tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74460874970852351812024-02-08T01:22:46.417-05:00Silent PartnerEveryday storiesLucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-83226429106866969602017-10-26T10:33:00.000-04:002017-10-26T10:38:16.730-04:00Happy 95th Birthday Little Mama<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: white;">On October 28, my Little Mama will be 95 years old. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><br />Do you know her? Do you know her strength, her humor, her generosity, her incredible curiosity about life and people, history and government, civics? Do you know about her life spent so creatively, (one time when I was young they did a full two page color Sunday edition of the Charlotte Observer on her and the Christmas showroom people traveled hundreds of miles to come to)? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><br />Would you know that at 19 she dropped out of college to join the Red Cross during WWII, had gas vouchers, drove anywhere in the country she was needed and that the only thing that kept her stationed on this side of the ocean was the letter from her much-beloved brother saying, "I'm here (in the thick of battle) please stay home to take care of Mom and Dad." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><br />As long as I can remember, Mama worked, side by side with Pop, she was the buyer, had the eye, made things beautiful. Sundays after church they'd be at the store working getting ready for the six-day work week. But she never failed to plan special things and trips and picnics for us. When it snowed she was the one that would trek the neighborhood kids for miles while Pop stayed home and made the hot chocolate. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><br />She was the best friend of many and held troves of secrets for everyone, sacred and quiet and to this day I know none of them. She walked all of her friends through the valley of the shadow of death and helped them stare straight into the face of it and held the hand of so many as they died. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><br />She had best friends, but Margaret was the best of them all. When Margaret came to work in the store it was before the civil rights movement, she was the only one they ever trusted to run the store when they were gone and manage everything. I remember as does Mama, the mother of a schoolmate who came in and in the ugliest of language made the statement that she would not be coming back if that.... was going to be working there. Mama said, "Can I walk you to the door? You certainly don't need to come back." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><br />The house was often filled with people and Mama was the queen of graciousness. The people were different walks of life and there were gay people (probably still in the closet) but Mama knew and appreciated them all (as did of course, Papa). All were welcome. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><br />Mama has read more non-fiction than anyone I know in her life and powered it down as well in these last 10 years, she watched every single moment of every primary debate of each party and every single town hall and debate from that point forward. Don't talk to her about civics, government or history unless you know your shit and for God's sake, don't bring on the fake news. (You probably didn't want to be the person who said to her, "Give Trump a chance" she figured by that time everyone should have clearly seen the BIG writing on the wall.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><br /> I should write stories about her, I really should. I didn't know another mother who thought the kids were sick of school and should be taken out for a day or two to go on a joy ride of adventure. She has been brave beyond belief, creative beyond measure, full of love and fierce independence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><br />Well, Mama, it's almost your birthday and on this day and tomorrow and on your birthday on Saturday and for every day after the world owes you a thank you for the walk of love, courage, perseverance, humility, kindness, wisdom and intellectual curiosity you have shown us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><br />Happy Birthday Little Mama. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "sf optimized" , , , , ".sfnstext-regular" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.12px;"><br /></span>Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-85610975256315064032015-05-10T15:35:00.001-04:002015-05-10T15:54:51.712-04:00Mama - Mother's Day of your 92nd Year<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">There are a few things that I associate with my Little Mama more than others. </span></i></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">How cool her hands were and are, on hot foreheads.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">How soft her voice was and is, in crisis.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">How steady she has always been when everyone around her is falling apart.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">How clearly she recognized the signs of weary school girls who needed breaks and responded with </span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">out-of-school passes, </span><span style="font-size: large;">emergency day trips and much-needed adventures.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">How fearless her design/color eye was and how she brought the trends early to a small town that otherwise would not have seen those trends for a good three years. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">How when so many other mothers didn't work, she worked sometimes seven days a week but never, ever, ever sacrificed a moment of quality with her girls.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">How she trekked the neighborhood kids for miles in the snow. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">How she stocked the kitchen for the inevitable masses of friends that would show up to eat, to talk and to laugh.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">How when customers came into the store in the early 60s and complained because the salesperson was black, she told them they didn't need to come back. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">How when I moved from Seattle to Santa Fe, she and Margaret drove in before me, placed all the furniture, put groceries in the fridge, flowers in the vases and turned around and drove back to North Carolina before I even got there.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">How her dreams often told her that bad things were coming and how those dreams made her feel helpless. How that recurring dream that I would die when I went off to college left her with no peace. </span><span style="font-size: large;">How on the day I would get so sick, she would call and ask me repeatedly, "Are you sure you are OK?" And how when I came out of that semi-coma, she would be sure that the only meals I ate in the hospital were the ones I wanted which meant raisin toast from home just the way I liked it.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">How when she was in her 80s and working as an editor with me, when there was an all-nighter to pull, she did it better than me.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">How when she speaks about the world it is firmly and with the hope that heads and minds and hearts will open. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">How when her friends were dying, it was she who spent hours day after day with them on the phone or by their sides, walking them through their fears and worries and pain. One after the next after the next, after the next.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">How when her mother, her father and my father died, she alone would watch the life leave their bodies and kiss them good-bye.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">How she has been fearless in life, in work, in love.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">How she has been insatiable in her desire to learn and grow smarter, wiser and fairer.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">How she has never lost her sense of humor.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">How she is a mother who has taught her daughters the walk of women and the walk of love.</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Lee and Mama.</div>
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<br />Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-80949959232154539732015-01-01T10:55:00.003-05:002015-01-01T10:58:46.835-05:00The New Year's Eve Blessed Quiet<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">The New Year's Eve Blessed Quiet. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">What struck me this morning was the true blessed quiet of
last night. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">For the first night in 22 days one percussively wracking
sound on one end of the house had not been followed by a similar sound in two
other places and then again and again. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">For the first time in what seemed a very long month, the
members of this house slept longer than an hour, quietly and peacefully. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">The blessed quiet was the sound of healing and a new
day. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">And, as it often is with symbolism, the blessed quiet came
home on the eve and day of New Year's. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Today as I do the WHOOHOO stripping of all the beds, </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">throw
open all the windows </span><span style="font-size: large;">and let the sun pour in, </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">place the Christmas stockings by
the Near Year's Day dinner plates and sit down with the two I share my space
and so much of my heart with, I think...</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">may this year begin for everyone
with </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">a blessed thoughtful and peaceful quiet, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">may that be followed by a very loud WHOOHOO, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">may the light POUR in and wrap us up, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">may there be moments of shared sweetness, of good
food, of heart, of the truest gifts in life </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">and </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">may the deeply grateful AMEN always follow!</span></div>
Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-70295515547448310002014-11-28T10:48:00.000-05:002014-11-28T10:49:36.058-05:00The Suffering and the Grace<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">This morning I woke with the same thoughts I had gone to bed with the last three nights, the suffering and the grace in life. The hand in hand of the awfully beautiful and the beautifully awful. (Roland our hospice nurse had introduced me to that concept.) </span></div>
</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Three nights ago, I was thinking about Ferguson, the grieving hearts, the deep suffering and the deep injustices and it wasn't until an image crossed my desk the next morning that I glimpsed some grace. </span></div>
</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The next night five hours before bed, I got the phone call that the unspeakably awful, and the tragedy of tragedies had brought the deepest suffering to three that I love and as I pondered that the last 30 hours, I have only been able to think that what was so suddenly ripped from their lives had been preceded by so much love in so much sweetness in so much depth and so much consistency that it could only be defined by grace. </span></div>
</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Yesterday when the alarm clock went off and Sweetheart who is long overdue a day off and long overdue a Thanksgiving not cooking for others, got up to cook for not 15 or 25 but 50 and did so for most all day so that we could have the grace of delivering food to the homeless shelter where women and children in the midst of living deep suffering had found a moment of grace and respite and safety. As I packed up the pies, I looked at the boxes with the sweetest of them all where the first and second graders had learned to get the pumpkin out of the pumpkins and bake their first pies and send them to people who needed them more, and the seed of true Thanksgiving had been planted. </span></div>
</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">When I met my friend to walk into the kitchen and I looked at her beautiful face I thought of the suffering the last few years have brought her and how she had midwifed so many of the dying without any respite to her own heart and how the grace flows out of her eyes. And late in the afternoon as I sat next to my friend of 56 years and held her hand, as she looked me in the eye and we talked of the friendship that had us side by side and the grace within it, I could see the searing agony of her heart. Life is the awfully beautiful and the beautifully awful and grace and suffering walk side by side. </span></div>
</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">On this day I can only breathe a quiet sigh of gratitude for the light in the dark moments and the dark moments that break our hearts open and make them one day and somehow more beautiful, more compassionate, more full of grace.</span></div>
</div>
<br />
<div class="p2" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
