Last Entry

Twisted branches, tangled art; beauty in the gnarled. The deep purpled-blue, sables and touches of pink. Black contains all the colors if you look.

Making crooked paths straight, twisting wrong directions into right destinies... this has been my recent pondering. Isn't it possible to have been so abandoned that you never find home? 

I suppose so, but while this world is not my home, I have found comfort and hope in a new place and experiences never imagined. 

Highlighted words from scripture, October 2009, almost ten years ago and at a time of complete abandonment and loss, my marriage, my home, direction in life, maybe even my mind for a time. 

Now I can speak to the veracity of these words then and now ...

“The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words.
I will never forget this awful time,
as I grieve over my loss.

Yet I still dare to hope
when I remember this:
The faithful love of the Lord never ends!
His mercies never cease.
Great is his faithfulness;
his mercies begin afresh each morning.

I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance;
therefore, I will hope in him!”
The Lord is good to those who depend on him,
to those who search for him."
Lamentations 3:19-25

Yes. nine, almost ten long years, and I can say, The Lord is good to me. My hope is in him.

dichossuaves#gnarled #twisted #slender#shadows #reflectionphotography#yogaclass #arcata #ramas #branches#pottery #simplicity

This the last entry in my blog of more than ten years. I hope it speaks to your heart as well as other entries describing and photographing my journey to this point. If you want to continue following me I can be found on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dichossuaves/

Mary Marsell
Love, Life and all of God's richest blessings to you.

Ferns and Fragile Things

Sagebrush is such a cool plant, so tough, so strong. I mean, who wouldn't want to say that she's a sagebrush, a badass plant? Regardless of hot furnace-like winds, she holds her own and gives some back, even making cowboys and ranchers wear chaps and thick gloves. I have tried, most of my life, to be a sagebrush, but, I'm not. Instead, I was a born little, an untimely runt.

My parents were 19 and other than following the social norms of the times, which mostly meant marriage some months before my birth, they were on the whole, unprepared, totally. Neither could handle the commitment of marriage, that included jobs, in-laws, and a myriad of skills, not to mention a baby, and they went their separate ways when I was just two months old. Decades later, I still revisit the sentiment that's followed me throughout my life; a fatherless daughter is a very vulnerable being.

My mother went into labor prematurely, when I was quite tiny, just 6lbs.4oz. The hospital staff had been ordered to wait the doctor's return In those days that's what they did. So, when my mother's contractions increased and I began to travel down the birth canal, the nurses clamped my mother's legs together to stop my early arrival, something they weren't able to do, and something that would be criminal today. I was finally born, a little girl to my father's chagrin, and weak with compromised lungs. Breathe, baby just breathe.

Breathing has ailed me all my life; asthma, bedrest, modified PE, and assorted respiratory illnesses that plague me each winter with the common cold. Sometimes I just forget to breathe in general, like I'm not really living , and so I have to remind myself. Breathe, baby, breathe.

So, very clearly, I'm definitely not a sagebrush, the rugged stuff of fighting lore. It's taken me almost fifty years to accept it.

No, I'm wonderfully something else, altogether. It's taken me all my life to understand, accept and love something different about myself, and it's this: I'm a fern! A fern, that in warm light and in forest mist delicately unfolds its lovely fronds towards the sun and sky. Ferns are unique with two separate living structures, the sporophyte and the gametophyte – both free living. When I draw, I love to draw ferns. I love ferns' uniqueness. When I visit the nursery, my favourite area is the ferns, so lush, so green, an ancient throwback to the primordial. Yes, I'm frail, a quiet observer, fragile, but I'm stable. I've been around a fossil-long time. I'm a tenacious survivor. I embrace that I'm a fern.

Loyalty

Some people aren't loyal to you, they are loyal to their need of you. Once their need changes, so does their loyalty.

