always 
each day
every moment
a reason to give thanks
could be a memory or a moment
could be a dream or a whole heap of hope
regardless 
always a reason 
to give
thanks
xo

May is coming, May is here. She wears flowers in her hair, flowers everywhere. She throws her cares to the wind and waits for them to come back as dreams. They tangle in her hair. She tastes salt. With her arms thrown open she knows the word Joy. 

May brought me a first born son~a man I adore beyond measure. A man who holds the history of love in his veins. His eyes the color of the sky without a cloud in sight. He is goodness.

May is a celebration, an invitation, a way to say hello to what will be. A reminder to never wake up with the word sorry in your heart. Forgiveness is medicine rooted in wisdom. It makes things flower. 

xo

The Ides of March 

came and went 

yesterday. 

Below 

a few reminders

things 

could have
gone bad. 

They didn't.

6. A Deadly Blizzard on the Great Plains, 1941
A Saturday-night blizzard strikes the northern Great Plains, leaving at least 60 people dead in North Dakota and Minnesota and six more in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. A light evening snow did not deter people from going out—“after all, Saturday night was the time for socializing,” Diane Boit of Hendrum, Minnesota, would recall—but “suddenly the wind switched, and a rumbling sound could be heard as 60 mile-an-hour winds swept down out of the north.”

8. CBS Cancels the “Ed Sullivan Show,” 1971
Word leaks that CBS-TV is canceling “The Ed Sullivan Show” after 23 years on the network, which also dumped Red Skelton and Jackie Gleason in the preceding month. A generation mourns.

9. Disappearing Ozone Layer, 1988
NASA reports that the ozone layer over the Northern Hemisphere has been depleted three times faster than predicted.


Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/top-ten-reasons-to-beware-the-ides-of-march-8664107/#HeLd5oIEP8IYebGz.99

12.4K23316905042.3K1. Assassination of Julius Caesar, 44 B

With the arrival of February comes Valentine's Day xo

There are about a dozen Saint Valentines, plus a pope.

'Saint Valentine's keys' were given to lovers as romantic symbols and an invitation to unlock the giver's heart. 



On the night before Valentine was to be executed he wrote the first valentine, to the daughter of his jailer. He signed it "Your Valentine."

In England, a character named "Jack" Valentine leaves sweets and presents for kids. I've never thought of Mister V as a man named Jack. Though in grammar school a boy named Jack gave me two candy hearts. I held my breath when I read the words. 

What else could I do? 

How does one become blessed? 

Is it a thing at birth? Like a bellybutton, 
a cowlick, the will to live?

I know for myself I was born loved.
I am in love.
I love...

I have young ones you aren't so young anymore.

I offer them things they once adored~ 
Funny stories, warm tapioca, knit stocking filled with simple things that say it again and again. 
I love...I love...

xoxo

Gertie is the Aunt I knew the least yet the smell of her is familiar and sweet. I take her with me; apples, shampoo, sunshine, and a freshly mowed lawn.

She was strong. She held her back straighter than the others, as if to prove she could live further out in the country and could and would survive. And she did. She survived deaths, hailstorms, coyotes, and early frosts.

Aunt Gertie's hair looked like she had just come from the beauty parlor when she hadn't. I remember her washing my hair in her kitchen's big white porcelain sink, wrapping a thick big towel around my head and shoulders and hugging me like she meant it. She'd shoo me out to the front stoop where my Grampa sat in a webbed chair smoking a pipe, watching the sky. He placed his pipe down and nestled me between his legs. I sat watching the sky, watching clouds whisper by. He rubbed the towel over and over until my hair was just about dry, then Gertie, with great strength and love brushed my hair until it shone like the sun, this what she said. I could smell a pie baking; apple  and cinnamon. This was one of the days I learned what love is.

Now, my sweet husband rubs my head as he knows it calms me and makes me happy, and eventually it will put me to sleep. He smells wonderful too; vanilla, coconut, and love.

Not A Dream

I would not leave this earth

To come back again

I would not fly to the moon

Nor go back in time

I would not want to be anything

But the mother of my children

I would not want to be taller, or fatter, or shorter

I would not want bunions or bad teeth

I would not want to be able to walk on water

Though I would love to fly

I would love to know other languages

And instruments

I would love to wake from this dream

And know it's not a dream