I’m A Pussy

To a point.

Once I’m moving, the cold doesn’t bother me too much.

Although my fingers feel like they are still defrosting.

It was a chilly, chill, chill ride home tonight on my bicycle.

And I argue that the weather here though temperature wise is warmer than say, Wisconsin, or Alaska, it’s still nippy out there and uncomfortable.

Yet.

There were moments in the park, in the dark, the wind whistling through my hair, the sound of my bicycle a fast low whip of feet churning and the slip of wind wicking through the spokes of the front wheel, that I felt so free and light that the cold was no more nuisance than a falling leaf.

There was more than one falling leaf however.

There were blown down limbs, palm fronds, acorns, seed pods, walnuts, scattered detritus that threatened to derail my wheel and send me flying over the handle bars.

There was just enough light in the park to avoid the majority of the windfall, but it was a winding road I rode.

It reminded me of the path, the journey, the way forward that I walk.

I realized that though there are times when I am literally the only person on a part of the path, some intrepid wanderer has gone before me.

I am not special.

I am not unique.

The most popular thing?

Yeah.

I will probably like it.

Although I have my tastes and foibles, they are often such to alienate me from the pack and isolate me, make me feel special, unique, mysterious, or some such other crap that is generated in my brain to pander to my super special ego self.

I am no trailblazer.

This is the thought that came unbidden to my mind as the wind grew woolier and the trees creaked in the sluice of air.

I suddenly had a feeling of what the woods were like, here, at the end of the wilds before the sea, the trees, the dark smell of earth and salt, the special light of moon playing over the meadows, an eery blue-white that velvet like drapes itself across every blade of grass and edge of leaf.

There was the road I was biking upon.

And there was the path, winding through the fallen leaves, sticks, boughs, branches, and various other road blocks, it was not wide, but it was there.

I was not the first bicycle through the park in the messy weather, and I  probably wouldn’t be the last this evening.

I would bet, though, that I may be one of the last folks heading all the way through the park to the wilds of the Outer Sunset at 9p.m. on a Tuesday night.

A night I had previous to today, thought was going to be my Friday.

I was under the impression that I had tomorrow and Thursday off for the holiday, and without realizing it, I had also assumed  I would have off Friday, like I did with the day after Christmas.

Not that I am being some sort of hound for extra paid holiday days, but you know, I like to know when I am working and I also wanted to co-ordinate with my guy, who was also under the impression that I would have a long weekend.

However, I was wrong.

Not impossibly wrong, but just slightly off, I will have Thursday and Friday off.

Not tomorrow.

So, off to work I go.

But with a four-day weekend in sight, I am happy to do so.

I don’t mind working tomorrow, I had a long weekend last week, and I still am going to get four days off in a row.

Plus, I have a date for tomorrow night and a destination!

I am going with my guy to Petaluma, to the Mystic Theater to see Tommy Castro.

I’m going to get some blues music on, some rock and roll, with a splash of rockabilly and I am psyched.

I get to dress up.

I get to go out with my guy and have a new experience.

I get to dance!

I don’t know swing, I don’t know two-step, all that well, maybe a tiny bit, I don’t really know anything formal, but I know how to rock out and I know how to shimmy and shake to a good blues line and I know how to kick up my heels.

My heels shall kick tomorrow night.

I’ll work until 6:30 p.m.

Hop on my bicycle, hopefully all the windfall will have been cleared up, and I will put on my swing dress with polka dots and put some fishnets on, red roses in my hair, re-apply my lipstick and head out-of-town.

We’re going to grab a bite somewhere on the road, which is fine with me, I don’t need to do anything fancy, I’ve had plenty of fancy for a while, then get to the show and hang out with my baby.

It’s nice to have plans.

It was nice to get the surprise text from my boyfriend about the show.

I didn’t know what we were going to be doing, aside from a possible party within our fellowship of friends, nothing really seemed on the menu.

And now I got a date to dance.

Pleased as punch.

And though I have sat and warmed myself up and had some tea and I am loath to wander out into that cold night, current temperature 50 degrees, I am off to Celia’s by the Beach to have a late night dinner with my honey.

Well, he’ll eat, and I will watch.

Discuss details and make our plans for tomorrow.

And do what all humans want to do when they are cold.

Snuggle into the arms of someone who cherishes them.

Nothing new to see here.

 

 

It’s A Different Kind

Of cold.

I find myself arguing with people who live outside of San Francisco when they snark at me that 50 degrees is not cold.

But it is.

There’s no insulation in my studio.

The wind off the ocean is not a breeze.

And it will cut you.

No playing.

Wet cold is so different from dry.

When I was up in Anchorage, the temperatures were drastically different from here, yet I found myself “freezing” on a number of occasions this past weekend.

I cannot believe the weekend is past tense already.

Aside from some cold extremities, which come in handy if one so chooses to use them as weapons of mass destruction on your boyfriend.

“ARGH! How are you’re feet so cold!?” He yelped when I stuck them on his warm leg under the covers in bed.

I felt justified.

The punk is not ticklish, so how am I to get my revenge?

Cold feet are awesome for that–revenge, a dish best served cold.

Not that I really have any thing to seek revenge upon my boyfriend, he is a peach, a pumpkin, a bunny, a darling, a sweetheart, as was often and amply demonstrated over the five-day weekend, which encompassed Christmas and all the crazy family baggage that entails.

For me.

Not him.

His baggage?

None of my business.

To write about or otherwise.

Something that being in a romantic relationship with this person is teaching me, I get to keep learning about myself, not him, myself.

Keep the focus on myself.

Which can be challenging for someone who grew up the way I did.

It’s easier to focus on others, whether it is their perceived wrong doings, or their right doings, when I compare, I despair.

And when I am focused on another person exclusively I am not seeing what I need to do to take care of myself.

It is a dance that I am clumsy at, but have a had a few moments of grace with; my two left, cold, feet, straighten out here and there and I manage to do a pretty pirouette and gracefully navigate a situation or feeling.

I just paused for a moment, to sip my tea and look about my clean space, it got deep cleaned today, and my pretty Christmas tree, to listen to the jazz on my player, to feel the warm dinner in my stomach, to hear the laundry drying in the next room over, to be so grateful for this place, this home, I just wanted to acknowledge a deep contentment for my space.

For that matter.

Let me acknowledge a deep contentment for my life.

I really have a blessed life.

