Bright Lights and Four Year Olds

At my very first ballet recital, I was not quite four years old. There were many of us, maybe 20 girls and one boy. We girls were dressed in aqua. His name was Jimmy. He was dressed in a white suit with white shirt, white suspenders, and a white Fedora. He looked four-year-old handsome.

The music we danced to was, “I Don’t Know Why I Love You Like I Do.” It was played by a real 30 piece orchestra. Jimmy would walk by us, and one-by-one, we would fall over with hands on our hearts. It was a bit . . . there are too many today words that don’t fit yesterday. It was sweet.

Of course, all I knew was that the costume was scratchy. I had to wear make-up. My hair was all curly. The lights were so bright in the theater. I couldn’t tell if there were any people there. I knew there were people there, because my dad had brought 27 of them, but I had no idea exactly where they were in all of that darkness out there.

A few weeks later I was at my cousin’s house. We were playing a game, re-enacting a popular television show called “I’ve Got a Secret.” It was my turn to be the one with the secret. I whispered it to my cousin. I said, “I was on television.”

I really believed it. I believed it for years.

I think it was the stage and the bright lights part.

−me strauss Letting me be

At the End of the Day

At the end of the day
I am the wind
whispering through the air
a living voice
singing for the stars

My life is the breeze
fluttering past my cares
a human song
stars singing for me
I belong to the night.

At the end of the day
don't look for me
At the end of the day
I belong to the night.

−me strauss Letting me be

20th Century Chivalry, Yes It Was!

One time I drove home from college to see that smile my dad would get when I walked through the door. Yeah. He sure got it. The whole saloon woke up. Me? I only saw him glowing, but I could hear the old guys talking.

“Uh-oh, Geno, here comes the boss!”

“Yeah, home from college better get out a twenty.”

“Wait, she’s coming behind the bar for a kiss, better make it two hundred.”

“You guys,” I laughed, not taking my eyes off my father, “I didn’t come for money. This man hung the moon for me. Don’t you think that’s enough?”

I kissed my dad on the cheek once and once more for good measure, and just as I did a fight broke out. It was between one young guy I sort of knew and some tall lanky stranger they said later was from Detroit. He was just passing through.

The fight didn’t last long. One punch and the stranger was down. Jim, the stocky guy I knew was back to his beer. The tall stranger with the black wiry hair was trying to get up. My dad, a deputized sheriff, walked around the bar, gently picked up the guy by the collar and walked him to the door.

“What did you say to him?” I asked my father.

“I showed him the way to the LL saloon where I’m sure they’d be happy to serve if he’s still thirsty.”

“Oh.”

Still curious, I walked around to ask Jim, the young man who had started and ended the single-punch fight, what it was about. I sat down beside him and ordered a coke.

He told me plain out, as is the way in a redneck saloon.

“He wanted to know your name, Maribeth, and I thought it wasn’t my place or proper for me to say. I told him to ask you or to ask your father. He didn’t like my answer so he pulled back to punch me. I took my shot, before his punch landed.”

I thanked him for protecting my honor.

It was 20th century chivalry, Yes it was. In a redneck saloon in Ottawa, Illinois.

−me strauss Letting me be

Inside My Head

Many people in the 3-D world have said to me I'm really glad I don't have to live inside your head.

Yet in the virtual world people seem to find it a fine place to come for a visit.

Isn't that interesting? My body gets in the way of people seeing who I am.

Is that me or them? Is that all of us?

−me strauss Letting me be

What I Really Need

There were 36 of them. Each of them was shiny faced and 6 years old. All of them, that is except for one. His face was never shiny. It was always smudged His shirt was wrinkled and unwashed. He had no friends. The kids didn’t want to play with him. He told lies whenever he talked. He didn’t write much. He didn’t seem to care at all about school. He had trouble showing where he kept his heart. It was sad to think he knew such things at only 6 years old.

