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

Cringe Detector

Outlawed Hope

“…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

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

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

Whew!

shrinershospitalforchildren

 

For the child who finally got a clean bill of health, long enough into remission at last, after three bouts of cancer, four surgeries, five courses of chemo, two collapsed lungs, a resistant infection, and more invasive treatments and hospital days than one can count (though I’m sure her parents had counted. Every. Single. One.)

Whew.

We’re so relieved.

You rock, little one!

 

 

For The Daily Post