Daddy's Pink Shoes

(A fictitious story about a fictitious Dad and a pair of fictitious pink slippers)

When I was a little girl, My Daddy was my hero. He would wake me every morning with a song and a soft kiss on the top of my head. As I opened heavy lidded eyes, his smile was the first ray of sunshine I'd see. He made my days begin with perfection and at night, his bedtime stories and gentle tucks to my bed covers, sent me off to dreamland feeling secure and greatly loved. My Daddy never once made me feel he didn't have time for me. He would always stop what he was doing whenever I would come into the room to ask him to tie a shoelace or find a hiding kitten, or help me ride my bicycle.

I recall once when it was just days away from my sixth birthday, My Daddy asked me for a date. My Daddy wanted to take me out to a fancy dinner and a movie of my choice. With great anticipatory joy at this request, I asked my Mother to take me shopping to buy a special dress to wear on my date with my Daddy. As we shopped from store to store, wanting to pick out the perfect outfit, I saw a display of shoes. “Mommy,” I quipped. “I want to buy Daddy a pair of new shoes that he can wear on our date.” Mamma thought that was a great idea and took my hand in hers to walk us to the men's shoe rack. “No, wait!” I pleaded. “I already see what shoes Daddy needs, right here.” My eyes had fallen to a pair of ladies pink slippers. They were smooth satin and were a soft pink color.
“But my dear, those might not come in your Daddy's size.” My Mother was and still is a very wise and diplomatic woman. “Please ask if they can, because I want my Daddy to have the prettiest shoes here.”

And so Mother asked the clerk to please see if she could find this shoe in a size 11 and a 1/2. Much to my delight she came back from the storeroom with a box of size 11 and a 1/2 pink slippers.

The next few days seemed to drag on as I looked forward to a date with my Daddy. When that day arrived we both performed our own separate rituals getting dressed. Of course I was late putting on my final touches of just the right ribbon for my hair and finally adding the strand of pearls my Mother was letting me borrow. I went to present myself for approval to my Daddy but he was not in the house. My bewilderment was short lived though, because our front doorbell rang and when I answered it was my Daddy, dressed in his best suit, his big wide smile and his pink shoes!

If any one noticed in the restaurant or the movie theater that my Daddy was wearing pink slippers with a business suit, I didn't notice. The only thing in my focus that evening was that my Daddy as always was putting my wishes, and my fantasies first on his agenda.

Through the years, my Daddy's pink slippers are always someplace around the house. Sometimes at the foot of his bed, other times by the back kitchen door. Other times when my husband and children would visit my parents, my Daddy would make sure he had on his pick slippers. Even though they became worn and scuffed with stains embedded from his working out in his garden, those shoes remained a big part of my Daddy's life and of his routine.

My Daddy passed away last week and when my Mother and I were going through his clothes to see what might be appropriate to dress him in for his last goodbye to his loving family, my Mother said to me, “You know, I think your Dad would love to wear his pink slippers.” And so we sent my Daddy on his last journey in his famous pink slippers. I'm certain the angels were envious when they saw him.

Mama

My Mother has been getting progressively more fragile ever since last October. When I returned from my three month stay in Spain, I found her so changed from the Mother that I had left in September that I've had a great deal of difficulty adjusting my thoughts and my feelings over our changing rolls. She is no longer the Mother who taught me about life, who talked me through every difficulty of my childhood, my Motherhood, my marriage. She is no longer the Mother who laughed with me, who took care of my hurt feelings, who's feet I would sit at for hours listening to her share with me her wisdom, her joys, her own childhood stories.

I am now finding myself tending to the simplest of tasks for her that she used to so independantly take care of on her own.
When I returned from yet another trip away from home, for just one week, my spirit wrestled with my anger over the new position I was finding myself in. Anger that I didn't understand. Anger that left me feeling guilty because I couldn't understand it.
And so I went to my Crone alter. I lit candles. I saged the alter, I saged my staff, all the while remembering my ceremony, the symbolic saying goodbye to the Maiden and the Mother and welcoming my new rite of passage as The Crone, the Wise Woman. I needed that wisdom now to help me understand where my anger was coming from. Why was I angry with my Mother for simply growing old and feeble? I called upon the wisdom of all my Sisters, present and past to give me an answer.

As I sat watching the smoke curl upward from the sage, and while I watched the dancing of the candles, and as I held my staff, these words came whispering to my heart.

