He leaned forward.
And jumped.
I was two steps below what I would have like to have been to make sure that it was not such a leap, but the boy was ready to not be napping and to get down stairs and be in the world.
His arms wrapped around me.
I caught him.
I always do.
His leaping lizard ways do cause my heart to lurch into my mouth at times, but the sweet and absolute trust in me he has, makes me feel always at the ready to catch him.
“I love you,” he said and buried his face in my shoulder.
“I love you too, bug,” I said and squished him close to my heart.
It never fails to amaze me.
This thing called love.
I felt love of all sorts tonight.
I met with a dear friend after work tonight and we hung out and had tea and talk all things girlfriend and life and the stuff of it.
I went where I always go on a Friday night, that bastion of crazy good and weird and wonky, Our Lady of Safeway.
I texted with a darling friend who just had a baby last week to check in on her and see how I could be of some service.
I’ll be heading over to her side of the bay next Saturday to spend time with her and the new little guy.
I rode home, slowly, in the thick of the night through shrouds of fog and wind and mist that slowly materialized into rain.
I did my stretches and strengthening exercise and though I did not want to do them, I did them anyway.
I have love of self too.
It doesn’t always manifest itself in the most logical of ways and that is why I also have a big community and fellowship that helps me discern when my feelings are having their way with me.
But love.
Well, love can have its way with me.
I may get hurt.
However, I will still have the experience.
I want to experience it all.
I have taken some leaps and leapt into some uncomfortable situations, painful, life affirming, and experiential all.
I don’t see myself sitting on the side lines with anything at the moment.
I am committed.
I sound like I am talking in circles and I am, but I know what I am talking about and as it winds itself out of my head and down into my heart I see where the wound is and how that it might sting, like, a lot.
Or not.
I don’t know.
So I took some action, reached out, and now, well, the results are not mine, the words, with a little help from my friend, thank god for friends, the timing so not mine, but the feelings, succinct and sure, are all mine.
I look forward to what ever happens next knowing that I have asked for what I need given the information I have been given.
And then life, well, it continues forward.
Through the rain and the gentle mist and the days and the nights, through the music and the poetry.
To the hair salon!
Yes.
Tomorrow I go in for a much-needed hair cut and color.
“I’m thinking of _____________,” I told a friend tonight as we were comparing schedules in regards to going out to Berkeley next Saturday. “I don’t know that I want to do color, everybody is doing color now (meaning blue and green and purple and what have you), I was doing color before color was a thing, I think I’m going in a different direction.”
I will take photos.
Don’t worry.
It will be fun to have a ladies day at the salon too.
I’m going to do the deal and then meet with my person at Tart to Tart and do some reading and checking in and then some lunch and the salon.
I’ll be heading up to Solid Gold in the venerable Tender Nob.
That nice narrow strip of town nestled between the bourgeois in Nob Hill and the hoi poi in the Tenderloin.
It’s not quite the same as the tech smash-up of gentrification and the homeless drug addicts strolling around Mission Street, but it is a clash of worlds and I am grateful that I get to navigate it the way I do now instead of the way I used to.
I have come a long way, baby.
There’s a coffee shop that I used to score at just around the corner from where I get my hair done and it’s always a fond trip down memory lane for me to go past it and occasionally even go in for a fix before getting my hair done.
Caffeine, that is.
That’s a leap of faith too.
All the things I have done that I can forget about.
All the ways that love as aligned to get me where I am now and where I will go next.
As I sit and look around my home and everything that has happened here in the last year and a half and how much I have done and seen and grown since moving back from Paris with $10 in my pocket, I am truly amazed.
Awed really.
Look ma!
No hands.
I’m doing this life thing.
It’s not just fantasy in my head.
And I have been in some fantasy in my head over the last week.
I took some action and, well, I get to let go of those results too.
Surrender is an act of faith too.
“Shh, sweet darling,” I said as I gathered him up from the stroller, “Meow is right here.”
He hung his head down onto my chest, clutching his stuffed cat to his body and clung to me as we climbed the stairs into the house heading straight up into his room, where I tucked him in and turned on the sound machine and a little fan.
I brushed the hair of his face, tucked him in, and bent down to kiss his forehead.
“I love you,” I said and my heart grew a little more full.
“I love you too, Carmen Cat,” he said, finishing with a sleepy, “meow,” has he turned over onto his pillow and burrowed under the covers.
I almost fell over and tumbled down the stairs myself.
Love.
It will catch you unaware and bash into your heart.
And I find.
There is not protecting myself from it.
I am open to it all.
To know that.
Is to know.
Grace.
And.
I am graced.
Auntiebubba 