The D Spot

So the summer flew by and we are facing labor day already.
::sigh…::
I cleaned out my garden this week, pulling the bits of grass and debris that took root, and trimming off the flowerheads that had seen better days. I found a rogue sunflower in the middle of it all, and realized that citronella REALLY likes to grow there.
Kind of sad, getting a garden ready for bed. There are still blooms to open of course, and my asters haven’t even started yet; but still, there is no sign of the tulips and daffodils that are sleeping beneath the warm earth, and I had to cut back my bleeding heart (finally). I left it up until the spiders that are born there every year had taken flight to their own homes.
Tank tops and shorts are soon to be replaced by fresh and crisp school clothes.
Alarms will have to be set again.
The neighborhood will be come strangely quiet at 7am, and will remain so until almost 3 pm…five days a week!
I used to look forward to this time of year when my kids were little…when I’d just about reached my limit of the bickering and bothering that brothers and sisters do.
(One year, one of the moms gave the bus driver gourmet cookies on the first day, to thank him for taking our lovely children away.)
Now however, when my life is more clearly able to be measured in seasons, I feel my own autumn beginning in my bones, and it makes it sad to see it reflected in the garden.
My hair has gone from blonde to brown, and now carries the hints of grey. Crow’s feet have settled into the corners of my eyes, and I have to tell myself “they are smile lines” more often than I used to.
Joints ache on those cool early mornings and I find myself oftentimes going to bed before my children.
Yes, autumn is coming to my garden soon.
My flowers are sprouted and grown, and ready to spread their petals to the sun.
And I am ready to remain, to root myself into the Mother Earth, to smile and nod over the newer sprouts, and to slumber under the earth when the weather becomes too chill.
After all, spring does come again..that is part of the promise.
And I will dance in Summerland with hair once again blonde.

1. I can still quote the entire script of the

Rocky Horror Picture Show

, including all the ‘lines”
2. My favorite color is blue.
3. I don’t think its better to have loved and lost.
4. I had pet gerbils when I was 3 and I named them Chopper and Lemon. They lived til I was in 1st grade.
5. Sometimes I am scared of mirrors.
6. I recently learned how to astral project myself in my dreams.
7. When I was little I thought Winnie the Pooh lived in the woods near my house.
8. I hate any type of medical procedure involving eyes.
9. I dreamed once that Jesus and I were walking in a parking garage, talking together.
10. My sister is one of my best friends. My husband is another.

“Mercy, please. I’m on my knees. You’re my temptation” (Alice Cooper,

The Last Temptation)

Ever felt that way? Something is so good, but so bad. Something so wrong, but fundamentally right.
What do you do?

How far do you go, how do you know when you’ve gone too far?

Temptation thrusts itself in front of us all, at some point or another. More than just a shiny red apple, it takes the form of all different things–places, objects, people, events…

Sometimes a little tiny taste is worse than the whole thing. A small bite leaves you hungry for more. A taste of ambrosia leaves you craving another taste.
A sip of sweet water on a hot day only encourages thirst.

But yet, that sip tastes so good for the knowing that we can’t have any more.

What do you do, when you are faced with a forked road..one leading the way you should go and one leading the way you want to go?

How often do you give in?
How do you decide if you are compromising your morals and ethics, or simply following your heart and destiny?

Do you measure your steps by the degree that they hurt others, or by the degree that you hurt yourself by not taking them?

Do you ever wonder if there is a running theme to your life?
I don’t mean something karmic, like a run of luck or something.
I mean more like, a common something that just keeps showing up, no matter what you do or don’t do. Something that happens so much, the significance is like a 2 X4 across the back of your head.
I have something like that going on. It has been going on for some time, and I’ve been aware of it for years. Recently though, it struck me that maybe there is deeper meaning than simple coincidence.
Its a WHOLE BUNCH of people in my life that have the same name.
I counted five people who are close to me in one way or another with the same name. My feelings for each one of them run in different directions, but deep nonetheless.
Last night I dreamed of one, and in the middle of the dream, another one of them came and actually said to me that he was interrupting the dream and taking it over. And he did.
Then today, I saw yet another person I know with the same name. (#6 but no emotional connection) It took me a while to recognize him, and I didn’t ever speak to him. But his eyes were on me for some time, several times. Ok so I admit it, it was fun being ‘checked out’ (god knows that doesn’t happen enough anymore!) but it was also fun wondering if he knew who I was, and watching him trying to figure it out. Or maybe he did know who I was, and just chose not to say anything, just chose to look. At me. A lot. (of course, I chose not to say anything to him either)
Very strange all around.
So I have to wonder if its a connection or a coincidence that people of that name always have some sort of significance for me. And I really wonder about the one who pushed the other one out of my dream…maybe that one (whom I haven’t seen in many years) will be showing up soon in real life.
Stay tuned.
And tell me here if you have any similar experiences.