My heart was torn about this child. I’d look at his dirty blonde hair and think of Oliver Twist. I wished I could make the tiniest difference, but for all of my creativity, I was at a complete loss when it came to this one child.

We were 37 of us that day, as we were every day when we were all at school. It was time to write and so I did. I started a sentence on the chalkboard and they finished it. They wrote in that special language only first graders could read, an alien, lost tongue−First Gradian. Once they wrote what they had to say, each child would come to the front to read what he or she had written down.

The sentence starter on that day was What I really want right now is . . .

I had been looking forward to what the kids would write all morning. I wasn’t in any way let down. I heard stories of circuses, bicycles, parties, and hot air balloons. The room was filled with wonderful dreams. Then came my Oliver Twist, the last to read. I noticed immediately that his paper was clean, his story was short. It was unusual in how neatly written it was, especially for him. I watched from near the window as he read.

All I really want right now is . . . a hug.

He got a hug from me.

Everyone in the room knew a powerful sentence that was.

−me strauss Letting me be

Life Is a Little Girl

“I could cry. I could crumble down and cry every time I see her.”
Love has so many forms, so many shapes and sizes. It can give so much, and it can fill in so many empty places. Love can turn the world into a glorious promise and fulfill it at the same time.
Love for a friend can make life worth living. Love for a father can make a son taller, make a daughter stronger, more beautiful. Love for a lover can heal a spirit, forgive self-loathing, and teach one how to cry with joy.

Love for child can make a mother happen where there was once only a little girl. Love for a child can make a man where a boy once tore about with his toys. The perfect trust of a newborn child is so stunning, so powerful. Once you meet, once hearts touch, nothing is ever the same.

From then on . . . life is a little girl.

Happy first days on Earth, little Robyn.
Thank you, for letting me be your blog-godmother.
−me strauss Letting me be

The Power to Call Folks Near

Long before there was an Internet, before I knew the words attractive or magnetic. I knew I was some kind of portal. It’s strange how words in my vernacular come back to me now and let me know how long I must have known

It's years that I’ve been saying, Oh, it must be my magnetic personality! . . .

Some folks are almost instantly attracted to something about me − the way I think, my writing, my sense of the world. They seem to find me almost enchanting.

I always introduce them to everyone I know, and then folks who were attracted by this magnet are instantly drawn to each other.

It often happens that folks I introduce become lifelong friends. Off they go to find and do things together. Soon enough, I’m in their past. I think they figure that the magnet that attracted them has so many attractive things to do. It’s not so, but they don’t see it. It’s natural for folks to assume that a magnet has the power to open elevator doors, or to ring a bell to call folks near. It’s a nice thought. Would that it were really true.

Sometimes they come back to tell me of their adventures.

Maybe that’s why I stay home so much. I want to be here when they come to tell me stories of where they’ve been.

−me strauss Letting me be

The Vacant Lot

I’ve been thinking of TheVacant Lot. It sat next door to my childhood house.

The Vacant Lot was a long, luxurious hill. It rolled down with a bump in the middle for about 300 yards. Then it flattened out to the backyard and up again into the riverbank to touch the river. Still it was only known by one name, The Vacant Lot.

The winter hill was made for sledding. The whole neighborhood came round to share it. Everyone aimed for the bump in the middle on the way down. The bump was the ride. The bump was the show. Everyone watched the one going to see the light of day between the rider and the sled when they hit the bump, then hit the air, in the way that physics makes magic happen. We didn’t need a grown up or a teacher to tells to stand in line or take turns. The winter had our respect. That respect made its own rules.

The spring hill was purple with wild violets. It was like the fields of Texas bluebonnets or tulips in the Netherlands. It was so easy to imagine a royal procession on that purple carpet. Time was we made up stories all day about it. I dug up wild violets and moved them around so that there would more and more of them. I only picked them once−for my mother−and then I learned they lasted longer if I left them in the ground to be with each other.

