A Bottle by the Fire and a Nod to Lessons Learned.

This week I passed the 14 year mark as a member of writing.com. The email hit my inbox along with the expected reminders to update my blog...something I have been hard pressed to do much over the last two months. I could blame it on the lack of time and discipline, the usual suspects, but the truth is my mind feels cloudy - it feels difficult for me to focus. I feel limited with being able to express myself lately, and seem to oscillate between a kind of manic contentment and a crouching darkness that makes me feel heavy and hopeless at times. I know that not writing, not attempting to write, is depriving myself of something key and I feel the absence of it acutely at times. I need to press myself into those familiar spaces again, force the words. My heart needs the outlet, my soul needs the confessional, my life needs the anchor.

"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
DAY 1519 Prompt: February 13, 2018
Prompt: Do you think people can change as to how they view love as years go by? And how do you think they perceive love and romance in different stages of their lives?

We have all seen them, that sweet elderly couple walking hand in hand or sitting together on a park bench. They are the standard of measurement for a lifetime of love. I marvel at couples who celebrate those milestone anniversaries; 50,60, 70 years together. Ask any one of them and I'm sure they've stories to tell, stories that might sound like fables where the messages are about patience and forgiveness. To make a life with someone that spans decades, there must be forgiveness and acceptance as much as love and devotion.

The rush of falling in love is a temporary condition. The euphoria of a budding, passionate romance always gives way to life eventually. Couples marry, have children...the pace of life changes and it gets harder to manage the expectations of another amid the beautiful mess of raising a family. The definition of romance changes over time I think. It is forced to become something else...trails of rose petals and long Sunday morning trysts yield to more practical measures like being able to take a hot bath why your spouse keeps the kids from banging on the bathroom door looking for snacks. My husband is fond of saying, "that's just life" when I complain about lack of "us time" or when we go consecutive nights with a child between us in bed and dogs layered at our feet. We are not the same individuals who once kissed in a rainstorm or spent intimate weekends in romantic inns. Sometimes though, I get our daughter to bed early and go downstairs to find the fire still roaring and the room lit by glowing candles. Love and romance move through time with us, they morph and change as we manage life the best we can I think. Sometimes sharing a waning winter evening and a bottle of Cabernet with the one we love is all the romance we need.

"Blogging Circle of Friends "
DAY 1916 February 13, 2018
Write about three people from whom you've learned the most.

I've been fortunate to have had people in my life who have taught me many things, lessons that were good and bad. It is a difficult question because overwhelmingly I have learned the most about myself from people who have hurt and disappointed me the most in life. I have learned from past lovers that some men are forever damaged in ways that can not be fixed, damage that can coat you like a toxin. No one comes to save you, you have to save yourself. You have to choose yourself. In those terrible moments, you can discover a faith you didn't know you had and a strength you did not know you possessed. I have learned the most about myself from being forced into corners, from the hollow sound of my heels in hospital corridors and the fear of knowing a man who claims to love you can still put you in the ground.

I am blessed to know a different man now, a husband that cherishes and champions me. He is a man who makes promises and keeps them, a man who magnifies all those special, little moments in life that once eluded me. He has taught me that men can be passionate without all the darkness and the violence. Through him, I have learned that men can live and love without the chains of addiction and rage binding them to their demons. Most of all, my husband has taught me that hope lives inside even the very wounded and that with consistency, with commitment and the smallest, simplest loving gestures, it can grow and become the foundation of a life worth living.

The Strange Perfume of Memory and the Leaps We Take Alone.

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DAY 1107 March 24, 2017
Write your entry for today about a place that you have spent a considerable amount of time in--perhaps somewhere you lived or worked before--and whose smells are curiously linked with your recollection. Describe the emotions and events from that period that those smells conjure up, and the ways in which your memories may have been colored by your preference or distaste of those smells.

In my youthful days, days when I was driven by wholly different passions than I am today, I volunteered at the local aquarium. During my tenure as a Sea Urchin, the aquarium's term for their student volunteers, my favorite assignment was working with the aquarists in the back. I remember arriving in the early hours on summer mornings and passing through the mud brown door labeled "authorized personnel" into another world filled a new variety of new sensory delights that I can still recall with absolute clarity.

I would always start my shift in the few hours before the aquarium opened for the public. The vast halls and rooms were oddly silent except for the ambient sounds of the massive filtration and circulation machinery always working in the belly and bowels of the place. The gray green windows of the display tanks cast an almost cosmic glow in the shadowed interior. I would pass the rows of tanks on my way to the back, the round eyes of our residents watching me pass. I would always stop at the shark tank and spend a few brief moments watching the sand tigers circling slowly, their snaggle-toothed mouths agape and their black eyes fixed and staring. Behind the circular shark habitat there were the three expansive windows of the main husbandry tank, most often empty that time of the day. Without a resident sea lion or bottlenose dolphin, it always looked immense and cold to me.