Me Too

In case you are wondering why "me too"
If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote "Me too" as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.
#metoo
Age 12 on a Navajo reservation. Home and my step-father for years. Teen, my older boyfriend, date rape. College student, a flat mate in a new city. Objectification, husband. Too many inappropriate and unwanted touches to mention. Enough is enough!
It hugely impacted my life; immobilized me and fed my fears when I was younger and distorted my trust when I was older. I'm so thankful for my present relationship and the strength gathered personally to denounce this evil with my sisters globally.
"Keep saying it, because we are fighting not one guy here, but a system that can only be challenged by collective rage, not individual shame."
#metoo #abuseofpower #powerover #harveyweinstein #sexualharassment#widespread

About Connection

"What curriculum did you use?" a new friend asked me when she discovered that we both homeschooled our children for well over a decade. We both had used the same integrated studies based on our love of literature. There was an immediate sense of commonality that got me thinking about connection and it's meaning at a deeper level.
Life can be many things to many people. There's commonality, what we share, and then there's a reaching out and making contact, and that's connection. A seedling reaches upward towards a bright sunlit sky and finds the nourishment to grow and flourish. A foal reaches up to its mother for warm life-sustaining milk. A single cell attaches and holds onto nutrient-rich lining to multiply into a complexity that still baffles scientists.
There's a bridging of chasms where otherwise there'd be nothingness. Death is bridged by life. I love life and therefore the giver of life. I love when a limp little creature bursts forth helpless from the womb and finally gains its strength, or a wet butterfly emerges from is cocoon and actually has the chance to dry its wings to fly. And, I love when Christ, the only figure to do so in all of religiondom, reaches out, spans the expanse of eternity to make peace between a just God and a world of hopelessly separated individuals. I love that there's a God, who's not just about commonality, but of connection. Of reaching out. Of life.

#connection #life #commonality #death #reachingout #homeschooling #sonlight #curriculum #eternity #peace #spanningthegap #christ #bilbao #religions

One Another

I prefer to say that no one is better than anyone else. But, if I were to say that I am better than you or you are better than I it would be in our regard and how we deal with humanity. How we treat one another would be the deciding factor. -

Woke to this thought 5am this morning.

Día de la Madre

Feliz Día de la Madre! Spanish Mother's Day comes a week earlier than in the States. It always leaves me blue, as if one Mother's Day weren't bad enough, I have two. But, the sun came through the clouds, and with its reappearance I noticed seedlings on the balcony pushing through the soil, sparrows visiting on the rail, swallows flitting and a festive feeling by all who passed below on the street. Before I could send a couple notes to loved ones, the doorbell rang and a winsome precious young woman held multiple gifts and letter of love for me. I can see her hand holding up my package. It seems she's whole-heartedly adopted me and I've undeniably become her God-mother; spoiled in her adoration. Love isn't always where you're looking. And if you're not careful you might miss the beauty right before your eyes. This was a beautiful day. 

#diadelamadre #madrina #corazon #love#littleboxes #unexpected #sunshine #mayo

I Confess

To the degree that we base our hope in something or someone other than the Lord, to that degree the hope of the gospel will not comfort and satisfy us.
In John 6, Jesus confronts the crowds who have been following him with that truth. He says, in summary, "You are pursuing me out of a selfish motive, in the hopes that I will meet your physical needs. You're excited about me, but for the wrong reasons."
Let's be honest with ourselves. We too sometimes follow the King for the wrong reasons. Yes, we're excited about salvation and redemption, but we're equally as excited to experience physical blessings and a comfortable life, straight from the hand of God.
- Paul Tripp

At the University I'm teaching a TEFL Course and the unit this month is on Productive versus Receptive Language.
What does this have to do with your words? Remember, if "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks," then what we say to ourselves, to others, and to God will reveal what we truly desire from the Lord.
If you were to listen to an audio recording of what you have said this past week or month or year, what desires would you discover? What theology would be revealed about how you understand and interpret God?