The summer hill was allowed to overgrown and it filled with hollyhocks. Until my teens, those flowers were taller than I was and they had so many colors. Hollyhocks seemed such old fashioned flower. The stories changed from royal palaces to those of mansions where there were dress-up balls with flowing gowns and escorts from the cavalry. I learned somehow to make a dancer doll from a hollyhock bud, a flower, and a toothpick. I don’t know if someone showed me, or I just figured it out.

The fall hill was for running down and up. AND if we were lucky enough, someone’s parent would have bought a new refrigerator and we could have a refrigerator box to roll our way down that house-wide open space. Then, the bump was for avoiding. Yep, experience taught us to stay away from it when riding cardboard, especially cardboard boxes with no steering.

To date only 34 toys have made it into the Toy Hall of Fame. One is the cardboard box. I guess it would take too much persuasion to get the internal museum Advisory Committee comprised of curators, educators, and historians, that reviews submitted nominations and determines which toys meet the criteria for selection to consider inaugurating The Vacant Lot. That’s okay to. The Vacant Lot was always unassuming. I’m sure it doesn't want the attention.

In my neighborhood, the Vacant Lot already is in the Toy Hall of Fame.

−me strauss Letting me be

25 Words: The Top

I see grassy hill. Size it up. Back off a little. Take a deep breath. Then I run without fear to be at the top.

−me strauss Letting me be

You're Only a Stranger But Once

You’re Only a Stranger But Once.

That’s what it said on the matchbooks for my dad’s saloon. I always thought that was special, and it spoke so much about my dad. It’s funny how something so small can impact a person’s life. It’s embedded deep in my philosophy.

Tonight I made plans to meet with a someone, attend a seminar, and share a room with her. We both said we must be stupid or real cool people. I knew I would go almost as soon as she asked−even before I talked on the phone with her. I already knew that we thought the same on most things. Then I found out that we are in the same industry, and that we actually have some experience in common.

You’re only a stranger, but once.

Then again, all of life is kind of that way.

−me strauss Letting me be

Daydreaming in Second Grade

Ever since I was little I’ve been reading about daydreams. They’re described in stories in schoolbooks, in novels, even in picture books. Always it seems there’s a child in school looking out the window at a blue sky thinking of what he or she might be doing. I never did that.

I never knew how to daydream. I tried. I tried more than once even. I tried especially hard to get the hang of daydreaming when I was in second grade. I was all of seven years old. I thought it was time I knew how. I'd start to think of a place that I'd rather be. Then . . .

I’d get distracted and start thinking about other things.

I’d start thinking about what you’re supposed to be thinking about when you daydream. I’d wonder whether I was daydreaming correctly. I’d look at the kids who sat between me and the classroom window−I never seemed to sit near the window for some reason−and wonder what they daydreamed about. I was sure that they must know the right way to daydream. Other kids seemed to know the right way to do almost everything.

Then I’d think about what their daydreams would be and see all of these Disney-like pictures of kids playing baseball and saying words like “swell” and “gee.” Those day dreams made a perfectly beautiful day seem so . . . so . . . boring.

Then I’d be distracted again wondering what it was like to actually be those kids. Soon enough I would figure out that there would still be a me sitting in my desk wondering what that kid in that other desk was thinking.

Either way, I guess you could say I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on in the front of the classroom.

I suppose my teacher would have told my mother I was daydreaming.

Really I wasn’t. I was just thinking.

−me strauss Letting me be

The Tulip Lady

When I was in Kindergarten we went on a field trip. Some twenty kids walked in two lines holding hands. We left school that morning. It was a surprise to us. All that Miss Mabry, our teacher, said was that we were in for a beautiful adventure that we would remember for a really long time. “Maybe all of our lives,” she said.
Everyone was excited and wondering what it could be. I was excited too. We all lived in the neighborhood. What surprise could there be that we didn’t know about?