Yesterday, for example, my guy and I went on a little road trip down the coast on Highway One to Santa Cruz.

We went to the Natural Bridges State Park and went on the Monarch hike.

Unfortunately, we got a later start then we had anticipated and there was not much monarch action to be seen.

Oh.

The monarchs were there, in the hundreds, if not thousands, they were just difficult to see.

The bower of eucalyptus trees that they were nestled in were already deep in afternoon shadows when we arrived.

The butterflies had thus already settled down into the bunches twined around the branches and leaves.

There were a few scant flyers in the top part of the tree canopy and I was able to spot a few fluttering around in the last of the suns rays when I strained my eyes all the way up to the sky.

Monarch Butterflies

The monarchs blend so well into the leaves when they are still that it took much searching to finally see the bundles laced throughout the boughs.

Monarchs

In this photograph I pulled as much out as I could and used my filters in Iphoto to somewhat capture a bundle. The gigantic mass is a horde of monarchs, most of them have their wings closed, so it makes it further challenging to observe them without their distinctive orange and black markings showing.

My boyfriend and I walked holding hands and climbed around the trees and paths and listed in the sun when it dappled down through the canopy.

I was already cold and ready for the car.

I joke with him that I am only dating him for the car seat warmer in his car.

In a way, I was disappointed, but in another, I was not at all.

We had gone on an adventure.

Sure it wasn’t the spectacle I had expected and I, of course, self-centered in the extreme, had envisioned the entire thing alone, with my boyfriend, the sunshine, the thousands of butterflies, and the trees.

Not the loud families having arguments about where to park or the tourists taking photographs or grumping to themselves that what was the point, you couldn’t really see the butterflies.

Damn you nature for not complying with our so human and prideful demands.

Rather, I was grateful for the experience.

I had gotten to take a road trip down the coast with my honey, listen to good music, hold hands, stop at roadside coffee shops and berry farms, I had gotten to see the waves unfurl and smash on the beaches of the shoreline on the drive, if I had only done this and nothing more, it was a successful adventure.

A grand experience.

And then as we were winding our way out along the elevated boardwalk, the last of the sun streaming in

Monarch Trail

I saw a monarch flutter in the trees and I whipped out the camera and caught them.

Not to take or steal or keep.

But to cherish and remember that moment, with my boyfriend next to me and the sun shining it’s last beams on our faces with boundless love.

Monarch Bundle

Granted.

It’s not the best photograph I have ever taken, but it struck me, how often I can not see the beauty of the moment because I am too caught up in how I think it should be.

The present is full of gifts and they are simple, the most alluring, and beautiful, when they open their wings and remind you that love is here.

You just have to look with an open heart.

Love.

Is in fact.

Everywhere.

Which was then further smashed home when we exited the trees and saw the escaty of the setting sun.

My feet may have been cold.

But my heart.

Oh.

My heart was on fire.

Sunset, Santa Cruz, Natural Bridges State Park

Realizations

Then there was that time in the car on the way to the place when I had an epiphany.

It came without bidding.

Most epiphanies do.

And it had to do with my father and the lack thereof of said father most of my life.

It followed closely on the heels of a conversation I had with my favorite uncle, my father’s eldest brother, and I realized when I said goodbye to him and I love you, that I did have a father figure, it is my uncle.

It was such a simple little revelation.

And like all such revelations, obvious when I saw it, that it had been there all along.

He had insisted the first year I moved out to California that I come up to his place in Nevada City, actually out past Nevada City, up further in the hills, for Christmas.

I had not seen this side of the family in a long time and I was nervous.

I was also going to be seeing my grandmother whom I had not seen since I was a small girl, four, four and a half, and she did not know that I was coming, it was a surprise.

I remember that my cousins looked so much more like me than my mother’s side of the family and that my uncle, who, although I was shy around and as one of my girl cousins noted, I did the same thing they did–hide in my hair–I felt uncustomary closeness too.

I couldn’t remember much of my uncle from being a little girl and I am not sure how much he was around at the time I was living in California, but he stepped in then.

And he has stepped in now.

I called him to get an update on my father–my two uncles and my grandmother flew up yesterday on Christmas to be with my dad.

My uncle gave it to me straight and thank god for that.

He also said all the things that I would have wanted to hear from my father at any time during my life, I love you, I’ll stay in touch with you, I will call you soon, I will keep you in the loop.

When I got off the phone I felt flooded with gratitude.

I had a dad.

And though my uncle is not really my dad, he’s my uncle, he’s a father figure and it was to a father that I felt I was speaking.

My uncle has daughters and as such is probably not looking for another, but the connection there and elsewhere–this is my uncle who goes to Burning Man–is strong, familial, blood, and I felt connected to him and the situation became just that more bearable to handle.

I won’t have a lot of say in the medical side, although I could choose to if push came to shove.

I don’t need to have that say.

Although my uncle made it quite clear that I am considered the primary next of kin being the eldest daughter and child of my fathers.

I am in control of his estate.

What feeble estate that accounts for since my father has been in a homeless shelter in Anchorage for some time is beyond me, but yes, I do have control of those monies.

I have no need for it and I would dispose of that responsibility and cede it to any of my father’s side of the family that should want it.

However.

If I need to I will take on the responsibility.

I am an adult.

I don’t know that I will pursue a great deal of a relationship with my father, I don’t know how much of a relationship there is going to be as the amount of brain damage is still be assessed.

He will be there in the facility for at least another two months.

He still has brain swelling and the two skull pieces that were removed have to be replaced and often times my father has to be restrained to not mess with his head.

I feel you dad.

It itches.

I was never good with the itchy stuff either.

But let it heal, ok?

Maybe because I do want to have some sort of relationship, if only to tell you I love you once in a while.

Everybody wants to hear that.

I believe, anyway.

And until that time I can always tell my uncle and my grandmother, my sister, my mother, my aunts and cousins, I can tell them I love them.

Life is precious and the more I live it the more precious it becomes.

Tomorrow I am going to take a trip down the coast to Natural Bridges State Park with my guy and we are going to see the monarch migration.

I am super excited to witness it.

I suspect it is something I need to see.

I feel the pull for these adventures and these experiences more now than ever as I see the kind of life my father has chosen for himself and the life that I have chosen for myself.

I can hope for a kind intersection of love and perhaps at a crossroads again I can take my father’s hand and we can walk along the road for a little while.

Or not.

