This morning was one of those mornings.

They come out of fucking nowhere.

No bad nights sleep or profound dreaming.

But I wake and I am struck with how much I miss my friend.

How I wake and think I will call her when I am brushing my teeth (like we did all summer) pretending to gag on our toothbrushes because we are that.

Oh. We were.

That emotionally mature.

And then I wake up further and realize I will never talk to her again unless you are one of the lucky who gets to see me talking to myself (her) while I wash the dishes.

I strive to find a reason to believe, a way to understand what you, what she did.

To give it a kind of grace a semblance of dignity.

But selfishly, all I can do is think about how much and who she decided to leave behind.

And though I truly and really ache for her for her loneliness for her confusion, I also feel a terrible anger that she that you did not just fucking pull it together and stay.

Anyhow. Raw already.

Dropping my younger off, Knight was in the schoolyard and from afar he swung his huge head (had he heard me smelled me?) and already a bit choked I got down and he dogkissed me and I rubbed him and tried hard to just stay okay around my younger while I tried to piece together my feelings.

Bear picked up on it at lunch and I was all I am okay I am okay.

But I suppose there are some things one cannot help but wear.

My transparency is wearing thin.

A Re-Post because.

Witch

Summers and weekends, crack of dawn I would get up and outside by myself sitting on the stoop back against my front door my windbreaker pockets with an apple an orange my breakfast. I remember a misty pink morning and as it got warmer my jacket would be left behind. It was the mid 60's and kids could do stuff like that, go play in the neighbourhood unattended, coming home only to eat.

As the morning went on more of us would come out and our wild pack would assemble to run the alleys the streets the pump. Some of it was good some of it was brutal as only children can get lord of the flies not such an impossibility. And no parents to tell us that it wasn't nice to act that way.

And on our street one house a dark old house set back by a large lawn and a big tree in my imagination scratchy and dark and overshadowing and in this house under the scratch dark tree lived the witch.

We would run down the sidewalk and come to a stop as a group and say the witch the witch. She lives there. Never go in she'll eat you

and then we would run away shrieking eyes wide in false real terror

One day I was alone, running skipping something down the sidewalk and she was standing on her front porch. An old lady grey hair dark dress and in my shock I guess I stopped or slowed and stared as only a six year old could stare.

and she beckoned me in and I went.

I don't remember her talking much I don't remember talking much at all but I remember a home filled with little tables and big soft chairs and a big glass jar filled with those colourful oil filled scented balls you put in your bath. And she invited me to take one. She was nice and quiet and soft.

And I ran off and I hope I said thank you but I don't remember if we still called her witch after that.

It seemed to me the other day, as I put my arm into my coat and the lining ripped, that some people go through life with a certainty, a surety and an ease which I envy deeply. It did not help of course that at the time of this thinking the moon was hitting full and as anyone who has worked in waitressing or law enforcement or in a hospital knows, the moon has a an absolute and profound effect on how we think.

How my life has changed in the past year of course causes me many moments of reflection and self critique and though there are many things I can laud about myself, I tend to a darker kind of introspection. One given to the voices that chip away at my sense of worth, or is it worthiness?

Yesterday, I said to my elder girl, I said, I am happy these days. She is a very smart and frankly terrifyingly perceptive child, though most of the time she is walking around in a Spike/Buffy haze. She was sitting on the couch eating chips, and between crunches she said yes, you are happy because you and daddy are now divorced. Hearing it said so bluntly, so truthfully, took my breath away. And though yes, essentially she is correct, I did let her know that I was very very sorry and very very sad that her dad and I had not been able to make our marriage work. What is better after all. Sticking something out in misery with the subsequent tensions, or walking the gauntlet and getting a divorce with the hope of happiness or at least peace, on the other side?

Years ago, when I was nineteen I was with a friend and we walked into a party on her street. We knew no one and everyone was several years older. Somehow we found ourselves on the floor with a woman telling my girlfriends future. I asked her to do the same for me but she said she did not want to because my life was too painful and I would have a rocky road and it would not smooth out until I was forty. My girlfriend went home that night and wrote it all in her diary, and swears that much of what the woman had told her had come true.

Well, I am seven years past forty, and this past year has been pretty much unbearable, what with the separation, the death of my girlfriend, and so much uncertainty about my future. But there is so much I am now celebrating. Happy and healthy children, a lovely relationship, a new home, a job in a recession market.

I looked at the lining of my coat last night, fingering the satin, trying to figure out the seemingly simple yet surprisingly difficult construction of an armhole. And today, I will pick up needle and thread and mend my coat.

Once upon a time...

...there was Bird and there was Bear.

These two creatures of the wood, they one day met through the fish of the stream and upon meeting felt feelings that only the best of creatures are allowed to feel.

But Bird was a most fretsome thing. Her feathers fluffing easily as she shivered on branches, head turning quickly side to side. Always on the look out for little imaginings that rippled her universe. Oh so delicate she thought her sensibilities to be. She would flit, branch to branch chirping but why this and why that and how now brown cow.

Bear would lumber below her, steady, (and at times to be truthful, sighing), crushing branches underfoot, as she kept pace in the branches above twittering down to him. At times shooting upwards in a start.

And he would grumble deep down in his throat come down bird it is alright.

Bird would twitter and fluff, chirping her favorite song butbutbutbutbut

But soon Bird found a way to slow down and listen to her Bear.

As he would walk slowly through the forest she would ride his shoulder holding on to his dense fur and this seemed to quiet her.

He would talk his beartalk, rumbling deep in his throat and bring her back to his cave and protect her from the night and wrap his body around hers and give bearkisses. And in the morning while he snored, she would gather berries one by one in her beak and carry them back to his pine bough bed. And he would eat them all and snuffle her with thanks.

Bird and Bear. They soon found that though their way through the forest had been most different, was surprisingly the same. And in that there was a creature comfort.

Bird still shoots up time to time, startled by words and moments. But her Bear just grumbles quietly and looks at her and pets her back down, smoothing her feathers with his dark strength.

Bird has come to love Bear, and he her.

Together they walk through their forest, happy in the way only the best of creatures are allowed to be.