We walked about eight blocks and turned the corner. We went to a house and into the back yard. You could not see the yard from the sidewalk or the street. Yet once we got past the hedge we were in another land. It was called Holland then. It was filled with tulips−reds, yellows, purples, striped ones and even black ones! Everyone’s eyes got as big as the plate in the lunchroom. Far in the back was a windmill made of stone with wide white blades that turned in the wind.

The Tulip Lady came out of her house through the kitchen door. She passed real wooden shoes on the stairs . She was wearing a real Dutch costume. She said to call her the Tulip Lady because her name too was hard for small children to say. She told us so many things about tulips and why her garden looked so beautiful. I could barely hear. My eyes were so bombarded with color.
I often think that was my best day in school ever. I can’t forget how amazing it was. A few years later out riding my bike on a spring day, I turned down a street and found her house again and I got to relive the field trip all over again. It amazed me to think that this dreamland had been within blocks of my house and I didn’t know.

I went back there this summer to see the Tulip Lady’s house one more time. My son was with me. I wanted to tell him the story, but times change and she’s gone. No wooden shoes sit on the stairs.

Miss Mabry was right though. I still remember. I still see pictures of tulips and the Tulip Lady whenever I close my eyes.

−me strauss Letting me be

Colorful Puzzle

In my mind are the pieces of a multi-dimensional puzzle. Some are two sided. Some are 3-D. Many are feathery, filmy translucent, so light, so free, you can almost see right through them. Each is a bit, a moment of my life, a word, a thought, a look, a touch, a feeling shared with a friend. Time was when I was alive inside each of them. Time was when I knew them well-enough to describe each in detail.
Now they float just beyond my reach in my almost consciousness, like so many pieces of a puzzle waiting for me to put them back together. Every now and then one will show itself and I’ll try to fit it back into the bigger picture. Sometimes I can. Sometimes I cannot. It doesn’t matter.
What matters is that they sit gently on my mind without sadness, touched with shades of joy, peace, occasional longing, and an abounding sense of love.
The grays and browns of my life fade into the past. What has stayed with me is the colorful puzzle.
I’m a lucky girl.

−me strauss Letting me strauss

Daylight

Standing under the sky at night I can imagine I am anyone, anywhere. My feet are exactly the right size. I’m exactly the right height. I fit inside my skin. The stars and I are made of the same stuff I know that. . . . Again.

I wish I could make this feeling happen in the daylight.

−me strauss Letting me be

Write, Paint, Dance, and Sing

If I could remake the world in one way tonight, I know exactly what I would do. I would wave a thought throughout the atmosphere, across the sky, sending it everywhere. It would be magical, marvelous, wondrous, and wonderful. I would make it so everyone could write, paint, dance and sing.

I can’t help but think that if each of us, all of us, could do each and all of those things that each and every part of the world would be that much better. I can see it now. I can hear it too. I’m smiling to think of it.

We’d write letters and songs. Poetry. Words would have meaning. The language would have music again when we talked. We’d color the sky with our eyes and our hearts, filling it with blues, reds, gold, and grays, making the ocean blush with pleasure. We’d dance with our voices and sing with our feet. We’d finally get to know things about each other.

It would happen because we’d have a reason to listen to each other, a reason to want to. It seems that the reason is what we’ve lost, and that’s all that we need. If we could all write, and paint, dance, and sing, we’d have a reason to read, look, and listen, to open our minds, our hearts, and our souls to what could be.

Imagine the colors the sky would provide once it found out that we would actually look. Imagine the colors already there, if we would just make a reason to see.

−me strauss Letting me be

The Best Thing

My family calls me Maribeth. It’s one word with an i. My mother chose that spelling.

When I was five or so, I got a baby doll for Christmas. She is the best thing.

Baby Doll−that was my dad’s pet name for me.

That baby doll must have been a very special purchase. I’ve never seen a doll anything like it. I still haven’t. It’s the size, shape, and weight of a real baby. I named her Elizabeth. I liked the letter z.

