It's 29 degrees, or maybe by now only 17. I am appalled by a few things tonight, so I will name a few, keep my amblings brief or my briefs ambling which would be infinitely more entertaining.
First off, I must give tribute to my brother Terry's blog at www.organizationalstars.com. Terry's writing is thought provoking and insightful whereas mine is more like a mischievous wood nymph who rearranges QWERTY to mean something immoral. At first I was bitter and resentful that I would have competition from my brother on the blog circuit and then I understood that that's the beauty of blogging - there is room for all of us. I might get serious here, I started to and then digressed into MWN (see aforementioned reference). Maybe Mischievous Wood Nymph can be a separate column where I discuss life's quandaries like putting in panty liners wrong side up or forgetting to shave before you go for a pedicure. But, really, I do have some stuff I want to get out.
Oh faithful reader(s). I can use the conditional (s) because now there are 10 of you!!! Yea! If you had any idea how happy it makes me to be well received or at least mind-numbingly entertaining for 4 minutes.!!!
...pause here to change album on I-Pod, speaking of mind-numbing...
Thank you for following me, for reading my, uh, content..thoughts..writing. Oh dear, does this mean I'm an AUTHOR?
yes, apparently with the attention span of a stapler.
Okay, back to the weather (ironic, huh?). It seems that everyone is struggling. Last week, countless people tried to make sense of the execution of four police officers in Lakewood Washington. I cannot even fathom the devastation of their loss.
I read an article about two people who met in a warming shelter last winter and are now married. The woman is just two years older than me and has health problems and is in a wheel chair. At 46 years old, she's been living on the streets 32 years. I get cranky after five days of camping. And even camping, I usually have a dignified place to pee. I don't camp when it's 17 degrees outside... during the day!
But two people found love in impossible circumstances. They fell in love, homeless, and got married, homeless, and are now seeking shelter from bone-deep cold, hoping that the shelter they land in will allow couples to stay together. They smile in the newspaper photo, they have learned to tolerate the most heinous discomfort. For them, there are no holiday cocktail parties, no fat steaming turkeys festooning burgeoning tables surrounded by 20 bleating celebrants. No, they are content to be warm for eight hours before they are shuffled back onto the street. They are discarded unseen observers. Petulant shoppers will scurry by them, competing for parking spaces, digging for keys in deep Coach handbags. People will contemplate their loose change until the light changes and then they will speed by, cars with heated seats, avoiding eye contact.
And yet the couple smiles. They are in love. They will think about much more than loose change. Change doesn't come loose in their grip. It is revered and metered out in increments. $1.25 might buy them enough coffee to stand in the corner of a convenience market until toes and fingers are warm enough to trudge on.
These things overwhelm me. I have a particular esteem for homeless people. Many of them suffer from mental illness they can not escape. Origins are unclear and frankly without meaning at this point. They were somebody's precious child, ambitious adolescents, hopeful young adults. Dreams and determination succumb to the plague of addiction, abuse and poverty. Illness goes untreated, despair unanswered.
So, whatever you embrace as December locks out the daylight: Christmas, Winter Solstice, Kwanza, Chanukah, none of that is as important as celebrating your humanity, your comfort, and the gifts of faith and love.
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