As you start traveling down that road of life, remember this:
There are never enough comfort stops. The places you’re going to are never on the map. And once you get that map out, you won’t be able to refold it no matter how smart you are. So forget the map, roll down the windows, and whenever you can, pull over and have a picnic with a pig.
And if you can help it, never fly as cargo.
~ Kermit the Frog (Jim Henson)
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We’re moving New Year’s Day. Yep, a holiday. Home’s been up for me a while. But this move, not expected this way. Not with so many unknowns in our lives, with so many intentions that need time and space to put in place. Not during the holiday season when an extremely tight rental market gets tighter. With the door banging our backsides as we leave. I was scared at first, got angry. This house full of charm and natural light built 1910 is rotting from neglect on the outside as we’ve cleaned, cared for and maintained her. I’d lost the delight of the porch to dark damp and peeling paint from leaks breached in the ceiling and sidewalls, unattended for many months despite dozens of emails, texts, contractors solicited and met, reports and updates written to the landlord, the other half of the roof draped under a tarp. There should be good faith, I thought. In the midst, I could see myself focused on what I didn’t want, knew I had to shift, focus on what I do want. Remember I manifest miracles. I wanted another story.

So, once again, I described my ideal home. This time mindful as I wrote each line item. Seeing it, feeling it, rolling it around inside. Omitting items like size. A feeling of spaciousness written instead. I wanted my mind’s borders to roll back, soften. Physical space is important to me. I’m sensitive to it. And I wanted essentials. I started following fleeting thoughts, looked in places I’d once rejected. One dawn I walked to the bay with Gratitude on my lips and a radical (for us) idea emerged. The simple act of saying yes, why not without asking how brought the shift I sought. What I desire in home. Peace living in my intentions for the coming months. Beauty that feeds me. A kitchen that’s easy, that I love, because it’s where I launch my day with a glass of water, looking at the sky’s light. After my dawn walk, where I begin my Doing of the day as I steep a small pot of fine tea, add a tad of honey, creme to slightly light. A place I feel abundant, cared for, not stressed or distracted. Space inside and time to write, create in quietude. Dream, envision, be bold with offers. A place I take back my life. No longer fly cargo.

So, tho it may look conventional from the outside to be moving to a small, immaculate townhome after living nearly my entire adult life in historic neighborhoods, for this live and let live unconventional gal it is not. I can gaze upon water steps out my door (a long strip of a tiny manmade lake). I’m in the center of where I live life in St. Pete, where traffic’s easy. And tho it requires 3 minutes (timed) in the car, I’m close to the bay for morning walks. I surprised my husband with the choice. Essentials, I told him. Writers write.

What’s Home mean to you?

Never be so focused on what you’re looking for
that you overlook the thing you actually find.
~ Ann Patchett

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Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writers Life

Once bright days on the porch.
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A favorite:  How the heart opens wide when the mind does.
A secret: To someone from North Carolina, most Florida lakes are ponds.

This is what I ask you. . .Can we ever know true what the good Lord intends?
Can we ever know our part in making it so?
This was always a story about things turned right.
Weren’t never just a story on what’s done wrong.
~ Sarah (FLIGHT, A Novel)
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Every Thursday morning while in Santa Fe I go to memoir class. Great exercises and prompts, lessons that serve whether fiction or truth. Not being one for reminiscing, I typically write scenes for my novel in progress rather than traverse my own life. Contemplation of the here and now, insights from the past woven in as far as I usually go if it gets personal. This week was different, tho. Make a list of people you’ve lost. Pets, family, friends. Prioritize. Of course, my parents, number one. Write a paragraph on each. Perfect exercise for a profile in the novel. Oh, yes, mother stuff all over my work. In my first novel, a mother’s sacrifice and it’s aftermath. In my work in progress, a pregnant teen who’s run away, carries a letter to her mother that she adds to regularly over the months. Carefully choosing what she shares of her life further and further from the coal fields she left. Mother stuff.

After I wrote my first novel, I was surprised to see parallels to my own life. How my dad was in a key character. How what happened to the little boy happened to me. My mother and I weren’t especially close. As a child, I frustrated and confused her, she told my husband. You’d ask a question, and while I was thinking of the answer, you’d ask another, she told me. Others said she withdrew from me. Not from her overwhelm with her meticulous, precocious daughter, but to counter the favoritism my father bestowed my way. To balance the seeming denigration of my chubby sister. In my novel Flight, a mother receives a prophecy, withholds herself from her son to make him strong, to prevent his attachment to her so he can fulfill his destiny. And it tears her heart out. I rewrote the story the way I wish it had been. A sacrifice, for me. Not really a choice. And the pregnant teen, her close relationship with her mother. Their camaraderie, comforts. I rewrote that, too. Filled in the holes of my mother’s love, because I know she loved me. Stepping back further, I see I’m rewriting both our stories, hers and mine together. A great wonder that it took so long to fully see it.

Last week I shared my husband lost his job. Has a condition that won’t go away, makes things hard. Days after that our landlord wrote he’s raising our rent 30%, or 62 % if we choose month-to-mouth. A whopping $1100/mt. increase. I planned to move soon, anyway – the place high maintenance, frustration with our non-responsive absentee landlord – but six weeks seems so short a time to find another good home, pack and move. Three nights ago I thought how I could easily claim a ‘hall pass’ for a day off to depression. I went to bed with a short prayer for help. Just before dawn, I dreamed a man came into the room where I was. One of these four watches has something in it, he said. I looked at mine, noticed a raised circle of glass on the crystal. Yes, this is it, see here, he said, scraping a tiny speck of something discolored from the edge. And took the watch away. When he returnee it, I realized he’d removed 1/2 oz. of gold. You took my gold, I accused, trying to figure how much he owed me. No response. Done, gone. And when I woke, I got it. Don’t give away the gold of my time.

That afternoon, on an errand at the railyard, I stood looking at the sky, the cottonwoods, feeling the dry cool breeze, listening to the sweetest accordion music. Classical notes that rendered the air heavenly. Not like accordion, at all. Taking my time to be here now. I crossed the tracks, gave the young man a few dollars. Lovely, thank you, I said. He tilted his head so his hair fell across his face, smiled. I’m happy to be here, he replied. Yeah, me, too, I thought. And it came to me. If I can rewrite stories of my childhood without intention, I can rewrite the story now spinning my head sideways now. I’m gonna be alright.

Tell me. . .what stories would you rewrite?

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.
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A favorite:  Surprise gifts.
A secret:  I ask for help nearly every day.