But I choose to walk this path and live honorable and lovingly and with great kindness and compassion for myself and my father.

He did the best he could.

I know that.

I don’t approve, necessarily of what that looked like when I was a child, but I accept it and I know, really know, he did the best he could.

Just like my mom did.

No one’s parents are perfect and no one’s child is perfect either.

Yet we are all perfect.

Human.

Lovable and worthy of love.

And I hope that you don’t fall in love with me.

Too late.

It’s irrevocable.

I love my father.

I love, but from a far.

I love, but I can see the mountains around him and the snow squeaking under the tires of trucks whistling in and out of the hospital parking lot, I can still feel his hand and the warmth of his cheek when I kissed him goodbye.

It was a kiss hello too.

And maybe there will be more of that.

In the meantime, I’ll stay connected to my uncle and be grateful, so unaccountably grateful for my family, close, far, blood calls to blood and I am connected to so many wonderful amazing people.

I am not alone.

I never was.

No matter what I told myself.

And neither is my father.

No matter what he told himself either.

Love never dies.

Never fades.

Love always is.

And A Very Merry Christmas

To you.

The day is winding down.

The tree is slightly askew.

But I bought it that way, don’t fret.

My nod to a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

Or a “humility tree” as I learned when I was up in Anchorage; where, yes, I was given the opportunity to place the one and only little red bulb on the bent bough.

One of just a few memories that popped into my head as I reflected on my day and watched the surf pound the sand.

Yes.

I spent Christmas down by the sea.

Not all of it.

Although, I suppose I could argue that I did, considering how close to Ocean Beach I live.

My guy had obligations that took him out of the city today, so I made the big Christmas dinner last night: bacon wrapped baked rib eye w/blue cheese butter and pomegranate reduction, garnished with garlic mushrooms and pomegranate seeds; tossed salad with romaine hearts and black olives, cherry tomatoes, and organic radishes; baked Japanese sweet potato with sea salt and whipped butter; baby asparagus with shaved parmesan cheese and prosciutto; and last, but not least, marscapone infused with cinnamon and nutmeg and the last of the season persimmons and medjool dates stuffed with Roquefort blue cheese and topped with strawberries.

Yeah.

I roll like that.

Notice, if you will, because although I don’t bristle when folks exclaim, “oh my God!  What do you eat if you don’t eat sugar or flour?” that I did not make a thing that required said ingredients.  I always find it funny that, I must not eat well if I exclude those food items or things that have those food items in them.

I eat damn well.

And I did as well tonight, with  my guy back from his trip, but simpler so that we could actually eat before it was too late.

Tonight we had breakfast for dinner: scrambled eggs with garlic crimini mushrooms, asparagus tips, a bit of left over prosciutto from last night, parmesan cheese, paired up with chicken apple sausage and yogurt for the man, and marscapone cheese for me, with strawberries and blackberries.

My guy also got toast.

I bought the tiny little loaf of SemiFreddi’s at the store yesterday.

Perfect for slicing up some toast and using some organic small vat butter.

And yes, I talk the talk, but I can attest to the quality of the food not just because I ate it, but so did he and he washed the dishes too.

Good man.

Good God damn.

I am a lucky girl.

I thought today, again, as I walked down to the beach with a blanket and a book that a dear friend had given me for Christmas, my lunch (left over salad from dinner last night and an apple–I can’t eat like I did very often add to that I had oysters and tartar the other night and the Absinthe burger–no bun–after the symphony on Tuesday night, I have eaten well and richly for this week), dressed in love’s trappings–flip-flops on my feet, a light sweatshirt and a sundress, adorned with some sunblock Santa left underneath the Christmas tree.

I have had a lovely week.

I really have.

Even when my head has gotten in the way.

I was able to step out of if, do some writing, do some inventory, and get readjusted really fast.

I know that the holidays are the holidays and that I treat them as such, just another day I get to have on this planet.

Just another moment, yes, layered with memories, but just another day of opportunity to practice love, service, gratitude.

This is water.

The surf crashed, the waves unfurled with all the winter magnitude and majesty of Ocean Beach and I held the small book in my hand and was quiet for a little while.

My friend had gifted me David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech that was published in essay form, “This is Water” and I had read the book in two sittings, perhaps fifteen minutes each, between last night and this afternoon at the beach.

Contemplative Christmas by the Sea

I could choose to see the garbage in the dunes and be unkind in my mind about litter bugs, or I could look at it as a sort of point of focus that brought all the beauty of the sea and sand and ocean together.

Sometimes when I see something ugly I have to choose a different perspective to appreciate what I have.

I could grouse about the tourists who couldn’t wait to get off the beach and take their 7-Eleven pizza box with them.

Or I could be grateful that today, instead, I choose to feed myself well, organically, and lovingly, and with kindness.

That I took time today, despite it’s Christmas, because it’s Christmas, to do laundry and put fresh sheets on my bed, to meditate, to write, four, no six! Six pages long hand.

That I called people I love and left messages and that I just showed up for whatever the day was going to give me.

That is the gift.

The amends.

The way of living that I take, or try to the best of my ability, to take daily, to live a honorable and will lived life.

Yeah, Christmas can throw it all into high relief, the gift buying, the special foods, the racking your brain over what so and so would like, the juggling of everyone’s schedule, sending gifts out, parties, dresses, expectations.

Oh, expectations.

Or, as someone said to me recently, “white girl problems.”

I had some and I let them go, drift away on the sand and the tide and the sea and I paused as they danced into the air on the backs of the speckled brown wild plovers dashing in and out of the surf, and I said, goodbye, I don’t need to see it that way and the world tilted, the shift happened, the perspective changed.

Gratitude.

Mile and miles and miles of it.

For my family, my health, my little Charlie Brown Christmas tree, for getting to go to the San Francisco Symphony with my honey for the Charlie Brown Christmas special, the lights of City Hall all festive and bright as seen from the roof top balcony of the Symphony building.

City Hall San Francisco

Grateful for beautiful silver earrings from my boyfriend in the shape of wings, that remind to be angelic, sweet, gentle, with myself and the experience.

Grateful that my grandma and my uncles headed up to Anchorage Alaska to see my father, so that he was not alone on this Christmas.

Grateful for my sister and her family and my mom and her partner down in Florida being close.

For though I was alone part of the day, I never felt lonely or lost or out to sea when I allowed myself to see exactly the gifts that I have in my life.

