Views From the Buena Vista

The beginning of our week started out like this.  Threatening clouds, wild waves, and just enough pounding rain to keep me inside with the shades raised high and a stack of books close to my side yet my eyes remained mostly trained on the horizon, my mind thick with thoughts.  I enjoy the sun, but I live for these dramatic days on the Pacific shoreline in which nature puts on the most spectacular of displays.  There is something about the turmoil on the outside matching the turmoil on the inside that creates a feeling of symbiosis deep within my soul.  I am drawn down into thought.  Thoughts about where I have been, thoughts about where I am now, and thoughts about where I will someday be.  The notary came by, last week, to have Mark and I sign paper after paper after paper as we are refinancing our beach home for a much better rate than we were able to lock into almost four years ago.  The words "in thirty years" flowed easily from the notary's mouth and stopped me cold in my thoughts as my hand systematically signed and signed and signed and signed and dated.  In thirty years I will be eighty years old.  80 years old.  My four Angel Daughters will be as old, or older than I am right now at this moment in time.  My nieces will be in their late thirties and early forties.  My parents will, most likely, be gone.  Long gone.  And my brother, he will still be only 41 years old...Has he had the chance to meet one of our heros, the larger than life Clarence Clemons, yet?  Dear God, I hope so.

Rainy days cause these kinds of thoughts to bubble up to the surface of my being.  The thoughts simmer there, oftentimes for days, bringing with them feelings of nostalgia, regret, hope, and renewal.

And as I take my old girl, my dog, Becca, outside, something in the water to the left of the bluff catches my attention and I am momentarily caught off-guard.  I hold my breath so as not to lose sight.  The surface of the water breaks with circular swirls of tiny bubbles.  Breath.  Air.  Life.  And then a fin...

And as I look down, she appears, gliding lazily along on currents.  My breathing somehow syncs along with her graceful dance along the water.  Under, above, under, above, like my moods when the rain comes and then leaves.

That evening, the sun returned just in time for sundown, the water smooth as glass.  It is 80 degrees outside here today.  The only clouds in the sky are wisps of cotton against the most beautiful of blues.  I am here, back to today, back to thirty one years away from my 80th year, back to life as it is.  I like it here. How to make the next thirty years slow down to a pace which does not feel like here and then gone?  That is the question that lays heavy on my heart.

Why I Love My iPhone

After uploading 672 seemingly innocuous photos from my iPhone onto my computer yesterday, and weeding through a lot of recent memories, it occurred to me that modern technology really does provide an amazing way to capture and share moments that definitely otherwise would have been lost.  You see, I like to amuse my family by transmitting pictures in real time to them over the phone.  It could be something bizarre, funny, touching, or even just a photo of a tee-shirt that I am thinking about purchasing for one of the girls.  But all of it is saved courtesy of my iPhone for a time when I am looking for something mindless to do and I decide to load it all onto my computer.  That is when I realize that I am very thankful that I did not take the time to delete anything from my phone while sitting there waiting umpteen minutes for the doctor to see me, and I read that super fantastic article about the importance of tooth flossing in a two month old magazine instead.  And while I will spare you the informative details of all that I have learned from a picked-over magazine in the doctor's office waiting room, here are some moments collected over the past couple of months courtesy of my iPhone.

Above is a picture of Angel Daughter Number Four and our wonderful dog Micah.  Regardless of what color this little angel colors her hair at any given moment, her classic beauty shines right through.  Micah is our 110 pound rescue pup who was definitely "bred" for size and strength, but by the grace of God, turned out to be nothing more than 110 pounds of slobbering love.  We are so grateful to the individuals who rescued Micah, his momma, and his two brothers and three sisters from inside of a shed where they were abandoned, emaciated, and alone.  Momma dog was nursing her babies even though she had absolutely no access to food or water for who knows how long.  The "owners" moved to Hawaii and decided to call animal control several days after they arrived there to let them know that they had abandoned some dogs on their property when they took off.  Minor afterthought.  Micah, his momma, and his brothers and sisters were almost missed because they were locked inside of a shed.  Thank God that the officers heard some whimpering from the shed before they left with two other dogs that were found on the property.  We got Micah when he was a few months old and rather small.(except for his enormous paws)  He was so pathetic at the time that we allowed him to snuggle up in bed with us for the first few weeks so that he would feel more secure.  Now he believes that he is a lap dog.  Truly.  Our vet somewhat jokingly called him a "Drug Lord's Dream" when we had him tested for breed.  He is one half Rottweiler, one quarter Doberman and one quarter Pit Bull, but really, he is all pussy-cat.  It is amazing what love can do.

Here is my buddy, Becca.  I have mentioned before how important this old girl is to me.  She is strength, guts and loyalty.  Next month, on my oldest Angel Niece's birthday, she will turn 13.  So will my niece, and God knows how much I would love to see her.  We fought hard but lost our battle for visitation in court.  One of the saddest stories of my life but in my heart, not the way that the story will end.  On October 21st, Becca and I will share some goodies in celebration of the birthdays of two very special 13 year old girls, one whose gift I will be able to give on that day and another that I will pack away for someday...

Only in Southern California can you walk out of the grocery store and find a stark white Bentley with blush pink ornaments on both hood, trunk and hub caps.(Although there must be a fancier word than"hub cap" when it comes to a Bentley.)  These cars cost anywhere from $225,000 and up!  That is a quarter of a million dollars for a car.  A CAR!

