My friend Age

Have you ever felt that as you get older time seems to fly faster? Do you remember how long it seemed to take for the holidays to arrive? I remember how Halloween felt a year away in January and how Christmas seemed to take forever to arrive. Even when I was a teenager we went through the school year as if we had been sentenced to a million years in purgatory with no sign of summer vacation in sight. How things change and how you become more understanding of how your parents must have seen things.

Now that I will be 46 in a couple of weeks how my perspective has changed.  How I have changed. I am a realist, always have been. There are no delusions here. The changes are clear and I don’t deceive anyone about them, least of all myself. The first of these changes is how time seems to fly. We have not celebrated Halloween when here comes Christmas bypassing thanksgiving. There’s no time to so much as enjoy one before another pops up. It’s a rat race, scavenger hunt and tag you’re it game all in one. As an adult you only get to prepare but never really enjoy the celebrations you held so dear and with such anticipation as a child. I miss that. For me the physical changes are enough to deal with. The exhaustion that comes out of nowhere, those little things you forget though you just heard it a minute ago and the ever so deep plunge your patience takes with people who make no sense. You know what I mean? That last one is a doosie for me. I have never had much patience to begin with. Especially for ignorance or stupidity from any source. The only people who get a pass are kids and that depends on the age. Sometimes. Most times the child is a product of the parent but that is another subject for another time.

Now as far as emotions go I find that the most difficult. Aging is an angry bitch with a hacksaw. She hacks at your face and body without mercy until only the shadow of who you were remains. The worst part of that is your brain remembers. It remembers youth. The freshness of your young face before the sun spots, the young hands before the lines set in. It remembers and teases you and entices you. It even tries to convince you that you have not aged and can continue to do that which you did twenty or even thirty years ago. Reality then hits you when you cant lift that leg as high or run that fast if you can run at all without gasping that is. Age my friend is a clown with bad makeup and no friends. Still we love her. I do because as I age I learn. With all it’s pains I see my children grow and flourish and I am part of that. That makes me welcome age as my best friend because she’s been with me 45 years and still I am here. Dialysis will come and go and my transplant will come when it comes. I will continue to hold her hand as long as I can. My greatest wish is to hold her tight and do it with grace, dignity and most of all with my mind fully intact.

Are you born a Poet?

This is a question that I have always asked myself throughout all of my years of writing. Out of all of these years this is the first time I have actually sat myself down to write about it. I have been writing since I was 13 years old. That would be about 30 years now since I first put pen to paper. I fell in love with the written word at the library, the school library to be exact because back then though I knew book stores existed I had never been to one. Buying books was not on the top of the list when your single mom is working hard just to keep food on the table.

The library was my haven. Everything I could digest I read. My first favorite was Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare. I must have read it at least three times. I didn’t understand it the first time but I remember the exact moment I did understand it and that I was hooked! After that first understanding books became everything to me. I traveled with and through them everywhere. I read fiction, non fiction, poetry, art, traveling magazines, everything that peaked my interest.

Still, although I wrote, I did not begin to write poetry until I was 17 years old. I don’t remember exactly how I began to write poetry or what inspired me. I took college writing courses but those were vested mostly in english literature which was my major.

I just loved writing. It became my passion along with reading but I was not attracted to short stories or to being a novelist my work always seemed to take poetic form from the beginning. Even my thought process came in spurts and one liners. It has always been difficult for me to write something that is not poetry but it doesn’t stop me from trying. I am a writer after all.

That is why I have always questioned if poetry is learned or if you are born a poet?

I was born a poet although I know that reading opened me up in many ways. My vocabulary and understanding have grown immensely through my love of reading and many of my teachers and professors enhanced and nourished that love but i believe that I was already a poet. I needed only to discover it within myself and develop it. In my opinion you are born who you are going to be, talents intact. Just as musicians are born with an ear for music and painters with an eye for art, I was born with the mind and hands for words.

So, I guess I answered my own question, but what do you think?

A Series of Prompts….. What are your religious beliefs? Have they changed or have they always stayed the same.