When I was five, she was all my arms could hold. My mom gave me my own baby clothes to dress my doll in. I can still touch the feeling of amazement to think of myself in the dress my doll was wearing. I played with her everyday.

I remember sitting Elizabeth in her high chair where the sunlight streamed in my bedroom window. We’d think together about the dust motes in the sunbeams. We’d wonder whether they came from the sun to us on that ray. I liked the word ray. So did she. We’d look through the sunlight out the window to the trees and the river past the back yard. We both had a thing for trees.

I taught her which was foot was her right and which was her left. I even wrote R and L on the bottom of her feet in blue ink so that she wouldn’t forget. I’d hold her and rock her back and forth to watch her glass eyes with those black eyelashes open and close. It was fun to do that and her eyes were blue like my own. We’d hug each other every day.

We would listen to music on my record player and I would sing songs for her. I was always there for her. She was always there for me. Toys and dolls are good that way.

When I went to college, I took her with me. It wasn’t a sentimental blankie thing. It was a practical decision. I figured if I didn’t keep an eye on her, Elizabeth just might just get lost somewhere in the shuffle. It wasn’t a bad decision. Other things from my childhood got lost−things I wish I still had. She even had the starring role of the baby in one of our theater productions, after Alice took my hand and walked me into Wonderland.

It’s a funny thing that I named that doll Elizabeth. You see. I think I was eight or nine and pretty much had quit playing with her, before I knew that my real name was Mari Elizabeth. I was thrilled to find out I had a name that had the letter z.

I was in college before I realized that my baby doll who wore my baby clothes had the same name as me.

My mother had known . . . my mother−who had lost a 9-day-old girl baby, three years before I was born.

My mother called me Maribeth. My father called me Baby Doll. I called my baby doll Elizabeth.

I still have that baby doll, Elizabeth. It still wears my baby dress. On it’s feet you can still see a faded L and R.

The sun still carries dust motes on sunbeams when it shines.

Right before she died, my mom said I was the best thing that happened to her.

−me strauss Letting me be

The Apple -- A Little Book for Mother's Day After

The Apple

Prologue:
There are all different kinds of apples. Some are green, and yellow, and red. Apples grow in apple trees. We pick our apples from apple trees. We eat them. They are fruit.

The Story

He's taking an apple from a tree. He's eating the apple. He's done. He's taken an apple with him. He put the apple in a bowl.

Someone visits him.

He takes the apple.

"Oh. No!"

He is too sad. He draws a picture of an apple. He kisses it . . . and he says "I love you."

He hangs it up.

My son wrote this little book in his own hand when he was four. His mother only added the capital letters and some punctuation. He already had those cool quotations. Happy Mother's Day, the day after.

—me strauss Letting me be

25 Words: Deeply Wide

When I know my life is but a story,
no pain will hang on me.
I will be vastly seamless,
deeply wide like the sky.

—me strauss Letting me be

Growing Pains

It started over a year ago—this horrible karma, this kind of conspiracy of things just not working out. It happens to everyone at some point or other, but usually not so very long, and not quite so meanly. I own a part of whatever pulled the wall tumbling down, but I'm not quite sure why my feet couldn't ever find their way back to a place to stand.

There's some lesson I was supposed to learn. Yet no matter how hard or how softly I searched for it. I couldn't quite get my mind, my heart, to find a way to it. I let go of my needs, my notions. I rethought my beliefs of who I conceived I am. I walked into trees for months trying to find my way out of the forest. Nobody seemed to notice I was there, hopelessly lost, wandering aimlessly.

I'm good at looking like I know where I am going.

Then for no earthly reason, the trees seemed to open up letting in some sunlight. The sheer joy of it hurt my eyes, my heart, my soul. They all wanted to cry out when I saw that I might have a way to go. It scared me a little. I started walking with some direction. I still have no idea what's at the other end of where I'm walking.

