1.5.05

Well, that was the most unpleasant nocturnal mind warp in quite some time.

It began as I woke in the dream, my sleep shattered by a noise right outside the bedroom. And another. Fully alert, I scrambled for glasses and shoes; cursing myself once again because I refused to wear contacts to bed and awake blind.
As the noise continued unabated my feet made a path through the house I neither recognized nor liked. I don’t care for multi storied dwellings and this, it turned out, was one. Reaching a door I flung it open like a fish gasping for air in the hot shallows. I paused to breathe in the freshness of moist earth and hibiscus. I hadn’t realized how suffocated I felt before. This was much, much better. It felt normal. I felt normal. But there was still the noise that must be investigated.

Almost unwilling to leave the house totally, my fingers let go one by one, slipping from the door, allowing it at last to snap shut behind me with dense finality.

I traveled in the direction of the noise, through overwhelming early morning fog and moist greenery. As I got closer to my target -and wetter by the foot- it became clear: someone was hammering. The man who brandished the offending weapon was busily building a wooden fence right next to my house. Alarmed and puzzled, I called out for him to explain himself, but I couldn’t hear the words that were spilling from his O shaped mouth as written music. I can’t read music!

Turning, I hurried back to the door, now completely soaked through. Water dripped from my clothing, my eyelashes, the tip of my nose. My hand slipped and slid along the door jamb trying to find purchase and I fumbled into the house with one thought in mind: call someone about the fence that shouldn’t be there. Chilled, I took a blanket from the chair by the door and wrapped myself in it; thick and warm, it allowed my body the luxury of instant relaxation.

Until I made a 180 into two strangers. A man and a woman, in my home. The type you’d find running the local pub, under normal circumstances. The usual questions were asked but their answers were totally unsatisfying. There were candles burning in the house now; the lady had lit them for me, she said. The man made excuse after excuse for their presence. They were trying to look comfortable in my home but were doing a horrible job of it.
I told them as directly as I could to stay planted while I rang the police. Enter the wild denials of the strangers, which fell on deaf ears. It was wrong. The entire situation was just wrong, yet I couldn’t say why.

As so often happens in the dreamworld, they were there one moment and gone the next. Into thin air or out a side door in the house I didn’t know; and I instinctually latched onto the idea that something was amiss. Though I hadn’t been aware of it at the time, the hammering had ceased, leaving a silence so heavy it almost smothered me.

Calling my dogs, who had been mysteriously absent, I ran to an alternate door and flung it open. This must have been the main door. The outside was painted a deep blood red and it unfolded onto a street scene. It seemed my house was at the head of the lane and I could see down onto the rows of houses lined up.
Turning my head slightly to the left at the sounds of nails on the floor, two dogs approached. Not my dogs. A small brown dog and a larger tan hound, not my dogs. I started breathing heavily again, gasping for air, and forced myself to look back out the door with no little trepidation.

There was a large white dog at the far end of the street, walking toward us. It was hard to tell the breed because of the remnants of the fog… A Samoyed? It almost strolled, taking it’s time walking, yet I could feel it was an malevolent presence. Looking down at the two clueless dogs I felt exposed. Where was my big black dog; my protector?
The white dog was closer each time I looked back out the door and took better shape with each step. He was a dirty white, and he was little more than hungry wolf.

I felt the rush of adrenalin that starts in the stomach and forces the transfixed brain into action, racing upstairs for the gun that lives in my nightstand. It wasn’t there. My mind blinked, ticking off locations of stowed weaponry. I ran from one hiding place to the next, only to find an empty space where there should have been cold steel.

What else was gone; what more had they taken, those two strangers? For it had to be them, it must have been… My breathing became more labored and I wept as each nook and cranny was checked. The wolf was coming.
My jewelry was gone. I don’t have much, but each piece has such a special meaning; the opal and diamond ring, tennis bracelet… oh, not my pearls. Not the pearls. That broke me. My sobbing took on the words ‘oh no’ as I rushed about, trying to take inventory.

Oh no oh no oh no oh no…. Breathing in the OH and out the NO, that’s how I awakened. Crying and trying to catch my breath, I moved into Dingad’s arms which were already comfortably splayed as if he waited for me. I refashioned my position so he would spoon me, resting my head on his arm. Feeling the warmth of him rise to meet my chill I wondered about the wolf, and slept again.

Sigmund’s pocket lint could figure this one out, eh? I couldn’t see it until rendered in black and white.