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Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-22626916460130533032013-01-01T09:25:00.000-05:002013-01-01T11:13:44.229-05:00We Should All Hope When We Are There, We Are There<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The day did not start out as a "can-I-get-an-Amen!" kind of day.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">No, more like it started out crooked-needed-to-be righted-and-flipped-upside-down kind of day.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But the afternoon had brought right-side up flipping and now I was working on the Amen part, just not knowing it, or maybe it would be more apt to say the Amen part was working on me.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I walked into the Blue Note Grill and they were the first people I saw.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Her puffy white hair, his Southern or maybe Southwestern casual elegant. I put them at 91 or 92. I've gotten better at assessing age these last years, knowing who was old before their time, aging gracefully, younger than any of us deserve to be with miles well hidden, the like.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I ordered a pinot grigio and a basket of fried pickles. Sweetheart would later explain to me that what made those pickles the good side of incredible was the drying out the pickles before the frying. Water and frying don't mix he'd said. They were extra crunchy and dead-on perfect.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Friday night and we were out, the rare, very rare, very, very, rare Friday night out, or any night out. Not only was I getting wine and pickles but music, good music and it was only 6:30 at night. Talk about blessings piling up.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I waited for him to get there and studied the older couple, my eyes going around the room and constantly back to them. I wondered about their stories, each and shared.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The music started. Sweetheart came. We ate pickles and pondered ribs.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The elderly man reached for his companion's hand and helped her up. He helped her squeeze through the two, too-close tables and when they made it through, she began with effort to shuffle walk, clearly it was difficult. He was there for her to lean on. I thought he must be walking her to the restroom and I thought how sweet.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">little did I know.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I looked up from my pickle and there they were.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">On the dance floor.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Agile, two-stepping, free as could be.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It was the first of a set-full of dances, the only break they took the last dance, the one for the cloggers and the one that started after their food arrived.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">They had danced the slow waltz, a faster two-step, and a few imbetween. They had danced without a falter, without hesitation, without a shuffle. They had transported themselves to another time, to many times, to the place where age and depression, reality and fragility could not find them, to the best of the moment and the best of life.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">They DANCED.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We were inspired.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Last week I saved an image, thinking how perfect.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I said to sweetheart, "would you take their picture, I want to write this." He said the camera was in the van. He walked out, came back, stopped at their table. They listened, she reached over and took his hands, he pointed at me, she waved, they moved together and smiled for the camera.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I think I hope to God that when I am wearing support hose and those orthopedic-athletic shoes I will have on a hippie skirt, a hippie shirt and a slivery shiny belt. That I will have a modicum of style or grace and mostly, that when I am 90 or better yet sooner, better yet now, I will have enough spunk, courage, rhythm and desire to find my damn way around a dance floor.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He came back to me. "Twenty five years they've been together."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Second marriage you think or third?"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He said, 'it doesn't matter, 25 years."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"We are almost there," I said.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He looks at me, his eyes a little glossy and mine were right-back glossy.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He says they'd told him, "you never know when it will be the last dance.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So every week we have a date night and we dance.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You never know when it will be the last dance."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">No saving the last dance for them, just dancing it.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We looked at each other and Sweetheart said,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"We should all hope to be there when we are there."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Can I get an AMEN?!</span></div>
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<br />Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-48383193110332801642012-12-12T13:05:00.000-05:002013-01-01T11:14:28.969-05:00Papa Rides Shotgun<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">PAPA</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It was a week of deaths, the powerfully moving and the inconseqential. Uncle Sammy, the last of the Pollard brothers died, and the Hyundai and Subaru did too, all right together. One important, two, not so much at all except...</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sweetheart had gone to the mechanic's to clean out the glove boxes on Wed, he came home that night with, "I think I found a little box of Papa."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I looked at him.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">For three years, ashes had traveled all over with me and the poem "I Will Remember You" had traveled in my head, to be spoken each and every time I left a piece of the old him behind. "I Remember You" comforted me<i>,</i> the gift of Hospice to us <i>right after.</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">As far as I knew the ashes had all made their dust-to-dust way home, although my sister's small box and A's small box in NY I wasn't sure about. (I had flown to NY with that box of ashes and he had bicycled his way from Brooklyn to a part of NYC, taken them from me and bicycled away again. Mama had told me when I got home that Papa hated New York, it didn't matter. He had loved Anthony. He would love a shared trip to MOMA or the Guggenheim.) Papa's ashes had been scattered miles apart in Mother Ocean and miles apart in his blue, blue, mountains, he had slid into the crevices of the foundation of his beloved Heidi Sue's new house and she swore she'd never had an easier build, he was under P's favorite rose bushes and next to the bee hives in E's garden. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He continued to veer off the road, peek under the bushes, trespass and treasure hunt, his lifetime curiosity continuing--- the curiosity that made us all prefer he ride shotgun than drive.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The last year and a half of his life, I'd run him to every doctor's appointment or out to see the leaves, wherever he had to go or got to go, <i>the few places he got to go</i>...he always rode shotgun. He never failed to comment on something we passed, usually and often with a single word, "Beautiful." The beauty never failed to get through even when other things weren't sticking as often, mostly I wasn't sure what was sticking. We drove past the fenced in area where for months we'd passed the goats and baby goats. Each time I'd point and say "goats" in the odd kind of way you do when you see baby goats and find yourself trying to sound like a baby goat as you do it. But that last time, as we drove past, I heard his voice go, "G--g--g---g--oa---oa---oa---tssss," in an exact mimicking of my mimicking the goats. He had looked at me and his face had split wide-open with his enormous smile.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He had noticed. I should have known.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The man listened and he heard. The man lived in wonderment and awe and had done his best to gift that to us. Throughout our lives we had opened our eyes to his extended hand, the one that held the tiniest bottle imaginable filled with the tiniest nosegay imaginable, of violets. A morning treasure from his morning walk from the obvious and the hidden patches, <i>his morning call for us to see</i>, and mostly <i>his morning call to us of love</i>. It was his way.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I remember clearly when I'd gone to get his ashes. I was dreading it. Walking in the front doors of the funeral home hadn't helped, neither had the shout in the background that followed...</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"IS POLLARD READY?"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He had been.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I had placed the box carefully on the seat beside me in the shotgun position, expecting to cry my way all the way home. Instead, I'd burst out laughing. He had distinctly given me a nudge, I could see him grinning and I could hear him laughing and then I could hear him singing like he always had, an old hymn, "The Lord's Prayer", or "Oh What a Beautiful Morning." It was the latter that I heard fly out of my own mouth, him riding shotgun and us singing our way home. Once again he was guiding me to a place where music, wonderment, peace and comfort became my heart.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">All of this flooded through my head in about 2 seconds of "Papa in the glove box?"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sweetheart handed me the box and sure enough it was Mama's--- the tiny little box we'd gotten for her to keep a few ashes in, just for her. But the ashes had made her too sad, they were too much a statement of what was not, of what had been, of the no place to go now.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We had taken him with us, to the old house, to Grandmama Pollard's, and Mama had tucked the box into the glovebox for safekeeping. Two years ago.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I could hear Papa laughing and I started laughing.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Who knew? Papa had been riding shotgun for months. With Mama or me, or Mama and me together. With his girls, listening, and not missing a trick.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Lord, was it fitting.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And in the fitting way of perfect timing and serendipity, he had surfaced just in time for his last beloved brother's funeral.</span><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He had made it to all but one, and he would make it to that one too.</span></i><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Yesterday I dressed for Sammy's funeral and slipped the tiny box into the pocket of my coat.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I heard the HA and felt the sweetness of it all.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I put Mama in the car and off we went for one more time, Mama, Papa and me. This time Papa was driving the car with me. God forbid.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">PAPA AND ME</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Uncle Sammy---Thank you for your love. Amen and Traveling Mercies.</span><br />
<br />Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-72107500052797360812012-12-09T11:35:00.000-05:002012-12-13T10:55:46.429-05:00Saturday Night Surprises and EJ Turns Sixty<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It is 8:20 and we are driving the 25 miles back home from Saturday night at the mall. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Saturday night at the mall part had hit me pretty belatedly. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sweetheart had driven around the miles of cars in search of a parking place, (my parking angel had clearly not recognized his old white van) and we had traipsed what felt like a mile to the heart of the outside shopping area. (The mile part had come from me being hungry, really hungry in my mind.) I'd left him at Barnes and Noble holding the pink bag while I went on my mission. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But, I was jostled and in the midst of it before it hit me. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Where I was, what day of the week it was, and the-season-to-be merry-realization. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We weren't "doing" any part of Christmas this year and hadn't the last few, that part of me had died sometime in the last few years and hadn't resuccitated itself. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I couldn't remember the last time I had been in a mall, and I was sure that Saturday night at the mall would now be in my book of cold-day-in-hell-before-it-happens-again-firsts. And then there was the unseasonably warm thing, December 8 at night, 70s. All of it making for something that speeded up the cranky on the way to bitchy scenario and made me walk faster and try not to think.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I made it to the inside part and found the escalator and touched the rubber rail. Immediately I went to my hand-sanitizer prayer. Please, please, please God let me have that in my purse. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I made it upstairs to Justice. Justice has nothing to do with justice. Period. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I have 15 min to find a present suitable for Mama to give our 10 year old friend and one that will pass muster from both of them. Even with the 40% sale, small fortune is ringing through my head. I find something I'm not sure about, dark purple and navy and find the glowy-nail polish of the same color, check the time, and am out of there on the run.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The only reason we are out on a Saturday, in the December summer, with Christmas shoppers is EJ's 60th surprise birthday party. I have 5 minutes to get Sweetheart and walk across the mall street to Maggiano's and wait. It is about this time I realize I'd forgotten my cell phone. Crap.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We get there 10 min ahead of the 7:30 "supposed to" time. I check with the front desk. No reservation. I'm starting to get that sinking feeling and hoping I'd not made up the restaurant name through some flight of brain fancy. They tell me they only have one surprise party and give me the name. I am thinking that Kathryn would not have used a pseudo-porn name to book the party, but, it sounds like one. (The pet and street you grew up on thing is plowing through my head and I realize hers would be Cadillac Aberdeen. Nothing like this one.) I'm getting steadily uneasier. I check my purse for the 4th time for my phone. We go by the door and wait. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sweetheart sighs and then sighs again. I hear him.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We watch all the cars come and go and let out the people by our door. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">5, 10, 15, 20 minutes pass.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I'm thinking we have already missed the window of "SURPRISE!" and EJ's look of happy followed by her trademark yet beautiful tears. Sweetheart has left his phone in the car but there is only one thing I can think to do. We trudge the 2 miles back to the van and call Mama. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Mama, I hate to ask you, but would you go over to my house and see if my phone is downstairs?" </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It had been a long day of errands for Mama, she was tired. I hated to ask. From her sitting room door to my front door is about 75 feet, unless you are Mama right now. And that rolling walker is about to walk its on nine miles. (Tim Conway, Carole Burnett Show.) I watched the minutes tick by, I figure 8 will about do it. She calls. No phone. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We got back out of the van, Sweetheart signs again---the quiet sigh intended for me to hear but not really hear. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We start to walk the 3 miles back to the restaurant, I am walking, he is lollygagging. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Maybe they came when we were gone? Nope.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">4 miles back to the van, more sighing and lollygagging and we head home. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">That's when the hunger and the "Survivor" thinking really kicked in. I hear Sally Field put on 40 pounds to play Mary Lincoln, I could do that. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We pull in the driveway and it is 8:47, one hour and 2 minutes after the Surprise was to happen.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">K has texted, "Are you coming still?" </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Where ARE YOU?" I text back. And I start scrolling through the old texts until I find the unopened one, the text of a few days before that said Carrabas. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">My phone chimes, they'd had to wait forever, they haven't ordered yet, we can make it.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I head downstairs. Sweetheart has turned on the tv and kicked off his shoes and is half-lying on the couch.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Not so fast, get-up, we are going!"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Really? We are going <i>NOW</i>?"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"We are going <i>NOW.</i> Period. EJ's birthday, on a mission, tonight, big deal, out the door. <i>NOW." </i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The whole time we are walking to the van I am wondering about running back in to make a quick peanut butter sandwich, but know better than to lose the momentum. I don't know how 60 mph can turn to 25mph. But it does. Always, when I am in a hurry and Sweetheart is driving, it does. He and the van are torturing me with a 58mph flashing but I am for certain, we are going nowhere.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We get there. We hug everybody. I sit down and pull the crab dip and bread to the spot right in front of me, drink half my Sangria in a gulp and think how this is a Surprise party with surprise pieces we hadn't a clue about. In the end, it will be a better story and EJ loves to laugh.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I look at her and the beautiful family she loves,<i><b> it is all good.</b></i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">The big-loving, beautiful Smalls.</span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I hand her the pink bag that is filled with chocolate and holds her card.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Dear beautiful, beautiful, beautiful one" it begins. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What it doesn't say is what I am thinking...</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This will not be the year when your honey is non-weight bearing for six months. This will not be the year of a raging infection that the doctors put into his leg when they were supposed to fix it.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This will not be the year when you are standing beside his bedside after the surgery to repair him and they call you about the tiniest spot they found on your mammogram.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This will not be the year when we go for your biopsy and they biopsy the wrong place.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This will not be the year when they tell you, you have cancer.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This will not be the year when you begin radiation.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">NO</span></b></i><br />
<i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></i>
<i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">this will be the year of</span></b></i><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">healing</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">of your honey walking again</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">of you singing melodically and happier and stronger than your already melodic, happy and strong </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">of you bringing music as you always have, into this world</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">of you crying more of the tears of happiness and empathy that water the world</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">of you bringing the truest of big love every place you walk in this world</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">of you bent over laughing</span><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">of you having a year as beautiful as the you I have known for the last 55 years</span></i></b><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Happy Birthday Dear Old Friend.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I am grateful for the Saturday night surprises turned into laughter and grateful</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> that you had birthday cupcakes for breakfast.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And mostly I am grateful for the knowing and loving you, and the family as beautiful as you.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">EJ, (her birthday cupcakes, Kathryn who planned her Mama's party and the one whose picture comes after knock-out and gorgeous in the dictionary and me<i>. </i></span></div>
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<br />Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-79322126955554250662012-11-25T10:40:00.001-05:002012-11-25T10:40:26.398-05:00Making Art<a href="http://animoto.com/play/plTEybn1QXkx3n6YtM7ojw">Making Art</a>Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-29936638094892528772012-08-16T13:40:00.000-04:002012-08-16T21:43:11.430-04:00A Thank You For The Love Within the Ethers<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"You aren't supposed to pick the flowers," she said to me. My ebullient and golden, near-perfect friend said something so strange to me.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"But you are. You ARE supposed to pick the flowers. Papa taught me to pick the flowers."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I was standing in her driveway having this conversation, looking down the gravel road at the fields of flowers.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And then I wasn't.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I was somewhere else staring ahead at the sidewalk in front of me.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">There was a grey vertical cloud a bit of a distance away, almost planted on the sidewalk.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It began to take form, shifting itself, shifting itself, ethers into human.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Clearer and clearer.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He stood there with his white hat on, big as the benevolent, beneficent, broad and face-splitting glorious smile on his face.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He covered a mile in a moment.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He wrapped me up, a hug as deep as they come, the kind he'd always given me.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He poured his strength right into me, filling up my cracks, crevices and gaping holes, all of the dark and scary places. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I hung on for dear, sweet life.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I hung on to the shared, the remembering, the now, all that is good, all that is sacred.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And then, he was gone.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I woke up, I could not remember where I'd been.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I breathed, it was easier. I laid there, it was quieter. I looked at the day, I had enough courage.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I remembered. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Papa had come to visit.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He had shape-shifted ether to form.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He had heard my only call, the one a few weeks back when I had finally whispered to him, "I need you."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He had wrapped me up in the big "it came to pass it didn't come to stay" hug and made me right. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Like always.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Spirit world "come" home to me, a visit in the guise of a dream.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I do not have enough thank-you's.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Not this day, not any day.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">There are never enough thank-you's for the love of this world, of the spheres and for the love that never ends.</span><br />
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<br />Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-45424040610104712282012-05-19T13:10:00.001-04:002013-02-02T20:47:28.397-05:00She is pure-out, full-on glory and grace<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Some people are just born with grace in their beings, blood, breath. Maybe not enough people, but enough to remind the rest of us of the path that is possible and the way of that path.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I watch her. She walks toward me, it has been months since I have laid eyes on her. I see first her beauty. Her hair is a new color, but it is rich and deep like her and it must be the color she was born with because it not only becomes her, it is her. Her beauty reaches out in front of her and trails behind her, it reaches softly like her being and like her smile. I feel that first, I see it second.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I look harder.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And then I see her now.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">She walks with what is more than an imperceptible limp, an almost awkward gait. She walks with that delicate precision that is the giveaway of the too careful, it is the sign where anything less or anything more, is far too painful if not impossible. She is fighting a new battle, one of many and this one the hardest, this one is to keep walking and keep moving and make the impossible, possible, it is the one that is her statement, "I am winning this round."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We hear about and see diseases, the kind that eat away, the kind that destroy, the ones of the mind that leave the silent, the ones of the body that bit by bit take it all away. I have watched my mother, my sister, my sweetheart battle pain that I can't comprehend. I have watched one friend die with cancer and when she left being so transparent, weightless and changed in body, that there was nothing left but her bright and shining soul.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This friend has battled one illness after another, she has opened the door to death, smiled graciously as is her way, had the requisite conversation and gently but firmly closed the door with a firm, "please come back later." Death and death's dark friends the ones that challenge and hone, scare and silence us, have stood watching her, too often. They took her mother, her grandmother, her aunts, all the women, a decade before they were as old as she. She is determined to fight the fight of her ancestors and her own at one time and win the battle for all of them.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">She is one of the truly brave and beautiful. Her childhood scarred and scalding. Too much of the never-knowing, the unexpected grief and pain, the judgment, the dark corners, everything but the comfort and the consistency, everything but the grace and graciousness that are her inherent being, everything that would challenge her young and make her want to be normal, because she believed normal would be where she would finally find acceptance or safety. At 60 she has finally begun to accept, normal is not, and has never been, her path. She has had a string of successful careers and businesses, and a string of disappointments. She has been the outspoken speaker for the underdog, the downtrodden, the abused and the scared. That voice of truth cost her a business and a home she loved, those in power bent on taking it all away from her not realizing that all to her was her boys and her own heart and they had no power over those. They had come to tell her the night before, "you leave tomorrow, we are evicting you in the morning, it is over." Quietly she had closed the door, turned back to the music, smelled her just-picked flowers, continued baking and cooking, feeling the softness of the home she loved, determined that until the last conceivable moment she would immerse herself in all of it. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">She raised those boys alone, no help from their father, she worked, she nurtured, she never missed a chance to empower them or support them or encourage them to be everything a human can be. And, they are. Now they are men that we all long to know and meet, kind, compassionate, smart, successful and fully devoted to their wives and children, doing it all, just like she did.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">She would go on and earn degrees in her spare time and use those to speak for herself and for those who most needed to be spoken for. She would reach out her hand to help someone to and over the bridge that they could not even see. At some point she began to understand her work was other-wordly---that it was about energy seen and not seen. She became the student of the shaman's path.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Beware.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Physician heal thyself.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Go to the place that is the darkest place within you, the dark place of the spiritual, of the emotional, of the physical and find your way back. And when you have done it, do it again, and again, and again.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">She has. Her body born fragile, has continued to be challenged every year, always with more to come. And now on top of all of those challenges, the little tick that bit her years ago and left its poison to wreak a demolition derby in her body for the next five years has almost won. The views are split and many, how do you heal those with this type of sickness, what might work, or has the best chance of working before everything quits working. She has taken the only path for her. Wholistic and careful and non-traditional. Expensive, more than she makes in a month. She walks, she drives, she works, she takes care of the animals, her doctor unable to understand how she can do any of it, but it is who she is and she will do it.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">She tells me, "last week I began walking into chairs and tables and I cannot control the direction of my steps, the pain is unbearable and I am scared."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I am running out of words, I am running out of hope to spread, I only can find a little humor and a true, real question to share. "WHAT were you f--ing thinking when you wrote the blueprint for this life? what were you thinking to become a saint in one go-round???"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">She laughs. She nearly always finds a laugh. But the laugh itself is quiet and thoughtful. She has lived so many miles of challenge, of fight. She has always found her way and she has always found her way alone. The moments when most she has needed anyone, they have not been there. She has not complained, (I try to think when I have ever heard her complain) but she has suffered and then she has gone on, to heal herself and do it. It is as she says, her path.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I watch her walk towards me. I see her pain. I see her heart. I hold her heart in mine.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I have faith in her.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I see her glance behind her at darkness and his friends, she waves to them and keeps walking towards me.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">She is nothing but beautiful.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">She is one of the strong, one of the Amazon strong and she is pure-out, full-on grace and glory.</span><br />
