~~~The art of forgiveness~~~

Forgiveness.

The word alone is like an open door surrounded by a foggy peace and an echo of “aaah...” in angelic tune.

The possibilities are endless and the beauty of forgiveness is like artistry for the soul.  Forgiveness gives you control of your life, wisdom for your mind, fuel for your soul and is honestly the greatest gift you can give to yourself. It takes all grudges, misfortunes, regrets, and wrong doings and wipes them away like a big black eraser over a dirty chalkboard. Shit be gone, that is the art of forgiveness.

Forgiveness allows you to:

Not understand things but release them with love anyways.

Not know for sure if there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but hold a match on your path to find it.

Not know all the answers, but have faith that solutions will come.

Not sweat the small things because it’s the big things that count.

When you forgive you are allowing yourself the recognition of what you deserve and do not deserve in your life. You care about yourself enough to know that you don’t need petty discrepancies weighing down your happy mind and hurtful feelings taking up space in your precious heart. Other peoples words and actions have nothing to do with you and to forgive is to repel them. You release the negative and embrace the positive for the better of YOU. Forgiveness is looking at your heart and saying “you’re worth it.” You owe it to yourself to forgive.

Forgiveness doesn’t require any physical strength, it doesn’t cost a dime, and it can recreate your mind instantly.

It doesn’t even require an apology, that is the beauty of forgiveness.

*Poof*----forgive and be free.

Aging: The inevitable mosquito

I had a feeling this day would come…it has been slowly blowing across my shoulder like a whisper, well perhaps more like a mosquito that I kept swatting away. I don’t know if I’m trying to deny the inevitable or perhaps I’m in a funk or have some preconceived inkling that I should feel a certain way so I am trying to turn into something else in a resentful manner. Maybe it’s Winter. It’s easy to blame the snow on my mood. Perhaps a lack of sun is playing tricks with my brain and yet I can’t help but conclude that I may have reached that point in my life where I feel I have crossed over that hill between youth and mid-life and fell into that sinkhole where I can honestly say without trepidation “I think I’m getting old.”

I do not like this. I do not feel “older” inside and my mind is like a rainbow of vibrancy ready to burst through my eyeballs and yet many of my surroundings and subtle hints along the way are leading to this conclusion.  Case in point: I went to brunch with 5 girlfriends yesterday. We went to a bar in northeast called Legends. Their specialty is Bloody Mary’s and vodka sunrises however nobody ordered alcohol. (I would have but everyone else got virgin Bloody Mary’s and since I hate that drink I ordered a hot tea with lemon- who orders that in a bar?!) Last year at this time I was bar hopping in 4 inch pumps and green attire with a flashing leprechaun on my left tit and swinging down colored beers while chanting along to Irish songs. I do believe I was prancing, gleefully down Grand Avenue and it felt GOOD. I was also hiding my grief behind a mug of beer but it felt right and it worked. The sun was also shining and I felt more alive, ready to live every day of my life like it could be my last. This year on St. Patrick’s day I was at a bar not drinking, dressed in all black and discussing the proper age to potty train a child and getting excited about planning a garage sale. I love my girlfriends and I really need to sell some shit at a garage sale, but how is it that I suddenly feel like I have aged 10 years in the span of one. What’s my problem?

Am I old? Middle aged? Young at heart but wrinkled on the eyes? Looking back I remember the strange point where you’re in your mid-to late twenties and every now and then you go into a bar and don’t get carded. You know you’re over 21 and know you look over 21 but you wonder why everyone else thinks you look over 21. Then you’d meet some guys and they’d ask your age and your girlfriends would say with a cute smirk “how old do you think we are?” They’d say 22 when you’re 25 or 25 when you’re 27 and you sort of giggle inside thinking it’s a compliment (even though they’re likely humoring you) and then there’s the day where your 26 year old girlfriend asks that innocent little question of “how old do you think I am?” and the guy says “28?” And that’s the day you no longer ask that stupid question. Who the hell cares anyway? There’s nothing wrong with looking your age, that only makes sense, but when someone guesses you’re older than you are? You’d think the world was ending.

It’s true what they say; when you’re 16 you want to look 21 and when you’re 28 you want to look 22. Life moves on. Numbers go up. Breasts go down. It’s all relative, it’s all gravity. It’s life. My whole issue lately is trying to decide when the hell this aging thing seemed to hit me so hard. I try to figure out exactly what has changed and when the hell it happened. I’m happy. I love my life. I want to embrace this whole getting older thing and not let a silly number dictate how I behave but I have a difficult time with maturity and adulthood. I’m a big kid and I like to rebel and stand on my own little pedestal while peering into the box that everyone else is thinking inside of. I am a black sheep. I march to my own drum in my own band on my own turf in my own world. I can’t control the getting older thing and quite frankly, it ruffles my feathers (my bold, sparkly, in-your-face feathers).