Are any of you lucky enough to still remember your first kiss? The heart-wrenching will-he or won’t-he (or will-she or won’t-she) as you bravely looked into your partner’s eyes before taking the plunge.
That first gut-fluttering clench of excitement when you realized yes, this is it! It’s finally happening!
ahh that first kiss…
I remember my first kiss very well. I was 12 and I had my first boyfriend. We’d been ‘going out’ for a couple weeks…which is a heck of a long time in 6th grade! Anyway, the Big Moment came one day when he was visiting at my house and we’d somehow managed to sneak under my mother’s watchful radar.
The kiss itself was nothing spectacular…in fact, I wonder now if my boyfriend had been getting tutored in the art by his older brother because it was a little….sophisticated. And sloppy. And not so well-coordinated. Maybe on second thought he wasn’t being tutored…
But afterwards I was convinced, utterly and totally convinced, that it showed on my face that I’d been kissed. I thought it was stamped on my forehead in bright blue neon that Boyfriend and I had kissed.
I didn’t see skyrockets a la Brady Bunch…but I did feel different. Changed in some way.
A few years and a few boyfriends later, I figured out about the skyrockets of course. But that is a different story for a different day.

Paula Cole said it best in her plaintive, semi-angry hit several years ago.
But really, its not just the cowboys that have gone missing.
Its the heros, the prince charmings, the knights in shining armor…
Seriously.
Where’d they all go?
Swords, armor, and maces have been replaced with the tools of the modern age.
Magic mirrors and oracles have morphed into iPhones.
The trusty steed is now a 4-cylinder with great gas mileage and lots of trunk space.
And where does that leave us, the fair maidens, the modern-day princesses in peril?
Well, we fight our own battles now, conquering enemies in the boardrooms of the country while our knights are out playing golf with their buddies at lunchtime.
No longer need we rely on an outside rescuer to save us from danger. Nowadays, with tae bo and kickboxing and powerwalks…well, we can slay our own dragons, thankyouverymuch.
But still…
Wouldn’t it be fun, just once in a while, to find a prince charming ready to defend us? An occasional hero..someone to show up just when we need him and whisk us away to our very own happy ending, all the while ensuring we are home in time to get to work the next morning?
A fantasy I am sure, but one that I suspect many of us modern-day princesses hold onto in the backs of our minds.
I know I do.

The last time I received a love letter, it was 1984 and I was 15 years old. The actual letter was an angry, tear-stained declaration of teenage love. Ferocious in it’s intensity and angst, it remains to this day the only written declaration of love I’ve received in the last 25 years.
Which is sad because I have been married for the last 15 of those years.
I have received cards, of course, with cute poetry mass-written by starving wanna-be writers. I have received jewelry (of the Sears and Roebuck line) and I have been told that I am loved.
But the sweeping “I love you so much I have to tell you in words” love letter is an art that is lost on my DH and therefore, forever lost to me as well.
How truly sad.
How romantic it would be to open my mailbox or email and find a love letter.
How thrilling to have something to read and read again, to treasure, and to have tangible proof that there is someone, somewhere, who cared enough to take ten minutes and actually share some feelings.
In the old days, entire courtships would be thru the written word. During wartimes of past and present, lovers separated by miles would have only the written word with which to express their love and in times of danger, I imagine those letters to be pretty damn intense.
Must I go to war? Must I move far enough away to be missed, in order to receive a love letter?
Perhaps I have held onto my 25 years old love letter because I knew even back then that the written word holds power. Maybe I realized on some level that those feelings, once written, were forever saved; sealed in the merging of ink and paper. I can read that letter even today and remember the feelings, the intensity of that moment in time, that awkward, fumbling, and heart-shredding teenage love affair.
::sigh::
Maybe its simply because of that power of the written word that I will never receive another love letter. Deep professions of love are not in my DH’s repertoire and I knew that when I married him. So I have no one but myself to blame.
But still….it would be nice to open my mailbox or inbox and find something sweet.
So since that is not in the works for me any time soon, I will wish instead that you, Dear Reader, will find many love letters in your own life, and that your inboxes will always be full of passion and romance.

watching the stars fall silently around me,
I lay on the grass in awe.
Dewdrops in my hair and I do not care.
The crickets serenade me with sweet summer songs.
I see a rabbit out of the corner of my eye,
he looks at me quizzically and moves on.
Stars sparkling–greens, yellows, whites and if I blink
I will miss them as they fly by….
Streaks of light erupt across the sky
and I gasp in wide eyed wonder.
This magic of late summer…

You came to me in a dream last night
Again, your face hidden
shrouded in secrets and
the promise of mystery.
I saw you in the pale moonlight,
as it lay pooled across the sheets.
Your hands held out beckoning
or were you maybe reaching for help?
I tried to lift my arms but languishing,
I could not move a muscle.
What look upon your shadowed face?
Was it sadness, resignation, fear?
I could not tell in the silver streaks of moonbeams
and then I blinked and you were gone,
as if you’d never been here.
Nothing remained, you left no trace….
A tear fell on my pillow and I wondered again
if I’d dreamed you in the summer heat
Or did you really come to me?