Blissful Morning to Write

Ingredients for a blissful morning

I was right to refuse a 9:00 appointment with Margie Fuller. Here are my recommended ingredients for soothing start to the day. Just when you thought I could never be calm or balanced again...you see, it really isn't me- it's my life! Oh, oops, sorry, no more whining.

Ingredients;

Several cups of coffee consumed on your deck on a warm sunny morning. Close all windows and doors to the house that let out the sound of your children or Spongebob. Listen to the sound of the breeze and the various birds. Read a little, write a little.

Here's what I wrote-

With first an explanation; I have been trying to concentrate on "boys" a little. My artwork and writing is always girls. I don't really like boys. They are loud and clumsy and destroy things for fun, then they turn into men. But I am trying to "like" them better. For so long I have concentrated on the things I don't like about my husband. Now I am trying to appreciate more the things I do like about him. There are many, I find. Plus thoughts of my brother have been hanging around my head. I miss him. I miss the brother I would have had as an adult. Sometimes, I even wish I had a little boy of my own.. but then my period starts and other equally crazy thoughts take over. So here is what I wrote this morning and I don't really know what inspired it.

"I don't know you" she said peering up at him from under heavy lids covered in crepe paper skin.

He leaned over and put his hand on her arm which seemed to startled her. Her shoulders lifted slightly and then settled back into their familiar slumped position. She turned her head slightly away as if his presence was just too much for that moment.

What thoughts passed behind those clouded eyes, he wondered, how do I reach into that world she stays in? "I know you, Grandma" he said softly, "I came to visit with you awhile."

She looked at him now, fully. First his shape looming over her and then his tan skin stretched over taught muscles. Then his thick hair growing unabashedly over his collar. His sideburns were unsuitably long and he hadn't seen the sharp side of a razor recently.

But those eyes- those beautiful eyes hadn't changed since the day his toy plane flew out the kitchen window of her house and dropped into the lemon meringue pie she'd set outside to cool. She'd seen it happening and when he looked around to see if he'd been caught she was standing there with her hands on her hips.

"Looks like your pilot is in a bit of trouble." She said as his eyes turned large and tears held tremulously on lower lids.

"I'm sorry, Grandma, I didn't mean it..."

"It's alright honey. We'll call it 'decoration'!" And that's how they served it later, plane and all. Everyone laughed and it became a family story.

"I meant, I don't know you since you got so grown up! So big and tall. And handsome!" She put her hand over his,and looked him in the eyes, and smiled that familiar smile he'd been looking for.

This was the world she lived in. She'd done her work, been a child who became an adult, raised a family, been a part of proper society. But now she rested, done with obligations, she visited her accumulation of memories. While others watched game shows and did crosswords she re-ran episodes that in total had equaled a life. A good life.

"Do you remember..." she plucked at his hand, and of course, he did. They had the conversation they'd had the last time he'd visited, the conversation that would become part of his accumulation of memories he saved for later. For dessert.