And oh, there are so many more than the ones listed, they are just a drop in the bucket, a speck of foam on the cusp of wave unfurling out at the shore.

My life, my love bucket full, my grateful heart, my friends, and family, and employers, and fellowship, my boyfriend, my perspective, a blessing.

Graced with gratitude for it these gifts.

Merry Christmas to all.

And to all.

A very good night.

I’m Glad Your Posting Again

He said to me this evening as we exchanged a quick hug before I bounced to catch the N-Judah home.

Yeah, not my bicycle, but the MUNI.

Flat tire today.

I was able to pump it up this morning and it held air to get me to, work, but by the time I was done with work again it was soft and suspect I need either a new tube, as the valve might be leaky, or I need a new tire.

Either way I am covered.

And very fortunate that my bike shop is just blocks away from where I work.

I dropped it off at the shop and then high tailed it in a cab to the Inner Sunset.

I got my God on and hit the MUNI home.

Tomorrow I’ll be taking a car into work, I don’t like how often I have had to take Uber and Lyft and cabs this past week and a half, but between the rain, the flat tire, and it just being that way, I will live.

“White girl problems,” he said to me as I complained that the new teas at Starbucks sucked and they didn’t carry any decent tea.

Yeah, that’s pretty much what I have today.

Which isn’t to say that I won’t get my panties in a twist when something small arises, so I gratefully hopped in the cab and I will gratefully take a car into work tomorrow.

Which also happens to be my Friday.

Oh yeah.

I have a five-day weekend.

I shall be kicking it off by getting picked up by my boyfriend from work and heading straight to the symphony to watch the Charlie Brown Christmas special accompanied by the San Francisco Symphony playing the score by Vince Guaraldi.

I don’t know what I will be doing exactly for Christmas Eve or Christmas or the days thereafter.

I did mention to my guy that I wanted to go down to Big Sur and see the monarch migration, but he’s been sick and is just now after five days of being in it, coming back to a state of normalcy.

I find it too difficult to ask for anything from anyone who is sick, let alone the boyfriend.

I figure we’ll roll with whatever happens.

He actually has standing plans to be elsewhere Christmas morning, so I’ll have that free too.

Sleeping in is about all I think Santa is going to be leaving under my tree.

My tree!

I forgot I had gotten my tree yesterday and was warmly surprised and delighted when I opened the door to my studio and there my little Charlie Brown tree was draped in lights and ornaments.

I plugged in the lights and smiled.

I do so like Christmas time.

I also finished wrapping up presents.

I picked up some things for the boys that I care for today—vintage newspaper boat hats, googley eyed “monster” putty packs, and one brand new wooden racecar for each of them.

I joked with the clerk in the store that I was using my Christmas bonus to buy toys for the boys I care for.

And so the love goes around.

I got a bonus for Christmas and that was such a lovely thing.

I wasn’t surprised per se, I expected that I would get one, but I wasn’t expecting it to be a whole weeks pay, before taxes.

Thank you Santa.

Serious.

I paid off my student loan a few weeks early, threw some in savings, bought some nice food to have around the house and am thinking I may splurge on a New Year’s Eve frock.

As well as paying for the application fee to the graduate school I will be applying to this weekend.

Yes.

That’s right, it’s time to get that going and on track.

I will have time to work on it and I can’t think of a better Christmas present to give myself than a future.

I had a few doubts over the past few days in regards to the school and the direction and am I doing the right thing, but as they say, “willingness without action is fantasy.”

I have to take the action and move forward.

If it’s not meant to be, then that will be made very apparent, but if it’s meant to be I have to do the work.

I can be willing to change and be better, but until I actually take a different action then its just masturbation and fantasy.

Gee, wouldn’t it be nice, if when my body falls apart from being a nanny for over eight years, I have another career I can segue into.

A career where I can be of love and service to the community about me.

Which is always my purpose anyhow.

For which I am handsomely and richly paid, but it is a different kind of service.

So, I will be taking some time to work on that and get it done.

“You don’t want to stop doing all the things that the person who is with you was attracted by, you’ll paradoxically lose that persons interest.”

Well spoken.

So, when I got the pat on the back for getting back in the blogging saddle, I knew it was the truth.

I still got to write.

I don’t suppose or hope or have expectations around my blogging or the morning pages that I do; rather, that I just need to do them.

I don’t have expectations any more about becoming a big, rich, famous writer.

Besides, I’m famous in my own mind.

I do, however, need to cultivate the artistic temperament in me, whatever that looks like in the moment, which is often the writing for me.

But it is also reading, which I haven’t done a lot of recently, and doing activities that inspire wonder and awe in me.

My partner, I have said often and loud, must compliment me, not complete me.

This means, I complete myself, take care of myself and nurture that art girl in me.

Maybe it’s time for an Artist Date as well.

I do have Christmas Eve day off.

So much life.

So much love.

So much gratitude.

Happy Holidays.

Home for the holidays.

Christmas in San Francisco continues.

 

 

Brown Paper Packages

Tied up with string.

These are a few of my favorite things.

“Upcycled” is how I like to think about it when I wrap my Christmas packages in brown paper deconstructed from SafeWay grocery bags and brown paper sacks from CVS Pharmacy.

I cut the bag up, pull the handles off, flip it inside out and wrap whatever present I have at hand that needs a spiffy new look to it.

I put a name tag or holiday tag on the package.

Then the piece de resistance, green jute string.

I also occasionally use fabric and ribbon remnants.

I have a little Christmas box and it was unearthed today.

I got my Christmas tree.

It’s definitely a Charlie Brown type of fella, but he’s got some style and panache and some adorable blue lights adorning him.

Before

After

Tied up with String

Blue Christmas

And despite the fact that my Christmas tree has blue lights, it’s not a blue holiday for me this year.

I have someone to share it with and that’s first in some years.

I quite enjoyed wrapping up his presents while he lay napping on my bed this afternoon–poor bunny’s been sick.

He did rally like a trooper and helped me go to the Sloat Garden Center and get my tree.

I warned him that I was about to dork out.

I closely inspected all the trees, the pickings were far slimmer than I recalled from last year.  Then I realized that last year I had gotten my Christmas tree far earlier than this year.

That whole weekend trip to Alaska threw my schedule off.

And despite the decorations and the lights and the Christmas carol’s being sung, the stockings all hung by the chimney with care, it hasn’t felt like Christmas until about today.