And She Writes

One Sister's Midnight Rant Worth Listening to:

Just turned off the replay of tonight’s Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous … no, I mean 60 minutes. I watched, admittedly transfixed, as our new con artist postured on his tacky and gauche, gilded setté, conning another one of the cons of our major networks.

Now, I’m a Celt. And that means I tell stories. I holler. I drink too much. I think too much. I talk to much. I get excited. I interrupt. I love and I heal and give with a fierceness and a loyalty that only my dog can surpass. It also means I will entertain a lot of discourse and political bantering and sectarian infighting on facebook. I will always be up for a good debate on just about any issue.

But, here is my shot across the bow.
On the subject of a filthy wall? NOPE! Come at me with anything to do with walls and that windy, militant, ig’nunt trash about roundups and deportations of millions of people and, discussion over. I will shut you down. Walls and mass deportations are pura NAZI. That’s right, I’m calling anyone calling for a wall or mass deportations a NAZI. If you count yourself among those who love me, those who love America, and your mind is on a wall or a roundup of millions of people at gunpoint, or the registration of certain members of certain faiths, you must have forgotten not only your history, but that I’m a disabled woman. We were the first victims of the Third Reich. I WILL not engage in a discourse that asks me to defend my right to exist. FFS, no human being is illegal!

Prey like a wolf or turn silently the other way –not sure which is more morally depraved at this point-- on the most vulnerable among us, and you’re culpable. Besides, in case you didn't know, children and poor people who walk your babies and change your elders' depends and pick and cook your food, and clean your houses and mow your lawns and study for medical school and law school and scientific and engineering breakthroughs that might cure your ass one day, and soldiers from these countless wars, are detained throughout this country in dog cages already! So, liberals gush away about President Obama, Deporter in Chief, and conservatives, gush away about the new bloke's immigration vision. History will not be kind to either of them. Or any of you traitors onboard with the policies of the Blackshirts and Brownshirts.

On fear: (don’t dismiss me as too privileged and
insulated from the consequences
of this election to meaningfully comment on fear
I’ve refrained up until now because, frankly, White
people have dominated the mic throughout this election cycle, and they’ve been fear-baiting the most. So, it felt courteous and
righteous to let others go first. And hopefully the first
thing people did as the results came in was comfort the ones
in their own midst before hitting social media.)

One thing I learned
when I was sick and
in the uncertain torrents
of a new cancer diagnosis, is
that fear, not cancer, is the enemy.
Lemme say that again ….
FEAR, not Trump, not even death,
FEAR is the enemy.
Fear has been the dominant currency of this election cycle.
We've all been terrorized by this broken system, some more than others. So, yeah, fear is legitimate at a time like this.
But ask anyone in remission or coming back from some other battlefield.
Prolonged anxiety, that goes
unaided and unanswered will bring everyone of us
to our knees faster than any tumor
or draconian policy, or blackboots, or goons
from the halls of power.

Had I rolled over and let myself
be paralyzed by fear and the shock of that diagnosis,
I would be dead. Let’s try earnestly to compartmentalize our fear
to short stints per day, and allocate the lion’s share
of our time and mental and emotional energy to taking
care of each other, starting with the most vulnerable, first.
I’m reaching out. I’m giving and receiving consolation.

Let’s get to gettin'. Organize. Resist. Rebuild this political apparatus and balance the power by the 2018 midterms.
We obviously have work to do!
Because, ain’t nobody comin’ to save us. WE are the heros and heroines in our own stories. Isn’t that the way it’s always been?
Please understand that only from my cold, dead
hands will they be dragging Rick or half my family
and friends and colleagues off.
I’m with you. For you. And I got you.
And, this is a big one…
Please, please, PLEASE don’t let it be
lost on us what the office of the
presidency, like any employment contract,
implies for the new guy:
We’re his boss.
He’s our apprentice.
Time to mentor the new help.
G'nite.
-Donna Davies

One of the young artists at Juvie.
(Clay) "The Wall"

Hallelujah

I've heard about this baby boy
Who's come to earth to bring us joy
And I just want to sing this song to you
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
With every breath I'm singing Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

