Getting Through

 Sometimes the only way to get past something is to go through it.  I have been so depressed that I didn't even realize it was happening to me.  Now that I have the epiphany of being depressed , I can't unseen it.  In my youth I was overly positive.  Always striving for the best outcome. Never really feeling overwhelmed by circumstances, people, or Life itself.  Now I see that I just had a lot of distractions.  The World itself was probably the biggest distraction of all.  All those people to meet and experience.  New jobs and adventures to have.  Relationships to have for my very own.  

Now I sit immobilized by grief and sadness and the weight of not being able to do anything about it.  I used to be so positive and full of life.  I really miss that version of Laura.  I can barely recognize this version of myself.  Of course the World isn't helping.  All the great stories we told ourselves, all the veils that loosely shrouded the truth, all the assumed rights of citizens are being dashed and shredded.

I wonder if this is how my grandparents felt as they fled what they had Always known for a chance at something new and shiny.  To cross an ocean for a chance to live and thrive in a new place.  They left fear and hate for this land that was also filled with fear and hate but there were pockets of solace in their neighborhood.  Living within tiny islands within the Bronx these havens were filled with familiar scents and sounds.  The Kosher butcher and the bakery were there.  You could hear many dialects but they were all familiar to their ears.  Russian, Polish, and Hebrew ruled this neighborhood offering the people its sweetness and comfort.

People before me have lived through worse, I keep telling myself.  This doesn't always help.  I have so many thoughts in my head but there is no sound outside of myself.  I have to remind myself that I have grown so quiet.  I don't think my younger self would recognize this version of myself.

I have grown isolated and removed.  I have crawled so far inside of myself so that there is no going back to who I once was.  I trust myself but even that at times is tricky because I hear my sanity has taken a leave.  It went on a vacation and refused to take me with it.  My hands shake and tremble and I am pretty sure it's just nerves.  

I do find solace in my plants.  They are thriving.  Lush and green these plants are not just surviving-they are thriving.  I want to thrive but have no idea how to change any of this.  People from the past have moved there permanently.  They now only exist in my head because I have vowed to not reach out to them because they wouldn't serve the me that I have become.  

This is not the life I once dreamed of having but yet I am having it because I still exist.  All this alone time has often immobilized me.  Depression isn't easy but hey someone has to do it, right?  My life has ground to a practical standstill with no idea of it changing.  Depression greets me first thing in the morning and is the last thing that puts me to bed at night.  The cats are excellent companions.  They are sweet and if it wasn't for them, I would have given up long ago.  They make me laugh out loud but that laughter sounds strange to me.

Have I finally turned into my mother?  She suffered from manic depression and went to extremes to try and get away from it.  I hope not.  I will keep trying because anything can change in a New York minute, right?

I am a seed

 I am a seed

I have the potential for life

The soil around me is expanding 

Warm and inviting

I crack the constraints that held me

I begin to grow upwards

Toward the warmth

I feel the sun pressing its heat upon me

Like a pulsing pressure and a warm blanket of

Heat.

I am magnificent in my glory

Whether a Cosmos, Zinnia, or Dandelion

I am perfect because I was created

Once I return to my bed

To my dreams of my sons and daughters

And their sons and daughters

All are included

I am a seed.

Nicky

 The World begins and ends all the time.  Of course we aren't aware of this.  I believe we are always one step away from total destruction.  Some of us closer to that edge than others.  I found out through DNA testing that I have a half sister through my father Nicky.

Has this information changed anything?  Not really.  I have thought about this and I don't have a lot of positive things to say about him to myself much less anyone seeking information.  You see, I know what it is like to hold onto a concept so hard like a kid holding onto a balloon...not letting go for fear it will fly away high up to the clouds away from me.  Having an absent father does that to one.  