It was the olfactory impressions of this place however that leave the strongest impression on my memory bank. Passing through the main lobby and side rooms and pushing open the door that lead to the aquarist area, I was immediately assaulted by the smells of the space. Here behind the tanks, were all the scents associated with the task of maintaining multiple marine environments and those creatures that dwell there. The air was flavored with the briny, slightly antiseptic smell of artificial seawater. There was also the pungent smell of fish meal loaves being chopped in the stainless steel kitchen or the biting scent of raw mackerel being stuffed with supplements and minerals. The strongest odors emanated from the buckets of squid and bait fish and from the rows of glass jugs where the aquarist cultivated brine shrimp for the filter feeders. Leaning over dark tank of the Pacific octopus, the water of that habitat always seem to have a strange tang of sweetness mixed with the faintest smell of detritus. The tidal touch tank smelled brightly of the powered salt that collected along the water line and low tide marks. The big river tank, the one that housed the rainbow trout and had to be accessed via a false woodsy terrain, smelled strongly like moss and brackish bays.

They were all strong smells, often not pleasant smells. They were the smells of this living world and I loved them. It was messy work, it was smelly work but it was the labor of love for me and I wore those smells home with me each day. The time I spent there is a vivid collection of wonderful memories, the foundation for something I carried forward with me in my life.



"Blogging Circle of Friends "
DAY 1590 March 24, 2017
"In late February, frogs, salamanders, and other amphibians responding to early warm temperatures began migrating from their winter hideouts to vernal pools to begin the spring mating season. Some of the animals were chaperoned to safety by concerned volunteers across trafficked streets late at night in New York and other Northeastern states. Write an essay about a time in your life when you made a big decision or took a leap. Did someone arrive to accompany you or were you on your own? Was your emotional journey guided by a crossing guard who brought you to safety?" ~ Writers Digest

Reflecting on the times of the bigger decisions in my life, I am forced to admit that those were the times I felt most solitary. In fact, I think the big decision moments felt that way because I had to make the decision for myself, with little counsel or guidance. That isn't to say I did not have people who helped me, because I did. The really big leaps though, I took many of those on my own and often, in relative secrecy from my loved ones. Divorcing my first husband is probably the one that really comes to mind. It wasn't so much the act of leaving the marriage that was the big decision but rather the emotional journey of freeing myself from a physically and verbally abusive relationship, one that I had hidden from everyone for almost five years. It came down to one moment, one moment when I had to decide to stand up and fight back. It had taken everything I had to push past all the shame and the fear and come out the other side. The day I pulled myself free, I was alone and it was awful and terrifying. It was also momentous and defining for me. Afterward, I did have "crossing guards" and good Samaritans who helped me with process of recovering myself and with healing. I found it much easier to let people in once I had made the leap. I think that that singular act, that decision, had to be mine alone.

Niagara Falling and Cyber Thoughts

"Blogging Circle of Friends "
Day 1367 August 12, 2016
Title Prompt: The Cyber- Thoughts

The Cyber isn't something I've given much thought to as an entity. I'd consider myself reasonable adapted to technology but not overly curious or enthusiastic about it in real way. I own a smart phone because of work. I don't own an e-reader of any kind. I have only a marginal understanding of web language, the importance of SEO and a working knowledge of social media and digital media marketing. I still feel a lot like a sci-fi novice when it comes to the cyber world. It even sounds too sci-fi for me. I didn't get the Matrix movies and I didn't care that I didn't really get them either. My daughter at age 6 is going up with daily exposure to technology and the cyber world. She's adept at using all the tools at her disposal to find what she needs and wants online, even if it is only watching other kids open blind bags and giant playdoh egg surprises on youtube, which is also something I simply don't get!


"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
Day 887 August 12, 2016
Tell me about a road trip you've taken? Would you do it again?

In 2011, my cousin and I took my Grandmother to Niagara Falls. She had always wanted to go and my grandfather had never taken her. We rented a car and drove, taking turns on the long trip to the border. We crossed over at Niagara, checking into a nice hotel directly across from the falls. It was magical. We did the Maid of the Mist, smiling broadly in our ponchos with those powerful torrents roaring behind us. We visited butterflies and got a little tipsy in the casino. Later after a bad slip and fall, my cousin and I debated whether to call my Uncle and chain-smoked, outside while my grandmother iced her knee. The knee was fine and the crisis had been averted. As a bonus we had a great story to tell about the now legendary fall and how an entire city has seemed to rush to our rescue. We laughed a lot. Especially after a very tired and a little buzzed, my grandmother accused one of us as having left the water running.

She insisted she could hear it until my cousin had flown out of bed asking sarcastically, "Gramma, I don't know, could you it be this?"

In one exasperated movement, she tugged open the wide curtain covering the wall of windows revealing the whole of Niagara Falls, the rushing water lite up and glowing in a rainbow of colors. We laughed about it for days. It is still one of those favorite family stories that gets told and retold, each time evoking the same peals of laughter and embarrassed giggles from Gramma.

After we had thoroughly done Niagara Falls, its butterflies and novelty museums, we continued on toward Toronto via the "wine route". We stopped along the Queens highway, hitting up a wine tasting or three before hitting the city. We did the CN Tower, the glass floor, even a high-end adult shop. Gramma was a good sport. After nearly thirty minutes, she came rushing up to my cousin and I as we were perusing a shelf of novelty sex toys. She whispered conspiratorially, "Girls, I think we are in one of those sex shop places." We fained innocence and quickly left, laughing behind our hands and chiding each other for having dragged our grandmother into such an establishment!

The ride home passed quickly. We slipped back through the border, tired but content. It had been a great time, we had built wonderful memories. My grandmother had enjoyed every minute. I'm grateful we had that chance, that experience with her.