Dancing to HIgher Ground

I sit alone. And I hear a sound.

One, and-a-two, And three, and-a-four.

It’s a hand. An old piano. Picking out a tune. It seems meant for me. It plays again. And then it repeats.

One, and-a-two, And three, and-a-four. I am at once, a sway, and a bounce. A soft hum begins in the background. A tapping sounds so lightly on the drums. Two grown guys hum in cool harmony. I keep thinking of them as if they’re 8 years old. I want to hum with them.

One, and-a-two, And three, and-a-four. A move, a sway, a bounce.

Words tell about the things I once knew. Happy sounds say things turn out right.

And I believe again in what’s there.

Within the backyards and the hours, the baseball games and innocence of wildflowers, a light shines day and night. A bee hums. The breeze smiles. I feel my own healing power. It’s a good thing, knowing that I’m not alone.

One, and-a-two, And three, and-a-four. I set trouble down. and turn myself around. I step into the light, and dance to higher ground.

I hear music. I see the stars. Day and night.

And my feet dance, and my feet dance, and my feet dance with that piano . . . and two grown guys who hum in cool harmony.

One, and-a-two, And three, and-a-four.

I step into the light, and dance to higher ground.

−me strauss Letting me be

Writing the Rain

A desk by the window, a journal to write in, these are the tools, the places where I live my life. I live in my mind. I live on paper. I live on the computer screen. Once in a while I live in the world where the people pass by me on the street.

Today it is raining.

People say they are glad it isn’t snow. The streets are wet. They are shiny under the lights of the city. The drops are small and soft on the windows, in the air floating downward They surround the city lamps with a swarm of wet dot. The lamps shed a glow of watery illumination that makes the air glisten as if the lights were dressed for a formal occasion, as if they were debutantes coming out at a ball. Yet, most people don’t see. They don’t see the magic of it all, the illusion right above them.

Most folks see only the cause for umbrellas and taxis. Most folks feel only the wet falling on their hair, on new-polished shoes, and their faces. Most folks are worried, are busy, are in a hurry. They're preoccupied with the human-made side of life. They see the rain as blocking their view, slowing their pace, and generally in their way.

I see the rain as a shower, a powerful, graceful invitation to refresh the view, a chance to renew my emotional state, my imagination. I see the healing, the good feelings of the rain coming down. I know the growing that will be happening. When the wildflowers drink it in, they will be coming up, up, up. I picture the meadows lush and green and filled with the joy and color of nature, the nature of wonder.

I don’t mind the drops that cling. I don’t mind my bad hair. I don’t notice as I let my mind wander in between tiny drops of rain, riding the currents of clean, wet air from here to everywhere.

The rain is there outside my window and inside my soul. When I’m outside my window too, I feel it all around, inside me, and on me. I don’t need an umbrella. I’m part of nature.

I’ve been wet before.

−me strauss Letting me be

A Lizard on a Leaf

They say it’s a jungle, a concrete jungle. When I think on that, they’re doing an injustice to the rain forest.

The towering trees and the canopies of the jungle make it dark and scary. The sound and traffic of the species would overwhelm me. I’d be lost in breath. I eaten by bugs long before some large predator got me, long before I was lured by a poisonous frog. The assault of the foreign and frightening would be more than my spirit could handle even with a guide beside me, even with the protection of a crowd.

Some days people scare me more.

That's when I go to the rain forest in my mind, to imagine the life of lizard on a leaf . . .

−me strauss Letting me be

Watercolors In the Sky

I don’t have to live under a gray sky if I don’t want to. I change the weather as easily as I change my mind. It’s a matter of knowing that what I see is only light bouncing on molecules of the atmosphere.

I know a thing or two about atmosphere, positively.

I make my weather. I make my luck. I draw things to me with my magnetic personality. I open up my arms and people come inside. It’s the way we’re wired. It’s the way we’re wound. Hold your arms out to a baby learning to walk and see what happens. Open arms is an easy thing. It comes naturally.

So does changing the weather.

Watercolors, a brush, and my imagination are the tools that befriend me, when my sky is dastardly, damning, deserving of Dante – not the kind of sky I need. Clear water in a cup reminds me that, when I close my eyes to what things might mean, I can make the colors clear. I can find blank canvas on which to paint a sky that I’d rather see – one that has room for me to move forward, one that has room for me to forgive and find a positive reality.

I paint with a vengeance over the darkness to remind that there’s a sun of promise behind that gray cloud cover.

Then I smile at the mess I made of the table around me.

−me strauss Letting me strauss

Along the Wall

along the wall
I have hung postcards
each from a different location
each from a different friend
each told a different tale
of a moment in a different life
silent and beautiful
still and full with time
and I pass by them
every day as if I
never knew that they
represent real events
of people I know and love
who have left me
their memories
which I have hung
along the wall

-- me strauss Letting me be

In the Silver Mine

Some folks search for gold with lust and a vibrancy. They live their life on the edge of survival. I don’t search. I wander. I wonder. I’m lucky, it comes to me. So does the rain, the snow, and the ugly slush.

But when I need time, it’s not the gold that I look for. When I need space, it’s not the riches I see. It’s the silence I crave. It’s wandering inside the silver mine. It might be dirty and unfinished, but it’s quiet; it doesn’t hurt my eyes; and it’s a constant discovery.

In the farthest corner of my mind are the silver linings of my lifetime. They’re waiting for me inside the silver mine anytime I need to go see.

In the silver mine of my mind are my golden memories.

--me strauss Letting me be

The Green, Green Grass

I walk across the green, green grass. It’s nor really my own backyard. It’s not really my own big, big tree. But the space is so full and the green, green grass rolls softly forward in an easy way. The air fills my lungs with the thoughts and the dreams of a child playing outside inside her imagination . I watch the grass as I walk on it gently. It's a need to let the creatures who have a tiny home near my feet to keep a life that remains undisturbed.

A butterfly passes. I smile remembering butterflies I could never catch. Butterfly nets are for catching air.

Hear the music. It’s children laughing. Hear the melody of many families on a picnic. Ah the folks lined up, tossing eggs in a silly contest. I once enjoyed that game and knew the secret to winning. It's a knowing smile that fuels the small dance I do – step across, slide, turn. Spin with my arms out full like a first grader. Eyes are closed to take in the feeling. Face is open and fully toward heaven. Turning, turning, turning.

If I go the other way, I’ll get un-dizzy. I do just that and it works because I believe.

As I get closer to the single tree, I walk more slowly, taking in its majestic silence. Branches so wide that no neighborhood could contain it. A big, big royal tree needs a rolling field to hold court. It deserves nothing less than this a carpet of green, green grass. My mind hears a lawn mower from years ago. I think of spring. Children playing baseball in summer clothes are almost visible out the corner of my eye the second that I imagine them. I hear the crack of the bat on the ball.

I breathe deep like fish, pulling oxygen like water into every cell of me.