I only know that it seems possible I finally could be leaving the forest, joining the world where people dance again. I wonder if I'm the same person I was over a year ago.

Growing pains means something different to grown ups.

—me strauss Letting me be

I Never Really Got the Hang of

Thursdays. I don't think I ever will. Arthur Dent had the same problem. He ended up hitchhiking the galaxy. Not the plan I had for me, but I'm not sure I'd mind, if it meant that I would never have to wake up to another Thursday. It's my automatic two-nap day.

Thursdays aren't quite Friday's, are they? Yet, they've left Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday far behind. They're somewhere in a wide, wide river floating south and slightly downward. Thursdays can't seem to decide what they want to be for me. Am I sorry I'm not done and wishing I had more time? Or am I wishing I'm done and sorry my time isn't over? Either one doesn't seem right. I should be happy living right now.

In college Thursday night used to be the night we went out to find out who would be our date for Friday. Hmmm. Now that was a good use for Thursdays.

I wonder whether my Thursday problem has something to do with the god it was named for? Thursdays just seem weird to me—on the Internet—even on the highway there seems to be less traffic.

I don't seem be myself on Thursdays. I feel a bit forlorned as if I'm waiting for a summer rain. I'm not sure why or how to fix it. All I really can say for sure is. I never really got the hang of Thursdays. I think from now on I'll call them something else.

—me strauss Letting me be

Austin Skies

Some places hold me because of the memories of who I was there, what I learned, who I became. Some places call me because of what I built, or grew, or did there. Some places live in my heart because of the people, the folks, the friends who held me close. But rare is the place that owns a part of me for no reason than what it is.

I've always been a bit rootless when it came to places. I think I wanted to live everywhere. I've made it around the world a few times and seen the sunset on four continents. I watched the sunrise in most of the 50 states. I've talked to the stars in countries where I didn't know the language and watched clouds from a 16th century manor house. I've seen the sky out airplanes and from sailboats and train windows.

Nothing ever filled me with the surprise and wonder of the Austin skies.

I'd try to describe them to you, but would you believe in colors that you've never seen before? Could you picture a morning with a Batman gray-black sky that 20 minutes later was blue as the tropical oceans? Would you be able to imagine clouds in shapes that looked like snowballs hanging in rows above for you to choose the one you liked most? Could you believe in watching a night storm in the distance off your back porch where the lightning ran sideways most of the night?

No. I thought not. Neither could I until I met them.

Instead I'll tell you about the 25-wood deck restaurant over the lake. At least once a week we'd go there to eat the best Tex-Mex dinner and drink margaritas, while watching the sun go down. I'd be thinking that People go on vacation to enjoy a place like this and we live here. The entire place would be one giant smile of relaxation. A lovely lake, great food what's not to like?

Then at the moment when the sun touched the hills on the horizon, and finally disappeared—it happened every evening at that time—all of the hundred or so people in the restaurant would stop—set down their drinks, their forks and knives—cheer and applaud the sun.

That's the beauty of the Austin skies.

—me strauss Letting me be

Golden

And I'll just get on my bike, and I'll ride and ride. I'll follow my heart all of the way down that open road, peddaling with the wind in my face. And I won't care. And I'll care more than anything. Sometimes I won't even hold on while I ride. Balance. I'm a dancer I can do that. Sure I can.

I don't know how to ride without holding on, but once I didn't know how to ride at all. The sun might be in my eyes, but my eyes will be open, like my heart. I won't be hiding. It won't be dark, and I'll be alive, really alive—not just living.

I'll swerve and turn. I zig and zag. I sing out loud and be so strange that I'll think I'm weird. I'll wonder what I'm doing. I laugh at myself. I'll make myself worry. But not once, will I think that I am ordinary. Not even for a second.

That is golden.

