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Free Verse Day (7)

Waking up too early after sleeping to little.

Running in the crisp dark cold nearly silent as our breath puffed white out of our cold lips.  The moon lit our path and made the run feel like dreaming.

Running into the house, into the closet and changing in five minutes and back out the door to drive up and over the mountain as the sky turned pink and blue and the valley glowed with the light of the new day.

A hour, no more, no less at the temple, listening to stillness and wondering at the peace of just being present.  Being wrapped in white and smiled at and loved and reminded that I am alive and well and that today is enough.

Racing home back over the sunlit mountain to see a valley stretched miles and miles filled with houses and lakes and desert to my home filled with friends waiting for Choga.  Sweating and laughing and worrying together as we breathe in and out, in and out.

Hugging goodbye with love and thanks, one set leaves and another set arrives to talk of children, parents, wildness, crazy ways, misunderstandings that leave us laughing with tears in our eye, and a hope that all will be alright.  We are, none of us, anything but perfect in our insane imperfection.

Shaking with cold and hunger, I find John's warmth and curl up on his lap as he rubs my arms with his hands and shows me magical kitchen cabinets as we listen to Henry's sing song Chinese recordings.

I eat, huddled in the sunshine, fingers trembling over the computer searching for Brooklyn AirB&B pads to crash at during our eight days in NYC.  Dollars and rooms and neighborhoods and unknown and wonder and worry and unknowns crowd my mind pushing aside the quiet.

A random bet on a house with a bite on my fingernails and a credit card number and a prayer and then off again, three minute change, lip gloss and eyes and headband without a brushing minutes late already.

Phone calls and promises and hopes as I drive meeting an old friend who doesn't need words to know that these stolen minutes are enough to feed and calm and ease our hearts.  Promises of more minutes when the sun shines on our heads as we walk exchanges as I race out the doors.

Running into mine with a knife to cut and create a picnic and pack our bags full of food and treats and yell to Finn to come to me so I can carve away the great blinding weight of his hair.

I carve like an expert with Finn's reverent awe that Great Clips would find me wondrous and I could give him cuts for nothing there . . . He knows so little of his fortune that I can carve them for free here, in our very own house.  Ahh the wonder.

Then we load, without the sick Phoebe, into our blessed beast with skis and poles and boots and hot dogs to fly over the hills on slick skis.

Not, in fact, so slick:  Missing keys, wallets, passes and a bellyache and an inability to re group caused a few jolts to the seamless plans.  Nothing food, conversation, warmth, and a good auto theft artist couldn't cure.

Driving home in the warm car with silent sleeping reading children looking at John's glow of ski high all is well life is good makes me smile and feel peace.

Crawling into bed, body weary and spent, soul full and warm wondering that in eight hours this all gets to begin again--blessed wondrous life.



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