Slow walking, slow to the tree walking, I see no cars, no trucks, no machines -- no cell phones, no computers. I like the look of that. I like the cloudless sky and the feeling that time hasn't touched this place.


I meet the tree. I run my fingers up and down the black, black bark of it. I can't help but put myarms around it. I rest my face on the side of the royal majestic tree, the way I once did on the chest of my father when we would talk. Then I sit with my back againt it.

I take out my journal and write for a while.

A place without machines is filled with rainbows, magic, and daydreaming. I find myself in a time machine of wonder.

They say don't chase rainbows. They say magic doesn’t exist. They say daydreaming isn't real.
They don’t about the green, green grass by the tree too big for a neighborhood to contain it.

--me strauss Letting me be

The Rhythm of the Rowing – Part 2

It's time to go back to where I started, back to where my feet feel the ground, where my skin is my skin and it fits perfectly.

I say good bye to the castle. It was a dream I was living in. I say good bye to the sky, to shore, to the rocks and the sand where I drew my heart. I walk to the rowboat, catch my breath and climb in. I feel the fear of my feet leaving the ground, that they love, that they know.

I take the oars in my hands, not so foreign this time, but not welcome -- nor will they ever be. I push away slowly, hearing the waves hit shore with slap. The noise of crash in my ears is a frown. I calm myself, and I drift out and in again like the waves. I find that place inside where I don’t care about progress now. I find the stillness of myself and use it to steady the boat as it moves slowly off.

I’m back on the water, but not rowing. I’m on my own, learning to breathe on the sea. I'm getting used to the rocking, getting used to the loss of ground once more. I know this place, this place without. I let myself find myself. Then I at last I start to row.

The rhythm starts to take me, to take me back where I am going. I am the rhythm, the rhuthm of the rowing. I am the going. Going is what I’m about. Every stroke that I row is a little calmer, a little sweeter, a little closer to my destination, the place I left whole.

The rhythm of the rowing will take me there. I will find my sky. It will hold the sun that rises and sets on my old oak tree. I’ll find the moon that was hung to keep me safe when I sleep. I left the castle and the sand and the rocks on the shore of the dream that I had. It's time to go back where my feet feel the ground.

But I won’t forget the translucent light of a white tulip an angel left for me.

−me strauss Letting me be

A Life-Long Friend Who Knows Me

I draw a heart in the white sand. I sit for the longest time looking at it.

I am lost in confusion. I am stuck in the visio. My heart is open, in plain view for the naked eye. Yet so many people cannot see it, don't believe it. They see what they fear. They see what other hearts have held or haven’t. They see only another heart that can’t be trusted, another heart that will fail.

I brush a tear from my eye. I brush away the sand heart that I have drawn.

I look at the sand. It seems empty. Heartless. I think about how the world needs more love, compassion and forgiveness. I keep staring at the empty space where the heartful of feeling once was, wondering at the folks who have conception of what that is.

A woman comes up beside me. Without a word, she sits. She picks up stick and draws an open heart again, right where I did. It takes over the view before my eyes. It's a symbol, a reality.

“It looks like you,” she says, though she stare out at the water.
I look over to see is a life-long friend who knows me.

−me strauss Letting me be

Falling in Love with Rocks

The rocks sit along the sea, getting washed by the tides each morning and evening. How round, how clean, and how colorful they are, even under the gray, gray sky.

See them. Aren't they so individual and uniquely beautiful?

The rocks remind me of some that I still dearly love.

In my landscaped garden in Massachusetts, one special garden spot was shaped the was a child would draw a simple house. Leading to the house garden was a mud path about three feet long and two feet wide. The path had railroad ties on either side. I made that a mosaic by filling it with small stones.

I found every stone in my back yard and carried it to it’s new home.

Stone hunting I would call it. I felt like a squirrel find food for the winter, as I walked around the backyard, looking for tiny rocks to add to my tiny project. The project transformed me and my relationship with rocks and stones.

I soon saw each stone as a possibility, an object of wonder. Sometimes I’d stand and turn the most usual rock around in my fingers again an again. I so enjoyed the point of imagining the colors, textures, of the stones when they would all be together.

Each stone took two or three minutes to place in that mud path, making that little mosaic took almost all summer.

I didn’t set or seal the path. I wanted it to last only as long as nature would have it. The garden was in a forest – a natural habitat. I didn’t need more than that.

I wasn’t making a path or even a mosaic anyway.

I was learning to fall in love with rocks. And I did a fine job at that.

See those rocks by the sea. Aren't they so individual and uniquely beautiful?

−me strauss Letting me be

Rainbows and Where You See Them

I have been to the place of profound hurting. Where the sky is bleak, forbidding, and totally inhumane. I have felt almost crushed beneath it. I know the sadness that makes a person’s blood move slowly. I know the pain that draws a curtain over things.

I know the awful place where the light of day only highlighted my worst weaknesses. The golden sun that so nourished me became something that hurt me. The flowers and trees said they aren’t meant for me. In that dastardly, hurting place, every thing living and nonliving scraped and tore at the person I thought I was. I was in the dark on the brightest day. My feelings collapsed inward crushing me.

No word could find its way out. I was stuck. I was stuck. I was stuck. I was stuck on an island inside a cave where I was safe but every color was black. When I was awake, I could move like I was alive, but mostly all I did was rock. The rhythm of the rocking might have been what saved me.

One day someone gave me a glimpse of color, a simple white flower. It was words that the world needs my voice in the choir. It was something that led to me knowing that I could leave the hurting place when I decided to. So first I made friends with that flower. Then I met a book and made friends with it too. It was different, kind of goldish shade if I remember.

In no time at all, I had a rainbow of colors – parts of the world that I love, things that I wanted to be with, things I no longer wanted to give up. That brought me out of the dastardly, hurting place, and what I found was a miracle of color.

Rainbows are where you see them. In the sunrise, in the sunset, in the eyes of the most frightened person, in the heart of the person who is going to be our next life-long friend.

−me strauss Letting me be.

Fully Grounded

I look out on the ocean, and I think how I never learned to swim.

I took the lessons. I passed and got the certificate. The paper has no meaning. I swim like a stone. I’m meant to stand at the ocean’s edge where the water and I might meet to share the same space.

I have to think that I didn’t learn to swim because my need not to learn was greater than my wish to conquer it. I understand, in a logical way, the abandon, the cool, fluid freedom from gravity that swimming has to offer. I realize the worlds that I will never encounter.

Still I cannot relinquish the connectedness I found when I first had my feet fully under me. It’s a connection I so dearly prize. I cannot give up. I cannot set it aside. I became part of the planet that day. My heart, my soul, my being won’t trade it. It is who I am.

My feet are part of the ground under me. My lungs are part of the air I breathe.

It’s not fear. It’s a “holding onto” the only boundaries I can rely on. After half a century I know. These boundaries – my feet on the ground and the air I breathe -- are a home base, a comfort for me.

Without my feet touching terra firma, my mind would float away, like a helium balloon let go. One idea, one passion, chasing and following, chasing and following, until any breeze could blow me, any hurricane could throw me. I need a home to return or I can't live with an open heart and a free spirit.

