Well lookie here

I see we've found ourselves in the middle of the ocean. Why not? It's better than a plain white background, and I've been too lazy either 1) to change the thing myself or 2) beg my boyfriend, who does this sort of thing for a living, to do it for me. Now that blogger has come up (finally) with some nifty, idiot-proof toys, I'm happy to have a bit of fun with it.

Is anyone finding it a bit disorienting to be reading this blog adrift in open water? I have to admit it takes me aback a bit. I might change it after awhile.

First trip of the year

T and I are taking his kids backpacking for the first time this weekend. The kids have done their fair share of camping and hiking, but have never combined the two into backpacking. Tomorrow we'll drive south, Thomas in tow, to the Red River Gorge near Lexington. In all my years here, I've never hiked there, so this weekend will offer an opportunity to see a new place.

Pictures and stories to come.

New pillowcases

The geckoes are my favorite. Originally I had planned that the body of the pillowcase would be done in the gecko fabric, but I cut wrong! So now I have to order more gecko batik. And for now, the lizards will remain on the cuff of the pillowcase.

And he would do it all over again

We stared at this article last night in bed, T and I, our mouths hanging open in awe. The dedication here -- no, the need evident in this photographer's actions is humbling to me.

And I will have to spend some time pondering that. Because that's just the sort of thing that I do.

Back there

If we want to get to heaven, boys
We must cross Logan Pass

--David Walburn, Going to the Sun

Ouch. It hit me this morning, on my way into the office, driving along the highway in the damp late winter of central Indiana.

I miss Montana. No -- that's not it. I've missed Montana for two years. This was different. It was a visceral, overwhelming gut pain to be there - not just Montana, mind you, but somewhere specific. I want to be in Glacier. As strange as it may seem, Glacier is mine, much more than it was ever ours. I don't miss Libby or the Kootenai Valley in quite the same way, because those places belonged to that family that no longer exists. I think of that little corner of Montana frequently, occasionally even wistfully, but I've no real desire to go back.

Glacier, though, pulls and tugs at my insides, calling me back, and making my heart hurt. Even with the opportunities to go to new places, I'm still drawn back there like some mindlessly persistent salmon finding its way home.

I'll need to sit with it for awhile.

Sometimes these things pass.

Sometimes they don't.

The tide, revisited

I went to write an email to Kristy, and I realized it was a post anyway.

T's mother apparently gets regular emails from The Universe, and she forwarded one recently, which is a particular favorite of hers. It read:

Sometimes, [T's Mom], having more fun and being happier comes from looking for each in crazy, new places; instead of waiting for them to come from where you've found them before or where others are now finding them.

And I do mean crazy. Not just from the old standbys of travel, adventure, and romance, but from stretching, reaching, and growing. Accepting new responsibilities for your happiness, totally accepting others, and grasping even higher ideals. Philosophically taking yourself to places few have ever dared before.

Red hot smokin' love,

The Universe

Aside from the attractions of being offered red-hot, smokin' love from the Universe, I found it interesting she should send me this right now, because it feels like all the events in my life are converging into that one lesson: "Stretching, reaching, growing." I thought I had emerged from the divorce pretty well stretched, reached, and grown, but now it appears that those challenges were just preparation for the opportunities that lay ahead. To mix and torture metaphors, the atomic reorganization of my life opened a painfully creaky door, but I still had to walk through it, and explore the rooms beyond.

In the back of my mind I had this cute notion that I'd get divorced, spend a year not dating while I gave myself the perfectly prescribed time to "work on myself", move on, eventually find someone, have a great, normal relationship, move in together or perhaps marry, blend families if applicable, and look around one day with a self-satisfied smile and say "Look, see? I've done it right this time." Counseling would be required, of course, and probably a great deal of dating and sifting. It would be hard, but not too hard.

Wrong, kitten.

One of life's most effective disciplinary tools is the realization, whether abrupt or gradual, that your future and your life will look nothing like you thought they would.* There are deaths, illnesses, betrayals, divorces, accidents, losses, gains, and lessons. I had one very abrupt realization in May 2008 that my life would look radically different than I had hoped, expected, or thought. But I don't think I ever completely absorbed the lesson from that, which is to let go, to ride the tide, and to open myself to the possibilities of the unknown instead of rigidly adhering to my visions and plans.

There was no year of singleness. Instead, with perfect contrariness, the Universe served up T as if on cue, and he parachuted into my life via e-mail on the day my divorce was final. We have an in-joke in which we observe that he was single for ten years, and I was single for ten minutes.

And then, over the ensuing nine months, I have bobbed and weaved, vacillated and quivered, as I discovered that T was going to commit the shocking act of being human instead of, at all times, my preconceived ideal of a mate. But by then I was in quite the pickle, because I'd begun to love him.

Into this morass stepped Therapist C, as she so often does, with her quiet laugh and her empathetic smile and her gentle, forward-leaning stance, to remind me to stop trying to control life and start listening to it instead. What was I learning from this? What was life demanding of me?

Stretching, reaching, growing. Totally accepting others.

The lesson I'm learning from being with T is that loving fully involves risk -- that security can never be the currency with which love is bartered. Love must be given freely, without a purchase price, or it's no kind of love at all. Relationships are about growth, and about loving, not when and if you can blend households, or get married, or feel that you have once again gained admission to structure and normality.

T gets into my life and makes noise there. Sometimes he does it with a smile and a sharp wit, and sometimes he does it with his own pain and defenses. But I always feel loved, and valued -- more so than I've ever felt, really.

I didn't need someone to make me secure. I needed to learn to live without it, because, as Pema Chodron reminds us, there is no ground beneath us.

And that's where I am right now.



*Sometimes, in a particularly harsh version of this lesson, we discover that our past was also not what we thought it was. While even more painful in ways, this is just as effective a catalyst for change and growth.

Predation drama on the beach

This was the one interesting bit of wildlife activity I saw this weekend, near the Blowing Rocks Nature Conservancy site in Jupiter, Florida. I'm squeamish enough that I had to close my eyes for some of it, but not so squeamish as to chase the gulls away from the crab. To do that, of course, isn't merely saving the crab's life, it's a choice to put the gull's life at risk -- and on what grounds? To force the gull to find dinner that doesn't offend the sensibilities of some random and uninvolved human? So you let it go, but sometimes your eyes close involuntarily, and your camera misses the thick of the action.







Here is where I instinctively looked away briefly. Maybe someday I won't have to. Maybe someday I'll be able to sympathize with the doomed prey while still watching its demise. Or maybe not. I'll miss a lot of good shots, but I'm okay with that for now.



Having defeated the crab, the gull spent several minutes protecting its dinner from others. Much squawking occurred.





Eventually, the gull swallowed the crab and the crowd dispersed, and the minor drama came to an end.