Journey Back, Journey On

 

As you travel paths of current days, new plans … remember times of past: The journeys never taken, the ones you had and wish you hadn’t, the ones you had and would again, the ones still left to seek and find.

Recall the feel of face against the window, the mist of breath on glass, the passing scenery, the whoosh of trucks, the sway of train, the rock of boat, the hum of plane.

Revisit muted conversations, real or invented, arguments and whining, complains and “I spy” games, “she’s touching me” and “99 bottles” songs.

Sensations, shared or private. Fall-asleep-legs, sticky vinyl against summer skin, hair in eyes, road grit, sweet treats, cold drinks. The heaviness of someone’s slumber on your shoulder, the lull of road weighing your own lids down.

And music. Radioed or piped through earphones. Sang loudly, hummed, internally known, ignored. The way the beat or words or both matched blur of blacktop under wheels or rain on windshield; the way it sometimes did not match at all.

Be still. Be rocked. Be moved. Be carried.

Allow yourself to be transported, taken back, imagined forward.

On this journey, your commute through life.

 

For The Daily Post

Ogunquit Duet

Ogonquit Maine 2009 Na'ama Yehuda

“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.

 

For The Photo Challenge

A Local Princess

hello kitty slippers

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

The boy who was a girl

spiderman

“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.”

 

 

 

 

Meddling

cherry tomatos

 

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