This love moment

I just returned from having lunch with my dear family friend, V., whom I've known since I was three years old.  While our friendship has waxed and waned through the years due to different places and mindsets we've been in our lives, there's no doubt that we have a love for each other as girlfriends.  V. used to live across the street from my auntie.  I did many weekend sleepovers at her house and she at mine.  Now she's just in the next town over, a mere 15-minute drive. And there's a chance she'll be moving even closer in the distant future.  


The introverted A. frequently asks me (who's extroverted) why I bother to keep in touch with friends with whom I share a past and perhaps nothing more.  Sure there are those whom we just bless and release.  But there's something to be said for connection and still feeling connected. While I may have less in common with friends I grew up with or other folks I knew from my formative years as a young adult, I still feel connected to some of them.  And if they still feel connected to me, why not make time to catch up . . . and reconnect?  


This love moment
i am loving awareness
because your heart touches mine
because my light connects to your star
i am loving awareness
as i breathe life into you breathe life into me 
aroha mai, aroha atu
love towards us, love going out from us
i am loving awareness


Inspired by Be Love Now:  The Path of the Heart.

Smack!

2010 was the year of remembered thanksgivings. And while I’ve declared that 2011 is the year of anticipated blessings, I’m working hard to beat down the winter blues – the holiday postpartum kind. It’s back to work, commuting via NJ transit bus in the Jersey freeze as I look doe-eyed into the grizzly skies every morning. At the beginning of the week, I couldn’t sleep through the night as I feared I might oversleep the first day back to work in the new year. So I found myself in the office earlier than expected on Monday morning. Three days later, I’m well into my routine now having trouble getting up early enough and making it in at the last possible moment. Gotta love how we just sink back into the daily grind. How do I make sure that the rat race doesn’t get the best of me?

That’s where my childhood’s memory, youth’s tenderness and being around kids’ (or pets') pure enthusiasm are my club to wallop SAD (seasonal affective disorder). Smack!  Take that, SAD.  I am most grateful that I can reminisce about my girlhood, and I am most ready for the unknown of 2011. Just gotta believe in wishes. 

Waiting for the ding!

hope swells

like a plumpy devil's food cake

in her easy bake oven

the promise of innocent goodness

we wait expectantly

the forethought of you holds

our eagerness as old as a preschooler

who listens for the . . .

ding!

Maxwell House moments

Those holiday Maxwell House coffee commercials get me every time.  Like when the big brother returns from West Africa, and his sister is up early to welcome him home on Christmas Eve.  Or when the daughter sips her morning coffee to surprise her dad with her engagement only to discover her fiancee asked for his permission previously.  Year after year, season after season, I still get overwhelmed.  Ever since I was a little girl.  Call me super sensitive or emotional.  A good friend of mine, R., once shared, that just means we have so much love inside and around us that it constantly flows out of us . . . Maxwell House moment by moment. 


2011 has begun. I'm sitting at the kitchen table looking out the window as the new year's drizzle washes away the blizzard mounds in the driveway along with all of last year's challenges and negative energies.  As I sip my coffee (french-pressed discount 8 O'Clock beans, not Maxwell House) and listen to Soundscapes' instrumental Winter Child, I sit in front of my laptop in simple gratitude for what has been and what is to come. 


Many times this holiday season, my eyes have welled up, usually in the car -- overcome by memories of celebrations past with my dad, without my dad and festivities to come . . . without my dad.  They are passing moments, not more than a minute or two.  They are also very present moments as I take pause and breathe in all that is and all whom I experience now in my life.


Whenever those Maxwell House moments catch me off guard, I've actually stumbled upon life's treasures. 

Treasure

moment by moment

each poignant flashback or promise

a newly discovered jewel

kept close to my heart

precious perfection