—me strauss Letting me be

A Little Bit About Feelings

Hey you. I'm sure don't know everything, but I know a little bit about feelings. I've felt so many in my time. I know how it feels to hold the world perfect, joyful for whole minutes in my hands and to watch slowly slide down through my fingers into darkness like so many grains of sands falling to the ocean floor. I know the feel of the sky against my face on the warmest summer night with the sweetest thoughts of life ahead, dreams and promises, words unsaid.

I've been so happy that I've cried and so torn with fear of someone's dying that all that we could do was laugh. I've walked into the darkest tunnel and turned around to walk right back.

I know a little bit about feelings. I've even carried mine beside me rather than feel them, rather than admit that they exist. It didn't work.

I don't know everything, but I know a little bit about feelings. I know that I don't have to have gone where you have been to know exactly how you feel.

I can hear what you're not saying. I know how you feel. My heart sends love to your heart. My thoughts tell your thoughts to rest.

My hope is yours keep forever. I've got plenty to last.

—me strauss Letting me be

Magic—Sure as a Baby Laughs

Just when I think that the world holds nothing new, no promise, no prize, a friend comes along and says something short, sweet, and beautiful, something that says "I know exactly what you mean. I see exactly what you see." I smile. Life bubbles into my eyes. The sun shines from way deep inside of me.

It's magic—sure as the stars stay up, sure as a baby laughs.

—me strauss Letting me be

Me Most of All

Sitting outside, alongside in the shade by the hay, even my hayfever won't bother me, well not until later. I can watch and think and be part of the day.

My mind wanders to wonder whether somewhere out there is another creature who sees me and contemplates what I might be thinking — me thinking of that one thinking of me — circular thinking.

I'm not a part of the action, or am I?

I am part of the scenery surely. In the scenery, I feel safe and only a little bit lonely. It's only a little wish that someone would come along to talk to me, but . . . I'm kind of glad that no one does, because . . . my experience is that people don't want to talk about the things that I see. So I crawl just a little further into the view and the vista. It's kind of nice just to sit, just to be.

This is the me I want my friends to know most of all.

I wonder what other people see when they look at this picture.

—me strauss Letting me be

Mirror

I used to wonder about folks who could let untruths slide off their tongues while they smiled with false sincerity. What I wondered was how they might face their own image in the mirror at the start and the end of each day, when they were alone with their actions, when only they could see who they were. Now I realize we have a different idea of what a mirror is. Mine reflects back what I see of me. Theirs is something altogether different.

—me strauss Letting me be

Writing and People

Other people cannot help me when I write. When I write I am alone. Every word comes from inside me. Yet. . . .
Not a word I write is not touched, not felt, not known by the people I have met, interacted with, and loved. Those who have been part of my life are inside and through everything that I write, even that which I think is only about me. I see every person I have ever known in what I write. Everyone I have met is in every word that you see.

—me strauss Letting me be

I Am Visible

I am a person. I have a place in this world. You can see me or you can walk right by me. You might try to make it otherwise, and it might work for you, but not for me. I am not invisible. I am a person. I can see me. There I am right in the mirror.

—me strauss Letting me be

The Flowers

It doesn't take much to appreciate the flowers when you're walking through the weeds. It only takes a look, just a glance down, just a stop to see that the flowers are there. They are always there, even when we don't look. Aren't they? Those flowers hiding in the weeds.They're a wonder.

Sometimes I forget to see them.

—me strauss Letting me be

Intimidation

You don't know how much you intimidate me.
If I don't know . . . if I don't know . . .
help me, please.

—me strauss Letting me be

Without the Pain

Most of my life I have lived with acute chronic pain. I've learned to make friends with it, to know it as a part of me. I don't usually talk about it. What's the point? People have the wrong response. They want to fix it, or fix me, or worse they feel sad. They don't need to feel my pain for me. It's enough that I feel it. It's enough that it's here with me.

It helps me understand how some folks can carry their anger. I don't know sometimes, who I would be without the pain.

--me strauss Letting me be