"Anger is but a signal that tells you, a need is not being met. That need is coming from the child in you that doesn't want to be abandoned, that is afraid of losing her Mother. You are no longer that child who needs a Mother's nurturing, a Mother's strong arms protecting you from life's dangers. You are the Wise Woman now and the things your Mother is experiencing is HER experience. It 's her time to choose how she will live out her last days. You and your Mother may have agreed in a previous realm to live this experience together now. She experiencing the pain, experiencing the moments of confusion, experiencing her decline, you standing by as her compainion to help her over the rough spots, to love her unconditionally and remind her that everything will be ok, that everything is as it should be. You must remember that these are her experiences and hers alone. It is not your reponsibility to try and fix what you cannot fix for her. It is only up to you to love her and to be gentle with her and to let her experience this time as she has determined she will experience it."

That is what the whispers from the Women of Wisdom said to me.

So my Mother and I will be companions in this experience and I can let the anger go because it was only a signal. Now that I have identified why it came to me, there is no longer the need to fear that my inner child is in any danger of being abandoned.
Namaste.

A Love Like Ours

A love like ours has no words that can define.

A love like ours has spanned a thousand lifetimes.

A love like ours, when we have picked our way though countless other relationships and have found each other again, deserves a few brief moments for sad reflection.

Each time we have touched, the heights to which our emotional attachment has reached, bridges the chasm that has kept us apart, making that void vanish and there is only you and I, looking into each others eyes with a knowing that tears asunder that temporary veil of forgetfulness. We have always instantly known that we are one and the same. That we have always been we two.

A love like ours deserves to be honored with these moments of sadness for our many separations.
Separations that we have always arranged as a reminder to us both, that there is no love like ours.

A love like ours is more powerful than distance, than time, or other binding circumstances.

A love like ours never dies, never diminishes, but remains strong and is of epic proportions.

A love like ours has a give and take that is balanced for the good and growth of us both.

When I am in need, you are there to give it. Freely.
When you are in need, I am there to give it. Freely.

These two hearts know when the need is shifting and we are always up for the task.
There is an instinct within us that is always on course in this regard.
We may not see each other but we always feel each other.

A love like ours makes it possible for our attention to expand to include others, to include the world. Because,
A love like ours knows no limits.

A love like ours is great because it exists,
Our two hearts have created this love like ours.

We desired it, we molded it, we thought it, we felt it.
We've written about it, we've discussed it, we've shared it.

Although apart for the moment, it takes but a thought to bring us instantly back "home" to each other.

So when I am sad for a brief moment in time such as this, I am honoring with these broken pieces of my heart, in great humility and thankfulness,

A love like ours.

Paradise Found

Took a walk around in the fragrant, fresh cut grass here in my little corner of the world.
My place seems to me to be far removed from everything. As I walk, look and smell my reality here in the now, it's easy to forget that there is anything else, only this.
At one end of the property, the north/eastern corner, the predominate sound that can be heard is the rustling that the wind creates as it pushes through the leaf laden trees lining the hilltop across my narrow two lane country road. Then there is the intermittent call of a bird, and then another answers from some other location.
The sun burns hot on the top of my head and upon my bare arms as my eyes span around the expansive landscape and out to the horizon where fat, bumbling carpenter bees float and zip and bump into one another with no apparent destination or agenda.
The grass is cool and crisp beneath my bare feet and the sky above is the color of blue that only a clear, Spring day can paint. Faint swaths of gossamer clouds decorate that blue sky and when I look away for a moment and then back again they are gone. Evaporated as if blown away by the breath of some great invisible giant.
Continuing on along the back of the house to the north western corner, I find an oasis of shade beneath the gargantuan Arborvitae trees, and there again is another swarm of awkward carpenter bees. One comes down right in front of me and hovers for a good 5 to 8 seconds before darting up and away and into the deep green foliage of the Arborvitae . At this end of the house is where the birds gather in larger numbers. My guess is it might have something to do with the feeders. I marvel that they don't seem at all bothered with the cats who also love to play and lounge here. Sometimes the cats crouch and stare at a bird for long, tense moments and as soon the hunter begins the slow creep toward it, the bird is off, flying toward the safety of a perch high in a tree or a power line, then to sing what might be a victory taunt and a dare to try again some other time.
My sense of smell catches the sweet fragrance of the honeysuckle that now engulfs the back of my little shed. Sometimes I think that maybe it needs to be cut back and cleared away but that scent would be one that I'd miss.
The tall grasses in the field below me wave to and fro with the breeze, the bees buzz, the birds sing, the cats prowl about or lay stretched out in the sun, the wind chimes charm my senses, the gravel crunches beneath the tires of occasional passing cars, a lone dog barks, the sun travels toward the West, and I am at one with it all.

The Caravan

The Caravan:

Sits in the back garden being gobbled up by flowering vines. They crawl in a tangle up the back, one side and across the top, throwing tendrils down the front, reaching to the ground. Their profuse growth would soon obscure the front window and block the doorway if not occasionally cut back. Pink flowers bloom amongst the chaos most abundantly in the Spring and Winter months but still offer the occasional splash of pale color year round.