He was handsome and wickedly smart. He could be engaging and fascinating. He was an astounding photographer and loved music and music engineering.   Most of all he remained a mystery.  I longed for him when I was little.  So much so that my mother got a hold of him and I went to visit him.  I was almost six years old.  I remember bringing him a fresh cup of coffee and just as I was handing it to him I spilled it all over him.  Perhaps my future self was there and tipped that hot cup of caffeine onto his lap.  Anyway I was soon on my way from Los Angeles to San Jose.  He never told my mother.  He stayed a few days and then disappeared leaving me with his brother and wife and their twins. There was also a younger sister to them but she was a toddler.  

They did what any responsible adult would do-enrolled me in school.  I cried every day for my mother.  My love for her at that time was tremendous.  I had an deep loyalty after all my mother was like a movie star-made up and perfect with flame red hair and a flair for not holding it together.

Eventually they contacted my mother and she came and got me. 

I saw Nicky again when I was about 8 years old.  He was dating some stewardess and took me to see Play It Again Sam then out for Chinese Food.  He didn't know a thing about kids and let me eat too many kumquats and I threw up in the bathroom.  His beautiful girlfriend helped me clean up.  He had no idea who I was or what I was about.  

I saw Nicky again when my mother was in the hospital.  She was in traction for her back and my grandfather had just died.  That would have been 1973.  I was 10 years old.  I was staying with my mother's friends, a lesbian couple Gracie & Cecilia.  They also didn't know anything about children.  I was lost and afraid and just wanted to go home.  I was picked up by Nicky and brought to his mom's apartment. 

I remember the apartment well because one of her neighbors had so many cats that I had to hold my breath walking past her apartment.  The smell of cat urine was so strong it flowed out of the next apartment like a wave.  My grandmother was an unfriendly person who treated me like a guest-never family.  Her second husband, Joe (also the same name as my biological grandfather) was a quiet man who kept out of this family business.  My father and his mother took turns grilling me with questions trying to find some chink in my armor trying to defend my mother.  At one point Nicky had me cornered in the bathroom, screaming at me for at least an hour.  You see everything was my fault because I wouldn't break under their interrogations.

I was returned to Gracie & Cecilia and then moved into a foster home.  At least they were strangers with no actual interest in getting to know me.  I was polite.  I was in the fifth grade and while there learned at school that I was a 'gifted' learner.  I also saw a vision of one of my friends from the foster home neighborhood while I was in class.  His name was Arthur or Artie as we called him.  He was laid out in a coffin in my vision.  Later that day the principal sent for me and asked me when the last time I had seen him was.  On the way home from school I passed the house where he lived with his mother.  There was a priest going into the house.  I told the kids in the neighborhood that Artie was dead and no one believed me.  Of course I was right and it was all over the news that night.  

Artie was taking his mom's welfare check to the bank but the bank was closed.  Two older boys not from the neighborhood took Artie to an old motel and went up to the roof.  They beat him to death and dropped him from the roof.

I saw Nicky again when I was 12.  I flew out to Los Angeles.  The movie on the flight was Young Frankenstein. The music I was listening to through headphones played Jackie Blue by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils played over and over and I listened to it while I flew across the country to my father.

He and his 3rd wife Anna picked me up from LAX and on the drive to their apartment, we were pulled over by the police.  My father was arrested for unpaid parking tickets.  Anna and I went to bail him out.  He still didn't know what to do with a kid.

Nicky told lies all the time.  He told me he wrote the song from the Courtship of Eddie's Father for me.  It was actually written and sung by Harry Nilsson.  He told me that I needed to stand up straighter and 'stick my tits out further'.  When I didn't listen he tied my arms behind my back.  He put me on a strict diet and we ran daily on the beach in Santa Monica.  Then I would run down the huge median in Brentwood.  He watched everything I ate and was obsessed with it.  He had a Honda motorcycle and would take me for drives up Pacific Coast Highway. He would drop me off alone at the beach and tell me not to fuck anyone while he was gone.  When he would come back he would ask me how many guys I had fucked in the bathroom. I was still a virgin.  I told him 500.  I was turning into a golden girl.  He bought me new glasses.  He took me shopping and told me not to call him daddy in front of anyone.  From then on, I only called him Nicky.

