Six Months Later

Okay, you are really going to laugh because once again I am back and once again sipping on my morning coffee contemplating life. But now I am sitting inside my house (because it is too damn cold outside), in my sunny gold room I call my serenity now room. The room has gold walls and 2 gold puffy chenille covered one and a half chairs, trimmed in 12" bullion, with 3 large pillows that envelope you when you sit. Sometimes Charlie joins me in the room. He picks the chair that the sun shines on the most. He will stand in front of the chair and wait for me to remove the middle pillow so he has more room to curl up. I have a great painting I purchased from a starving artist that depicts old buildings and rain-soacked streets and sidewalks. The storm must just be breaking up because the sun is beginning to bellow its golden red hues through the overcast sky. The setting must be in the early 1900's with men walking around in our their boiler hats and waist coats and women in their long bustled dresses and parasols. There is a statue of a man on a horse in the city square, most likely a military hero, and an American flag draping from the front of a building. The painter copied the Kincaid style of bringing the painting to life with gold colors and flecks that appear to catch the light and actually glow when the sun or a night light hits it. It is a great picture. The south wall has plenty of windows covered in pecan colored natural bamboo shades that let in the perfect amount of sunlight that warms me up when the chill of winter surrounds everything. There is a half-moon shaped window above the others that has leaded glass. It too reflects the sunlight perfectly, diminishing its intensity but also plays with it a bit by adding muted colors of the rainbow to dance on the walls. The French doors allow me to close the world out or let it come in depending on how much serenity I really need. When the little boys come to visit, which isn't often enough, I tell them that this is the room where you come in, sit down and be still. Just be still. It is funny to watch their faces and their body language when I keep reminding them in a Ashram Guru sort of way that they need to breathe in and breathe out and just be still. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Today, for the moment I am just breathing. FL is on his way to the high security prisons in Canon City, CO where the most notorious of criminals are housed. He visits once a month to about 15 inmates who have converted to Orthodoxy. He doesn't know their story. He doesn't ask. It isn't for him to judge. I am sitting at my country French secretary with its open pane doors that are inlaid with brass triangles. Inside are memories of years past encased in frames that compliment the room. I also have hanging on a wall a Japanese watercolor with birds gliding over a Lily pond of floating gardenias and orchids and tall eucalyptus branches draping over the water. As I sit here, I ponder at how quickly time goes by.

Yesterday FL and I drove early in the morning to Cheyenne where FL's mother Esther was remembered in her 3-year memorial after the Divine Liturgy. We then went to the cemetery where it wasn't hard to remember that cold blistery winter day when she was laid to rest. ["Laid to rest". What does that mean? Here -- let me seal you in this hard cold casket and put you six feet under so you can rest? Never to see the light of day or be seen again? They should say -- where you get eaten by whatever decays your body and turns you back in to the dust you were before God decided to turn you into a human being. I guess it doesn't quite sound so peaceful.] Again the temperature was in the 30's and the wind was blowing 40 miles per hour -- which offered a wonderful balmy wind chill factor which made it seem as if it was 10 below. It was cold. Cold lips don't allow you to speak very quickly but FL did a nice job. We have determined that memorials for Esther and George will be in July from now on. Sitting down to lunch, we shared in memories of Esther the mother, sister, matriarch, wife and friend. There was a lot of laughs, and not so many tears as favorite stories or Esther euphemisms were shared.

Esther inspired the theme of "every-generation, FL's sabbatical journey. And now, six months later, it is difficult to find the time to reconnect to the flavor of the those 4 months. I remember the sites and the walking and the family moments. But now that journey, that experience, just dangles out there like cut up rags dangling from an elastic rope waiting for someone to bump against them so they can bounce up and down until they become still again. Every now and then I grab on to them when for some reason they brush by me like a ghost and something or someone makes me pause and remember. Six months later we are back in our routine. That old idea of spending more time together and slowing down a bit -- reorganizing our schedules to allow more time for family or exercise or nice dinners at the table that sits empty and alone in our kitchen. But it is all okay. It works, it's life. And we know what the alternative to that is -- I guess we will get enough "rest" later.

I don't know if anyone will ever read this, but if you do -- call me, I'd like to know you are following.

Thanks,
Marsha