I feel settled and at ease with what is happening with my father.

I got through my birthday, which, yes, though a day of celebration was such a surreal experience as it was the day I got the news about my father, plus it’s just a loaded day.

“Don’t have any expectations about anything,” I told myself.

Which is the best suggestion I can give myself at any time.

Expectations lead to resentments for me and the last thing I need on top of my already merry-go-round mind is some resentments about the expectations I have around the holidays.

And with a few years of having done this deal and been an orphan as such, although not really an orphan, I have done a few things for myself that speaks to good self-care and holiday joviality.

Last year I worked at half day on Christmas eve, then I rode the F-Market train down from the heart of the Castro to the Embarcadero and caught the last ferry from the terminal to Sausalito and then hopped off, walked a few yards, snapped some photographs, and hopped back on the ferry to San Francisco.

The year before I was in Paris and that was both monumentally mundane, as I helped a visiting friend locate a store open in Paris on Christmas Eve that could fax some paper work to her job, and unbearably magical–walking into Sacre Couer for midnight mass and the entire church is signing the first Noel in Latin.

Yeah, that’s not really a bad way to spend Christmas Eve.

The year prior I took myself out to the San Francisco Ballet and saw the Nutcracker for the first time.

I got all dressed up and took a cab.

I was unbearably homeless and lonely.

I was house sitting for a friend.

One of the sweetest gifts I got that year was a tiny black framed print in aquamarine that says: “Happy is a home that shelters a friend.”

I was pretty much a wreck that year, but tried to muster through it.

Of course in hindsight I can look back and see that I was being stripped down of all the things that I needed to let go of so that when the opportunity arose to go to Paris I was pretty much able to up and go.

The year prior to that I was living in Nob Hill.

And that was the first year that I allowed myself a Christmas tree.

I had a small studio and it overlooked the cable car line on Washington Street at Taylor.

The cable car guys would rumble by and certain operators would wave or flirt, or ask me what I was eating, my window really was just at eye level with the cable cars.

That year I was struck dumb with love and light and joy when I turned off the lights in my little studio and the Christmas lights on my tree twinkled and winked at me and the bulbs lit up the ornaments which cast Christmas colored shadows on the walls and ceilings.

Then.

Oh then.

A full cable car rattled by and all the passengers on the car were signing Christmas carols.

I felt my heart swell and the magic of Christmas kissed my forehead as I settled down for a long winter’s nap.

I can and do get a tiny bit sentimental and I think that’s ok.

There’s love and joy all year round in my life, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t want to celebrate and decorate and do up my own tiny little scene.

I have some Christmas goodies in the fridge to make a Christmas Eve dinner: warm spinach salad with bacon and Roquefort Blue Cheese, cherry tomatoes, and chopped apples; mini-rouladen–thin sliced black forest ham, slathered with a cream cheese and rolled around a dill pickle spear; asparagus with prosciutto, (I am now seeing a proliferation of pork products in my dinner I was not aware of until just now, ha), roasted Japanese sweet potato, and filet with some of that Blue Cheese reduced down and mixed with softened butter and fresh pressed garlic sautéed with baby Portobello mushrooms.

Yeah.

I like to cook.

Then  Christmas night dinner–caesar salad with grilled chicken and bacon, berries–strawberries and blackberries– and mixed cheeses, which I am going to do a little swing through ye olde BiRite tomorrow while on the way to the park with the boys, I’ll probably get my man a small Acme batard or sweet roll, a relish plate with marinated baby artichoke hearts, black olives, cornichons, deviled eggs with organic paprika, and yes, Virginia (ham is not on this menu), a duck.

I have not ever made duck before, but I am going to give it a go.

As I said, I like to cook, if you haven’t noticed from previous blogs and I am quietly thrilled to be able to make a few things for the man.

And have a tree.

And someone to hold my hand and snuggle with while I watch the lights twinkle in the dark.

Happiness.

Happy home for the holidays.

Happy indeed.

What?

It’s a Saturday night and I’m blogging.

Shouldn’t I be doing the boyfriend thing?

That is usually what is up if the post is not posted.

“When was the last time you blogged,” he asked me this afternoon.

“It’s been a few days, but I will be writing tonight,” I replied, and I knew I would.

Not necessarily because I have to, but because I want to.

I have become a little less stringent in my blog every day.

When I accepted the post a day challenge, from this very site, WordPress, back, oh I don’t know, five, six years ago, I was adamant.

ADAMANT.

That I would post everyday.

And I came really close to that.

I may have missed a post now and then.

I may have not had internet or I may have been out in deep playa at Burning Man; but for the most part, I was pretty on it.

The new relationship has changed that.

Not for the good or for the bad, it’s just a change.

And I like that I am allowing myself to be flexible.

To write when I need and want to write, for myself, about myself, and for no one but myself.

To forget the audience and just write what I need to write.

Oh yeah.

And my father woke up out of the coma.

With no filter.

“I need to scratch my balls,” I heard him say to the nurse, who was trying heartily to stifle his laughter and also to detangle the phone cord from around the many different tubes, cords, and monitors that he is hooked to.

He was really incoherent.

But odd things would get through to me, despite the crackle of a bad connection in Anchorage and the shoddy reception I was getting as I hopped in front of double bay window at work watching the rain sluice down the street.

The nurse explained that he had woken up and asked to speak to me and to my grandmother.

He, the nurse, also said that my dad was pretty groggy and out of it, but really had expressed the need to speak to me.

Despite denying that he had any recollection of me being there, I knew, that he knew that I had been there.

He didn’t know it was my birthday when we talked until I told him.

Then he told me that he was seventeen when he had me.

Not sure how that math works, he’s 65, and I’m 42, but hey, dad, glad to hear your voice, even in its querulous, the nurses are annoying me by not letting me scratch at myself (I tried to explain that he wasn’t and shouldn’t be allowed to scratch his head, since the skull flap was still open).

He also “cawed” at me like a crow.

Which I took as a great sign.

A weird sign, granted, but a sign that he was cognizant of somethings even if he was having a challenging time saying what was on his mind.

I had left a card with the nurses, one that I had gotten at the gift shop at the museum, it had an etching of a raven on it with the tribal reflection in the snow of the animal’s shadow.

I took the cawing to mean that my father had gotten the card and that he had either read it or had it read to him.

I found tears springing to my eyes.

I wiped them away.