A couple came to Bethlehem
Expecting child, they searched the inn
To find a place for You were coming soon
There was no room for them to stay
So in a manger filled with hay
God's only Son was born, oh Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

The shepherds left their flocks by night
To see this baby wrapped in light
A host of angels led them all to You
It was just as the angels said
You'll find Him in a manger bed
Immanuel and Savior, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

A star shown bright up in the east
To Bethlehem, the wisemen three
Came many miles and journeyed long for You
And to the place at which You were
Their frankincense and gold and myrrh
They gave to You and cried out Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I know You came to rescue me
This baby boy would grow to be
A man and one day die for me and you
My sins would drive the nails in You
That rugged cross was my cross, too
Still every breath You drew was Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

CLOVERTON LYRICS
"A Hallelujah Christmas"
(originally by Leonard Cohen)

El Silencio

Distance doesn't separate people . . .
Silence does.

No es la distancia que separa a las personas. . . 
sino el silencio.
Jeff Hood

Me

I am not the soul that spits in pain or danger's face.
I'm the trembling fast heart beat of a small bird, that slips through your fingers in flight for fear of an unbearable fate.
It's not death that frightens, but disregard and disdainful abandonment.

How I admire the swarthy tough soul that challenges a fight.
But, it's only curious observation, since I can't be anything but me.

Failure and What You Can Live With

Sometimes being “tested by adversity” means ostracism, rejection of others you care about, often deeply, who don’t understand or agree with the decisions you’ve made in your greatest time of doubt and instability. It might be for them that you didn’t handle your greatest challenges and problems with enough wisdom, with a backbone of steel, weren’t a badass, or simply you didn’t do things the way they think you should have. Instead, you made the choices you did simply because you did, and mostly because you were you. Honestly, you did the best you could, with what you knew and had available to you. Maybe looking back with hindsight, a proverbial situation of imagining different scenarios for your life, you would change things. The reality, however, is you've failed, maybe not just at some point, maybe at many levels. And for some people in your life, that failure isn’t ok. Relationships are broken and/or dwindle, lost in the aftermath of expectations and disappointments. This being the case, I wonder if you can wake up every morning with a smile on your face? Can you learn to face each new day with both the you today and the you from yesterday? Are you content being you? And can you live independently of the good and bad opinion, the rejection of others, even those who mean the most to you?

Silencio y Las Redes

"Si hubiera un poco más de silencio, si nos calláramos... tal vez podríamos entender algo."
- Federico Fellini

Por favor, no te ofendas si no pongo “me gusta” ni comparto tu página o entrada ni acepto promover momentos de solidaridad, manifestaciones y huelgas. Porque, por muy noble que sea la causa, y también habiendo predicado mis propias causas preferidas muchas veces, sigo creyendo que es preferible hablar menos y escuchar más. Me pregunto, si la gente se ocupara menos de cuestiones polémicas y de presiones de lobbys en las redes sociales ¿no disfrutaríamos de la vida uno con el otro mucho mejor? En un mundo que se está volviendo cada vez más polarizado, las redes sociales están causando grietas feas entre amigos de toda la vida e incluso entre potenciales nuevos amigos. Por lo tanto, como un barco con su brújula marcando el norte, elijo atender y compartir las entradas y acciones que:
1) inspiran espiritual y socialmente
2) promueven las artes y las ciencias y
3) apoyan y reconocen mi comunidad de amigos y familia aquí en facebook.
Voy a intentar no desviarme demasiado ni hacia el este ni hacia el oeste y prometo ser fiel a compartir solamente temas de amistad, caras, fotos, arte y, sobre todo, amor.
"Pongan su empeño en vivir pacíficamente, y ocupándose cada uno de lo suyo".
- Tesalonicenses 4:11

Las Redes (Sociales) - Social Networks

Silence and Social Networks
“If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet...maybe we could understand something.”
― Federico Fellini