My mind needs the rest of me, and the rest of being, fully grounded − at least partially.

−me strauss Letting me be

The Funny Thing about Tulips

When I came out to get coffee, it was there on the counter, a single white tulip by itself in the morning light. It was almost angelic, translucent, glowing. It filled me with a feeling that went wide. It made think of the funny thing about tulips, how they seem to exist for our delight and joy.

Every spring the tulips come. They do seem to appear at once. What a show they put on!

Together they stand. Together they reach for the sun and bend in the breeze, gently without a thought, softly without a sigh. In some places they fill fields clear to the horizon, as if a painter has made them real, in the way of a baby's laugh. They’re like dancers, graceful and open hearted. They’re like souls without burden or care. No other flower is quite the same as they are. Fragile, dignified, light as air.

Yet for a tulip to grow into a beautiful flower, it lives in the dark, cold, cold ground from the first freeze until after the thaw. Without the dark, without freezing temperatures, the bulb won’t grow. It won’t make food for the flower. In the spring there would be only sad, lonely leaves.

And . . .

In the spring those flowers I see only last for a week, maybe two, not nearly as long as I dreamed they did, not nearly as long as I wished they would.

The funny thing about tulips is that a graceful, open-hearted flower would work so hard to exist for our delight and joy.

−me strauss Letting me be

Glory in the Almost Morning

I wake. I walk. I wander into the almost day. It’s almost there in that blue, that blue I only see at sunrise, that clear blue, that cerulean comfort color that goes out past the ocean to forever. It’s the feeling of being inside a whole note. It’s the experience of knowing water. It’s breathing without thinking, air intake automatically, a childhood of rhapsody.

I slide my feet along the bit of beach as I run my hand along the wall of the castle. I think how lovely that color is, and how people have never captured it. It’s too clear for any product, to filled with light for any art form. Music might describe it, but most folks wouldn’t know to listen. Most folks haven’t stopped to see. I wish myself surrounded by it, but that's not a human passtime.

Some colors God keeps just for himself. I ask him to send it to you in your dreams.

I wonder at the clarity of the backlit color that starts the day. Would it be nearly so wonderful without the orange-lit clouds nearby? They stand in waiting as it holds court for the morning sunrise.

I slide myself down onto the sand to watch the wonder. I listen to the rhythm of the waves. The world has so much comfort.

The marvelous blue fades to let the glory of the sun take over.

I walk. I wander back inside the castle. I find my way to my first cup of coffee.

I look out at a beautiful day.

I think how glory is such a small thing in the almost morning.

-me strauss Letting me be

Imagine That.

Everything that I think doesn't have to be real, doesn't have to be on the ground where people can see it. What a laugh that is! As if I could keep my feet firmly planted on concrete. As if I could live without thoughts of wishes, and hopes, and dreams that have made pictures in my mind since before I was able to talk.

The rhythm of the rowing, the melody of morning, the sights and sounds that nature brings on the waves, on the breeze, on the clouds passing over me. How could I let them just pass unnoticed? That would be a travesty.

Buildings, and streets, and cars, and machines are nothing compared to skies, and trees, and flowers, and . . . breathing. And my soul smiling with knowing. Thinking is hard without wonderful thoughts to interrupt me and twist me and turn me. Their gift and music that I have to offer. They're the song that I dance to when I write these words here.

I'm gonna row that boat with you in my heart. Just like a rocking chair on the waves, that boat will take us to a magical, healing place. We'll head out to a castle on a forgotten island. No one will be lonely with us gone away. Time will stop while we play. We'll have whatever we need to be safe.

We'll have drinks with umbrellas. We'll talk about myths and legends. We'll remember the things that we love. We make up lots of new ones. We'll laugh without stopping for days and days. We'll discover pure energy and learn how make whenever we need it.

We'll celebrate what we love about being alive.

Imagine that.

--me strauss Letting me be

The Rhythm of Rowing

I feel whole and on the right path. My answers are coming. My ideas are the right ones. My clothes are fitting and my skin is my own skin. My feet are under me, taking me forward into the vision.

And life tells me that I am not enough.

People call to me to say they're hurting.

Three people in less than 18 hours with sad, scary stories to tell me, asking me to listen, hoping for wisdom. Wisdom is what I long to offer them, but I fall way short of it.

No Zen sailing will not be on my agenda this day.

In my jeans and an old zipped up Gap sweatshirt with ink on the sleeve, I walk down to the dock in hope that the water will teach me. There waits the red rowboat -- an invitation. Can I face my fears? Can I be the only one in the rowboat on the big water, the one who can't swim, out there alone?

I climb into the boat and sit on the hard seat. I feel the boat swaying. I wish for my grounding. I wish for my friends to be around me. I wish for the courage to face where I'm going, to know what I know -- that I'm unprepared for what I'll be doing.

I pick up the oars and hold them in my hands. I know at first touch. They're too big for me, too heavy, too much. That's no consolation, no remedy. I hold them. I pray. I look at the sky that shelters me. Then I breathe. Then I breathe. Then I breathe once more.

I untie the boat. I use my hands, then an oar to slowly push away. I let the boat float on its own, as I get used to the feeling of motion. I get used to the idea that I won't be turning back. I need to know this or I can't help anyone.

Slowly I place the oars in the water. I ask permission without words, but through the grace and gentleness of my movement. I ask for faith from sky and angels who are everywhere. I need the wisdom of one who has conquered fear.

It takes a while, but I learn the rhythm of rowing. It takes a while, but I forget myself and learn about what I'm doing. I get to be one, inside my situation. I start to understand that the wisdom is only the knowing. I lose my self-consciousness and let my cells take over the understanding of what is needed, and suddenly, it's a dance with the water -- with no one leading.

Inside the fear is the graceful wisdom I was seeking.

My help will be the rhythm of rowing.

me strauss Letting me be

Crayons and the World

All of my life I've been wondering about crayons. I know I've said that so many times before. When I was a child it was a somewhat literal thought. All of the colors are so unique and beautiful. Each color has a presence of its own.

But those wonderings were also imagination. I could change the color of the sky in my world. I could color the flowers red, orange, and yellow. I could make them all shades of magnificent blues.

All of our eyes see color in a slight different way. Science has shown that. And who knows whether my concept of red is the same or even near yours. Yet, we can all play with our crayons can draw a vision of wonder.

We can use crayons to change the world.

--me strauss Letting me be

Poetry and the Taps

I don't have a picture of my first tap shoes. They were white as everyone's were. When we bought them brand new, shiny bright. They came with an inch-wide grograin ribbon that went through the two holes and tied into a beautiful bow. Of course that had to be replaced with something more function for a three-year-old child. Out came the ribbon. In went a loop of inch-wide elastic. It was the same as everyone's. Dancers in our dancing school looked alike as a rule.