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<br />Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-82799795133214740692012-05-10T12:17:00.000-04:002013-01-04T01:00:41.436-05:00Liquid Brain, The All Out Snotty Crying Strength, "It Is What It Is"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Four years ago it was always the same. I'd go see the Healer, he would look at me and I would begin to cry, not just a little crying, not the sissy kind of crying but the big-full-on-broken-down-full-on-wearied-out-full-on-worn-out-gone-to-hell-in-a-handbasket-full-of-snot-crying. The hiccuping kind. The kind you most often feel stupid after. The kind that if you "pride"yourself on strength, makes you mad as hell you "showed" weakness. The kind that after it happens more than three times you finally give in to the learning and say, "It is what it is." Sometimes it might be the quickest way of getting to "It is what it is."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Meme told me she'd had a full-out-hiccuping-day-long-cry and she was really upset with herself. That's the way strong women are until they aren't, until they get to, "it is what it is." Or, until they get to the place they realize that in certain moments we don't have a clue and we can't define what it actually is: bad, indifferent, educational, life-changing, beautiful, funny, awful, awfully good, what it is or the opposite of what it is. Sometimes it really is about silver linings, things that are illusions, grace on the other side of that waterfall of challenge, strength in the middle of the snotty nosed cry. Sometimes maybe oftentimes it is about how when life shifts up our lessons we have to shift up our labels and our semantics to keep up---and most often we do this with a WTF planted on our faces, our bodies rolled into question marks and all if it, right before we hit our knees. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Meme's long ass hiccup day of crying had taken her straight to that place and the place we find ourselves loudly saying, "this isn't me, this isn't who I am. I am stronger than this."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I'd said to her, "But it is. It is who you are, it is who we all are. We are all the pieces and all the parts and it is always what it seems and what it doesn't seem and most especially when we say, it isn't who we are..."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I told her that the year of liquid brain had brought me to a clearer understanding of things like who we are and what we take for granted about ourselves and how we think about ourselves and the pieces that make it all up, that with liquid brain it all goes melting down the street in front of us and we can see it but it has all run together and so we stare and wait until it solidifies a little bit and forms any kind of new solid whole that once again spells out life. Liquid brain is like throwing ourselves up in the air in pieces and watching as they float back down and happiness is catching some of them and putting the some back together. The some back together becomes the new story and new stories mean change, mean we've moved on from the old and the letting go and we are free to write the new challenge, with new humor and new sweet. We can trade the old weak for a new strong, the old job for a new title, the cancer for the grace, the family can expand with in-laws and the story can grow as long as we need it to, until it is time to throw ourselves up and catch the rewrite, again.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Liquid brain is like snotty nosed crying, it brings you up short and just pauses you and you go on living as best you can and in a way that usually people only get a glimmer of how far you have melted and how far you have to go. Sometimes they see a together person when all you see is that liquid running down the street in front of you. Perceptions, perspective. Damn if it doesn't make you strong while it softens up all your edges, and damn if when you put your Humpty Dumpty self back together again you don't discover that you are no longer made of something hard, something rigid, something really defined, but instead, something sweetly, strongly soft with blurred and open spaces and something that if you fall, will only crack, heal and then be whole again.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">She repeats. "This isn't me, I don't wallow, I'm so strong, I never cry." And I think how all that crying and all that liquifying and all that letting go only made and makes me stronger and how it is making her stronger too.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It is hard to pick up one illusion and discard another, hard to become everything we believe we are not. But if we can find that place inside that recognizes or gets the slimmest math glimmer of parts of the whole, we can maybe get to the loving of each of the parts. And whether the part is the big snotty cry that takes us straight to strength, the big shout of whoohooo that takes us straight to heart, the big glue of laugher that holds it all together or the big sigh of surrender that takes us straight to where it really all happens, it is what it is and <i>what it is, is all of it.</i></span>Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-15406462075635844382012-05-09T08:36:00.000-04:002012-05-21T12:12:11.652-04:00Moving Through Hatred<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We have had this talk more than a few times these last two decades, the Healer and I. The talk about the times to come, the earth changes, the changes in consciousness that have to happen, the big fork in the road, and the way home. In the last few years each time it becomes harder and harder for me to understand human behavior and judgment I have found solace that it is in the moving through we get to the other side. It is in the suffering, we find Grace. It is what it is and within that there is a way.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I dread going downstairs to Mama's today. It is all I can do myself to get out of bed. My heart is like a boulder. Last night for the first time in 20 years, my Sweetheart went outside and screamed into the sky, not once but five times. He screamed. What else can you do at times but send it up to to the angels. That is my take on screaming into the sky. His was knowing full well that neighbors on all sides but one had probably voted For this day. He wanted them to know how he felt. He wanted them to know he hated them. I feel like crying, Mama will have cried already, I believe my Sweetheart has cried as well, although he will never let me see that.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Last night as he screamed I went to the place of eerie quiet where it is all there is to do. It is the place where helplessness and hope meet inevitability and shrink into nothing. And nothing is what it all becomes in that moment until it re-forms and guides me someplace different.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I tell him I cannot bear to hear the word, to not say the word, I am almost shouting myself, silence to shouting can too often come quickly.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"DON'T say HATE."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"I hate them all, all of them who voted this way, I hate all of their ignorant, stupid, uneducated, self-righteous, Christian selves."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Don't make like the Bible scholar you aren't. It is not all the Christians, so don't blame the Christians.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DON'T SAY HATE. HATING THEM MAKES YOU THEIR EQUAL. HATING IS HATING. PERIOD. "</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"You tell me what you want me to call them and I'll call them that."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I don't have the answer. I am not sure in this moment how to define without labeling how to explain without judging, how to even talk about it. It is the calling each other anything except the sweet and good where the walk becomes precarious, it is only in the love we are safe. But in this moment I'm faltering. I think of Billy and Franklin and spending money on the bill boards for hate. I know they didn't speak for God even if they are so misguided they believe they did. My own anger boils up and it is all I can do to not scream at the sky myself. It is like that with hate. Hate begets hate and it multiplies as fast as rabbits and rats. I think that the religious leaders of Iran who foster hatred and the religious leaders of America who foster hatred are no different. I think about how the "right" is to me so wrong and the label in that. I think about governments built on religion, wars raged for religion, and the narrow views of the few. I think The Handmaid's Tale is not a work of fiction, of the 1,000 bills in legislatures across this country legislating women's activities, health, behaviors, of the fear, of the need to be right, of the hatred driving it all. I think of the Dalai Lama who said it would be the Western Woman who would change this world. I think it is time to dress up, get out of the house and start the world changing. I wonder which state I'll be living in next. I think it was easier when I moved from NC to Seattle the first time, it was me, Milda and the pick-up truck. Now how to get us all there and how would Mama adjust.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I think about it all and try to find my hope. I think about it all and try to keep my faith. I think about it all and know that love is always the only way out and through, around and over, the only thing and way that makes the big changes, brings about the big healing. I think about it all and step clear and dead into the center of the hatred that boils and spews and wounds and kills. I step into that center and know that this is the path of healing, this is the path of finding our way home, this is the way and the place we all go back to love, but only, only, when we all get sick enough of hatred, we can hate no more.</span><br />
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(Note: This is written on May 9, 2012 the day after North Carolina passed an amendment to their Constitution. An amendment as I understand it funded by a hate group and 12 years in the making. An amendment that will take away rights not only of homosexuals but heterosexuals, the 2nd amendment to the NC Constitution, the first being against interracial marriage. A sad history and a sad present.)<br />
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<br />Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-50013770942529831292012-04-16T07:53:00.012-04:002012-05-29T10:03:32.207-04:00She Flies Through the Air with the Greatest of Seeming Ease<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Every day I am astounded by the women around me. By their strength and beauty, determination and limitless, if sometimes faltering, courage.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">They are often the women who have been the mothers not only of their own children but of their own mothers. The ones who have been the caregivers from childhood, have weathered the deep dark, have waded in scalding streams and swum against a waterfall. And every single one of them is beautiful, each differently so, their light shining and to me in often moments, gently blinding. These are the women who have surrounded my life, the ones I reach out to, embrace and speak ever and on-going thank-you tos. Their hair silver, and blonde, white and rich brown, almost maroon, uniquely colorful, but always covering heads full of the real of wisdom. Their clothes, conservative, or trendy, cutting edge or simple, cover the scars, the muscles, the layers, the pieces that have carried them through decades of illness and angst, their own and the ones they have healed or stood beside.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">All of these women laugh--- loud, long, soft, wide, appropriately and inappropriately. All of these women, I am convinced, giggle and snort with the angels.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">These are the women who every day, change their world, my world, this world and we all whether we know it or not, count on it.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I have sat in the long dark tunnels with them, each of us looking for the thinnest stream or miniscule pinpoint of light that will give guidance towards the next place, or step, or movement forward, squinting towards and for the light that will symbolize the hope and the going beyond. I have held them tight through their tears and my own and sat in belief and disbelief, in the waiting, in the dance, in the heart splattered yet singing. I have seen when transformation comes, the blessedness of patience, deep devotion, prayer, the blessedness of suffering held within grace, <i>held within it all. </i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Yesterday she flew.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">My friend who will soon be 50. She flew through the air in a dance on fabric, her blonde hair hanging towards the ground. She waltzed in space, with wings of giant turquoise. Her strong arms, walking her up the blue and up the yellow into the air, towards the sky. Her smile hiding her fear of performance, hiding anything else in her heart, just showing us the luminosity of challenge when challenge is met and befriended and takes us to new heights. This friend of mine who has supported and lifted my soul, shared life's sweetness and blessing bowls, the best of sunsets and giggles; this friend of mine who somehow unthinkably, improbably, impossibly, traveled with me a few weeks ago to the most cutting, jarring and soul-shaking place in our relating and who matched me step by step finding our way back out, blessedly walking through melting the hard and jagged into a liquid stream and back into the golden heart of love.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">She is alone, or a part of 2 or 3, dancing in the air with those 2 and 3 decades younger, and she is outshining them all, golden, luminous and smiling.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I watch her, I am inspired, I am profoundly thankful, I am in the heart of grace.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">She is one of the women, one of the strong, one of the beautiful.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">She is a weaver, she is an alchemist and she flies,</span><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">with the greatest of seeming ease.</span></i><br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr-wkqv8tR8">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr-wkqv8tR8</a><br />
