  “It’s never to late to be what you would have been.” – George Eliot Kettle screams out. Steamy hot water swirls the tea around in the cup. Peppermint, Spearmint, Chamomile all rise up to greet me. I watch the honey melt off of my spoon into my cup. I sit down in my big purple chair to contemplate the evening holding the big cobalt blue mug between my open hands, holding tight to warm my fingers. As I sip the tea, the warm washes through me.
Like liquid solace. Have you ever been walking through your life, doing the day to day or working, whatever…and this voice whispers something to you? Deep inside. In your soul. Your spirit. Maybe an instinct, maybe the universe giving you a clue.
Something so real and basic, you know it’s true, but you don’t acknowledge it out loud, or even to yourself for too long, because it’s best not to speak it. It’s best to just create it. Make it happen. The Great Spirit says, when the voice tells you what is true, only whisper it on the wind. Those who are jealous or unsettled will want to tear you down. Once you hear that voice of opposition, you might let it drown out your own voice.
You can make it more powerful…make it louder…until it you let it tear you down and destroy your vision. That happens to me a lot, that whisper. I think it always has, but I think I’m just now starting to hear it. Thank the goddess for that one. Tonight, I was making my tea….warm and safe at home…hopeful about the direction I’m taking. I was writing, and chatting with a friend online.
The voice came to me, “This is your life.” It’s that simple. This feeling, this direction, this activity….that is my life, where it is going, how I will make it. I can’t explain that in more depth for the simple reason that it’s intangible, but my spirit recognizes the statement and agrees. I sip my tea and let the warmth of it and these thoughts fill me up. I lean back in the chair and let Sweetback take me away. The music dances over my skin, flows through me, surrounds me like a blanket and lifts me up to a place where it all seems to be coming together.
I narrate my life everyday. As I walk through the world, I write it in my head. What I see, what I smell, what I’m thinking. All the tangibles and the intangibles. When the music comes, it needs to be my soundtrack. It always calls to me like a friend, providing the audio component to my experience.
I stood there tonight, looking over the vast ocean in it’s inky blue blackness.... fluorescent white foamy caps breaking and splaying over the rocks and the sand. The sound of the ocean beating against the cliff and rocks was so loud, I couldn’t hear anything else even though I was high above. I watched the sea water slam into the cove, meander inside to the utter darkness and flow somewhat slowly out the other side, only to be sucked in and pulled back out by the tide. It seemed to be in a huge hurry to go nowhere. At times I relate to that. The haze from the ocean’s misty kisses covered all the windows and cars and air everywhere.
It was as if I looked at the scene through nylon, like they shoot the beautiful actresses through when they want them to be unbearably beautiful and glamorous. The night was just chilly enough for a light jacket, but not too chilly that wandering up and down the coast wasn’t pleasurable. The night breeze lifted the moist ocean air over me and through my hair. I breathed deeply, taking it in, as if I could breathe in the ocean. It soothes me. Has conversations with my soul.
My spirit. I don’t know how, but this brings me center. My Mom joins me this night. Eileen and my biological father are in visiting this weekend. I have 3 sets of parents (therefore 3 moms), so for simplicity’s sake we will use her name, Eileen. She tells me that walking on the beach that day, she found a sandollar.
You don’t find sandollars or shells much on pacific coast beaches. She said it was a sign. A sign that this weekend would go smoothly and we would be a family and have a peaceful weekend. As I look away from the water breaking on the rocks below, I realize she has tears in her eyes. I have had some issues that have seemed to be beyond resolve with my father and Eileen. I still don’t know if they are resolvable.
In this magic moment standing next to the water, it seems we may have found some common ground. I explain to her that it hurts me when they say what they say without proper information. When they don’t realize how hard I work, how much I’ve accomplished. When they don’t see me, how I really am. She seems to understand in her facial expressions and gestures, that maybe there is a gap here. That maybe they don’t really have all the facts.
That maybe even if they did, it’s not their place to judge a situation they have no familiarity with. She tells me she just wants to be a family….good, bad, and indifferent. I smile at that. We walk back up the many steps to the restaurant where we proceed to have a fabulous dinner of seared ahi, rice noodles, spring rolls, shrimp and martinis. My father proceeds to lighten up the mood by stealing, by hand, a handful of my rice noodles and shove them in his mouth. This is a nice restaurant.
I am my father’s daughter in some ways. I throw more noodles at him. I sip my apple martini under the toasty heat lamps surrounding us on the patio above the ocean. We joke about my brother and Eileen flirts with the waiter. We talk through the night about what we will do with the rest of their time here. After I’ve seen them back to their hotel, I drive away home.
The night is cooler now, but the window is down so I can surround myself with that cool, moist night air. I chuckle as I think…we should find sandollars more often. 