As I sit here watching this series on the bible I contemplate on what I honestly believe when it comes to religion. There are many things I believe in but before I begin I will tell you this, I do believe in God and I believe in Jesus and the fact that he was here to do right by mankind.
I believe that if you hold on to him he will guide you if your heart is true. I believe in his commandments. I have faith.

Now that we all know what I do believe in, there are also quite a few things which I don’t believe in at all and I fully understand that my opinions might stick in some people’s craw but the truth is that for me, that is irrelevant, My opinions will not change.

Yes, I believe in God’s commandments but only in his commandments. I believe that if you follow said commandments the life you live will be a great example to your fellow-man. If you were to treat your neighbor as you would yourself every other commandment should be quite easy to follow simply by not causing pain to others that you’d not suffer yourself.

I don’t follow religion. I follow God. I was raised to make up my own mind. My mother never raised us to follow dogma or to blindly follow priests or mans teachings and my opinion is that the bible is filled with mans words mixed in with Gods desire for his people.

If you want God in your life, invite him in. He is listening.
You don’t have to pay a priest to pour water over your child that he may have Gods blessing. Simply ask God to bless your child, your home, your life.

Ask God. Go to him, isn’t that what he told you to do?
He told you if you need anything come to me, through my son you can find me. Not through saints, through Jesus. I’m just saying.

My religious beliefs have never changed because they were never something I inherited from anyone. I read the bible on my own and when I was 15 I got on my knees and asked God to be in my life. I invited him and Jesus in. It was that simple. And he came. I felt the second of his arrival because my heart was asking and it was true.

It does not mean that I have not suffered since then or gone through trials. It means I have had the strength to surpass them.
God knows my face. He has given me a hand and because of him I am still here.
For this I am eternally blessed and grateful.

No matter what I may believe about anything else I do know this, God is within me and everyone else who honestly asks him into their life. He is not in wood and stone, he is in your heart and in your actions and you and I are his children.
Can I get an Amen!

Stay Blessed…..

Where did the Time Go?

This year I will be 43. I don’t know where the time has gone because I still feel fifteen in my head. I know my mind is different. I know that i have three kids of my own. I have learned and experienced much through the years but it still baffles me that I am almost 43 years old. Do you remember your mom telling you she was forty three and almost falling off of your chair at how ancient that sounded?!
Can’t you still remember when you were in jr. High and your friends? How nothing and everything was the end of your universe. I do. I remember the first day of school and how embarrassed I was when I realized my girlfriends had matured during the summer and I was still as flat as always. I remember how I lost my best friend to another girl and my other best friend kissed the boy I loved most in the world. I remember the growing pains, the tears and the invincibility of being young. How I’d like to return if only for one day. What would I do?
I would kiss that boy that’s what I would do! I would do everything I was too shy to do and do it loud because I would remember that everything Is quite impermanent. I would express what I felt irregardless of shyness.
Then again I would probably do exactly what I did then, because when your a child in a child’s body nothing is really about you. It’s all about making your friends happy, hoping they will like you and surviving just one more day. So as I did then I would probably cry through the pain, laugh through the joy and grow through the next day to come and when I got to 43 I would still wonder, where did the time go.

No Rescue….. Day 19 NPWM

I saw you falling
Once
I ran around
trying to construct safety nets
but my hands were too small
And the nets were not strong enough
you fell and your pieces littered the floor
you were not you anymore
Shards of you cut my hands
Made a mockery of any chance I had to save you
left at the door of choices
I would not shatter under you
instead I flew

Childhood…. Day 12 NPWM

 

It SMELLS like childhood to me

fresh pork roasting

pizza baking

pinesol floors

baby powder

wet concrete

 

It SOUNDS  like childhood to me

loud music

parents laughing

loud sirens

people yelling

your brother telling

 

It FEELS  like childhood to me

warm summer breezes 

aunties kisses

sibling fights

misbehaving pinches

jumping rope in the park

 

It TASTES  like childhood to me

now & laters

rice and beans

Mr. frosty

plantanos  and chicharon 

lemonheads

 

It LOOKS like childhood to me

grandmas walking

supermarket overflowing

kids running

fire hydrant pouring

cars cruising

 

There’s NOTHING like childhood

TO ME