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</i>Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-61801915774503332812012-01-07T09:09:00.007-05:002012-01-16T20:24:57.746-05:00Feet Don't Fail Me Now<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7PLNHBaE3OKnEbTK4zvpZpw1W-zk9HLOitKSukZLpGfTpzKZMNXpfsxg4KQooTXfIWHvCZ8KAhx96M42NxanDmHcrbaR3Y4kuY2lf7Gfbl8E26ZLWCmYHCxIXZ2gIXLMUYBXaVbR9z3-H/s1600/163008_1715147446144_1461949963_31773840_598050_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7PLNHBaE3OKnEbTK4zvpZpw1W-zk9HLOitKSukZLpGfTpzKZMNXpfsxg4KQooTXfIWHvCZ8KAhx96M42NxanDmHcrbaR3Y4kuY2lf7Gfbl8E26ZLWCmYHCxIXZ2gIXLMUYBXaVbR9z3-H/s1600/163008_1715147446144_1461949963_31773840_598050_n.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In that two hour stretch of too early morning I find myself thinking, if my feet could shout up at my head how many times would they be shouting, "Please don't make me!" or "I'm NOT going there!"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">If I heard them, if I listened, how many times would I change my course, back it up, how many ways would I miss every place I needed to go.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I reckon had that feet-shout been heard in my head I would have missed most of the Holy Moly, Holy Sh**, gobsmacked, WTF moments and subsequent enlightenment. I would have missed the bulk of what has taught me, made me smarter and brought me here --- even if here is with my mouth hanging open until I hear that voice from childhood saying, "Shut your mouth or the flies will fly in."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It is a new year and my feet are twitchy, they are no doubt talking to me in sign language and responding to a yesterday written in the oddest of odd, to a day ahead that holds God knows what, and to a year that was often, a trudge dance.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I'm not sure how nuanced the understanding of my thinking feet are, but I'm guessing like the rest of me, they are just hoping to land on solid instead of squishy ground and hoping to find their way through and home.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> If my feet could talk and I heard them calling out,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"squishy surreal upfront"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"don't make me"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"backwards, go backwards"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">what I would do.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I'm hoping I'd just have enough faith to look down and keep saying "don't fail me now," keep my eyes pealed for the WTF's and remember to periodically shut my mouth.</span>Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-56906326015293348312011-12-30T07:27:00.004-05:002011-12-30T07:59:58.291-05:00Early morning and what is and isn't in my head<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Yesterday and it is 2:38 in the morning. Sounds like a line from a country song, who knows if it's a good one. Two days in a row, I'm awake and thoughts are running like a clear, mountain stream. Thank God.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I am grateful when the lunar lunacies spend the night away from home and when the things that talk to me in the middle of the night do so quietly and calmly. Quiet and calm beats the hell out of unruly talking children thoughts who get up in my head, shout, laugh and poke at me, who get scared and scream at me. Spending early morning with thoughts that run on quiet power and speak to me like I have good sense, are easy. Early morning with screaming unruly children thoughts is when a five minute conversation lasts 10,000 years and being run over by a Mack truck would be a kinder thing.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I get up and write my emos. For whatever reason, the last two weeks all the memos have been emos. That is what keeps popping out of my mouth, "I'll write you an emo." I need to remember to look emo up---maybe there is a deeper meaning to writing emos than writing memos, the thought at least entertains me, more than the actual emos do. I write the emos and send a pile of them off and climb back into bed. It is 3:38.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I can't find a place for my legs because Gratefulest Dog has decided my absence means he can stretch out horizontally and he has left me an inch. I move my legs. He ends up off the bed and on the floor. Immediately his Dad wakes up.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Why are you shoving the dog off the bed?"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"I didn't. I moved my legs and off he went."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"WHY are you shoving the dog off the bed?"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I didn't, I swear I moved my legs and he went off."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Right."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Gratefulest is back on the bed by this time, half-horizontal and half-vertical. We are awake.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He tells me it is all my doing that the dog is on the bed to begin with. I refuse to own that one. I remember when he came and he slept on the sunroom floor and stared in the windows at us, and we stared back. He had his bed and we had ours. We were not so unified at 3:38 in the morning.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Every time I went out of town, he slept with you. You started it."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"That's different."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It doesn't seem to be a productive conversation but it makes us both laugh. We start talking about an art project in Georgia, Perceptual Control Theory, the emos, the printer, the offices, the studio, retrofitting plumbing. We start talking about something else, he says, "You remember?" As usual, I don't. I used to always remember.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I tell him, "You know I don't know what is in my head anymore but I sure as hell know what isn't." Country song 2.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It is a long conversation ---probably the longest one we've had in weeks. It is real and it is us and it is funny. Thank God. The gifts 3:38 and a dog flying in the morning can bring.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">There is a loud, low noise that hums above us and hangs out. "What the hell is that?" It lasts about a minute. Both of us are too quiet and run through our heads anything it could have been. It comes back and hangs and lingers again. It shakes us up and we can't come up with a single, "good" explanation.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sweetheart gets up. Time for early coffee and pondering the fact that he wishes a UFO would come and visit. He has wished it for a long, long time. I lie in bed and think how it would be to run downstairs and tell Mama. To tell her that the world she believes has gone crazy now has a UFO and real ETs in it. When I tell her later in the day, she laughs. And then she ponders what that means.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It is almost the New Year, and tomorrow night I will probably be wide awake again in the middle of the night, listening for Sweetheart's UFO. I will be grateful if the thoughts are quietly conversing and not the unruly children screaming, it would be a good way to have a new beginning. I will lie there and feel Gratefulest up against my legs and maybe if I'm lucky, hear Sweetheart laugh in his sleep and I will not so much care what is or isn't in my head.</span>Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-42745509459443565242011-12-24T13:57:00.005-05:002011-12-25T22:41:07.857-05:00We Take Blessings Too<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He is standing a bit away from the front doors and ringing a bell. Each person he sees, near or far, he shouts to, "Merry Christmas". Like everyone I see, I avert my eyes and scurry past.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I leave the store having forgotten to get the cash back I'd planned to get because once in line I couldn't remember why I needed any. I knew there wasn't any point in just "having" some. Sweetheart would find it and he would need it more, not in the wishful thinking way, or the made-up kind of way but the real kind of way. So here I was back outside the door, without so much as a nickel, looking at the man and his bucket, and as usual remembering later what I'd wished I'd remembered sooner.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This time I looked at him.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"I'm so sorry. I meant to get some cash. I don't even have a dime or a quarter in my purse." But to be sure, I looked, I stood there moving everything around hoping that something would materialize. He kept ringing his bell and looked at me and smiled.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"We take blessings too. Most people don't know we take blessings too, most people just walk past and don't say 'nuthin so I can't tell 'em."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I think how I'd just walked past and said 'nuthin.<i> I think how I'd looked at him and immediately gotten caught up in the thinking of everything I couldn't give, didn't have or what was expected of me</i>. When all I needed to do was say Merry Christmas <i>and let him give me his gift. </i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Thank you for telling me, thank you for reminding me. Bless you, bless you for what you are doing and bless you in the days to come. Merry Christmas." </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I touch his shoulder, look him in the eye and smile.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">As I drive out of the parking lot I watch the people flooding in and out of the store doors and I listen for someone to return his Merry Christmas. I don't hear a single one.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sweetheart said yesterday everywhere he drove people were in a hurry and just plain mad, they were in a hurry so that <b><i>later </i></b>when they weren't, they could stop and say, "Merry Christmas" and by then maybe mean it.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Today I have been reminded of the simple, the important, the moment, of the need to slow it down, look and listen for the stranger bearing merry and bearing blessings.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Today I have been reminded that</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"We all take blessings too."</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS-AgNRuM0l9-8kOL0xRyz3NoF-gaxtS3r_BnSrlcTjvPhZP0eXJ0C8s1jiV5HQNvwCrPA1WjkvCvIGiiI8cc41pFaR4vFPYjGnB00lLlBmMbrH1LVcA_gifiOwhtgZgc1C0rOUOblkWLG/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-12-25+at+4.15.18+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS-AgNRuM0l9-8kOL0xRyz3NoF-gaxtS3r_BnSrlcTjvPhZP0eXJ0C8s1jiV5HQNvwCrPA1WjkvCvIGiiI8cc41pFaR4vFPYjGnB00lLlBmMbrH1LVcA_gifiOwhtgZgc1C0rOUOblkWLG/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-12-25+at+4.15.18+PM.png" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiBIxdnKGwT_Al2StJKQSagxpT0RqEK8gzVsZKw6dPAlpSR4REfIls9NAJJPEJrK9b0j_mDx23AiRK55YIrSTDwVVNk9jsQ7oiIyNUlKgQsWBql-ohS0T54pfAhg6o7e-iSKQVJENc3VOr/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-12-25+at+4.15.38+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiBIxdnKGwT_Al2StJKQSagxpT0RqEK8gzVsZKw6dPAlpSR4REfIls9NAJJPEJrK9b0j_mDx23AiRK55YIrSTDwVVNk9jsQ7oiIyNUlKgQsWBql-ohS0T54pfAhg6o7e-iSKQVJENc3VOr/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-12-25+at+4.15.38+PM.png" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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</span>Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-15912208617452227002011-12-20T08:57:00.003-05:002011-12-20T09:02:08.115-05:00The Stories That Come and Go Like Water<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIeYvn1_o3CKFvff26pySbYkZt_eaVXG73oM3CPPhyphenhyphenn5QQI-dXE0UHHCpUFcvqxdPsAaDVAybSJWvMZ72p09Q_56Wbtz2SHrXLoSPzDJ2DG8Z3w4NEpB5OLGDFlD2tg3vw2sfPgnx6aQaR/s1600/ignitefire-654x453.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIeYvn1_o3CKFvff26pySbYkZt_eaVXG73oM3CPPhyphenhyphenn5QQI-dXE0UHHCpUFcvqxdPsAaDVAybSJWvMZ72p09Q_56Wbtz2SHrXLoSPzDJ2DG8Z3w4NEpB5OLGDFlD2tg3vw2sfPgnx6aQaR/s320/ignitefire-654x453.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I am held in the stories that come and go like water. Standing still, watching and feeling.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Challenge. Suffering. Challenge. Suffering. Weakness. Strength. Humor. Hope. Grace.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Coming and going.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I stand still within the stories that are layered and nuanced, subtle and unsubtle, that scream and cry, that whimper and whisper, that beg and demand, that rip out the heart and then slap on the laughter.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Mama's face looks paler every day. There is the pain that is her constant companion, but mostly there is her heart that feels it all.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"I have lived through wars, and a Great Depression, I have lived through ugly politics and soldiers coming home to have no jobs. But this, this is crazy. It has never been quite so bad and quite so crazy and I don't understand this crazy."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Mama's story this day will be followed by five or six, or ten more that all are held in suffering, in seeking, in not so often, understanding.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I only know how to reach out my hand. I only know how to reach out my heart. I can steady with my hand and wrap them all up in my heart.