What i'd say to the alcoholic parent

You were born full of potential. This is where you are now, as you are sitting here. You may hate what you've become, and certainly many events have contributed to this result right here. But you're not dead yet. You most certainly will die, but the potential contained in your baby-body is still within you.

You've had dreams, and then you've been discouraged. For some reason, you didn't become obsessed with the dream strongly enough as to possess you to work diligently forever until you achieved it. You became deflated and forgot about your dream. The precise timing which would have activated those past dreams may be past and gone now. (Let go, life contains suffering :) HOEWVER! You can still re-learn the capacity to dream. However many years you have left, you can still achieve something.  You had stopped dreaming because "what's the point?" But here it is: The point is that you're going to die, and you're going to have lived... And what you leave behind in the world is still completely up to you. Buck up!!! Your legacy is at stake. How you are remembered is at stake, and much bigger than that, the pleasant moments will have been missed if you don't buck up.  There is still time for growth. You can still learn how to reach out your hand and touch the hand or the shoulder of another. You can still inspire if you do buck up. And if you don't, the legacy you leave behind will be clouded iwth negativity. You would miss the laughter you could laugh, the wisdom you could share, the stories you could tell, the service you could give back for all the opportunity you've been given but have been too imperfect to appreciate.

Build some courage within yourself. Convince yourself of your own self-worth. Think of a good life and what that would look like for you, and start making baby steps towards it and never fucking give up. Please!

Easter and Spring

In the Fall i wrote about thanksgiving, halloween, and christmas. I wondered if that would be all the holidays my son and i would begin celebrating in our own ways, but today i had a revelation. Easter has come and gone. I saw easter paraphernalia in CVS and some neighbors had brown rabbits on by their entrance. Some younger folks were going to california for the 'easter bowl,' my favorite tennis tournament in my teens.



I was feeling cold and felt i needed to thaw out, so my son got in the carriage and i went for a walk/run to the playground. I passed the evangelical or episcopal or presbyterian church that is on my road and we stopped at the playground there. After frollicking to our hearts delight, my son wanted to go into the church. There's a playgroup we attend there so he thought maybe there'd be a room full of children. It was empty, but we walked deeper into the church and into the presbyterian section of the church. There's a synagogue too, which recently celebrated Passover (which is also relevant to this idea i'm working out right here.)



I opened the heavy wooden doors and was greeted by beautiful stained glass windows and a huge organ in the front. There was a cross, but nothing too horrific was depicted. I walked to the front automatically becoming a little reverent. I noticed a writing on the wall that said "I am resurrection, I am life. Those who believe in [ressurection and life] shall live, even if they die." or something along those lines.


The pastor of the church takes jesus christ literally in everything he says, rather than poetically which i think is a misunderstanding of astronomical consequences. When i asked pastor david for his explanation of jesus saying "i am the son of god" and saying "we are all children of god" and the pastor said "Yes, we are all children of god, but jesus is MORE special." Right.

Well "I am resurrection, I am life," that, to me, conveys SPRING!!! The winter is over, the death is resurrected. And in my experience, I have noticed that even that which decays will give birth to growth once more. Here's a video of decaying vegetables and the parallel sprouting of a potato to illustrate my point. It is only logical that we could consider our own death as a gift to the earth from which we will become compost. These days we don't embrace death so much. We embalm corpses and put them in tank-coffins and hope the earth won't touch us. That'll change eventually, but its worth mentioning it, in case you haven't thought of it. It reminds me of the woman creating a mushroom burial suit filled with spores of fungi that will most effectively detoxify her body and eat her up. Besides incineration, there aren't that many environmental options for properly disposing of our bodies. My grandmothers corpse comes pretty close. Her ashes were put into a cement coral reef and sunk off the coast of Florida and fishes will begin to live in it. People are thinking of these things. I like the mushroom suit :) and no coffin.

But EASTER! Yes, springtime is wonderful. but how shall i celebrate it!? Passover is also a celebration of spring. Wikipedia says that to ensure that passover did not happen before spring, they would wait until the barley ripened as a gauge. For a few centuries it has been a mathematically fixed date, however, so even if the barley is not ripe, jews get together and eat unleavened bread. This tidbit of information will inspire me to plant barley in the fall and watch it ripen in the spring.

But what will i do for a spring celebration? I love the festival of colors originating in India where powdered colors are thrown at each other and into the air. That is messy though. I definitely want to do it someday. THey're even doin it in UTAH!

In japan and dc they have a cherry blossom festival. I do like that, actually. That resonates well with me.
Not because its so japanese, but because when you gather the fallen petals in your hand and throw them up in the air, they flutter like confetti all around you and it feels so celebratory. Maybe i can take that idea and make it bigger, like bring bucket loads of fallen petals and have a grand parade honoring the flowers of spring or something. Hmmm...



But the nice thing about rituals is that it marks the year.

I guess so do pictures, and i definitely take much more pictures in the spring and summer.

Lent. I have always liked the concept of Ramadan, fasting, and lent. As a ritual, it is a very good one! Before the spring officially arrives, just as the days begin getting longer, we hold off on indulging in all the excess and get down to the basics. Praying, almsgiving, fasting, I like all of that and then spring (easter) is the big reward after 40 days of delaying gratification. Recently i realized the wonders of delaying gratification, and really would appreciate the practice of expanding my capacity to delay gratification.

Lent rocks! Okay. Next year i shall remember to do this as the days lengthen :) Its too late now! Spring already sprung.

;)