There is no nibble urge so great
As that
Which clasps
With “awwww”
So sweet
At very sight
Of newborn
Feet …
Photo: Yisca Freedman
For The Daily Post
Too Sweet To Eat!
Month: June 2017
Plane Wisdom
Photo: Pinterest
On gloomy days
That sap the light
And leave your soul forlorn
In life’s overcast,
Remember:
Above the darkest, densest clouds
Still shines
The brilliant sun.
For The Daily Post
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Ogunquit Duet
“Ogunquit Duet”
I took this photo in Ogunquit, Maine, during the summer of 2009, as hurricane “Danny” rolled in. Air and water mixed into a mist of gray, as the ocean roiled closer and closer to the buildings and the clouds kissed the waves.
The beach was deserted other than for some miserable looking seagulls who huddled as near the building as they could … and the brave soul who attempted a stroll against the edge of the storm … pushing forward with the umbrella not as rain shield but as barrier against the driving wind.
A moment after I took this photo, the tension broke as a gust whipped the umbrella up and over this person’s head, almost turning them into a kite. A dance ensued: The human tried to turn the umbrella sufficiently into the wind so they could close it; the wind buffeted each duck and weave maneuver with rain, wet sand, and foamy mist.
“Danny” won.
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Cringe Detector
“…None of anything is half nearly as organized as you’d want it to be, Aimee. … In the end, child … all that matters is what your own skin and neck hairs tell you.”
“My skin and neck hairs?”
She chuckled. “And your gut, while we’re at it. Think of that Watchman who was up to no good in a hurry. How did he make you feel, not only in your head with thoughts or worries but in your body?”
“He made my skin crawl. … ” Her meaning dawned on me. “Oh, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck standing on end, and my belly flopped all frightened.”
“Exactly!” she smiled. “I knew those Matrons could maybe get you to obeying and to keeping your tongue quiet—not that anyone would know it now, from all your chattering—but they did not manage to squelch your instincts for detecting the real kind of wrongness. If you follow clues already in your body, you’ll see through titles and claimed importance. Just make sure you follow your body’s signaling and steer away from those who get your sensors to this kind of itching. Nothing but trouble in those people, and no amount of reasoning will make it worthy.”
(Excerpt, Outlawed Hope)
For The Daily Post
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A Local Princess
Most late afternoons she arrives to session in frilly sleepwear and pink plush slippers, locks of hair damp from her bath. I’m on first name basis with her three varieties of Elsa nightgowns, her Dora robe, her Hello Kitty slippers, her Eloise headband.
She has no qualms traipsing the urban outdoors in jammies (or on a rare rescheduled morning, with brush-phobic bedhead). It may be that she’s five … but the short commute sure helps: she lives right across the street. No fuss. No sweat. No need to primp.
After all she is donning royalty to sleep.
For The Daily Post
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The boy who was a girl
“I saw a boy who is a girl,” the six-year-old noted. We were wrapping up a session and he was coloring a Spider-Man drawing he’d made.
“Oh?” I offered. I don’t always know where things are heading when children offer out-of-the-blue declarations. Instead of assuming, I try to stay out of the child’s way till they say more or clarify.
“Yeah,” the little guy added. “He is a boy on the outside but he is really a girl on the inside.”
“I see.”
He lifted long-eyelashes with an adorable ‘is-she-really-listening-or-just-pretending-to’ look. When our eyes met, he nodded in satisfaction and lowered his gaze back to his drawing. He regarded it quietly for a few seconds then rummaged through the colored pencil box. “Aha!” he announced, pulled out the silver pencil, and meticulously drew squiggly lines over his superhero’s bodysuit.
“Yeah,” the boy said, “just like Spider-Man.”
I made a noncommittal noise in my throat and he looked up at me again, eyes slightly narrowed in concentration. “Yes,” the little boy stressed, “because you see, sometimes he is a regular man on the outside but he is still really Spider-Man on the inside.”
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When I Grow Up
“When I grow up,” she said, small face determined, adamant, “I will make sure no one is hungry and no one feels lonely for a hug.”
(S.J. age 5)
- Photo: Pinterest, Kay Anderson
For The Daily Post
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Transience
Like life suspended in the fleeting moment
between here
and gone …
Photo credit: Inbar Asif
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A Coil of Time
Life will loop back
Onto itself
A coil of time,
A wreath of memories
Unwound,
Revisiting.
Hold tight. Ride on.
A curve will come.
A turn to grow.
Till the next loop
Flows back
Contracting
Time.
For The Daily Post
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Meddling
It took a full sixty seconds before she could get hold of her giggles long enough to tell me why she called.
“What’d he do now?” I smiled.
You see, she has a four-year-old and an 18 months old. Both precious. One precocious.
The preschooler omits some speech sounds and makes a salad of most others. He knows what he wants to say (and has much to impart from dawn to evening), but the production message from his brain to mouth muscles doesn’t always come through organized. We’ve been working on improving motor planning and sound production, and he’s been making steady progress. He is a studious little dude and follows instruction well enough, but what he really adores is experimenting: With his father’s shaving cream and his mother’s makeup, with his little brother’s haircut and diaper-rash cream, with words and their meaning.
“I was making him a salad,” the mom hiccupped, still not quite over her laugh-a-thon, “and silly me, I thought I could slip in a tomato.”
I grinned. Silly indeed … This boy loves some vegetables … but he is also the kid who declared “tomatoes are mean because they look like cherries but they taste yucky.”
“So, he takes one look at the plate and shakes his finger at me, saying ‘Mommy, I told you five times already. Why you meddling my dinner?'”
For The Daily Post
Na'ama Yehuda 
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