Nicky once did a wheelie with me on the back of the motorcycle to impress some chick who was driving next to us.  Nicky told me not to tell his wife.  That was also the summer that my father molested me and that too was a secret.  I was a pain in the ass and he didn't get as far as he wanted to.  I had such a mouth on me and pushed him away.  That was the summer I saw the movie Tommy with the daughter of one of his friends.  It was clear that I wasn't wanted and I wasn't going to be compliant.

My aunt and uncle and my cousins showed up that summer.  We went for ice cream in my father's red Mustang convertible. Everything seemed normal for that night.  The next day my father locked himself in their bedroom and had a very loud, long argument with my mother.  He screamed at her that I liked unicorns and didn't she know what that meant.  What did that mean?  Actually that I liked unicorns.  It wasn't some subconscious yearning for cock.  Soon after that without warning he drove me back to LAX with no luggage and put me on a plane back to New York.  I arrived at JFK and called my mom.  She told me to get in a cab and tell the driver to take me home and she would pay him once I got there.

I saw Nicky again once I was living with his brother and family.  I am still not sure why my Uncle thought fostering a relationship with this man was a good idea but by this time I was a people pleaser and went along with it.  The first time he picked me up my Uncle wrote down Nicky's license plate.  He took me to a near by Marie Callanders and critiqued everything I ate.  I was 15 years old.

Those visits were sporadic.  He was living up in Lake Tahoe.  He would arrive and ask me where I wanted to go and it was always San Francisco.  We would listen to Chicago Vll on cassette in his MG.  Everyone thought he was so charming and handsome.  I thought he was scared of me.  Instead of ever touching me again he instead would constantly talk about sex.  He was so inappropriate.  One time he came to visit and I was involved with a play called The Front Page.  He took a bunch of photos of the play and crew.  I was doing make-up.  Nicky asked me which of my friends he could invite back to his motel.  I told him I had no friends.

I used to get a really bad feeling in my stomach whenever he was near.  I don't mean in person.  I mean when he was in the area.  He would be in town a few days and this dread would be sitting in my stomach and then finally he would call.  It was horrible to be connected to someone that you didn't like at all but on some level loved because everyone always said I should.

I saw Nicky right before I turned 21.  I was in cosmetology school.  I cut his hair and he was so impressed.  He then asked if I knew where to get any cocaine.  I did and he gave me a 100 dollar bill.  I called my best friend and she was going to pick it up and meet me at my apartment.  I was living with my boyfriend in San Jose.  I was working and trying my best to make it through school.  

He showed up with his girlfriend.  My boyfriend was out working.  Nicky kept acting weird saying that my friend was going to rip him off.  We were drinking Heinekens and smoking pot.  My friend showed up with the coke and a date and we were doing lines, drinking beer, and doing bong hits.  Was this an ideal situation?  No!  Weirdness always showed up to my family events and took the best seat.  At some point Nicky went to the bathroom with his girlfriend.  They were in there for a really long time.  He called out of the bathroom for my friend to bring him a beer.  Then they were in there for a long time.  A little while late she came out of the bathroom, grabbed her purse and told her date they were leaving.  I asked her what was going on and she looked like she had seen something terrible.  I begged her not to leave and tell me what was going on.  Oh and Nicky and his girlfriend were still in the bathroom.

She told me that when she brought him the beer, he pulled her into the bathroom and his girlfriend was sucking his dick but it was limp and he couldn't get it up.  He thought she could help him out.  She said, 'what about your daughter'? His response was that I could join in if I wanted to.  She pushed her way out of the bathroom and wanted to leave.  I didn't blame her.  My boyfriend was still at work, I was high, and they were still in the bathroom.