I had to be going soon, the boys were running rampant, my boyfriend was going to be taking me to dinner and I needed to leave and get on my bicycle and get home and shower and be ready at 7:15p.m. to go to my surprise dinner.

The surprise, being, that my dad had woken up.

I rode my bicycle home is a semi-state of shock.

My phone battery dying.

Wondering who I should call, who did I want to call, did I have the energy to engage with any of it.

I just wanted to have my birthday and my boyfriend and not be apart of the drama anymore.

Showing up and answering phone calls and talking to relatives and family that I have not had much interaction with since I was young girl was draining.

So too seeing the state my father was in and what the twelve years intervening had done to his body and spirit.

He’s a tough old guy and what is it “they” say?

God protects children and drunks?

I think that covers it.

I told my sister, well, I texted her, that was as much juice as my phone had and when I was trying to get it together to do the next right thing in front of me, I just plugged it in and declared that the rest of the night was going to be my birthday and that I would call, connect with, and contact all relatives, family, friends, and anyone else who needed to know the status of the father up in the Anchorage hospital bed.

I took a shower.

I put on a pretty dress.

I put on too much makeup and felt like a tart and didn’t really care.

I went to a fat dinner with my baby.

He too me to Bobo’s.

It was smashing.

I had surf and turf.

Blue black filet with 1/3 of a Dungeness crab.

The crab is in season and wowzers, it might have been the sweetest, most delectable crab I have ever had.

We also split a wedge salad with pancetta and Point Reyes Blue Cheese, a side of brussels sprouts, with more pancetta, and a side of garlic Portobello mushrooms.

It was divine.

I was replete.

It took me a little while to settle down.

To get into the spirit.

It has been a ride.

It really has.

When I reflect that this time last Saturday I was sitting in an ICU room with my father’s hand in mine, not knowing what the next day would bring, wanting to be done with the grief and sorrow and knowing that there was more walking through the dark hallway to go, I had no idea that one week later I would be sharing about the experience in a Starbucks up in Noe Valley and recounting the gratitude I had for the experience.

Life is intense and fast sometimes and you blink and the next page has been turned, I don’t know what this next chapter holds for myself of my family, suffice to say I think I will be staying in touch more with then I have in the past.

I really don’t know where this next year is going, but I know that I am in the right place, with the right man, the right job, and the right fellowship around me.

I am blessed and alive and know it.

Even when I walk through the darkest hallways, I know that there is a light and a way out.

It just won’t look at all like I think it should.

But that is good.

It always looks better.

The outcome always.

Always.

So much greater than my best laid plans.

Oh Yeah

Tomorrow’s my birthday.

I sort of forgot.

“I don’t care about my birthday, or Christmas, or the holidays, or any of it, I just don’t have it in me,” I told my dear friend today on the phone from the playground before the rain started up again.

No those aren’t tears on my face, it’s just the rain.

Ok.

I lie.

There’s some tears in there too.

I cried a bit more than I expected I would today, it would catch me off guard and I wasn’t prepared for it.

I went back to work today after spending a lot of time yesterday nesting in my little home by the sea.

I cleaned, scoured, scrubbed, swept, did laundry, stripped my bedding, washed it all down, as though if I could possibly control my environment I would feel in control of something.

“If it feels like you’re falling down the hill, you’re in God’s will.”

Falling down that hill.

Not sure where it’s going to land either.

Things aren’t neat and tidy like they are in the movies, a quick resolution of the drama, a tight little bundle wrapped in brown paper and tied up with green jute string.

Nope.

My father’s situation is still stable, no change, according to the phone call I took this morning from the hospital.

I took a few phone calls from the hospital, which is probably why I was in tears more than once today.  Emotionally off my equilibrium.

Caught in the unawares by feelings that I thought had already come out.

I was that crazy lady in the terminal at the airport crying.

I was the passenger in the window seat forlornly staring at the cloud columns rising in the sky against the burnt umber of the sunset.

I was the woman lost at the terminal when I landed waiting for my ride to show up, he was in terminal three I was in terminal one.

I was that person.

I was that woman sobbing in her boyfriends arms.

Then kissing him and hugging him and wanting to crawl under his arm and into his coat.

Which I did do later that night and when he didn’t ask if I wanted him to spend the night, he has to be up ridiculously early for work, but just gathered his things to bring over to my house, I was grateful.

Wet and sad too.

The rain, it just doesn’t stop.

It’s like God is crying for me.

And sometimes I don’t know what I am crying for.

The sadness of it all, the wasted living, the relationship that was truncated so long ago and never fully re-established.

I miss my dad, but I miss him like an afterthought of what a father is supposed to be, like the taste of chocolate, a memory in my mouth.

The velveteen rabbit bank he gave me more solid in my mind than conversations about our lives, hopes, dreams, endeavors.

I know, however, I believe firm and true, that my father wanted the best for me.

So, with all due respect to the man still in the coma, I am going to get about living.

That’s really the only option I have–be true to my life and my recovery and my journey and live it the hell up.

Tomorrow I’ll be 42.

Hell, in two hours I will be 42.

In fact, in Australia, I already am 42.

I was a few hours ago as a friend from Sidney wished me a happy birthday from down under.

What will I do with 42?

In the year past I have done some traveling–Florida to see my mom and sister last January, Wisconsin to see my best friend and her skulk in July, Burning Man, to see that family that is extra special dusty and dreamy, in August, and Anchorage, Alaska, to see my father in a hospital johnny that did nothing to hide the ravages of the years.

I would actually like to go back to Alaska, under better circumstances, this year of my life, to see the long days and the light that lasts almost all night in the summer.

I did not see much of Anchorage, but I saw enough that I am intrigued.

Plus, I met one super fabulous woman and I suspect that there are a few others up that way who may be friends of friends that I could connect with.

I also want to go to Hawaii.

When?

I don’t actually know, but I feel like this passage of time and this experience with my father has brought about in me a hunger to know more of my family and more of my family history–which on my father’s side has a great deal to do with the Hawaiian islands.

“How old is grandma?” I asked my cousin as we sat in the airport terminal having lunch.

One of the gifts of the delayed flight time back (I am sure there are others, but this is the only clear one to me, the length of time it took me to get back was deliriously long–one missed connection by four minutes led to me having to wait an extra six and a half hours in the airport and then the weather was bad in San Francisco and my plane, once I was finally on it, was delayed again and we sat on the runway for two hours, then circled for an additional half hour in the air above SFO) was that I received a call from a cousin who I had not seen in over 30 years.