What changes? When I look in the mirror I still see the eyes of that six year old girl in blonde ponytails with 3 pieces of pink hubba bubba gum in her mouth, trying to blow a bubble bigger than her head. I still like her. She was comfortable in her skin and effortless in her confidence. I still feel like I want to draw pictures with colored pencils and play hopscotch til the sun goes down. Maybe I just miss the fresh air of Summer.

Aging is hard because the number tells a different story than my mind. I feel like it’s a deception of reality, a lie almost. Not that 35 is a bad number or anything, but I feel like I don’t match the mold.  I’m not ready for this sinkhole I feel like I’ve fallen into.  I see eye bags that don’t belong on my face, wrinkles that don’t blend with this skin and the aging hairs that don’t belong on my head and I will never embrace that shit. I feel healthy, full of energy, and I feel like I will forever be in my 20’s no matter how many days I wake up and how many calendar pages I flip. The hands of time will always be in control and I will keep getting older and older and older but my heart will forever be young and that will never change.

So the whole “I think I’m getting old” thing? The thought is inevitable. I just need to rephrase it as a positive: “I’m blossoming with age.” “I’m ripe in my years.” “I’m growing with enthusiasm.” Screw it. I’m getting old, but nonetheless, it’s still better than the alternative and I’m very grateful to be alive even if I have to swat at my age like a mosquito.

367 days and counting

365.366.367. Does it matter when that one year anniversary marks a day that put a scratch on your heart? What’s with the whole “year” thing anyway? Who decided that precisely 365 days constitutes a year composed into 12 sections called months and increments called days made of 24 hours made of 60 minutes made of 60 seconds and so on. BOOM. It’s been a year and 2 days since a piece of my heart seemed to vaporize and slip away to the other side with my Mom’s soul leaving a hollowness that will forever reside in me. I don’t like dates, months, and numbers anymore, never cared for them actually. I wish time could just be time, days could be days and we could all just live. If we’re all supposed to live for the day and live like it’s our last then what’s with all the counting and numbers and keeping track?

It was like March crept up like some impending doom this year. Knowing this was the month that was horrendous last year, I really wanted to just forward through the first couple weeks of this month because even though I know that 365 days doesn’t mean anything and time is irrelevant when it comes to matters of the heart, the calendar still told me that on THIS PARTICULAR DAY, March 12th, 365 days ago my Mom died. I couldn’t avoid it. Just when you think you’re at peace with everything and understand the who what when where and why the hell did that have to happen, you can’t help but think back on those moments last year and wonder “how the hell did I make it through all that?” and begin to unravel everything in your head and replay images, thoughts, words like some movie you need to watch 20 times just to understand the plot. I get it. It happened. I just wish I knew then what I know now because things may have been different. Or not. We’ll never know.

What I do know is this: The more life goes on the more I miss her because that time span between the last time we had an eye to eye conversation seems to stretch longer and longer apart. I yearn to see her to tell her about all these things in my life that I’m supposed to tell to a Mom. Since that won’t happen but in my dreams, of which I have had many conversations with her in the deep of nocturnal world and I believe them to be real, I also just talk out loud to her in my car. All the time. Like a lunatic. I can feel her in the passenger seat next to me and I talk to her out loud like she’s physically present. I always feel better after doing this. I ask her questions out loud and the answers seem to come to me, floating through my mind like snowflakes and suddenly certain ones stick and I know that’s her.

I ask for signs from her incessantly, acting as if she’s some genie in a bottle and the world is this crystal ball she now has the power to manipulate and mold in my favor. I imagine her as this angelic guide who follows me around and puts a protective bubble of mystical good fortune over my life. She’s my secret miracle maker and I feel like this invisible chain of love and understanding forever links us.

It’s been a year if you want to count about it. One whole year. I don’t know what I expected to happen on the anniversary of her death. It’s not like the sky would open up and this ray of light would shoot down so I’d know she was happy or something. Oh wait, that did happen. That is the photo above. I stopped traffic to take it on the side of the highway with my hazards on but I never worry anymore about getting hit by passing cars since there’s an angel on the other side who has my back.

Anyhow, it’s not like 365 days would suddenly turn and I’d feel better.  I just got a flood of memories and images of her last days. Her lying in that bed in our living room watching her gasp for breath wondering if she felt the pain and knowing she did. Being powerless to stop it. Holding her hand that was so warm and swollen and stroking her fingernails that were positively perfect looking. Her hands always looked like she had a French manicure even though she has never had her nails done in her life. The whites of her nails were amazing. I have her pinkies. The look of their slender elongated grace and the personality of how they perk out when sipping on a cup of coffee. Every time I look at my hands I think of her and remember the beauty of her fingernails and the last time I held her hand.