I took to tap dancing right away. It was mathematical. It was like talking with my feet. The steps had names with syllables that matched the taps they made. Shuf-fle, shuf-fle, ball, change. Step, dig, step. Step, dig, step. They matched the words they made.

My friend, Peg, said I write poetry because of the math. I'll have to tell her that it's also because of the taps.

--me strauss Letting me be

Like Rollerskates

On the bed
in my childhood room
was a white chenille bedspread
I used to run my fingers across it.
It was like rollerskating.
You could still feel it
when you stopped.
I would look at my hands
filled with the sensation.
It was amazing.
The deep purple corduroy bedspread
that I picked out later
was even more thrilling.

--me strauss Letting me be

Out My Window

It's January, but the sun is shining on the harbor. I look out my window, and the colors of an orange to pink sunrise surprise and delight me. I stare at a sky of possibility that changes by the second. The water, the windows next to mine, reflect back brilliant color.

I sip my fresh, new coffee at the window. I don't usually do that, but this sunrise, that you wouldn't believe unless you saw it, has the power to transport me. I think it's time I let it. So as I stand at my window, I let my reality go, and I follow my imagination.

I see myself down on the dock, walking in the sunrise. I don't need a coat as I drink in the blue, becoming bluer, of the water with what I didn't know were my so hungry eyes. I walk. I stroll. I place my feet just so between the board on the dock, remembering the fun of being 5 years old. I revel in the space of a world that has sunrises.

I walk right from that dock to the riverbank of my childhood. That takes me to the memories of my younger, older brother who taught me how to watch him when he was fishing. I smile to think about how my job at almost 9 years younger was officially that of watcher. He may have thought he tricked me. I won the reward of that job. I have the images. I have the wonder. I have the mornings like this to prove that.

The riverbank becomes the mountains in the spring with flowers blooming. I stretch out on my tummy, like I used to do to watch TV to get a close up of the crocus. I've gotten to be friends with these brave, little spring flowers that show even through the snow. They are a lot like sunrise. They are hope and proof that good things keep happening.

In with a deep breath, as the sky finally goes fully blue. I come back to the beautiful harbor that waits for boats that won't be back for months yet. I know that it's still January, but that's okay with me.

Every day has a sunrise out my window.

--me strauss Letting me be

Standing at the Fire

Standing outside the fire. Life is not tried. It is merely survived if you're standing outside the fire -- Garth Brooks.

I walk up to the fire on the beach. How could I not walk right up to it. It's warm on the cool, dark night. It's wild, on a mind that's quiet. I stand to watch. I stand at watch. It's a movie. It a memory. It's a fire in my heart. It's my spirit before me.

Yea for the diftwood that someone like me left behind for me to sit. I take my place and my eyes crawl all the way into the flames. I see my life most inside the firelight. The flame dancing around as I dance within it. Yeah, I've been both burned and warmed by the experience of being there.

But I breathe the air, and I flow with the river. I walk the earth. So I must feel the fire.

Life would be cold and distant, unattached and without wonder, if I spent my days standing outside the fire.

I walk in the fire head high, knowing I'm alive.

--me strauss Letting me be

Like So Many Chocolates

New Year . New Day. New thoughts running.

New ideas and new possibilities.

A sunrise, a baby's eyes, a smile.

New feelings. New beginnings.

Life stories to live and to remember.

New delights and cups of coffee.

Love and memories with family.

Friendships to discover, like so many delicious chocolates.

Happy New Year!

--me strauss Letting me be

Not Fireworks, Shattered

It's sad what happened in Bangkok.

Darn, darn, darn was the subject of her email. She'd just gotten back from a trip to visit family in the UK. She lives in Bankok in Victoria Square. I got the email this morning to tell me she was all right, despite the bombing. Six nearly simultaneous bombs have gone off during the New Year's Eve celebrations.

She was still awake at 4a.m. her time watching the news. Thank God, she'd been too tired to go out or she'd have been at this bar.

"I heard a loud explosion and I thought it was fireworks. I ran thereand saw a
bleeding woman at the bus stop," Somrak Manphothong, areceptionist at the
Saxophone bar near where one of the earlier bombswent off. "Another guy was
lying on the floor, covered with blood, andhis wife was shaking his body." New Year's Eve Bombs Kill 2 in Bangkok

It was fireworks that the person quoted heard. It was the sound of two lives shattered.

It might have be Muslim terrorist or those wishing to overthrow the traditional power.

A new started with sad, ancient problems.

I'm grateful for many things tonight. Her safety is one of them.

My own is another.

--me strauss Letting me be

When Coffee Is Best

She sat as only a friend would, downstairs waiting for me. I was upstairs getting the last of my pile of stuff together for our foray into the shopping mall ready. We were going to spend time and to spend my gift card so that I finally would have pants that fit me. It was a day any pair of friends might be spending, a day during Christmas vacation week.

She was there when I came through the door, shopping bag at ready, laughing and saying that she was on time despite the buses it took to bring her here, that I was late despite my short elevator. She smiled and said now she could hug me.

We took a taxi down to the Magnificent Mile and the first thing we did was buy a cup of coffee. We found a wonderful love seat in the lobby of the magnificent shopping mall, just outside the door way to Bloomingdale’s. She had the pumpkin bar. I had the lemon bar. She brought the napkins. I went to get the forks.

I’m the one who spilled my coffee while I was talking. It didn’t matter.

We talked about nothing and everything.

Coffee in porcelain cups is very nice. Coffee served by elegant waiters is so refined and wonderful. Coffee in Europe is an experience that must be tried, especially in a restaurant that doesn’t think people should leave after 1 hour and 45 minutes, when they’re barely started talking.

But coffee is best with a friend that you love, when you’re sorting the details of normal life, when you’re sharing the stuff that most people wouldn’t give a blink to hear. . . . Then it brings out the little kids in us, telling tales of characters in made-up stories.

After the coffee we went to the stores and we did what was on the agenda. We accomplished things and we were together. It was a fine practice run for the next time and the time after that when, I’ll wear the pants I bought. We’ll have coffee and go somewhere again.

But this time, we’ll have coffee at the beginning and coffee again at the end.

Coffee is best with a best friend that you love.

−me strauss Letting me be

A Blank Page of My Life

Looking back through what I've written, across the time in this space, I see so many changes, pieces, parts of me, some not the most overjoyous, some not a work of art.

Yet overall I find this energy that propells my fingers on the keys. The creeping melody of the tapping of my thoughts, sometimes whismical, sometimes deeply telling of the mysteries I just saw. The silver thread that holds all loosely tied as one is the connection that they have to each other and the people who have inspired them and me.

I love the words that give me power to recall the thoughts and stories. I love the sounds of memories that bring a lifetime back to me. I cherish the music that makes my heart feel colorful.

I stand back in awe that a blank page of my life can become a thing of wonder.

-me strauss Letting me be

Son to Sunrise

3:26a.m. Waking, walking to the kitchen to make coffee. The man in the living room is writing on the computer. He is my son. He hasn’t gone to bed yet. We have this splendid time in the dark and silence. We talk a bit at the end of his day, the beginning of mine. I hear the classical music in his headphones. I smile to think what would be coming our of mine.

