Love

Well, it has been a long time, friends, that I've been away, and it has been a difficult and dark journey.   In February I had my seventy-first birthday, less dramatic and disturbing than the 70th, and I am feeling rather hopeful, not so helpless and frail.  It is just a number after all! And we are all moving toward death, no matter how old or who we are.   I am sleeping, after a fashion, and feeling ambition to work on something that really matters, which happens to be my book.  So, this year will see a new burst of energy as I revise its backstory and peel away more layers of my lonely past...
Since I last wrote, two miraculous and lovely things have happened in my life:   I have become a great grandmother, and I have adopted a small gentle terrier who is called Peaches, who comforts me with her gentle spirit and her endless affection.  Being a great grandmother is a feat, to be sure, or should I call it a landmark?  The arrival of little Eadweard in Oregon has brought warmth and love and community into my family; we smile proudly at the miracle of a new human being in our midst.  I am grateful.  I am so grateful for the new life, for the love that lurks under the layers in my family, in all families.  I am in Oregon now amidst great blustering rain and gray skies, and have been gazing in wonder at this little boy, and feeling bathed in the unspoken love felt by my daughter, granddaughter, and others.  I am here with my sweet dog Peaches who looks like a dappled little white greyhound with giant black eyes.  She is my best friend these days, for she has shown me how to sleep, to be in the moment, and feel gratitude.  She embodies love, as does my little great grandson.  As I consider these two,  I am reassured again that what really matters in life, the only thing really, is love.
I am going to take this love as I go forward and feel it and create from it.  I will persevere.  I will complete my creative vision.  My gratefulness is limitless, and even in gray and damp Oregon I see the sun shining brightly.