1.4.05

I’ve made no mark to speak of, less kindness to others. How one treats his fellows always leaves a impression, seen or unseen. No, here I refer to temporal rather than spiritual. I’m nowhere.

Adopted at birth by John and Rose, they gave me a solid foundation, decent upbringing… and a new name. They worked hard and taught by example. I love them and they are, for all intents and purposes, my parents.
Unfortunately, I don’t show up on either’s family tree. I understand. Pedigrees are for blood.

All grown up and spitting at 50, I have stepchildren and stepgrandchildren. But having never given birth myself… well, pedigrees are for blood. I still don’t fit in or rate the merest mention. When I’m gone it will be as so much fluff driven by the wind. Ashes to ashes.

I’ve never looked for my birth parents or possible siblings. At first I didn’t want to hurt my parents and later it just didn’t matter.
But this I know: I was born in The City of Angels, August 1957. My birthmother -Nancy Ruth Ellis- was very young. She had fallen in love with a tall, blonde cad named Mr. Sparks - we can only guess at his first name - and become pregnant. Upon hearing the news he fled. She followed him as far as Las Vegas, then returned to bear her child. I can never finish thanking her for not aborting me. It was a private adoption; Nancy’s sister Darlene worked with Rose and they worked things out for Nancy’s benefit. For her own good. And purportedly for mine.

I have an old black and white picture of Darlene circa 1957. It amazes and confounds me that I look like her. I’ve clung to that picture all my life because there is that link between us, the same DNA. It’s such a powerful high to run my finger over her mouth, nose, brow and note the similarities… and such a low to remember that I don’t know her. Or my birthmother.

Sparks, Berry, Ellis. The names of a past I know nothing about.

Somewhere I fit into a family tree, I’m blood. But if they don’t know me, how can they add me?

1.3.05

Self-realizations may not come quickly to me, but they usually show up when least expected and most needed. How often do we look up and blink, only to hit upon the obvious?

Tired of overthinking Dingad’s new restraints at work and what they might mean, I cast about for something to work my mind against. It’s mental masturbation at it’s lowest form, this worry.
We can sell this house quickly, if we must. Those large Dell boxes work well for packing. The logistics of yet another possible move trip my brain like it’s wearing oversized Converse All Stars.

Then it hits me: All our furniture looks as though it’s been purchased for ease of travel. The heaviest piece is probably our king sized bed. Most of our stuff is made of wrought iron and wood, infinitely easy travelers. Was this an unconscious decision on our part through the years? Pretty funny.

I need to fill my noggin with something other than worry, but the kittens and fairy dust won’t come when I call. I faintly remember a lesson in worry amounting to: it’s a sin. If you’ve asked for help; put your problem in God’s hands, as it were, and still worried… Sin.
I’ll try to keep that in mind. I’ll also try to remember that there’s not a damn thing I can do about it anyway.

Pray for the best and prepare for the worst. That’s what I’ll do.

12.31.04

I intended coming back here after Christmas to write a scathing expose, a.k.a. “Airing of the Grievances”. But I can’t seem to reel off a screed worthy of posting. I’ve lost my ability to snark, as it were.

Sure, silly things happened. Stupid things. Vastly irritating moments, lumped onto each other, tempered with joy and love.

I’m holding Dingad a little closer at night. Crawling inside myself to examine the interior, like I’m a used car on the block.

I’ll be back. [She said to the echo chamber]

“Don’t rush me, sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.”

12.21.04

I rant about my family here but never will the spotlight of wrath be turned upon my friends. They are solid gold, those people. The ones who hold me up, sustain me in good times and bad. They protect me and make me a better person simply by virtue of knowing them.

These are folks that I’ve known for many, many years. One from grade school. I met my best friend in 1985. One in 1979. Others in between. Our friendships are easy; never have we strained at the confines of the relationship. Nurtured, bound together by some unseen force, we have survived many different life experiences together.

It is something beautiful, spiritual, to know that there are people out there who love you for who you are and that you love them the same. You can do anything if you know that someone has your back. And you can dwindle and die in despair if there’s noone there to catch your soul when it plummets to the earth.

I’ve always thought that people who commit suicide just didn’t have any close friends.

I have many acquaintances, but those closest to me, my friends, had taken the place of the family I was born into. My adopted family’s relatives never really accepted me. Oh, on the surface. But not really. So from an early age I made my friends my family, and even though I married and have a new family, that is still true; they are my extended family.

My friends. Solid Gold.