A New Experience

In the early hours of this morning as I sat wrapped in a warm cover in my "quiet contemplation chair," a strange thought occurred to me. Perhaps it isn't really strange, for it applies to all of us. It was a thought about death and the fact that if I die without leaving a written record of my life, it will not only be as if I never lived, but it also will be as if a small treasure chest of valuable (or not) records, information, and experiences had been buried from the world, never to be unearthed. What good is a treasure that never sees the light of day to bless anyone's life, or life's experiences that never are shared?

Thus, today, at the suggestion of my niece, Amy and some of her friends, I embark on a new experience of creating and writing on a blog, and applaud those who seem to do this effortlessly, not to mention eloquently. Their blogs are so interesting and bear testimony to their creative know-how. I'll have to have Papa Roy teach me how to put pictures on here. My mind doesn't have a file for getting the pic from the camera to the blog. Does this make me a likely candidate for the cave man commercials for Geico?

After breakfast I danced with my kitchen . The sameness of being, the non-endingness of necessity, and the mundane task before me turned into the "mun-dance." Suddenly, I didn't want to clean, but I couldn't just walk away, so I played a dancing game in my mind without music or lyrics, but with poetic fluidity of motion beginning my cleaning at the far end and moving as efficiently as the "god" of possibility would allow.

Where once I had five little helpers, there is now only me. Oh how I miss those ten arms and legs, not to mention the brilliant minds, incessant chatter, and natural static. I'm now left to my solo dance, my "bread winner" has gone to win some bread. He cooks, I clean. Our chosen roles for our morning brings us comfort. We greet the day with visiting time and a cup of tea; mine Peppermint, his Chamomile. We sit in our kitchen nook by the windows where pale yellow silk flowers strain against the glass and hug the windowsill outside. They have held up well through the cold of winter and scorching heat of summer, but the power of the sun has stripped them of their brilliant yellow. It matters not. Flowers of any color, including white ones, gladden the heart and strengthen the spirit.

I smile at the memory of three weeks ago holding my little two year old granddaughter, Adyson, as she pointed to the flowers and in her precious baby talk informed me that those "flaus" were "ow-sigh" and these "flaus" were "in-sigh." How do we spell baby talk words? To me she was brilliant in her descriptions. We talked, kissed, hugged, and then she was gone to explore her world.

I think of the song from Fiddler on the Roof, "Sunrise, Sunset," which laments the fleeting passage of the years of our children as children. "Turn around and you're two, turn around and you're four, turn around and you're a young girl going out of the door..." It goes by too quickly.

On Tuesday I stopped by the drugstore near my home. As I was opening my wallet, a man bumped into me, reached his arm across in front of me and said, "Oh, excuse me," and proceeded to pick up an item I was buying. I stepped back thinking he had left something on the counter, then I looked at him and realized it was my friend from my author's club. His name is Lawrence Montaigne and he's an actor. We laughed and hugged, and then he invited me to see the protype of his book which was in his truck. He needs to send it back to the publishers to sharpen up some of the pictures inside, but it was exciting to see that he has a product very nearly completed. Lawrence has quite a list of movie credits to his name, movies like The Great Escape with Steve McQueen, and he was part of the original Star Trek cast with William Shatner and Leonard Nemoy. You can check him out on his web site if you're interested.

I'm not sure why I'm writing this, except perhaps to express joy in his writing of his book, and to relate a brief moment we had when I gazed at the picture on the front of his book which shows him now, and two characters he played in yester-year. I asked, "Lawrence, do you ever wonder how quickly you got to this age? " He was instantly engaged and said he and a friend were just talking about this; then he said it made him angry. When I asked why anger, he said, "...because there is so little time and so much yet to do."

I guess I'm feeling this way. There seems to be so little time left, and so much yet to do, not the least, and perhaps the most important, is getting my books finished. Some days I don't know which one to write on, Life's Lessons Through Literature, Life's Random Moments, The Fault Dear Brutus Lies Not in our Stars, But in Ourselves: Personal Transformation is an Inside Job, The Bracelet , or my favorite, the title I think Amy knows, but I'm not ready to write it publicly, so it shall remain a secret for now. I have chapters in five different books and can't seem to corral my chatter to one track. I've even got an idea for another called, A Bag of Chocolates, and an idea for a novel that takes place in Rocky Point. Does anyone have any suggestions for keeping me on task to complete one project? I have to say that I'm loving The Bracelet, but I'm finding it is making me think and reevaluate or define what I really "think" about some things, like what is TRUTH? Maybe I'll post a sampling of The Bracelet.

Well, "..time flies on wings of lightening." I shall say goodnight and push the publish button and see what happens. All of this is a first for me....