He called when my grandmother saw my post on facecrack about the flight delay, he was nearby at work and we had a little family reunion at the Phoenix airport over some bbq in the terminal.

“She was 13 when Pearl Harbor was bombed,” he said ticking off the numbers we figured out her age.

My grandmother was on the island when the bombing happened.

There’s a lot of history there to be explored.

That’s something I want to do for 42.

I also want to go to Atlanta, Georgia, there’s a really big convention there in July.

Not that I am psyched about going to Georgia in July, but hey, it only happens every five years and I have yet to go.

It’s time I do that as well.

Other goals?

Well, graduate school.

That’s still on the table.

“I’m a therapists wet dream,” I joked morbidly with one of the nurses on my father’s watch.

I had moments of dark humour sweep over me and sometimes it would sneak out.

But it doesn’t really surprise me that one of my desires is to do therapy as a vocation.

I’m a care taker, a home maker, a protector, a nanny, a confidante, a mentor, it makes sense to add therapist there.

“You’re a child psychologist making baby sitter wages, go back to school,” he suggested with blunt authority.

Yes sir.

That graduate school application isn’t going to do itself.

That’s one thing to aim for in this year of 42, another thing on my to do list.

Go back to school my dear.

I want to see the monarch migrations in Big Sur, go to Burning Man, but not work it, well, at least not the way that I have in the past 7 years, I want to hang glide, got to the boardwalk in Santa Cruz, I want to spend a holiday at my Uncle’s house in Nevada City, see my grandmother in San Diego, maybe see if I can get my mom to come to San Francisco.

Oh.

Yeah.

It’s also time for another tattoo.

Come January 13th or thereabouts, I will need a commemorative tattoo.

Design yet to be decided upon.

And I want to live, live, live, and experience life fully, dance, sing, hold my boyfriends hand, sleep in the crook of his arms, be of service to my friends and my community, laugh a lot, cry when I need to, ride my scooter, go to school, love as hard as I can.

Really.

That’s it.

I just want to live and love as hard as I can.

I think that’s a great goal for this next year of my life.

42.

I say I do.

Let’s get it on.

Saying Hello

Just to say goodbye again.

Goodbye papa.

I love you.

I kissed his cheek.

It was surprisingly warm, and the warmth and the prickles of stubble startled tears from my eyes.

I left his room.

I had said my goodbyes.

I told him what I needed to say, I wrote him a card, I held his hand, I stroked his arm, his knees, and the tops of his feet.

If he wasn’t wearing a helmet to protect his head, I would have stroked his hair, so like mine, still so dark, the gray is in his beard.

That was new.

I have never seen my father with a beard.

It was not a full fledge beard, but it was far more hair on his face than I can ever recall having seen.

“Does anyone know what happened,” the night nurse asked.

“No,” I replied, but the nurse who I checked in with on Friday read the intake notes to me and it sounded like he was assaulted for his wallet.

There was no need to say the rest of the story, my father’s body tremors spoke the rest of the tale, the bruises and scrapes and scars, the toughened skin, the cracked toenails, the hair, too long—another thing I had not seen on my father, long hair—the swollen hands, the alcohol withdrawal was hard to watch and bear witness to, but bear I did.

“You did a fine thing, you showed up as a woman of valor and strength and whatever happens this is between you and your dad, and you deserve to go out and experience every rich and wonderful thing that life has to give you, you let yourself have those things.”

Thank you Honey.

I needed to hear those wise words.

And so many others.

My darling boyfriend.

My dearest best friend.

My mom.

My sister.

My grandmother.

The worlds all convened in one spot for me in one fulcrum of pain and sorrow and grief and joy and gratitude.

The gift of my father.

I thanked him for helping me find closure.

I don’t know if he will come out the other side of this, but I do know that I will.

Breathe and pray.

She said to me.

Breathe and pray.

And that’s really what I did.

I prayed and held his hand.

I also cried.

But have I had a really good sob?

Not yet.

I did for a moment break down when I left the ICU, said thank you to the kind nurses; I lost it for a moment there in the waiting room.

Barren but for I.

I crumpled.

My face fell.

The tears scalded my cheeks and I let loose a wail.

Then I breathed in and prayed out and asked for a little more strength.

There was no one to hold my hand through the walking out of that waiting room, but I was held nonetheless.

My eyes so blurred with tears that I could barely respond to the texts from my boyfriend, then, the elevator, the intake desk at the ER, the cab called, the wait while the crazy of a busy ER bloomed around me.

“Please, sit, really, the driver will come and call out your name,” the receptionist kindly spoke to me.

I thanked her, looked at the melee in the waiting room and withdrew to stand by the doors.

I am done with this place, this space, this ER, this ICU; I just want to go home.

Home.

San Francisco.

I met so many kind people while I was here, was helped immensely by the fellowship, welcomed and hugged, picked up and brought places, asked to read and share, drank many, many, many large cups of coffee, and cried in the safety of rooms that I knew would hold my tears and keep them safe.

I am so thankful, grateful, and in deep debt to these rooms and the amazing people I met, especially one lovely lady who really stepped up to help and be of service, may I have the graciousness within me to play that service forward.

I have thank you cards in my bag, which of course, I did not find a mailbox to mail them from, but they are there.

I bought them as well as a postcard and a refrigerator magnet at the Anchorage Museum.

I got out a little today in between the church basement and the hospital.

My new friend took me to a museum and we talked and laughed and shared our experiences and then went to a café and I had a big old green salad, oh San Francisco I do miss your lovely food, and it was so wonderful to connect with someone.

I met her just yesterday morning and she feels like an old friend.

Just one of the many gifts I am sure will come of this experience.

The gift of seeing my father and finding my way through to an adult experience to deal with the being there for my family and to also find a small space for myself to have my own experience and interaction.

My heart hurts.

I am tender.

I am wrung with tears.

“The Christmas lights are so pretty in the snow,” I texted my boyfriend.

The Christmas carols in the hallways of the hospital, the crying child, the mountains capped with white, the blue sky, the blaze of golden orange at 3:30 in the afternoon as the sun began its fast descent, the mix of cheer and pain and sorrow and joy.

The richness that is my life that I can hold more than one emotion at a time and allow space for all of them.

I am a vessel of love and I found that the depth and parameters of my heart are far bigger than I suspected.

That’s what happens.