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I can listen.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I can honor each one and its storybringer. I can one day, write them.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I look for a flash of the iridescent, the glimmer that signals the wings where the quiet quiet quiet giggle rides piggyback with the quiet quiet quiet hope, where for a moment the suffering will ease, the story will change and where the page will turn.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I stand still</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I am held</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">in the stories that come and go like water.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span>Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-54010408068944338032011-12-15T10:22:00.004-05:002011-12-15T14:30:07.067-05:00Dreaming Abundance, Dreaming Grateful<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I woke up this morning and for once remembered the dream, vividly, all of the images and all of the conversation. Usually I only remember pieces, morning blurs the pieces and quickly quiets the real and scary, real and joyful, the colorful that is filled with live people and dead people. Morning usually sends the gifts and journey of Mother Moon away.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Today, I remember.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We walk across a breezeway into a different room---away from what I think is familiar to what I think is unknown. As we walk towards one from the other I realize that we are going from what belongs to us to another part of what belongs to us.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"I don't remember we had this room."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I spot the bathroom.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Look at that bathtub. It is huge. It has JETS. I can soak in lavender. How could we have a bathroom with this tub and I didn't know it?"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I walk out of the bathroom and into a great room that has a kitchen, room for a bed, room for a living area, floor to ceiling windows except for the places that hold the bookcases and the fireplaces. Beautifully small in the way-big-enough-kind-of-way, minimalist but having everything we need, want and have wished for in the place we have wanted to live these last umpteen years. I look out the windows, see the big green, the Grandaddy Spirit trees and stand in awe. I spin around and count the fireplaces, not one but three, each beautiful, each different, each big and lit and pulling me into their warm, into their light.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"We have fireplaces? How did I not know we had fireplaces? I just told someone we didn't have a fireplace? And we have THREE."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"We could live here---in our place. In the place we've always wanted, in the place that holds our dreams, in the place that already belongs to us."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Everything we wanted, dreamed about, was already ours.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I am astounded. I am thrown. I am thankful.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Oh."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"So."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Wow."</span>Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-53994888827616881202011-09-28T00:00:00.003-04:002011-09-28T10:04:15.048-04:00Crackle, Rustle, Happy Birthday<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Crackle, crackle, crackle, crackle.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I moved.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Crackle, crackle, crackle, crackle.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I lifted my arm.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Rustle, rustle, rustle, rustle.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I shifted.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Crackle, rustle, rustle, crackle, crackle.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I opened my eyes.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I was covered in a few hundred little pieces of paper.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I lifted one up and looked at it. I squinted and read the tiny writing.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I love you.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I turned my head. He smiled and said, "I love you."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It was the spring of 1974 and the man I was living with but not living with not according to if you'd asked my parents, the man I would later marry and later divorce had covered me in hundreds of I love you's. It was one of the reasons I loved him and one of the reasons he claimed a piece of my heart and one of the reasons he still has the key to that piece of my heart. It was one of the reasons that it is always worth loving, even when we change, even when we walk apart and away. It is one of the reasons that as we continue to become who we are, the people who have loved us or shared with us become even more important.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It is your birthday today Wingfield.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Close your eyes and imagine that I have sent a shower of hundreds of little pieces of paper floating down on you, some of them say, I love you and some of them say Thank you and some of them say, Happy Birthday and some of them simply crackle and rustle for the remembering and for the fun of the sound of it.</span>Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-60867769205256319302011-09-27T13:16:00.003-04:002016-11-19T08:47:55.602-05:00Brian's Masked Sunrise<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I stare at the painting. Its reds, oranges, yellows and flight move me as they have for 27 years. All things being equal, odds are, based on everything else I no longer have, that I would not have this either. For a good while it was 90% of everything I owned. It traveled with me from Seattle to Santa Fe, from Santa Fe to Dallas, back to Seattle, in the cargo of the plane to New York, and in the back of the mini-teeny truck home to NC. It traveled to Las Vegas, to a small apartment in Hilton Head and on to Atlanta, then to the NC tobacco barn, the log cabin and finally, this home where many lives and stories, merged. I have left clothes, furniture, books and most other things behind, but Brian and his <i>Masked Sunrise</i> have remained a constant, the first thing in place no matter where I landed, like my own sacred cornerstone, a sacred cornerstone and a sacred knowing, as long as Brian was with me, I could rise free as his birds into the sunrise. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_er7Yn5GYcdTgdSMl63WlxY9Bv7JLvJ7pMbaMv6jNMNVTMvjQeXEYLWlGND75yH8nAkPzM1uCU5sz-EJieHVqqqB9x70WXt-xWduCYkOEgS7vtjjHqrKNQycvLW01sYaInp4hVqHodKF1/s1600/Masked+Sunrise.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_er7Yn5GYcdTgdSMl63WlxY9Bv7JLvJ7pMbaMv6jNMNVTMvjQeXEYLWlGND75yH8nAkPzM1uCU5sz-EJieHVqqqB9x70WXt-xWduCYkOEgS7vtjjHqrKNQycvLW01sYaInp4hVqHodKF1/s320/Masked+Sunrise.jpg" width="252" /></span></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Masked sunrise, maybe it was a metaphor for his life, the potential, the glory, and the mask. For me it was and is always about the sunrise as metaphor for possibility, goodness, love, sustenance, awe, for the true in nature and the true in us, for the palpably beautiful and the palpably real.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I see the blackbird winging towards the heart of sunrise and I think how much it is like Brian. Always in motion, always striving, determined to make it even when the depression, the suffering, the callousness, the disrespect and inhumanity tried to crush his beautiful soul, he was always seeking to fly, he was always seeking glory in the morning.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He has been sitting company a lot with me these last days. It has just been his birthday and mine.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I see him as I first saw him, leaping across the stage in the hot pink stretch pants that he later gave to me, the ones that defined him and later defined me, the ones I wore with hot pink stillettos, funk, bad taste and full-on "this is who I am." They were "who we were," shared.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I remember the first Thanksgiving where he invited all his alone friends and he cooked for us from his heart in his gourmet way. I had not yet cultivated the taste for chestnuts, and brussel sprouts, or seaweed, I was longing for thick gravy, stuffing made with butter and a pile of mashed potatoes. In memory it became two things, the Thanksgiving of trying to swallow what I'd rather have spit in the napkin and the Thanksgiving where alone hearts were embraced in a day of giving thanks for all the hearts. It is why each year, the tables and borrowed chairs grow and Mama's and my plates merge and each year it is more challenging to feed the growing Thanksgiving numbers, but it is why the Blessing Bowl overflows. It is Thanksgiving as ritual and heart, and as Brian defined it in 1977. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Brian was deep and deeply committed, a deep thinker, a deep feeler, a deep everythinger. He was deeply healthy and deeply working on staying that way, in either a slim and lithe dancer's body or the body builder, muscled and strong one. When he was training he'd think nothing of working out for 3 hours and ending the work-out with a visit to see me, running up the 46 flights of high-rise steps to get to my office. Most often, he'd walk in barely breathless and giving me "the look." The one that came when he saw my croissants and bacon and butter that he knew I'd either taken the elevator to get or sent Tina to get while my own butt stayed parked happily in my chair. I would meet his look, reach for my bacon and we would talk. One day he waved his arm at me when he walked in, his hands held a rolled up sheet of paper. An almost perfect likeness of me drawn from memory. The frame has long-since disappeared, the offwhite paper is smudged and dirty, but it hangs between my office and bedroom. It is signed by 4 fingerprints turned into hearts that I remember he said he had blown kisses into.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjHRi1V9LsMzDLeLksdwdo31mDaS2Ld4ye0D_om1EiaavGiLbXfoSc0qU4yGTXujM3Y9QHWKNes1ubczX7UVseV9SjPIrOH7yyg8RAiV9MutpTxuO34QfYA7cbg-EH5jmsXTG7SkD1cu9D/s1600/Me.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjHRi1V9LsMzDLeLksdwdo31mDaS2Ld4ye0D_om1EiaavGiLbXfoSc0qU4yGTXujM3Y9QHWKNes1ubczX7UVseV9SjPIrOH7yyg8RAiV9MutpTxuO34QfYA7cbg-EH5jmsXTG7SkD1cu9D/s320/Me.jpg" width="246" /></span></a></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He called me early one Saturday, he had a borrowed car, and took me to a beach on the peninsula, a picnic basket of feast treats and a bottle of champagne and we sat and stared at the wild ocean and huddled together in appreciation of magic. It was one of many Brian surprises, he delighted in giving and he delighted in surprises and he was master at combining both. I was often the recipient of full-out serendipitous goodness. The first gift ever I found on my pillow. He'd taken a bus from Seattle to Kirkland, broken into my house and placed an inscribed copy of <i>The Red Balloon</i> on my pillow. He'd locked the house back up and quietly left. Years later when he came to visit he would leave behind more gifts or mail them after he left. The green bowl, the weaving he'd done on his grandmother's loom, "Things Not Seen" a painting I"d fallen in love with from the slides, As I finally quit traveling and most of what I owned was not just my sunrise, as my possessions began to grow again, so did the gifts from Brian. He delighted my heart and my home.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The last thing that came a handmade book, each page a page of his last vision quest, each page a short poem of his soul that day, each page one day closer to when he decided that he wanted to live and not die. It is a beautiful book, fragile, delicate and unmeasurably strong, it is him. His grandmother's teachings about life and art had mostly sustained him, he had made peace with the love of his family and the love of his family removed. He had found partners and left partners, had had successes and the many lean times when having been the first Barista for Starbucks he would always return to that for making the money to pay the rent when the stretches between one man shows were too long. And he had doubted himself, his life and his gifts more times than a human being should, but finally, had found some peace.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sometimes we would lose each other for a year or 2 or 3 but always we would find each other again. His last trip here he stood over the pool in the woods imagining his next one man show and beginning to draw figure after figure swimming, diving, flying, leaping, all of the figures in a place of movement but also all in a place of surrender (just like him). He would cook our dinner, and draw, he would laugh at Jeff not smoking smoking and the curiously funny way that Papa broke his leg, he would talk of his Borzois and how he missed them. He would come upstairs to tell me he would be sleeping on the couch in the den because the spirits in the basement were way too active.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He would leave. For the last time.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I knew he had moved to a small town north of Seattle, had finally found a partner he was happy with, that he was teaching and working on several new shows I knew he was finally almost as close as genius can ever get to being happy.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I lost him for 2 years, I googled him. I couldn't find him and then one day a review appeared, of a one-man show of figures leaping and moving, dancing and flying off into surrender. I finally reached the gallery to ask them to have him call me.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Oh." She said.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"I don't know how to tell you this...</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> That show was 2 years ago...</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> and well, Brian died."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I hung up.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Over the course of the next few days I would learn about an opening night, a mosquito bite, a headache that started and wouldn't quit, a hospital that said nothing was wrong, a return trip back a few days later too late, a coma and then his death. I would learn of a family who did not want his paintings but finally took them anyway, unhappy with what they perceived as a burden.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I would never learn about his partner, the end of his life, his final almost happiness.