I went and banged on the door and told them to get out.  He said in a minute, I said get out now.  He comes out looking at me sheepishly and I told him, "Would you do that in your mother's house?".  I told him and his girlfriend to leave.  They did.

The next day he called and told me to come get my birthday present.  For my 21st birthday he had gotten me a mink coat with coyote tail trim.  I lived in San Jose California not the arctic.  This was the most useless present ever.  I took the coat and left. He called a week later and was out of state somewhere and asked me for the coat back.  I told him I was using it as a bath mat and hung up on him. A few years later I traded that coat for an oak water bed.

Nicky and his girlfriend came to town a few years later and we took them to my favorite restaurant DiCiccos in Campbell.  I insisted we take separate cars.  Everything was fine until he started telling us a story about sending his girlfriend to score some coke and they tied her up and held her for more money.  I wanted to leave them there, so my boyfriend and I left them with the bill in the middle of dinner.

I saw Nicky after the break-up of my marriage.  My daughter and I were staying with my aunt.  I was invited to join Nicky and his mother for dinner.  I pleaded with my cousin Donna to go with us cause I wanted a witness.  My daughter was about 3 years old.  She was perfectly behaved through the meal. Nicky was looking more and more angry and I had no idea why.  After my daughter was done with dinner she climbed into my lap and was still being a perfect little girl.  Her father was going to meet us there to pick her up for a visit.  Once he did I left too as it was clear that Nicky wasn't pleased but wasn't saying anything.  It was once of the weirdest dinners I have ever attended.

The following morning Nicky called me really early.  I suppose to catch me off guard.  He started screaming at me that I was disgusting and fat and blah blah blah.  Nothing I hadn't heard before but then he started in on my daughter.  My innocent 3 year old daughter.  Well Nicky hit a button that he shouldn't have.  I told him from what parenting experience are you reaching from to dare tell me anything about me and my kid.  I hung up on him and we didn't talk about for years.

The last time I talked with my father he was on his deathbed.  I was starting my life over again, this time with a 2 year old son.  Nicky was in New York.  He was in the hospital dying.  My Uncle had gotten a hold of me to let me know.  So I called and we talked a while.  He told me how sorry he was and what a terrible father he was and could I ever forgive him.  I forgave him and let him go with peace.  When I called the next day he was already dead.

I haven't talked directly to my new half sister.  She never knew her parents as she was given up for adoption.  I am sure that held it's own version of hell.  I know how much my mother loved my father.  I know how much they wanted a baby.  I know that once I entered the world Nicky never learned what it meant to be a father.  I am glad my stomach no longer hurts from him being near.

Grace

 Dear Grace,

For someone who I no longer speak with, you sure keep popping up.  I spent a lot of my life trying not to be like you or Nicky.  Something are unavoidable.  

I arrogantly thought that all I had to do was survive my childhood and then I could move past it all.  I really thought there was something special in store for me once I survived you.  You were the first person I ever loved with all my heart and soul.  You used to tell me that 'we would always be together'.  Then one day you sat me down and told me that I had to go away and that nearly broke me.  How could I not be with the most amazing mother in the entire world.  

You were so smart but so manic.  You acted as if staying up all night (yes I wasn't always asleep) was normal.  I didn't know then about depression and how you couldn't get out of bed sometimes because the weight of it all kept you down.  You almost always had a smile for me.  There was so much that we never talked about.  I broke the rules because I told on you.  I couldn't stand that you didn't want me any longer, that we couldn't be together.

You didn't contact family where I may have had a chance at normal.  Isn't that funny?  What family is normal?  Even those with the best of intentions still cause harm.  So I started on a path and always looked for the light.  I always found the light in music otherwise why would music exist?  

Every song, every melody, every lyric was absorbed like an student at Seminary School.  Music became my salve and salvation.  Some people are naturals with facts or figures, well I remember every song I ever heard.  This was where I prayed...where I found solace.  This was a relationship that wouldn't send me away or disappoint because music isn't capable of abandoning me.  

