazed at how pure and gorgeous it was for that short time when it was freshly fallen...
That moment just shows what really always happens, each and every moment of our lives, but not so blatantly, the state of endless renewal we are all in...the possibilities...

Rumblings and ruminations.

Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. ~Grandma Moses

The other night, I couldn't sleep at all. I got into bed in the wee hours of the morning after a lovely evening with a good friend, a more- then- slight overindulgence in craft beer and a basket of some greasy, spicy chicken wings, which had seemed like a wonderful idea at the time.

Amelia, is my cat rescuer friend. She is the type of woman who lives her life doing what she believes is just. Her adoptable kittens are gorgeous, glossy and amicable and are only allowed to go to homes that will feed them healthfully and love them adequately. Hilary had stayed home. She was another cat rescuer who specializes in adult cats,. Amelia and Hilary have approximately 28 cats and a gentle, bovine pit bull between them right now. They also feed multitudes of feral cats around the area at various 'way stations'.
Amelia herself reminds me of a cat. The kind of cat that sits, folded neatly with one ear slightly forward, missing nothing. We had a lovely evening but I was glad to get home.

I gratefully got into my bed with its fuzzy flannel sheets and closed my eyes with a sigh, only to realize within moments, that my mind was a store with holiday hours, and had no plans to shut down as long as business was going on. At the same time, my stomach gave a lurch and an alarming rumble, letting me know that the chicken wings were going to have a volatile difference of opinion with my stomach.

I had been out all day, so both cats were in my room keeping a close eye on me. They were pretending to sniff everything, carefully hovering over every object in the room, like reading a well-loved book in olfactory braille.
The children were away, so they really wanted to protect their sole 'keeper of the cat-food cans' . They escorted me to the bathroom and sat down to wait until I was done, looking pleased. Their purring abruptly stopped and their ears went flat, as my digestive system went up in flames. They retreated to just outside the bathroom door, before escorting me back to bed with sidelong glances.

My notebook and pen were on the bed next to me, as usual. I opened the book to a fresh page, and starting writing down some of the thoughts and ideas passing through my mind, some of which I approached with trepidation. Thoughts can sometimes be as jarring as a hastily scribbled note propped up against a lamp on a bedside table somewhere.

It was January now and I wondered how I had been marked by 2010.

I know I have come to understand that hopes and dreams follow their own timetable, one never knows when or how or who. Mostly I know that hope is deeply eternal, and might be as a flame, gutting briefly in the breeze, but it will steadily burn again... given a moment or two.

I have learnt that we can pray for something with our whole heart, but not all we ask for is necessarily good for us. It is probably worth praying for "what is best for us, and best for those that we love, in the right time and in the right way."

I have learnt that we can live somewhere for awhile, and it can never feel like home and we can live somewhere for a short time and feel like we have always belonged there.

I have learnt that when a cat gets his legs shaved at the vet, that it will take weeks for the fur to grow back, and until then, they will look slightly like a well worn velvet couch, but their bald patch is soft if you pet it. I have learnt you will probably get bitten if you pet a cats front legs.

I paid another visit to the bathroom, tripping over both cats who were jockeying for the best viewing seat of the disaster that was my stomach.

When I got back to bed, I looked out of the window at the the translucent darkness, like the arcane leavings of watercolor water, after the painting is done. This night was over too, it was 6.am, January 2nd.
Sleep finally stole over me like a sweet shadow and perhaps peace of mind.