Please don't be offended if I don't like and share your page or post or accept to promote moments of solidarity, marches and strikes. Because, as noble as the cause is, and having been on my own soapboxes numerous times, I still believe in saying less and listening more. I wonder if more people minded their own political, religious, or other special interestbusiness on social media we wouldn't enjoy life with one another a lot more. In a world that is becoming more and more polarized, social media is causing ugly rifts between long-time friends and even possible new ones. So, like a ship with its compass marked north, I am choosing to steer straight for posts and shares that:
1) inspire spiritually and socially
2) promote the arts and sciences and
3) support and recognize my community of family and friends here on facebook.
I'll try not to digress east or west too much and promise to stay true to the goal of sharing only friendship, faces, photos, art and most of all, love.
"Aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs..."
– Thessalonians 4:11

Menopause

Menopause came knocking again.
I told her I was busy.
She promised not to stay,
but she took a chair and plopped her plump rump right down.
So, I let her know. I couldn’t entertain her. I had no time today.
I cleared the table, swept the floor, even exercised, planking my plank.
She insisted, however, said she’d brought me something,
and she handed me stomach and headache as I showered and readied for the day.
In light-headed confusion, I walked and shopped with her. Had there been any choice?
We found groceries and teacher supplies, but pain now throbbed my temples, behind my eyes, flashed feverish heat through my body. On repeat, this gift from her, over and over again.
Finally, the rain subsided and in that drizzle I told her, “you stay here now, I know the way,"
Instead she followed me back home. Has she set up residence?
"Celebrate menopause," I've heard some say.
But, she’s an unwanted guest at my house these days.

What will surely happen one of these days to me if Menopause doesn't take a hike.

The Birthday Trip and Turquoise Scarf

Dark teal is the color of the long scarf Grandma Nome crocheted me the same week she died. It was the last testimony of her deep love for me. She picked my favourite blue, and she made it especially big and long for the birthday trip to New Hampshire where we traveled to see autumn's colours on the East Coast.
I'd dreamed of this moment, pictures cut from magazines and a million images in my mind of how it would be. I was, in fact, dazzled by New England’s beauty; covered bridges, the simple white and Quaker-style bed and breakfast we stayed in, contrasted against mountains ablaze with reds, oranges and yellows dipped sky-side with white. Nonetheless, an unexpected snowfall thwarted my fall fantasies of walking through dry leaves, breathing the autumn air and drawing the golden colours into my nature notebook.
The spontaneous plan to fly out during a somber 911 national pause had been my then husband’s plan, who insisted that we needed to get away. Getting away was his typical answer to the needs of my severely wounded heart. As much as the Man in the Mountain was missing his nose, our bed's crisp white-sheets were just as lacking and as cold. The distance of too many unreconciled hurts. What that charming colonial bedroom needed was a kind heart and gentle hand. Love after all, begins in the kitchen, in the den with the children, in the garden. It happens every season of the year. It flirts every day to include each moment. It grows patiently and warms like sunshine, a year-after-year long journey, a growing and maturing. It's not an impatient, quick-fix trip. So, I guess it's not surprising. I don’t remember much about the touches exchanged there.

What I do remember was my loneliness and then suddenly, the unexpected snowfall that spoiled all nature loving plans to hike, to photograph and draw autumn in all its glory. And you know, that cold snowed on more than those mountains. It foreshadowed something else; it shrouded more than the tree covered hills and darkened more than the New Hampshire sky.

We returned home to grandma dying. She got frightened in our absence, used to living alongside us and when she panicked we not there. Just a couple of days away from home. We thought all would be well, but her call to emergency brought the paramedics who then delivered her into inept hospital hands, all unaware of her fragile state. Without her medical history she was unprotected from their unskilled probing. It proved mortal.
So, I sat with her alone, in disbelief, those hours of hospital white, my hands grasping hers.
I’d heard and read about people taking their last breath. And it’s true. That midnight hour I listened to Grandma'a laboured breathing; in, then out, so slowly that I had to strain to hear her, and then she breathed one more breath, then a last, then none. A still surprise. A. Final. Silence.
How could it be? “Grandma, breathe. Don’t go.” But she was gone, just like that, only minutes past twelve o'clock. My fortieth birthday, turquoise scarf over my lap, was her going home day.