I learned at an early age that there a more than a thousand ways to wash dishes.  I learned because I observed and because I watched I foolishly thought that I was safe.  People would poke fun at me because I always sat like a little lady with my hands folded.  How else would I sit?  I had a thirst for knowledge that wasn't ever filled.  So I devoured books and listened to anyone I met.  I talked, oh how I talked.  All.  The.  Time.  I didn't know that this was my way of coping with pain and fear and abandonment.  I took love and friendship where ever I could find it.  I didn't understand that the World I was in was so cruel.  I was filled with light and love and joy and I just wanted to be normal.

You weren't normal to me.  You hated yourself so much that you wouldn't tell me how old you were or allow me to see you until you 'had your face on'.  That must have been exhausting to always have a mask on even to those who were with you.  Children make so many allowances for their parents.  And the funny thing is that the parents are really just larger children.  We heap expectations on adults until they crack and fracture and then finally break.

Our separations were so hard for me until I finally put my foot down and left you.  I thought then that I was reclaiming who I was and protecting myself from you but that damage had been done already.  Patterns of taking on people who I never should have been around but hey we do what we can, right?   My conflict is that I now can conceptualize what actually was going on with you with what I felt as a child:  anger and disappointment and fear and just the unfairness of it all.  To be a child is to be vulnerable to so much and yet this is the ways it happened and there must be a reason for it.  At least that is what we tell ourselves.  Trauma doesn't really ever disappear.  I think what we wind up with are different levels of functionality.  These levels can range from taking care of every task, every detail, every possible scenario for a long time, to utter despair and depression.  

My aunt used to jokingly call me Pollyanna. I had a response and a resilience that didn't waiver.  Again this was because I foolishly thought that once I got out of my childhood, I would be handed a golden ticket.  Perhaps that's the carrot that dangles in front of me.  Always a bit out of reach.  What I learned too late is that I wasn't living....I was still in survival mode.  

I thought as long as I had a job, I was doing better than Grace and Nicky.  I thought as long as I got up every day and went to  a job that made me more functional than those grifters I called parents.  I really thought that earning a living, putting my nose to the grindstone made me better than them.  I lived that way until......March of 2020.

Then all those illusions broke open and I have had to face myself again and again.  This was not the life that I sought out for myself.  Always trying to make the most out of the so little.  This included relationships of all kinds.  Men who wanted to be close but weren't my equals.  Me relentlessly breaking things down in a stupid attempt to get them to understand.  Well, if you want a better relationship make sure they speak your language.  Me so thrilled that someone at least finally took an interest in me.  In spite of my insecurities I tried to remain functional.  Until I realized that those men had no clue how to fix me.  That was my job.

So Grace, I then searched for answers instead of band-aids.  I dug in and did the work.  I went to shul, I went to therapy, I went and talked to anyone that would listen and you know what?  There really isn't an answer.  You betrayed me on such a deep level that I am still trying to recover from it.  "Moving 8 miles a minute for months at a time".  I thought I was healing, making progress, making sense of it all.  I thought I was so wise but now I am not sure that I was ever wise.  Who loves like I did and not expect anything in return?  Who does that?

Grace, you signed me over to the state of New York and you moved three thousand miles west.  You told me that once you got settled then you would send for me.  You didn't want me.  I couldn't see that then but I see it now.  I could forgive the illness.  I could forgive you almost anything but you didn't have enough respect to make sure I was safe and loved.  You handed that job to me at 13 and I thought I was doing so well.  So I took two and two and tried to make four but it just kept coming up as three or five....never four.  I am so angry because you played it the way you wanted it but never gave me the courtesy of the truth.  

You are gone and I am here holding all these feelings.  So many feelings.  They drown me sometimes.  I don't like the feeling of drowning.  I want all of my power back.  I do not want to waste any more time living a life of fear, neglect, and poverty.  I got pretty far on nothing but even that has run out.  You exhaust me.  You take up space in my head and my heart and I am evicting you.