Personally, I was more impressed with the pink emblems than the car itself.  This was one of those, "send a photo to my girls in real time" moments which I am now sharing with you.  You're welcome.

*Ghost kitty!

Sorry if I scared you...Halloween is coming and I LOVE Halloween!

Kissy face with Angel Daughter Number Two.  How I love this girl...How I love them all.

This one was taken specifically for Angel Daughter Number Three.  She loves it when I send her pictures of Rex and often texts me requesting them from work.  He sometimes likes to snuggle his way underneath the pillows on Mark's side of the bed.  He thinks we can't see him.  *Refer back to photo above.

Uh-oh!

For those of you with small children(Mark) who you might or might not have trouble bringing into fancy stores like Target, I am here to tell you that it only gets worse.

Oy Vey.

But then it gets better once they hit the age of about 24 or so.  You see.  I am here to bring you hope.

Another photo moment is when I find things like this.  First, they take my breath away, and then, I take them as signs of what they so obviously are to me; hellos from my beloved, deceased brother.  I have been constantly reminded over the course of the past three years that my brother is still very much here with us.  Unbelievably supernatural signs that line up in a way that cannot be explained in any other way.  As a teenager, my brother was a huge KISS fan.  His room was decked out in posters that I happened to find somewhat creepy but KISS was a guy's band and my brother was pure guy.  This record album was one of my brother's all time favorites.  I mean, if I close my eyes, I can hear it blaring loudly from his twelve year old room his voice belting out, "I wanna rock n role all night and party everyday!",  his fist rhythmically pounding out the beat.  Around his birthday, we were in a thrift store that sold a little bit of everything.  Up against the wall in a small corner, I spotted this album sitting by itself.  I reminded myself to capture the moments as they come because sometimes, they become an ethereal mixture of reality and dream in my mind and then I begin to wonder.  Doubt.  But with something concrete to look at, I cannot doubt.  And so, a picture...

One of my favorites is this last one.  My two guys, Micah and Mark, standing out on the edge of the bluff together, our strength and our protectors.  As far as I am concerned there are not five luckier women on the earth than my four Angels and I because we have this man to call our own.  Husband and father.  Chief of our tribe, love of my life with his trusty dog by his side.

And this is why I believe that the iPhone is really a fancy camera that happens to make phone calls, as well.

Untangled

Walking down the beach a couple of days ago, Mark and I came upon the remnants of this giant tree which, after spending countless years being battered and tossed around in the immeasurable grasps of the ocean,  was carried back to the shore in yet another form.  Recognizable as to what it once was, but transformed in remarkable ways, this tree, now driftwood, must have spent years, even decades, rumbling around in the tumbling waves being shaped and transformed and smoothed and sharpened into what it is now.  As we approached this giant relic upon the beach, I was enthralled by its stoic presence.  I imagined it as it must have been, a graceful, strong tree rooted deeply in the ground someplace, green leaves swaying with the wind, branches turned up toward the sun, thriving for year upon year.  And then, I marveled at what it now is.  A solid piece of driftwood with trunk and branches and roots, stuck solidly in the sand on this beach in San Clemente.

We are like this, shaped by love and pain, longing and letting go, hope and regret.  We are often swept along in the emotions of life trying our hardest to stand firmly rooted in our deepest beliefs, knowing what is right and what is wrong, what is just and what is not.  And yet, we change, we transform, and eventually, we even release, allowing the tides of life to pull us along while remaining some of who we once were, but constantly being reshaped, and smoothed and sharpened into who we now are.

Today we go back to court to so that the judge can rule on the monetary issues pertaining to the case I was forced to bring forth for visitation with my young nieces.  It has been over three years since my beloved brother died, two years since we filed our first motion for visitation and two weeks since we were told by the judge that although he would do things differently if it were up to him, the court could not find the mother of the children "unfit" and for that reason, and that reason alone, the state could not step in and force visitation on a parent who did not want to allow it. 14th amendment rights and all that...  When everything is said and done, I will write more about the decision and my thoughts about The Grandparent's Law(which includes siblings of the deceased), but for now I will only say that with the case that our attorney presented, there was absolutely NO way we could have won this thing.  We were led down a path in which only one result could have occurred according to the judge so now we must just tie up some loose ends and proceed with the next step in this process.

Over the course of the past three years since my brother's death, life became much more complicated than it should have been.  I found out a whole lot about who my family is(my husband, our four daughters, my father and his wife) and who would be willing to tangle the very tender strings of my heart into tight little knots, not caring whether or not they choked the very life out of me in the process causing me to end up in the same place that my beloved brother is.  And. I. Mean. That. Sincerely.  I discovered that there are people whom I considered "family" because my mother and my brother brought them into my life, individuals whom I cared for, defended against one another, entertained in my home, gave specific honors to at my children's Bat-Mitzvahs.  I let them in and I allowed them to be a part of my children's lives.  But, we cannot look back.  And once again, we have been reshaped by the experiences of life.

And as I begin to untangle the roots of my heart, I will keep this giant tree in mind.  I will remain steadfast in my beliefs and I will stand behind my decisions.  Life isn't only about remaining rooted deeply in one place.  It is about accepting the changes, transforming through the pain.  And sometimes, it is about untangling the mess that life can wrap around our souls.

*If you could say a silent prayer or send some positive energy our way as we head into court this afternoon, I would greatly appreciate it.  The thought of having to pay her attorney a dime, would prove that there is NO justice in family court and we have already lost too much.