Written 1.17.15

My Mother's Day Gift This Year - When It Can't be Mimosas and Brunch

Powerscourt, County Wicklow, Ireland

You all know, I have four wonderful children. You can't know me without knowing that. They are the best of the best, my favourite people in the world. And, I have one wonderful, intelligent, eccentrically fabulous and artistic mom, who is also the best in the world.

And, if you know me, my values and heart, you know, too, that I tried, with everything that was in me to make a home that we could share as a family to last throughout the years.  That refuge, however, a no-matter-what-else-in-life-happens place, a home to come back to, and where to grow old together, didn't last.
Instead, we're dispersed; we're all across the country and globe.

Logically, then, Mother's Day looks a lot different than how I imagined it some years ago.
It certainly isn't Sunday brunch. No bouquet of roses on a lace tablecloth. No going out for the day together. No, not one single mimosa coming my direction.

My Mother's Day Gift, instead, is going to be expensive, really expensive, more than ten truckloads of flowers, more than fifty brunch experiences at our favourite restaurants, more than a whole aisle of Mother's Day cards. More than we can afford, really.
Still, there are gifts that you don't look at their price-tag.

"Somebody, how about just more time — and internal permission — to surprise with more spontaneous “Mommy-Holidays!” in the middle of the week and go for ice cream and the park and the beach and the woods... just more time slow down, smile into them, simply enjoy being... "

Yes, I'm giving myself that permission.

"What you really want, desperately, wildly, in spite of everything — is for them to remember the good…. to remember enough of the times you whispered, “I Love You” … to know how many times you broke your heart and how how hard you really tried."
Have you ever read 1000 Gifts?

It's a gift to myself,
from me to them, my kids and mom,
It's a gift that I give, that we give, I with Enrique, my beloved accomplice, companion, and sweet husband.
Flights. Four of them, maybe five. To travel, travel here to us.
Four flights to Spain, to come and hang, to cook together, surf the internet side-by-side, take picnics, pictures and bike rides, and do all the things together that the rest of the year won't permit.
And we can't wait!

Mark, HS graduate, arrives the beginning of June.
Sara leaves her vanwelling to arrive in July. Both will be gone by August, but we will have soaked up as much love and hugs and essence of one another, intensely.
Mom comes here to celebrate her September birthday. We're making it happen, wheelchairs are magical, wonderful things.
Then Risa, candy-cane girl, comes in December.
And, finally, my Army man, Ryan, will join us if military miracles happen.

We will remind each other.  every day.  how much we love and support the other.
We'll champion one another while we're together. Then we'll promise to do the same thing all theyear  long in-between-our-visits times that are now part of our family's fabric.

A Journey of Firsts

Love that transforms forever is born.

My real home - Mom, look what I found *grins*
My treasures and my hopes are all beyond the blue
Where many many friends and kindred have gone on before
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore

Over in Glory land, there is no dying there
The saints are shouting victory and singing everywhere
I hear the voice of them that I have heard before
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore

Oh, lord, you know I have no friend like you
If heaven's not my home, oh, lord, what would I do
Angels beckon me to heaven's open door
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore

Heaven's expecting me, that's one thing I know
I fixed it up with Jesus a long time ago
He will take me through though I am weak and poor
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore

Oh, I have a loving mother over in Glory land
I don't expect to stop until I shake her hand
She's gone on before, just waiting at heaven's door
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore

Oh, lord, you know I have no friend like you
If heaven's not my home, oh, lord, what would I do
Angels beckon me to heaven's open door
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore

Downpour

Sudden release of thick clouds, heavy emotion
Tensions thunder across wild sky
Grief thick with blinding light.