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I would learn about fleeting, and about too sudden. I would remember big generous and big love.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">These days he has been with me. His birthday August 28.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Telling people I love them is something I do, every day, and as often as possible. For whatever reason, I never told Brian enough.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I place the<i> Red Balloon,</i> the green bowl, the poster, the card, his handmade book on the woven throw, the throw that is on the guest bedroom bed, the one he wove with love, the one that adds his love to mine and reaches out in welcome to the one who comes to stay. I look at what is symbolic of the person who so enriched and continues to enrich my life. The soul I believe still paints the sunrise, while sitting in the middle of it.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I wonder if he knows how big he was, how gifted, how loving, how powerful, how beautiful. I wonder if he knows how much I loved him, how much he gave me, how much because of him, that glorious sunrises and flight free as a bird have always been and always will be, my possibility.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFZFbk1-h-cQGWjLFCnEg2n_IH5EHMrvTcri84O7lECGnDs0WI2Ov8JAI8V9gmU1EI7BoOJoGua9jFlZNxZJl-Fv_oKZIblgXYfwizi1Qd8NZ6diceTzqYTnwdrnuMfhANhqEqgS0ql7pu/s1600/mail-1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFZFbk1-h-cQGWjLFCnEg2n_IH5EHMrvTcri84O7lECGnDs0WI2Ov8JAI8V9gmU1EI7BoOJoGua9jFlZNxZJl-Fv_oKZIblgXYfwizi1Qd8NZ6diceTzqYTnwdrnuMfhANhqEqgS0ql7pu/s1600/mail-1.jpeg" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Things Not Seen</span></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAvJ-7tHg4OWaeqsJC_btc7O4ZL3KZMxGLGzk-Nw2q4W6dFPTkLVuJZX7vQWK1P5yF5cPuQ-66Ok2vjKiD0I-kBC7y1i2pWkWa9uTzkOaYot1hLaMtFjWZY66lDBgeJXTUrEZUPBzYzNKT/s1600/mail-3.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAvJ-7tHg4OWaeqsJC_btc7O4ZL3KZMxGLGzk-Nw2q4W6dFPTkLVuJZX7vQWK1P5yF5cPuQ-66Ok2vjKiD0I-kBC7y1i2pWkWa9uTzkOaYot1hLaMtFjWZY66lDBgeJXTUrEZUPBzYzNKT/s200/mail-3.jpeg" width="149" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A note to me, a poem sealed with a kiss.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> "We fall & climb again into arcs of radiance fill the sky with vibration</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> impelled like summer birds."</span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4hnQbTzgM77o6hn8tU4l3IZHKXg7Fbp2G5XaT5VWZI9l0MLsp0yMRRpNqVdcqc_2sPhgoPfErGGiAKdsYzO3CRByLmAbhot28qc0hMWu94KZoArw86bFXIsnW-KuUCWQSH0lZ1DeTT2j7/s1600/mail-4.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4hnQbTzgM77o6hn8tU4l3IZHKXg7Fbp2G5XaT5VWZI9l0MLsp0yMRRpNqVdcqc_2sPhgoPfErGGiAKdsYzO3CRByLmAbhot28qc0hMWu94KZoArw86bFXIsnW-KuUCWQSH0lZ1DeTT2j7/s200/mail-4.jpeg" width="200" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">33 years of gifts that traveled in one small box across the country and back again. <i> The Red Balloon</i> inscribed in 1977, the last handmade book from his 2004 vision quest, the weaving made on his grandmother's loom.</span></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjttISvVCN9Y-s3yU4s5KD8o0xkfQZ36eUYycrnoGzlvSbdVxCGUBJOCp4B3q40HyQSyloFHLDyWGGZbtdbAFL__LfHVLov7nEosf217oAhHo71kWqGxOoU7Rji65hd4mePmZYXNStYxRls/s1600/mail-5.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjttISvVCN9Y-s3yU4s5KD8o0xkfQZ36eUYycrnoGzlvSbdVxCGUBJOCp4B3q40HyQSyloFHLDyWGGZbtdbAFL__LfHVLov7nEosf217oAhHo71kWqGxOoU7Rji65hd4mePmZYXNStYxRls/s1600/mail-5.jpeg" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The article on Brian in 1996 New American Paintings: A Quarterly Exhibition, Open Studios Competition Number VI</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-1435072081161371092011-09-03T11:49:00.036-04:002011-09-05T00:41:06.021-04:00Finding Beautiful<div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I think everyone should be told they’re beautiful until they believe it. </span></i><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>-</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Unknown</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeszDijk1cUbz74j4rQN5U1a1W9wZxlMaWl8gbooa5cSLrRnu1wiqHhyphenhyphen2A3R7VM4COjaorNR67sq-qEWvMIIVxY39Hh18JxxBOLLWmUYBQcUTAdlf0hd1tGJ2D-9pjPsTrGC3Ab2wpxrq7/s1600/Mama.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeszDijk1cUbz74j4rQN5U1a1W9wZxlMaWl8gbooa5cSLrRnu1wiqHhyphenhyphen2A3R7VM4COjaorNR67sq-qEWvMIIVxY39Hh18JxxBOLLWmUYBQcUTAdlf0hd1tGJ2D-9pjPsTrGC3Ab2wpxrq7/s1600/Mama.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Mama taught me more than a few things that stuck. One of them has to do with taking that extra moment on any given day, no matter where my head is, (and most especially when it is out of the world or up my ass) to say a few kind words to a stranger. It used to embarrass my ex, she would stop at a stranger's table to say, "What a beautiful family you are," or, "the parts of your conversation that carried over to me that I should not have been listening to, were perfectly delightful." (The latter we all felt a little embarrassed about.) On the hot days of summer at her old apartment when the Hispanic crew were worn slap out, Mama would fix trays of ice tea and cookies and walk outside and motion to them to come and she would serve them a little respite. I have seen her stop a stranger on the street to tell them what a beautiful smile they have, a beautiful blouse they are wearing, how pretty their hair looks that day, something, always finding something she could compliment them on... sometimes reaching out her hand to touch them softly on their shoulder as if she knew they needed reassurance. This was and is Mama's way of telling the people she knows and doesn't, they are beautiful.<br />
<br />
I try to remember. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I might have been the other pea in my Father's pod, but in many ways, I am my Mother's daughter.<br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I try to combine Mama with me. I try to find my own way to voicing kind and beautiful. </span><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">There is no end to the ways of telling each other we're beautiful, if we trust ourselves to do it, step outside the comfort zone, reach out and down and say loudly in the quietest of ways, "You are beautiful." That one moment of our spontaneity births another moment of serendipity and maybe a little mirabilia. That one moment is an <i>extra</i>, the kind of <i>extra</i> that deep inside we all need and sometimes hope for, the kind that could change a life and the kind that in the end, will be what changes a world. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The water, the breath, the food, they sustain us, being told we are beautiful gives us back our hope. The think tanks, the physicists, the philanthropists, the groups doing all the big and small of changing the world, somehow or way they began when kind met beautiful out loud and then they grew together.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Or, maybe they met Mama. </span><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It is time for me to start the "You are beautiful" list, telling </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">at least one person or one more person a day they are beautiful, and trying to see the beauty in at least one person I don't find beautiful at all. It needs to be a footnoted list, where every time I don't notice and should, I think about it and don't, and where every judgment that stops me seeing, will write itself. It needs to be a miles long and world traveling list, where its numbers grow and the footnotes shrink. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Banjoel says it will take a long time, the telling everyone they are beautiful until they get it. It isn't just that enough of us might not be saying it but it is also that most people might not be hearing it. Beyond that he says it is doable. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcnSLC6d3thSqZALKJln5IygedlGFPn5AFxp9Gg1zhrZfpVcDxrnEzkA5g2uON3RhAxPl1j7TA97WuoAjLxyfteBkBlAdXO0JqbnsoSqayi9EFmtPtgWASJaGgD5Ec3RyRRQPOfllQrWs7/s1600/Joel.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcnSLC6d3thSqZALKJln5IygedlGFPn5AFxp9Gg1zhrZfpVcDxrnEzkA5g2uON3RhAxPl1j7TA97WuoAjLxyfteBkBlAdXO0JqbnsoSqayi9EFmtPtgWASJaGgD5Ec3RyRRQPOfllQrWs7/s1600/Joel.png" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So I don't know who you are and when you read this, but when you do, I have this to say. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i><b>"You are beautiful."</b></i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I mean it. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And if you don't think so, sit down and <i>stay there</i> until you figure it out, all the ways or any of the ways, <i>you are beautiful</i>.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Then sit with your own beauty or any part of it you can own.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And when you are done, go tell somebody else.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And mean it.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div>Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-4596484077108657122011-08-27T07:33:00.012-04:002011-08-29T17:19:53.921-04:00Blue Green Venus and the Stuff They Say<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Ninety degrees. He has to mix and pour in daylight. Mixing by hand, buckets of tint, sakrete, stone, he starts the process he cannot stop, he lays the base of who she is. He tints, he mixes, he fills the 50 pound buckets, he pours, he makes her real. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He has taken her apart, and put her back together on paper and in steel. He has changed her butt, her legs and twat, three times, Like the nails, the water bringer, the thought, she is talking to him and she has stuff to say. He is listening like he always does. The wood, the metal, the steel, the bronze, they tell him stuff, he tells them stuff, most times they work it out, together. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sometimes they tell him stuff <i>before</i>, sometimes <i>after</i>, it is easier <i>before</i>.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Blue Venus. She is, he thinks, blue and modest, it is what he saw in that place where he sees.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He mixes and blue-tints, carries and pours, then leaves her to become what she is.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Turns out she had stuff to say,<i> after. </i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He laughs.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">She is not blue, she is not modest, she is green and full of attitude.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He knows that when he grinds, polishes and lacquers <i>she</i> will have the final say.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfqYNMyzFFy1zuLEUnPlF7NdTSyaYrseX8HFYu_7d1-JoEVGc3Nob9bYnHsFyKqAngfvmGhg90Vyii-gckySYUmfRXBbv4YgCt8YRTD2IQrEqttsI4m5_okQ-r5bb1n6OANSy-C6YpseG4/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-08-26+at+11.53.58+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfqYNMyzFFy1zuLEUnPlF7NdTSyaYrseX8HFYu_7d1-JoEVGc3Nob9bYnHsFyKqAngfvmGhg90Vyii-gckySYUmfRXBbv4YgCt8YRTD2IQrEqttsI4m5_okQ-r5bb1n6OANSy-C6YpseG4/s320/Screen+shot+2011-08-26+at+11.53.58+AM.png" style="cursor: move;" width="118" /></span></a></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He tells me his story, he tells me her story, as he sees art.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I tell him his story, I tell him her story, as I see life.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sculpting life and sculpting Venus are close to the same. The getting born-poured-shaped-put together-taken apart-put together-taken apart-hammered out-ground on-chiseled at--buffed up-polished smooth-textures-colors-attitudes-befores-afters, the saying stuff, the not saying stuff and the sometimes working it out together.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9eZj1uuDumqD4PX295kgr3Ktg9owqlY3LX90Nn-13vLN3ofRyPFlwEjrlSHMhEvDW0_vflnjpzrT2idWuQ_Dk591sBR37HiKl3IsyaRBX6kc3oZRHS53WQfusxHTSX1UPpHaaVRnToO4v/s1600/Jeff+and+green.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9eZj1uuDumqD4PX295kgr3Ktg9owqlY3LX90Nn-13vLN3ofRyPFlwEjrlSHMhEvDW0_vflnjpzrT2idWuQ_Dk591sBR37HiKl3IsyaRBX6kc3oZRHS53WQfusxHTSX1UPpHaaVRnToO4v/s1600/Jeff+and+green.jpeg" /></a></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-11009918553522809272011-08-19T13:38:00.002-04:002011-09-11T16:48:57.378-04:00The Gratefulest Dog and Perfect<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It was about four weeks before Papa died. The house and those of us in it, were held together by a fragile thread. Every day I was juggling hearts and trying to keep them from slamming to the ground. Every day I was trying to hold center when center had gone.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I had stopped to stare out the window and just breathe. The phone rang.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Honey, I think we have a dog."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I stopped breathing.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Did you hear me? I think we have a dog. The people behind the studio are gone and abandoned their dog, left him tied up, <i><b>left him</b></i>. I'm bringing him home. We have a dog!"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I still had not breathed.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Honey? Are you listening?"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sweet Lord. Three years since we'd lost Belle and Zeus, followed by two years near hell. My sweetheart's heart had a big hole that needed filling, and the only thing that would repair it was a dog. I knew it was absolutely what he needed and absolutely what I did not. It was as timing goes, perfectly imperfect. I could see the need and feel the impossibility. Now? No.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The sliding door opened and in he came, a black and white border collie almost stuck to his side. I looked at him, I looked at "the" dog and I waited. He looked at me and he waited. "The" dog looked at both of us and waited.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I got it out in a whisper.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"No. We aren't keeping him. Not now. No. Sorry. So sorry, but no, not now."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He looked absolutely stricken and he had just looked happy.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"But <i>he</i> came to <i>us,</i> <i>he was left for us,</i> right by the studio. Right at my back door. <i>He was left for me... </i>All you have to do is look, and you'll see he's wonderful. Can't you see?"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But No. "</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I started to cry.