I tried to focus on the normal things about her rather than the moan of her breathing and the vacant look in her eyes. I thought of the warmth of her hand in mine. I stared at her hand for what felt like hours when she was slipping away and remembered all the beautiful things those hands have done from cradling babies to planting flowers, wiping tears to peeling potatoes. Those hands must have applied over 100 band-aids, started hundreds of bubble baths, raked a million leaves, made a thousand braids of hair, and rolled out countless pounds of dough. Her delicate fingers held Danielle Steele novels, made the beds of far too many people, hung laundry with clothespins nearly every year of her life, and sewed with pride matching outfits for her daughters. Those hands never stopped. They decorated cookies, washed windows, placed the needle on record players, twirled baton, changed diapers, delivered Avon orders door to door, held countless nursery rhyme books, painted ceramics, decorated birthday cakes, tied shoelaces, wrapped scarves, tied ties, fastened necklaces, and put in her gas permeable contacts that she always said were “the only contacts she could ever wear.” That always made me giggle inside. Her hands were indicative to her soul and I felt lucky to be stroking her perfect fingers.

My Mom becomes more special to me as time goes on. The things she did for me hold a more powerful value than they used to. I delve deeper to find the meaning in things. I pick apart my childhood and sort happy memories into this imaginary scrapbook in my mind that I can page through at any moment and it exudes comfort and puts a happy bubble in my heart. She lived a beautiful life of wondrous moments. I was so lucky to have been given the gift of a delicate and sweet mother who was warm hearted, nurturing, and forgiving. Those are the things I like to hold in my mind. The good stuff is worth recapturing and meditating on and no matter how many days have passed and how many March 12ths I will see in this lifetime I can still feel her hand in mine like it was yesterday.

~The bread you'll go bananas for~

My tooth is sweet and my tongue wanted a treat so I fired up the oven and whipped up the most gooey and delicious loaf of banana bread ever to sweeten the air in my house. The texture and flavors were positively flawless and I think I FINALLY figured out how to make a mind melting bread without adding flour, milk, butter and other unhealthy crap.

I combined a couple of recipes I found online and came up with the precise combination of ingredients to make this one a winner!

Of course I’ll share it. Oh and plus it has zero processed sugar, it’s dairy free, gluten free and vegan...YES it is possible to make the perfect bread without those items :)

~The Bread you’ll go Bananas for~

Preheat the oven to 350.

Dry ingredients:
1 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
2 cups spelt flour
1 stevia packet
1/3 cup chocolate chips

Wet ingredients:
1/3 cup coconut milk (or almond milk)
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 cup organic pure maple syrup
1/4 cup organic blue agave
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
2 cups mashed banana (measure after mashing, it took 5 large for mine)

Combine the dry and wet ingredients and mix gently with a wooden spoon and then just use your hands to incorporate it all. You don’t need to over-do the mixing it will look nice and blended quickly.

Grease a loaf pan and bake for about 40 minutes. The top will be slightly brown when done.

Cool at least 20 minutes before slicing into (ok so the smell got to me and I dug in after 10 and really didn’t care if it crumbled because it was so damn good)

It’s difficult to not want to devour the entire loaf. Next time I’ll just double up on everything and make 2 loaves. One for ME and one for the boys :-)

A little tale of being stuck in the snow

I’m making progress.

The ONLY time I swore at the snow today was when my tires got wedged into a slushy pile after fully stopping at the stop sign (why oh why I didn’t just floor it through the shit--oops I mean snow). Anyway, so I maneuvered the vehicle in a creative fashion by going into the obvious forward reverse forward reverse motion whilst cranking the wheel from right to left and pushing my foot onto the gas pedal in a fit of frustration. I got a slight bit of satisfaction because I felt a momentary rush of heat flood through my body. Anger gave me a blood flow of warmth to my chest and I relished in it as my cheeks turned a flush of pink.

I could feel the presence of a vehicle waiting for the jackass (being me) at the stop sign to get the hell moving. I finally gave it one big PUSH equipped with a trail of f-bombs that may easily have been heard 3 miles down. I gave a quick glance in my rear view mirror for a 3 second “aha!” grin to the dude behind me. He seemed pleased, which is more than I can say for the poor gentlemen who was attempting to shovel his sidewalk to the left of me. I’m assuming he was in a snowsuit although he looked more like a walking snowman covered head to toe in the backwash of slush and snow that my fierce moment of gear thrusting tire spinning action had turned him into. I thought of going back to apologize but feared getting re-stuck, hell I was glad to be moving!

It’s ok though. I don’t think he was in the mood for an apology as I saw his snow covered fist raise in the air as his middle finger slightly rose above the rest.

I wasn’t offended in the least as I felt completely worthy of it.