I didn’t mean to get up this early. He didn’t mean to stay up this late. We didn’t mean to meet in the middle of the night, when the harbor is empty and the sun is still sleeping.

It’s the middle of his visit. We have no rush to accomplish so many conversational things. Before we settle in to the quiet, I tell him what I hope we can do together before his leaving. He tells me about his tradition of cleaning out his email over Christmas vacation.

I begin my work. He returns to his. We work silently, side by side, like two children in a sandbox, taking comfort knowing the other is there. He finishes up and says he’ll see me later. I think that’s a wonderful thought, a lovely sentence to move me forward into my daytime.

6:26a.m. Working. My son is sleeping. The sun the still has not begun to show its colors in the sky. Will it turn the harbor waters a magnificent teal blue? Will the sky gray with the clouds of a Chicago winter sky? Will it have the lavenders and pinks that stopped for minutes yesterday morning?

I think of the boy who came into the world with so much promise, how once I never could have imagined this night.

From son to man. From possibility to glorious sunrise.

−me strauss Letting me be

The Indigo Blue and the Sunflower

The Indigo Blue is like the sky right before it readies for sunrise. It is the color of the deep place inside lit moonlight and feelings. I go there to reflect when I write, to hear my ideas, to understand what I’m thinking. No chaos is there. No intrusions reside. It’s peace, contentment, and silence. It’s the sweet stillness of the new fallen snow. It’s the cool breeze of a soft summer evening. It’s the formlessness of liquid light in the most secure warm blanket night.

Yet it’s never dark in the indigo blue. A sunflower fills it with light when I think on the ones I love.

−me strauss Letting me be

It's the Lights

We look back on the years gone, the days gone. The holidays spent. The events seem to blend. They can seem one together. They can seem gone forever. We can feel lost in a world without what we had, lonely and longing for what once was.

They aren’t gone. We still have every bit the beauty, the wonder. That’s the awesome science of neurology that we never lose what we really need. Sometimes we hide it, deny it, or lose sight of things. It’s the forest and not the trees. Yet our souls don’t let go, no not really.

It’s doesn’t matter if it rains on Christmas. We don’t need a tree, and if we feel alone, all we need are the tiny lights.

Tiny points of light shine our history. They are moments in time frozen still wishing us back to them, captured like water inside raindrops from heaven. They make us stop, hold our breathe, in another time. Remember then . . . remember when . . . and our hearts feel the place that those moments fill.

Look inside the lights. The moments are waiting. They are held in time, like a jewel, like a diamond that our hearts can hold with wonder and joy. None have been lost they’re all with us still in our souls. They’re in the sparkling threads of the tapestry of our lives.

When we laugh, they are there adding brightness and color. They’re in the glow that sometimes crosses our cheeks. When we smile, they show children how twinkling eyes ought to look. When we shed that tiny tear of wonder, the memories are safe inside the salty drop we release.

We don’t need to waste a moment in thoughts of days gone by. We don’t need to feel lonely missing them. We brought them all along with us to this place in our lifetime. They’re in the lights − big and small everywhere.

It’s the lights we see.
It’s the lights we remember.

It’s the reason that newborn babies are fascinated by the lights.

−me strauss Letting me be

Golden Moments of Discovery

One of my brothers was a ringmaster. He could get a room going and make things happen. The other of my brothers could sit in room on Christmas, a room of chaos and read a book on finance. It wasn’t that he wasn’t present. He was there and aware. He just wasn’t an active participant.

He could do that on family visits. It’s who he is. The consummate introvert. No reason to talk. Well then, he didn’t. To put it plainly, the man is thoughtful, kind, but very efficient.

Last night at Christmas Eve, I watched my son. He takes after his uncle. He participated as might, but most he worked on syncing his computer. I thought about what he was missing − the chance to find out more. The chance for conversation, to ask questions to learn that one lovely, lush detail that he, one day, might pass on to his children.

Meanwhile his father and his father’s mother discovered that when set aside their fear of each they really had things they might talk about. Their conversation was deeply philosophical or life changing in any way, except that they had it without looking for reasons not to trust each other. He’s barely a man now. He’ll learn the difference one day.

Christmas is about being with family, not just attending.

It’s so many golden moments of discovery.

−me strauss Letting me be

Christmas Eve and Traditions

I used to regret that we have no grand Christmas Eve tradition with our son. We decided when we moved to Austin that he should have what time he could with his family in Chicago. We gave him up for Christmas so that he could share the time with his grandma and grandpa, aunt, uncle, and cousins. It was important to me that he know the feeling of having extended family around him.

They treated him like a visiting Prince come to their nation. He was feted with feasts, games, and gifts. Others came to visit, bearing tokens to the castle where he held court. As a good prince, he was gracious and giving. He still is. The love is there.

Did we miss him? Of course, we did. Did we tell him? No, we thought not, thinking he should go free of us to his magical Christmas in Chicago. Who knows which choice would have been better? We know that the house was empty without him there.

So our son owns a Christmas tradition that does not include us. I think of that and hope that his memories are filled with wonder as he faces that time now when the tradition falls away and nothing comes to replace it.

I wish I could hand him the same magical, child-like wonder, but he’s no longer a child, and nothing can match years of a Christmas tradition.

Here I write on Christmas Eve as morning comes up over a gray Chicago lake. Now I’m back where the tradition took place again -- only 17 years too late.

I’ve loved him from afar every year on Christmas, catching the smiles that he’s willing to share. I trust he knows that love can handle the distance no matter the time and space. And as he leaves to start his life after college, the same love will hold him safe.

That’s my Christmas tradition. It lives in my heart surrounding the gift that bears his name.

−me strauss Letting me be

Listening to Understand that You Understand

How do you let someone know, to experience, to actually hear that you understand, when he's so sure that you're not listening that he can't stop beating out his message, pulling it in like staccato waves on racky sand. How can you calm his waters so that he stop himself from interrupting, so that he can breathe long enough to do what he's afraid that you are not -- to process the words you are saying. to understand?

--me strauss Letting me be

The Christmas List

Every year on a Sunday in early October, my mom would hand me the Sears catalogue. She’d tell me to write a list of the things I wanted for Christmas. The rules were clear. Everything on the list had to be priced under $10.00. All of the ordering information must be included to the detail. It was an exercise in gathering information as much as a wishlist of possibilities.

The promise was crystal. I could believe that I would receive one thing from the list.

Oh what an event in serious work making that list would be!

It was always a Sunday. Now I understand why. Children have too much free time on Sundays. Making Christmas lists kept a girl busy for hours. Draw the page as a form. Make columns for the catalogue page number, the item number, the item name, the description, the price, and other information. It was a job before the searching started.