Sitting inside with a view out onto lush green, with various flowering bushes and trees, watching the morning washing flapping at the breeze and warmed by dappled sunlight, I corral my wandering mind back into this moment and simply appreciate.

Ego And Higher Self

Sitting outside this morning in quiet reflection, watching the rain fall softly on green grass, while the wind made the trees sway and dance and birds sang and flutterd at the feeder. Wanting to just relax and meditate for a while, I first tried to clear my thoughts of memories of songs that kept playing in my head, and the intent to go to Spain, wondering if it could be possible. I remember thinking that while I am meditating maybe my intent should just be my desire to go to Spain to live for a short while.
Lost in these thoughts and just wanting to allow them, almost without my notice, I began to "see and hear" something quiet different than my first desire. I heard the voice of a black preacher. His voice rose and fell and rose again to a crescendo, up into the air, and through the trees branches. I laughed inwardly to think of all things I was hearing a black preacher telling me the most profound message that I have ever heard!

As my feet splashed in the puddles that crept across the concrete patio and the rain continued to whisper down from the sky he said these words.

"The Ego wants it, the Higher Self creates it. The two are one, a team. They work together. Why do you continue to listen to those who have forgotten just as much as you have, tell you that you've got to get rid of the ego, its a bad thing? Without the Ego expressing desire or inent, what would the Higher Self be creating?
Ego has forgotten who they are! Who and what they are a part of. Ego and Higher Self (or God if you will) are one! They are Gods and Goddessess, who are Divine, Eternal, Pure, Higher vibrational energy beings who broke off little pieces of their unique personal Selves to set them into particular realities they made and said, now go live, experience. This is the script I wrote for us so embrace it all. Be appreciating every experience and when that one's done, we'll decide where to put us next. Ego has come a long way from where it started and got to forgetting. Ego now has full stage Alziemers! Ego is now stumbling, wandering, combatting and basically gone off on its own as it moves through this fog of dullness. Not only does Ego have Alziemers, it's got cataracts! Blind as a bat and a little crazy. Lost and forgetting it's Higher Self for ages. It has come to believe that the Source of it's origin is somewhere "out there." That Ego must live to please that "someone out there," and not piss him off or there will be hell to pay!

But it's all been a creative experience between Ego and Source. Ego has reached a time when it begins to remember, slowly sometimes and way too fast at other times.
Now is the time for the new creation. It's time for Ego to remember that it creates the intent and Source carries out that intent.

Ego with the experiences comes to have all the kinds of ideas, desires, inent to make it possible for soure to know what to create. A new era, world, reality?
I don't have all the answers, I have forgotten the same as everone else, and am only just waking up myself. So until we have more complete and total recall. Peace!"

And that's what my black preacher said to me this morning.

Do It Yourself

It looks increasingly clear to me that our government is not listening to us. The people that we elected to look after our intrests are not. They are busy protecting big corporations, making themselves super wealthy. Bullying and overthrowing other nations. We can sign all the petitons we want to sign. We can vote the basterds in or out it really doesn't matter anymore. We can listen to new politicians tell us that they will change things, they will do what we sent them to Washington to do. Have we not learned by now that they are all liars and they will tell us what we want to hear just to get elected? Once they get into that system the Devil takes their souls and blinds their eyes with greed and plugs up their ears to our outrage.

I finally believe now that the only way to fight them is to become as self sufficient as we can. There are many ways within our own communities that we can do that, we just have to look around at where we live and find our own resources. Are you angry about Monsanto? Grow your own food. There are many places where we can find GMO free seeds. Some of us even have family who have been growing their own food for decades and have saved their seeds from season to season, year after year and we can form small community co-ops that will more fully supply our needs than our corrupt government can.

I'm not saying we should all lie down and let them walk all over us. I'm not saying to stop paying attention or stop putting on the pressure.

Fight them if you believe in fighting that way. My fight will be more of a focus on how I can take care of my own self and my family.

There is a shifting away from big centralized governments all over the world. If you've been paying attention you will see that. Yes, there is a plan for a New World Order, this is not new, its been the agenda for a long time now. But there is also a movement that is resisting that and that movement might not be so visible. It's there though.

Maybe we will see chaos and devastation as we have never seen, before things settle into something different in the world. But maybe we won't. Life is a stage, we are the actors, we created this story, this script, both in our collective and in our individual lives.

Focus on what you want the world to be. Not what you don't want from it.

Individually create love and joy in your own circle, your own life and you will ultimately affect the changes you want in the world.