Convulsive drops hit rooftop tiles,
Pound glass windows
Stream down my face,
Hit my heart, a physical ache.

Mother arms empty, a simple text,
Mint Julep, how to,  a continent away
I feel you, intense, just beyond my fingertips.

You're there. No, you're not.
Mirage in wet comforter, soaked by
Open window and broken-heart tears.

Quickly clouds lighten, black to grey to white
Move off in the distance, again a spread of blue breath.

Inhale, fresh after storm breezes whisper,
It's alright.

Las cosas no son como empiezan, son como terminan. 
Things aren't how they begin, but rather how they end. - Spanish saying
And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love him and are clled according to His purpose for them. -Romans 8:28

Las Flores en Tu Balcón

Astorganos are so very critical. Critical of themselves and critical of others. I'm convinced it's in their DNA. You can usually tell that you're doing something well, for example, if you don't hear something negative being said.  It's so true it's laughable, like a joke I heard last night at a benefit.

So, it was quite normal that I didn't immediately think lovely thoughts nor respond with a "thank you" when I heard a two elderly Spanish women assessing our place.  Or maybe they were speaking of the one for sale next door (any buyers?) I heard something about the balconies, perhaps our balconies, and they were saying "look at that, and look there, at those," and so on...

Camouflaged in my pink floral dress, I quietly kept dead-heading the geraniums, pinks, reds and whites. It's our garden, all that can fit and grow on four very small, approximately 5 by 2 foot wide and long balconies, looking for worms, noting a few white flies, and making my own critical assessment when they looked up, and we three knew we were unable to avoid a greeting of some sorts. So, I gave a little wave with my hand. The one resumed her commentary, "We are looking at your flowers. They are so noticeable, so nice."

Well, that made me stop and straighten up. "We really need to paint the facade," I answered, talking as natively as posible, starting up a humble and recognizable banter.

When the tiles and grout were being repaired in spring.

It was over in seconds, a short, but such pleasant exchange. When they said good-bye and I closed the balcony doors, I had to stop and smile at their admiration.
It feels so good. Yes, it does.  To do something well, and to hear it said. Maybe this is even more true in a foreign country. Makes you think.

Antique shop window/Escaparate en una tienda de antigüedades en Grants Pass, Oregon

When the Mantis Flew Away

Ryan rescued a green praying mantis and transported it to the kitchen floor balcony geraniums where it lived many days, but then disappeared mysteriously the morning after Ryan boarded the bus to catch his Madrid/Dallas/Sacramento flight back to California life.

Photo courtesy of Naturalist Enrique

Sombra has been out of sorts every since she noticed something was happening with Ryan's suitcase. It wasn't serving as a roof to her kennel anymore, but was down and being packed. Yes, she knows the signs for packing, doesn't like them, nor her family leaving. I agree, we are the same. We didn't like that Ryan, like the mantis, just disappeared.

So she began whining, commenced her nervous habit of finding shoes, clothes, anything really, of the family to stash away in her crate, and finally she resorted to barking at odd noises over the balconies, which she never does. We finally went out for a 3am walk that first night, which neither of us does either, I can assure you, and still her restlessness continued.
Now, a week today has gone by and she still looks up and down the stairs for a big boy, who startled her at first with his large playful gestures and exuberance, but finally won her over. From greyhound nose to tail. All the way. Of course he did.

Ryan teaches Sombra to take her first selfie.

We, too, had initial adjustments; had hard things to say and hear, but just as quickly we settled in. A comfortable routine; one day after another, full of love, great times; hugs as we passed each other, games during sobremesa*, surfing the internet side by side, cooking, shopping, and just doing what we do, but doing together, which, of course, makes all the difference in the world. What joy.

So Sombra, I'm looking for him, too. Be brave I told him when he was leaving and he didn't want to go.  Be brave, Sombra. I'm repeating that line to myself, too, like a meditative mantra, a prayer, a plea with my heart.