Then, the dreaming. It was a ritual to open the first page of the toy section. I apend all day to looking at each item, considering it’s usefulness, lasting fun value, and chance of being bought. I stopped for meals and returned to my bookmark. Those toys that passed the test were entered using my “very best handwriting.” The whole time I was thoughts of the days I would spend playing.

As I got older I would ask in advance, when it was time to write the Christmas List. I had become part of that day of organizing, shopping, and daydreaming a different life. It was a vacation and a seminar. Pencils, crayons, ballerina dolls, easy-bake ovens, and rollers skates went on the page in order and precisely at the same time they made stories and adventures in my mind.

While I was making this list sometime in each early October, I didn’t know that my mom had all of my presents bought and gathered.

All of my presents were wrapped and ready − all of them, but one on that list, made on day that I lived each year.

I miss the Sears catalogue.

−me strauss Letting me be

Way Back When

When I was a child, I thought a day was long and an hour would never pass.

I didn’t like to take a nap or go to sleep at night because of what bits of life I might miss.

Today I will be that child again, so filled with the mystery of life.

Today I will begin having fun like I did way back when . . .

−me strauss Letting me be

Angels Are Everywhere

I take a moment to consider, to reflect on the things that stop me, that stun me in the most profound ways. I collect those thoughts, those deeds, those sights, those colors. I’m searching for the pattern that holds them together, that makes a whole, an experience I can seek.

What I find is I earn them. I win them. When I am least expecting they are a gift granted by bountiful nature. They are a sign of life larger than I am. I feel their power and depth in each atom of their being. Colors of brightness shout of glory. Feelings of authenticity sing of joy, delight, and life lived with passion. One child with ice-blond hair walks with humanity and with an angelic soul, proving again that angels are everywhere.

−me strauss Letting me be

The Door to a Story

I look at the door. It’s not even a door I know. It’s a picture I used in a story.

But the story was real and so close to me. It was a story between my child’s journey from high school to college. Now he’s about to leave college. How quickly four years goes by. He’s a man, not the teenager, who caused his mother to explain how to empty the trash one more time, who told his mother she was doing it wrong when she dared to do so.

Past that door is a pile of memories and pictures, images in my mind of a child growing, laughing, crying with the frustration of meeting the world head on. Head on is how he challenged everything he met. Head on he made his way with his heart on his sleeve, under a cuff of bashfulness. Head on he went, as if he knew one day he would be taller than his mom by an inch. Every memory tells that story bit by bit, tear by tear, smile by smile.

We wrote it together as a family.

Looking at that picture brings it all home to me.

−me strauss Letting me be

Out of the Corner of My Eye

While I’m busy, while I’m so busy, I am making things get where they’re going. . . I take things that were one thing. I put them with another and then I make things. I build things. Sometimes I imagine new into life. Sometimes the things that I make aren’t really things. They are only ideas and concepts. Yet in my mind, I can reach out to place a finger on part of them, and they will respond with movement and a sound.

It’s a wonder and a workload to make thing inside a head that filled with crowd of loud.

Sometimes I do less interesting things. I don’t make things. I clean things. I sort things. I put things where they belong. I rearrange my thoughts to see whether it changes who I am. I rearrange my words to see whether it changes what I mean.

All of these things and all of this working with things is a natural way of my life. I don’t think that it actually is who I am to be playing and thinking about things, until out of the corner of my eye, I’ll glimpse my life speeding by the same joyful way I drive.

Then I smile.

−me strauss Letting me be

Old Gig, Open Door Metaphor

A one-horse cart rolls down a paved country road in Italy. I sit on the grass by my journal, watching a metaphor for my life passing by me. Voices in my head try to say how could that apply to you in this time? I blow out a bit of a air with a small laugh. Why am I echoing other folks thinking? I would never think something as silly or stunting as that.

I stare at the wheels slowly turning on the hard asphalt, so black. I wonder who paved this road in the wide open country, such an efficiency that manages to serve the people but leave the vistas of beauty that brought here.

I can’t help, but have to follow the cart to where it’s going.

Like my life, this gig presents no hurry. It has only to get where it’s going. The horse, like my heart, knows the way home, if only the driver/rider will trust it. So I take my time gathering my journal, my pencil, my blanket, my backpack. I put them all in the car. I stop on moment to take a mental image of the view and tag it as This is where I first saw the gig that is my life.

I feel calm with thought of being on my road − my little car, my one-horse gig.

I stayed back as far as I could. A metaphor doesn’t need me intruding. I need things from it, things I will learn. Only ego would think I have something to offer, and then the metaphor would be gone.

We approach a village it’s tiny, maybe 1000 people call it home. The gig and the horse in charge pass on through to the other side, where it finds a farm. The man driving gently takes the gig from horse and takes the horse to his ministrations.

I am left to see what I came for − my life , my one-horse gig, has brought me to an open door.

−me strauss Letting me be

Then Comes the Daylight

It happens at night, when the world is quieter. That’s when I can be alone. It’s me and my keyboard, me and my thoughts, me and the music that plays in my head with each word that I’m thinking, with each feeling that floats.

Each feeling expresses itself intermixes, interweaves rhythmically, piece by piece, part by part, as a syllable.

Syllables are parts of feeling,s in the same way they are parts of words, in the same way are parts of music. The syllables of feelings, little bits of meaning, don’t really separate out alone. They work together to build things, to fill things, to add lush and lovely detail to what would have been merely a seven-year-old’s sentiments -- flat like folks once saw the world -- turning those sentiments into emotions worth sharing, worth keeping forever inside a heart.

Syllables, notes of music and . . . shades of color from the natural world, all of them mixing, like so many sweet and subtle flavors in one giant wonderful milk shake with bits of dark chocolate. A fabulous drink sitting right next to my favorite cookies, waiting to share, waiting to be consumed, but always there, always ready.

Syllables, notes, and shades of color . . . to express everything. They make me brave, vulnerable, and creative.

My thoughts are a giant canvas. My heart is an artful painter. I am a magical creature of the night. Watch me be. Watch how easily I can say what I feel and know.

Then comes the daylight. Enter the words, songs, and sunrise. They deliver themselves to me differently. They come to visit me whole. I’m a different kind of brave, vulnerable, and creative. My thoughts are an open page. My heart is an insightful writer. I am a creative thinker of the day. See me help. See how easily I can I feel and know what other people need. I can offer them ways to go. . . .

It happens at night when the world is quieter, you’ll meet a whimsical, wonderer. Then comes the daylight and you’ll meet the someone who, looking back at the bright, yellow light of the sun, remembers, who knows the wonder of wandering through little bits of meaning, music, and shades of color.

I love the wholeness of the daylight.

I stand in awe of the magical, mysteries of the night.

−me strauss Letting me be

Sweet Dreams

When my son was 3, he's now graduating college, I would tuck him and say Sweet Dreams.

He took that to mean how you say good bye to someone who is special. So when, at age three, someone -- a stranger -- was nice to him he would say "Sweet Dreams" instead of saying "Good-bye" -- at 10a.m. in the drug store to a clerk who paid him special attention.