I need you to understand that I loved you unconditionally and you weren't able to return that to me.  I want you to know that when you were trying to kill yourself over and over but never told me I still knew.  So instead of doing your personal work you and healing us, you tried to manipulate me.  While I was fighting for my life and was losing my sight, you wanted to come and live with me.  I wasn't even living on my own.  And I had a child to raise and another child who was struggling on her own.  

Generational cycles need to be broken.  Hell, they need to have a nuclear bomb dropped on them.  I never want my grandchildren to experience this kind of heartache.  So, Grace, I am trying to forgive you for all of it.  I forgive you for allowing me to see my father when you knew he wasn't a safe person.  I forgive you for having money but not investing it in me.  I forgive you for not talking to me about your lifestyle so I wouldn't be ashamed because it wasn't accepted at the time.  I forgive you for not helping me when I was trying to start over yet again and you could have changed all of it but you didn't.  

Grace you did what you thought was your best and your pain and suffering are long over with.  Maybe in the next life I will be the parent and you will be the child and hopefully we can nurture what should have been.  The time for that isn't here and now.  There is nothing left for us.  Please wish me well and I hope the best for your safe travels.  I hope you find the light and love that you so deserved and never found.  I hope you know how thankful I am for what you were able to show me and teach me.  I hope you know that when I hear Frankie Valle and the Four Season that I know it's you saying hello.  I want you to know that every time you wanted me to 'get' what a song was about that I got it.  I just didn't need to hear it a thousand times to get the message.  

I hope you find peace.  I hope you find grace.  I hope you can forgive me for not being able to be the daughter you wanted because no person could have given you what you weren't willing to give yourself.

Bricks

 I am about 4 years old. I remember running around with no shirt on in the summer rain.  I remember loving my mother with all my heart.  I remember her getting up before us to 'put on her face'.  I remember thinking to never be afraid to just leave the house with no make-up on.  

There was always music playing even when I went to sleep.  I know the music from my childhood intimately because it's imprinted onto my soul.  That's what happens when you're raised by a depressed narcissist.  I remember sitting in the back seat and watching my mother's hand hit the outside upper part of the car window frame.  I would watch her hand, with a ring keeping time, tapping to whatever song was playing.  She was the perfect passenger.  I made note to be the driver and that it's okay to also be the passenger.  'And I ride and I ride'

I thought my mother's cooking was the best.  She could cook so good that you thought you could be bewitched.  Her bohemian ways.  Her artistic eye.  Her screaming insecurities. Her world and I was allowed to visit when I was young.  

All that music and manic afternoons and don't wake her up before noon.  I remember how much I loved school.  I loved the structure of it.  I loved learning and the KNOWING of something.  I loved that once you learned something it was yours forever.  I always had music in my head.  Just a constant stream of music until someone interrupted it.

I am making peace with what she did give me.  She showed me beauty both superficially and into your soul.  She showed me that making a home means the vibe of it.  I learned how to live with someone so moody that I entertained her with my intelligence so she might now slip into her darkness.  I grew to loved many of the same things:  books, good fresh food, art, discussions, radio.  So I kept the good parts and tried to sail away from the bad....the emotional baggage.

Oh and I almost forgot!  How she normalized drama so that when I saw people who were less emotionally charged I waited for the other shoe to drop.  When that is the norm well it's hard to train yourself to other environments.

When I was growing up I wasn't just imprinted with my family of origin.  There was a host of characters.  Many of which had no business being around children.  There were a few and I clung on to them for any intellectual companionship.  I would become really good at just telling people the truth and telling them what I need.  I didn't realize for a very long time that there were things I needed that I didn't know how to ask for.

When things got too complicated and or emotionally charged my mother just disconnected.  She began to disconnect for longer and longer periods of time.  I couldn't live like that.  I asked to leave and the powers that be said okay.  I went from a foster home, to a group home, to family.  I had my eyes wide open and I saw many things.