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"I know you need a dog, I know you <i>really need</i> a dog. I know he came to you, I understand. But you, you have to understand. I can't love any more right now. I can't ask my heart to take on loving any more right now. I can't bring another being, another spirit into my heart. I can't take care of another living thing, I can't love another living thing. My heart is as wide open as it can be and <i>all of it hurts. I wish I could, I would if I could, but I can't. I.....Just....Can't."</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He got up, walked over to the sliding door and out. With the dog. He was angry, he was sad, he hurt.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">An hour passed, it is a long drive to the studio and I was sure he was explaining to the dog as best he could, what he really couldn't explain to himself. He called me. "I let him go."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Click.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I felt bad, but I could't feel any worse than I already felt. Bad was bad and sad was sad. End of story.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Three hours passed, the phone rang. "He came back. I let him go. I told him not to come back. He came back. I took him away again and he came back. We're keeping him. That's all there is to it. He's ours. His name is Presley, they named him Presley. And <i>Presley and I are coming home.</i>"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I walked back over to Mama and Papa's.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It would be awhile, more than a month before I got to know Presley. A month where I was steeped in how the living, die, and we die with them. In sitting vigil, picking nosegays to place by the bed, in singing and softly holding hands and hearts, in the very gentle, sad, quiet. Presley did not intrude, but quietly wrapped his heart in grateful and his Dad's heart in his own while my heart was wrapped up in the rest of it.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A few months later I was watching him, wondering about how he lay with his head upside down devotedly staring at his Dad and me. He had mastered that, just as he had mastered complete devotion to his father, and earnest, grateful and adoring to the rest of us. It was about that time when the hugging started. If I reached for him, he would sit on his haunches and wrap both his paws around my arm and hug me. I couldn't touch him that he didn't hug me. He was hugging me all of the time and hugging everyone else, most of the time, he still is. Except for Mama. He knew instinctively about her paper thin skin, he knew that she required, gentle. Instead he would put his paws delicately on the edge of her chair, lean in towards her face and look at her as if to say, "I love you." In the last few days he has become her nighttime guardian. She says, "I am going to bed" and he will stand by her side and wait as she puts on her pajamas, he will walk beside the walker as she goes into the bedroom and wait patiently while she climbs into bed and turns off her light. And then he will stick his nose on her hand, say Good Night and leave her safe and sound.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He has befriended the world, the people, the cats, the squirrels, the deer, the other dogs, every creature, every size, every age and every number of legs. He has made willing and earnest a part of his grateful, asking permission to venture to places unknown and high-tailing it back the moment he hears his Dad's whistle. He is kind. When friends come to play he greets them with his favorite toy and drops it at their feet, if they both are catching whatever is thrown, he will catch his, bring it back to them and add his bounty to their own, and if the all-out-one-to-one- chase is on--- he'll pull up and let them have the glory.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRA6SX5aDxIGCBO3GZuPpuktmGCJkhhiF1PHwlnaw-c7TKW-9Jv0iLaRykFlsGMVYNPDBicBKWhIaVH-gbXKGmTl4_yk6PkVpELTgK1tx-RP19VgnM0p7MsQ_b15jqzArkCFL_MWTrH1OZ/s1600/Presley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRA6SX5aDxIGCBO3GZuPpuktmGCJkhhiF1PHwlnaw-c7TKW-9Jv0iLaRykFlsGMVYNPDBicBKWhIaVH-gbXKGmTl4_yk6PkVpELTgK1tx-RP19VgnM0p7MsQ_b15jqzArkCFL_MWTrH1OZ/s320/Presley.jpg" width="180" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He is the consummate Wal-Mart greeter at home, the beach, the sculpture shows, the studio, everywhere he goes. And he lives the way of kind, earnest, friendly, grateful and perfect.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">ABH says to me, "He is perfect you know, he is the most perfect dog I have ever known."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I said, "I know."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I tell her I've been having regular and frequent little talks with him.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Eye to eye, face to face, nose to nose, I stroke his head and tell him how much he has saved his Daddy's heart and built up the rest of our own. I tell him how we love him and how he has made us grateful. I tell him life is a sweet-hard story especially the part about the road up ahead. I tell him that he is perfect and that probably next time he will be a street urchin child. That when that happens he will feel differently, he will think differently, he will be lost differently and he will be found differently, but no matter it will be OK. I tell him that if he forgets the good, kind, sweet, grateful and earnest, that sometime he will remember them again. I tell him that next time he should look for his friends because they will be there and he will know them. And I tell him to keep his eyes peeled for angels because they will always show up when needed, although he may not recognize them by their look. I tell him they may be standing tall or upside down hugging but one thing is for sure they will arrive when the timing is perfectly imperfect, but imperfectly perfect.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Z3sO31giTrePbi9uFYMIWgF4_NN5n17Y2MPb_0fMsqFEj9Tc0KkaI_JyiJc09DUjiZe1yjrx8i9_wyV9jHbulyTiwC3g8Ov9_bd88Qvv-ZrDihab6fnL78bHfvEybHCejN3TT6ps1viw/s1600/IMG_1613.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Z3sO31giTrePbi9uFYMIWgF4_NN5n17Y2MPb_0fMsqFEj9Tc0KkaI_JyiJc09DUjiZe1yjrx8i9_wyV9jHbulyTiwC3g8Ov9_bd88Qvv-ZrDihab6fnL78bHfvEybHCejN3TT6ps1viw/s320/IMG_1613.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span>Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-25260179393857789952011-08-12T23:05:00.000-04:002011-08-22T10:54:14.852-04:00Laughing With Mama<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">My phone rang and I was up the road. I answered because it was Mama.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">"I'm not sure who jumped higher, me or it."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">Silence.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Who is "it" Mama and jumped higher "how" Mama? "</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">"I went out the back door (Mama's, Papa's and my stories always have/had to start with early history and move through elaboration, sometimes getting stuck in the elaboration) and thought I'd stick some dirt in a pot and pot one of those plants your sister brought me, so I leaned over to get some dirt out of that bag you know the one that was sitting by my back door in the big pot and while I was at it I thought I'd move that bag too and so I started moving the bag and up it came, high as it could, like right towards my face, it jumped right up at me, and I jumped way up too (now you have to realize that Mama moves very slowly these days and jumping, well...) right in my face, high as it could be, all coiled up and right there at me... and I jumped, I MEAN I JUMPED, CLEAN UP and THEN I GOT OUT OF THERE, not the back door, not by it, NO, I went in the front door. (The back door a foot away, the front door 15 yards.) IT WAS A COPPERHEAD. I KNOW IT WAS A COPPERHEAD BECAUSE I ASKED JEFF AND HE SAID SO, a copperhead IN my face. Right up in my face. I got out of there as fast as I could and I'm still shaking, I'm telling you right up in my face!"</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">"I'm so....sorry..."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">and that was as far as I got because the laughter just took me over and wrapped me up in the hooting, tears, and a little snot, it was the kind of laughing when you are sure, absolutely sure you can also hear the angels snorting behind you.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">I could tell she was flustered and maybe offended, but I couldn't say a word, I just kept laughing. I could see it. Mama, the snake, and then Mama moving fast, hellbent on breaking a new speed record, moving at a walker speed of light to the front door and safety.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">God, it was funny.</span><br />
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</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">"What's so funny?"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">"<i>You</i>, Mama, <i>you</i>, the idea of you moving faster than you'd moved in a decade. I can see it now, I can see you jumping clean up in the air and I can see that walker never touching the ground."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">She giggled. In her own mind she saw it too, she's pretty good at "seeing."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">I kept laughing. She giggled some more. And then it was the all out kind of laughing that would take us both over for the next 15 minutes and the angels would be snorting in waves around us. We have had a lot of times like that, Mama and I, and many have been "inappropriate." At funerals, at concerts, of the like and <i>worse.</i> These last few years, we haven't had enough of "those" times, not enough of hearing the angels snort either, so it made me happy and it made me glad about a copperhead in the flower pot. </span></div><div><br />
</div>Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7446087497085235181.post-87213292443626257922011-08-07T11:38:00.000-04:002011-08-22T10:54:40.582-04:00Would You Smile a Perfect for Me?<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"></span><br />
<div style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">My empathy meter needs a new battery, my heart needs to be recharged and I definitely need something good in my tea, or maybe peyote in my Special K. A new rule wouldn't hurt either--- no more disturbing anythings at midnight for them to seep in, get toxic and wake me up wrong.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">Taking Mama to get her car and wondering if they will have done as promised, and driven it to reset the battery so we won't fail emissions, again. Thinking I won't be happy if these people who have had our loyalty for 20 years do one <em style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.5;">more</em> thing to piss me off. Mama is telling me a story about some friends, whose lives are a bit shaken up and so this year they won't be going on vacation. My empathy meter is still set at minus 100. "Well Mama, they have had three fabulous vacations a year for the last 8 years so I think that will be OK, this year without." Then she regales me with a few more of their problems, and I am thinking about the friends around and close to me, all in deep and harrowing places of suffering, except the two this week who'd found a seven year cycle ended and a full circle turned upward spiral, the big Grace on the other side of their long challenge. Maybe all the suffering has shut my meter down, sometimes our own hearts draw a line about how much they can soak up and soak in. And missing a year's worth of vacations (who the hell puts s's on vacations anyway) is just not right up there with the rest of it. We get there, and Mama in her Southern grace and beauty and dignity and strength, rolls her little push walker straight in the door me behind her, hoping...</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Oh, we didn't expect you yet, we still haven't driven the car." (The exact words I didn't want to hear because yesterday I'd planned on doing just that and they'd usurped the privilege.) My mother's hand reached back to apply a little pressure on my arm. I kept my mouth shut for a minute. They talked, the behind the counter person walked away and Mama knew I was pissed. "Don't get mad, OK? Just give me a smile---could you smile for me?"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">"NO." I stomped off. I never stomp off.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">I was not going to respond to a request for a fake smile, the one Mama had expected for almost 60 years, the kind that is the smile you "put on" in public even when you are thinking mean things in your head and saying a "Bless Your Heart" to the person who has pissed you off. This time I'd revolted, in public and stomped off--- well really just turned on my heel and walked out, counted to 10 and walked back in (the counting to 10 part pretty easy because it was 100 outside and made me count faster.) Some things are not going to change, including a mother who wants you to always be perfect and especially so, in public. I stood there, I waited, I contributed a few words to the conversation, we left. On my way out, I turned and said, "Thank you Mary, Thank you Sam." Nicely, sincerely nicely. Mama waited til we had made our gracious exit and said, "Thank you for being nice when we left."</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">Crap, well, and there it went.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"><div style="line-height: 1.5;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Mama, when have you known me to NOT be nice when I left and when have you known me to actually MAKE a scene? " I put the pusher thing in the back of her car, put the pillows in her seat and said, "Have a good time."</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.5;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">On the way home I'm thinking about the real versus fake real and how for me it has always pretty much been about the expression of real, being it, trusting it and whenever possible making real, better. I can count on one hand the number of scenes I'd actually created in public, but I couldn't begin to count the "good" real times.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.5;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">A few miles later I started to pray, don't let anything happen to Mama today, because how awful would it be if she had asked me for a smile (fake or not) and I hadn't given her one.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.5;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">SIGH.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.5;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">I need to get my empathy meter adjusted, my heart charged up and quit reading and listening to crap at midnight. Today is going to be another day where I am going to be starting the "I am grateful for..." list any minute, and it will start with Mama, perfect smiles or no, and then it will move to real.</span></div></div>Lucie Pollard Branhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04785711279314135059noreply@blogger.com6