It became something very special between us. As he got to be 6 or 7, it was more important even than "I love you." When he would throw a tantrum, and everyone in the family would be mad and loud, and he would be sent to his room. A little voice would say "Sweet Dreams."

When he got to be 8, for a few years, it was "SD Mom, SD Dad." But it meant the same.

To this day we still say it to each other every day, and on the telephone.

It brings a tear as I write this because it's so close and so dear.

Sweet Dreams is how you say "I love you" to someone very very special, any time of day even when you're angry or when you need to say it in code.

Sweet Dreams is the most perfect thing to say.

It was made up by a 3 year old.

-me strauss Letting me be

Open to Discovery

Stand at the waters’ edge
pushing back things between
horizon ahead
I see the distance
go back, go forward
back calls
I know it
fear is in the space ahead
open me to discovery
open my heart, my head
with the key
the world will unlock
fear will be forgotten
open me to discovery
open my heart, my head
to the courage of curiosity.

−me strauss Letting me be

Head and Heart Together

It showed itself early in the child he was. Head and heart. Both were so open, so ready, so expansive, so much more than a child’s mind could comprehend. Decisions were overwhelming. He could sense need from want, but not sort them. The loop would travel round and round, until he would cry for arms to surround his heart and a familiar soft song to quiet his head.

The brilliance of super intelligence and creativity was locked in the mind of a child who’s brain hadn’t fully developed. Oh the stories! It produced so many marvelous, magical, insights and influential thoughts. The generosity and vulnerability of a heart that was wide open to sensing what others felt is a gift and treasure of perfect sweetness and love. Every time it went unnoticed left puddles of bashful, shy insecurity.

Piles of perception without the ability to understand that others can’t hear hearts and see feelings is a challenge for anyone at a full-grown age.

It's an overwhelming mystery, an impossible arrogance for a child to have a thought that might sllow a possibility in which he could do something so wonderful and others could not.

It must be the picture or the child who is wrong.

It’s no wonder that information and thinking become safe. It’s no flaw that feelings and people become something to keep at bay. The first offered an equal and fair exchange. The second was a landscape constantly changing without rules that could be organized in a logical fashion. Brilliance and perception block the way of learning to navigate using all of your senses.

Standing behind a mother’s skirts, holding on to a toy that is fascinating, a brilliant child can build a castle, a university of protective self-preservation. From inside its safety made of observation, he can watch and learn the patterns to become part of the conversation. Only it takes so much longer and so much more effort because he sees every layer and every nuance around it. It’s so much harder and painful, because he has to give up his sameness to do it.

With all of his thinking, a place to meet shows itself.

He uses his sense of humor to come out to play. Then people look at that and not him. They don’t know it’s a bridge of understanding for him and for them. It’s where their feelings can say hello. It’s where he shows his heart.

I tell a friend and she says, “Gee I wonder where he got that from.”

Head and heart together. Head and heart – it took so long to know.

When head and heart come together life is a dance.

Head and heart together . . .

grace.

Head and heart together . . .

art.

−me strauss Letting me be

Lush and Wonderful

I look at my walls. I stare at my computer. My world seems so normal. I touch to my desk and wipe the glass surface. Everything is hard and finished. Things are so tangible.

Paper and pencil sit by calculator. My mouse is by my keyboard. My journal is just beyond them. My notebook of invoices isn’t far from that. Stamps and a clock hold their place by some envelopes.

It’s uninspiring, until I look out my window.

Out my window are things that people could never put together.

The sunrise is more than color. It’s magic indefinable. The rain can hold my eyes to each drop running down the glass for minutes and hours. The snow makes a silence that takes my breath away. The lake takes my imagination to places that I forgot I knew. I can look through the air across to California where I sat eating grapes, drinking wine, in a valley where not one machine could be seen, where not one noise was unnatural.

It doesn’t matter what time of day it is. It doesn’t what the weather is.

The world out my window is lush and wonderful.

−me strauss Letting me be

An Open Book

I’ve opened many books. I’ve found many answers, many problems that shook my stature and turned my way of thinking. I’ve learned to trust the way I read the words I find on the pages. Maybe that’s why I feel that books will always be beside me, even when friends have long forgotten who I might have been for them.

I open a book. I find you. The words say that everything that matters to me is wrapped in people. You are one of the people that I’m finding in every book. It’s not hard to get to know you, you’re in all of the books I treasure.

I open a book and inside I find my heart, an open book everywhere I look.

−me strauss Letting me be

Into the Future

On the threshold, finally, I see a new tunnel.

This one’s not dark and black. The light is throughout it not waiting at the end. It’s filled with the vision of positive possibilities.

I’m filled with wonder at the mere glimpse of what could be.

This morning I take a step, walking into my life as I would write it. My future is mine as I would describe it.

−me strauss Letting me be

Just Over There

Sitting on this side of the water, everything can seem dark and just out of reach. That boat right there can seem too hard to row. Those trees can seem scary and threatening. Time to figure out what to do can seem like it has all run into the river before me.

That’s the moment, when I need to breathe. Nothing is that important. Absolutely nothing is that important.

I seem to think that other people know more than I do. I seem to think that they have more wisdom and more ability. I endow them with so much power to decide who I am, to pick my faults and myabilities. Who put everyone else in charge of which doors get opened and which rivers get crossed?

Just over there on the other side is a new way of looking at things. All I have to do is get in this boat, take a short ride, and I’ll be looking back on where I was. How much trouble is that, how much worry? I can actually see where I’m going. I can do that. I can do that. I know it.

Who convinced everyone that this is the only place to be? I’ve decided that I need a change of scenery.

I’m headed just over there. I’ll be where I can find the person I know I’ve always been wanting to be. The lights already shining for me there.

−me strauss Letting me be

Melting My Heart

I was only talking, sharing what little I seemed to have experienced. You were listening, listening for what you call wisdom. You happened by while I was doing my talking. You stopped to do some of your listening.

Soon we were in a most amazing conversation. Words and feelings were passed from you to me to you to me until they were just our words in a pool of friendship. We got to know one another in ways that people rarely do, because we dared to do. It is a thrilling and marvelous experience. Something that others don’t know about, though they might think that they do.

Which leaves us with hardly any words to describe it. How could there be words to describe something that no one has ever needed to describe? Yet before I even had this question or thought about it, before I even let the idea cross my consciousness, you knew you were past the beginning and to the perfect middle.

Head and heart came together at last for you. And you chose the perfect was to say so in four simple words that weren’t an answer but a declaration. It melted my heart like a sun on the first warm winter day. All I could is smile with my watery eyes.

You said, “I love you too.”

−me strauss Letting me strauss

Crumpled Idea

When I have an idea, it’s private. It’s my very own. I work with it inside, precious and silent. If it’s unfinished, I chose carefully those I share it with. Childhood has taught me that people can be insensitive.

