so bright, and so pure pure**

10:00 and I need to get cleaning.

Moms is coming in 3,2,1.

For 72 hours we'll be together in this little apartment.

I am spraying the place down with tranquility and calm, so it will not be a powder keg of anxiety.

Damping the old fuses, so they will not blow before I even see to blow them out.

Because I have gotten good at seeing them, because I am trying to be calm to respond well. I am hosing them down now. I am breathing deeply now. I am building my reserve now.

I will need it.

Three days, with my Mom. Lord give us strength not to fall into that emotional hole we existed in when I was 16 and we were both losing our minds in intertwined ways.

I have found my way out of that. And I have laid a trail of breadcrumbs for her to find (my mother also loves pastry a little too much!). And I will show her the lights that lead out of the forest of darkness that we were once lost in.

The fears. The great ghosts of fear that used to make us so insecure and spiraling in desperate circles down.

I know the way up mom. Follow me. (I know you will). We are going someplace beautiful.

And I love you. For the years you live on this earth you will know my love.

We will relax together and feel okay. Because I have carried your crosses I know the splinters (those thorns!)* you carry. And I have learned, since that tender age of 16, how to get them out. I have learned things. And you, I see, are ready to learn them too.

I must stay calm. I must stay plugged in to my reserve, return to myself to refocus and recenter throughout the days as winds try to buffet me off course. And I can do it, not perfect, but better than I ever have.

With love there are possibilities. With love we can build bridges. Those four miserly letters that so utterly fail at the concept and experience we are trying to evoke when we say them. Why it all sounds to trite and facile. And why the word "God" has seemed so ridiculously odd for all these years. It is- as a word and one often used in bad ways- a miserly name for something so vast, and so grand. So at once complex and simple. So not that. But nothing else either but something that perfect sounding. Something that truly amazing. Something so luminous and so lovely.

*******************************************************************

* damn I love when things suddenly come fully circle like that. I sure didn't see that coming either

** yes I just combined together recklessly a deepest of deep thought/revelation with a reference to the dirty dirty south. Just like in my post on a semi-academic blog where I had a single sentence that obliquely referenced both a T.S. Eliot line and cocaine use. (Not that I do that per se, but a sister's been around ya know). Cause I'm cool like that! See man if only my first chair adviser saw how cool I was instead of my third chair! If only the world noticed how awesome I was, wouldn't that be great.

******

When I was 5 years old I thought I truly was the shizznitz. I would write my name in my baby book (MY book) over and over with the picture of a cake in magic marker and a big letter 5 and I wrote, probably, my first real lines...

They went something like this:

(quietgirl) rock,
(quietgirl) rock,
(quietgirl) rock,
FIIIIVE!!!

I think this song was a bit dervative of "jingle-bell rock", but nonetheless a very cool derivative. I sang that over and over in my head while I browsed and drew in these pages. I had no doubt of the greatness that burned within me. I was a mountain. I was a flame.

Apparently by six something had happened to shake that confidence. The outside world with its attendant fears began to creep into my little world of purity.

But I remember that world. It has taken 25 years, but by golly I have stopped and I have remembered.

And that lovely world still is there. I do still rock. I rock six times harder. I can't believe I forgot.

Man I'd forget my head if it wasn't attached!

quietgirl rock, quietgirl rock, quietgirl rock 30

:)