God breaks open your heart to fill it further.

A split open heart has more room, more area, a cup, a chalice, and a field of blazing aurora borealis against the deep indigo sky, to hold love.

It’s a feeling I have not gotten used to, but it is not unfamiliar and in the feeling I know that the rendering of it will only make me love harder and more if I keep my heart field open.

That’s the best I have.

I let go.

I let God.

I surrendered.

I accept and am loved.

I was brave and will continue to honor my family, my friends, my love, myself, and most of all this wilderness that I have come through to another pivot point in my life, and that, that is the choice for me.

Life.

I choose to live.

Thank you, my father for my life.

I will live it well and full of love.

I promise.

 

 

 

In Blackwater Woods: Mary Oliver

Look, the trees

are turning

their own bodies

into pillars

 

of light,

are giving off the rich

fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,

 

the long tapers

of cattails

are bursting and floating away over

the blue shoulders

 

of the ponds,

and every pond,

no matter what its

name is, is

 

nameless now.

Every year

everything

I have ever learned

 

in my lifetime

leads back to this: the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side

 

is salvation,

whose meaning

none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

 

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

 

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it

go,

to let it go.

 

Sometimes People Die

I should rephrase that.

We all die.

Sometimes people die and then, well, they don’t.

I expected the worst when I got the phone call this week about my father, the surgery, the injury, the coma, the low quality of life he has had over the last few years (in and out of homeless shelters), rampant alcoholism.

Hell, the last few decades.

However, he’s tough.

Like me.

I get my toughness from him.

And my mouth and my hair and I hate to say it, my big old Hawaiian flat-footed feet, I mean, really, those are my feet.

And my nose.

And my hands.

And my hand in his.

It’s just a slightly smaller version.

Watching him struggle, watching the tubes tumbling out of every single limb on his body, was like watching a version of myself and what it could be like, well, if it weren’t like what it is, which is that–

I have recovered.

From a seemingly hopeless condition of mind and body.

My father has not.

Maybe.

Maybe he will.

Maybe he’s still digging that bottom of his.

Maybe he’ll die.

Maybe he won’t.

Well, he will, I will, you will, we all will, but maybe there might be some juice left, some special spark, some tremolo of love that sings out, come walk with me longer, look at the mountains, see the sunrise over the snow-covered trees and breathe the air–crisp, cold, bracing–let it fill your lungs and soul and heart.

Whenever it got to be too much I would walk the sky bridge between the ICU and the wing adjoining the Cancer Center.

It’s a skywalk with views of the mountains and it commands attention.

Nature.

God.

Great.

Out.

Doors.

What ever you want to call it; that which is a power greater than myself.

That tree, yes, that one, over there, its older than me, it was here before me and it will be here after me.

I am just a blink.

A particle of time and space and love.

But oh.

Such love.

How many times did I tell my father I loved him today?

A lot.

More than a few.

I told him, I told friends, I told my sister, and my mother, my grandmother, my uncle, my great-aunt in New York.

You know who I didn’t?

My boyfriend.

Not because I didn’t want to.

That’s another blog.

But out of fear.

And perhaps that lesson is the greatest one here.

Tell them all, tell them you love them, smother them with love, and tell yourself you love you.

“I have to go papa,” I said and squeezed his hand again.

It’s disconcerting, he’s so lively, so responsive, but it’s not cognitive response, it’s nerve response, it’s like watching a fish with electrodes moving it’s tail back and forth.  I don’t know how much is real, and I don’t want to give myself false hope or for that matter, anyone else.

He twitches and jerks and occasionally an eye opens and it rolls and I don’t see much there and I am afraid to not see it and afraid to see it all at the same time and then I think, he hears me, his head it turned, but then it turns back.

I squeeze his hand, my hand, that is my hand, there and stroke the pad of flesh with my thumb and rub it and touch it and warm the skin.

I lean in and find a place in between the maze of wires and find a spot I can kiss goodbye.

But not yet.

Not goodbye for good.

Just good-bye for a meal and a hot shower.

I stay as long as I can, then I go.

Twice today I went out, out into the world and then in and down into a church basement.

The great thing about where ever I go, there’s a church basement with a pot of coffee and some big styrofoam cups and some principles in red ink hanging from the wall and someone to offer me a suggestion.

“Pray and breathe,” she said to me.

Yes.

Pray and breathe.

It’s that simple.

And say I love you.

Again and again and again.

I love you for your brown eyes and your dark hair, and your big hands and strong legs, those legs, you gave me those, I recognize those knees and thighs–I use them every day on my bicycle or to walk or to kneel down and pray–for being so smart, “you got your intelligence from your dad” so my mom says (although I suspect I got my heart from my mom), and you gave me stories and you told me I was a writer.

“I always knew you’d grow up to be a writer,” my father said to me on the front porch of Patty’s house on Monroe Street in Madison.

We had just gotten a couple of cans of Barq’s (Famous Olde Tyme) root beer from the soda machine at the market–when it was still 35 cents a can and we’re drinking the cold pop on the steps smoking cigarettes and (watching Captain Kangaroo) watching the cars go by.

“You’re a story-teller, just like me,” he said and sipped on the pop and dragged off the cigarette.

The sun was warm, my feet were bare.

I was nineteen.

I was lost, pretty much a college drop out and my dad was basically couch surfing and dating the daughter (18 years old and therefore younger than me) of the woman who lived in the house whose porch we were sitting on (I ended up sleeping with her son, so I think we’re even on that score), living on food stamps and borrowed time.

But in that moment.

Exquisitely happy to be hanging with my pops on a porch, shooting the shit, telling stories, remembering when I was  little girl and he would ride me around on his motorcycle.

Not all my memories of my dad are so golden and shimmering and flecked with creamy root beer spiced carbonation.

I don’t know that I would cast the memories that I am creating here in this hospital as golden either.

But they are a gift.

It is a gift of immensity that I expect to be exploring with new and different eyes for some time to come.

And maybe my papa will come out of the coma while I am here.

And maybe he will not.

But I am here.

I showed up.

I grew up.

And in my heart, I’m still sitting on that porch listening to my father spin yarns and drink root beer in the dusk of a summer evening.

I love you Michael Martines.

I am your daughter.

You are my father.

And whatever happens.

Nothing will change that.

Love never dies.

Or grows older or fades.

It always stays.

So stay a little longer.

There are so many stories I haven’t told you yet.