My work begins with a proverbial blank sheet of paper. An open thought, an idea waiting to happen. I get a glimpse of the power and the work of creation. I get a heartfelt look at the commitment it takes to invest in making something come to be. It takes gentleness. It takes time and cajoling. It takes forgiving and overcoming self-doubt.

Every idea forces me to choose my ego to give the idea legs to stand upon. Every idea mocks my arrogance at doing that. So I'm vulnerable for merely having had it.

When an unfeeling person walks by, without looking and makes a crack, about an idea he has never seen. It doesn’t matter what his intention is. His words are worthless. They're merely noise on the wind.

I know the value of what I have done. I know the beauty of the details I’ve crafted.

The idea of the future that will be so much crumpled paper is his perception of what I have made.

−me strauss Letting me be

The Blue Bottle of Character

When the conversation was over I walked her to the elevator, as I had done many nights before, because all who were around weren’t sure she would make it on her own. Hugs, at the elevator followed, professions of undying gratitude. Yet when the tide turned I hadn’t changed. Someone had asked her to change how she looked at me, and she did.

And she calls herself a child of her God. And she professes love for everyone.

Yet I have only the blue bottle to remind of the giving person that she had when she wanted.

Sent away somewhat unfairly, Watched as she turned away almost immediately.

Why do I feel like I am the lucky one to be here with the blue bottle? The bottle always was and always will be what it represented itself to be.

It seems some inanimate objects have more character than people do.

−me strauss Letting me be.

The Universe of Understanding

Somewhere a gracious pool collects the thoughts, the feelings of every human that ever was. It’s a glorious, deep well of inspiration. It’s filled with wishes, dreams, and heartfelt songs of trials that real people have faced and met with courage, despite the cold, unfeeling elements that tried their being.

Each ripple is one more thought, one more dream of what could be, of what we are together. The pool is pure and good.

The last straws and harsh words have been siphoned away. The mean looks and disgruntled sighs were blown off on some wind, long before the pool could form. The sour notes, the sadness born of strained relationships, the discord are gone. The only sound is cool, clear water flowing like so much soft music.

Every favorite color, every favorite sight, sound, taste, and smell is captured there to keep forever. All memories of warmth and human caring run in currents deep and are carried like so much treasure. Every soul is beautiful and happy. Each drop is filled with texture, lush with delight, and brimming with so much experience and meaning. I can run my fingers and my feelings through a universe of understanding that the world has missed.

And every time someone says, “I love you,” another drop is added to it.

--me strauss Letting me be

Talking Texan

“Finished,” my third grade teacher would say.
“You’re not done. You’re finished,” she would tell us.
I would just want to tell her that I had completed what it was that she had put before us.
Every night, I face that one more thing to do feeling.
I think of how they say that in Texas.
They don’t say that the presents need wrapping.
They say the presents need wrapped.
I like the sound of that. It sounds half finished -- even before it has even been started.
When I want things done, finished, over, completed.
I just remember to start talking Texan.

−me strauss Letting me be

Unbelievable

In the most common place by the shyest lake that had really nothing to brag about, a cabin, a shack really, stood hidden in three about fifty feet from the water. We found our way there on an afternoon hike while we were just talking about life. We unpacked our bedrolls and stuff and lit a fire.

By the fire we watch the stars and spoke of the people who came before we were born. He mentioned his ancestors who traveled here and the troubles they found. I told him of my grandma whose brother tried to marry her off to some old man she didn’t know when she was just 16. We felt like we were telling stories of characters from novels, not real happenings.

We cooked on the fire. It was beans and bread. We drank wine from a bottle and wondered where our we’d be in ten years. Every now and then, one of us would go into the shack to find something softer to sit upon, a blanket, a pillow, an old rug. When the night brought a chill we moved closer to the fire as we got closer to each other. We shared our fears, shed our tears, unbundled our hope and our love. In our own way, we wished we were immortal, and we wished we were done with the trouble of living.

We fell asleep outside. Our stuff in the shack fifty behind us.

Early, early on, the morning was so silent, it woke us with the music of the color. We looked to the sky and what we saw was unbelievable.

Somehow we knew that God and the angels had been watching while we were sleeping.

The most unbelievable things to our eyes can put faith in our hearts.

−me strauss Letting me be

Before, During, After

Just before for the storm, the air is full. It’s as if I’ve been putting things, little things − things people said or did− into my backpack. That backpack slowly fills just as molecules of atmosphere pick up water. The backpack, the molecules, don’t really notice as they gain weight and girth, until they are ready to burst. Yet, people know.

People sense that a storm is in the making. They pick up the signs with their senses. Intuition interprets newly formed details. Nothing goes without notice to our subconscious. The slightest change in the sights, in the smells, in the tilt of a head, in the tone of a voice, nothing escapes. Yet we brush most away as having no meaning. Sometimes we do the same to other people. We know, but we don’t pay attention to the truth that is building, growing, about to become a storm.

Then comes the storm, bursting with energy, scaring the thoughts of peace from my mind, leaving behind only thoughts of survival and salvaging any and all of the priceless things that a minute ago I didn’t think to value. The storm brings out something from the core of each one of us. We become more of each part of us. Life is about blood pumping, heart beating, loving and learning to see past the snow with our souls.

After the storm, the calm is most deafening. We’re left with a beautiful silence in which we understand our actual size in comparison to he feeling, the power, and the wonder of laid in our path to walk through and conquer.

Love, compassion, forgiveness before, during, after. No storm can touch their power.

−me strauss Letting me be

Zen Sailing with You

Shh. Come with me. I know that you are worried about the weather. Take my hand. It’s okay. I know the way to somewhere special. I have cookies just baked and some hot, sweet tea. Take my hand. Trust my heart. Shh. Come with me.

Can you hear music as we slide through the hallway? It’s on the air only there playing for you and me. Hear the melody, and you’ll know we’re safe as we move through the storm. See the cold rain can’t touch you. Isn’t that something? Shh. Your heart is safe too.

The wonder hasn’t started yet. Shhh. Don’t say anything.

Hear the music. Hold my hand and think of the cookies just baked and the hot, sweet tea that I’m carrying. Across this street, down the stairs, here we go to the lake. No worries the tunnel is friendly and angel safe. See that light at the end there? That’s where we’re going. We’re almost there. Hushhhh. Hear the music. It sounds like the water on the sand. You and I are safe

Oh, look, someone left a perfect sunset, a perfect day for us. How did it get here?

Shhh. Hear the music. Let’s take the sailboat, lay back in the openness, and enjoy the weather.

I have some cookies just baked and some hot, sweet tea. The storms we imagined will wait until we’re ready to see with them. Why waste a perfect time to do sail in the sunset? No one can bother us. You and I are safe and sound. We can feel happiness without worrying.

Shh. Hear the music. It’s on the air only there playing for you and me. See the sunset. It’s in the sky making colors only for us to enjoy and be please. It’s safe to delight and wonder in the beauty and music of a sunset.

I can’t think of a better place than Zen sailing with you, eating cookies just baked and drinking hot, sweet tea.

−me strauss Letting me be