Don't think your children don't know what's going on in your home.  All children are psychic.  Even if they don't have words they have feelings.  I saw people who really cared for others.  I saw people do things just for the money.  I saw that when I was left alone I knew right from wrong.  I could read people well.  When you grow up around someone like my mother you learn quick.  I have always talked a lot.  Did I say a lot?  It was just so exciting to meet people and see places.  I talked a lot to cover my fear.  There was always a lot going on emotionally and talking for me was a defense mechanism. Since I was able to engage with strangers I learned things about those around me.

The older I got the more I realized how much in my life wasn't right.  Even when I was trying to do the right thing it was often with the wrong person.  So now I am careful.  I am careful with my feelings and with relationships and with strangers.  I used to be wide open and now I feel as if I am behind a reinforced wall.  With time I realize, the wall no longer serves any purpose.  What and who it was protecting me from doesn't even exist.  Trauma is like battling with people who are just ghosts but who can stab you.  Trauma is hearing or seeing, or hell-smelling something and you are triggered and you are in that place or situation and your mind picks it up and plays it out.  Not always appropriate or convenient but tough shit your on a trip.

So lately I remind myself to be kinder to me.  That for as much baggage that has been processed there is still so much more to do.  And I am okay with that.  I will do what I can in the time that I have.  I will try to nurture that scared child inside of me.  I will try to pry a few bricks every once in a while.

A Pot of Sauce

 Today I am making a big pot of 'gravy' or sauce as West Coasters know it as.  My mother was one of the most amazing cooks ever.  So when I moved out at 13, I wanted to recreate her sauce.  Looking back it was my ego that drove me to first recreate that gravy.  If she could make amazing sauce then so could I.  

First of all, never cook when you are angry.  If you can, have your favorite music playing.  Fresh is always best.  And think about who you are going to feed.  You are preparing something that someone else is going to eat.  I would like to believe that I am creating magic with my cooking.

My mother was Jewish and married a Sicilian.  She learned from his mother how to make gravy.  It was spectacular.  My mouth waters to think about it.  Rich and simmered for hours....all those spices marrying with the tomatoes.  It was truly something to behold.  

I make excellent sauce.  If I am making lasagna or stuffed shells or baked zitti I push the flavor profile up a bit.  So I am thinking about Samantha and my grandkids while I create this sauce.  My grandchildren LOVE my cooking.  Which means it is a great experience for them and rewarding for me.

I am a nurturer by default.  I used to cook big batches of food and feed my friends when I was young.  It is truly one of the greatest pleasures in the world to feed someone.  There should be something intimate about a home cooked meal.  It's about intention  and if your intentions are positive then it will be amazing.  I equate cooking with other acts of love like a really great hug.  If I don't like you then I am not cooking for you-ever.  

I also think everyone should have 1 signature dish.  Can't cook?  That's okay!  You can make the best scrambled eggs or pancakes.  What matters is that you are in the moment, that you are creating something and that an event is being born.  Like many important circumstances cooking is a magical that makes people take notice.  It hits all your senses and afterwards leaves you feeling satisfied.

I look forward to passing this on to my grandchildren so they can pass it forward.

I haven't written in a very long time.  Five years!  I am not sure why I stopped but I need to start writing again.  I have all these thoughts in my head and they just keep spinning around.  Kind of like an off balance washing machine that works but is a bit wonky.  Yeah, that's me...a bit wonky.

I just turned 58 and I didn't want another moment, week, month, or year go by without me sharing some of my thoughts.  

This year, 2020, has been unlike any other year. Not just for me, but for everyone.  I see that things are breaking down in order to build something else that is stronger and hopefully more noble.  Wouldn't that be wonderful?  To live in a world where noble acts are revered?  Where people are able to grow and thrive and not just exist?  

I am so rusty.  Words feel as if they are jammed up.  But don't worry.  I will continue and they will come easier.