Never doubt the strength and power of love. The love which comes from another is not always recognizable. But when it is real, there is no doubt and the feeling curls around your whole body as if it wants to find a place to get in. Then it goes in deep.
Several times in my life I've felt the real thing. Once it came from my dog and when he figured out that all he had to do was look at me, he used it often. I became butter on a hot dinner plate.
Well into the decade of my undoing, I was dealing with a whole lot of anger and had two new friends who took me under their wings and helped me through the difficult time. When my anger got a hold of me, they took it in stride and let me be, spots and all.
More recently, I felt the same thing when two new friends allowed the sadness I was experiencing after two major losses. When I could barely put one foot in front of the other, I felt the sensation of something powerful holding me up. These spiritual giants were in fact angels.
I've heard the words I Love You spoken when it meant something, from two men, one my son, the other my fiance, the latter for the first time at age 62.
Love has many faces and takes many forms. It's a cloudless day with a light breeze and two palm fronds slapping against each other as I walked by, as if they were applauding me. I knew what that meant. I felt it viscerally. It's the sudden rush of passion for that someone special you haven't seen since forever back home again. It's everything beautiful and wise and whole, it's a connection to all the good surrounding you.
Thankfully, I've been the beneficiary of this love. I feel it where I work and when I'm driving my car and listening to the Boston Pops. I feel it when eating chocolate and when my head first touches the pillow at the end of the day. I know love. I've melted down into it and, touched by its warmth, became someone brand new. I've also collapsed in its absence.
I recommend you never doubt its strength or power. And when you chance to meet it, give some of it away, share it, and slide around on the dance floor with it. Swim with it and nourish your spirit with it. It will begin to grow on you and more and more and more will come your way.
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Coming Home
Today Saharan sand is blowing in from Africa. I know this because the weatherman gave the forecast last night. He said winds aloft would carry that sand all the way over here. Guess we could use some more since our beaches are eroding. The sky is hazy and it's warm, reaching 95 degrees today. But we've had some beautiful weather for the last week or so. Hot and windy, much like the Sahara.
I moved to South Florida for the tropical moisture, the rains that come in every afternoon as they did in Panama when I was a child. That moisture builds up over the Everglades and the clouds carry it eastward toward the ocean. Once a day until November we get drenched. Then things taper off. November is cooler and sunnier. Ideal for the plants and our skin, the humidity in the air functions like a natural moisturizer so we all look younger and healthier, unless we go out in the sun and end up looking like cowhide.
At the age of 13 I few to Panama with a stopover in Miami. It was arranged that I stay with friends of my parents. George, the father, was, like my stepdad, also in the airline industry and his wife was away visiting relatives in Lebanon. George picked me up from the airport.
"Jeanie, be careful because I have two boys. I'm worried about you."
I wasn't exactly sure what he meant but ventured a guess.
"Oh I'm sure they'll be gentleman."
"No, no, it's not them I'm concerned about. It's you."
I laughed. I was only thirteen. I was to learn later, that both boys had a crush on me. Recently, one of the boys, Jeff, called me fifty years after our brief acquaintance. A mutual friend had given him my number.
I told him how fondly I remembered his Dad and my visit. How well I remembered going to a yacht club for dinner and walking out onto the dock to look at the boats. Jeff was a few years older than me.
During the three day visit waiting for my connection to Panama, Jeff and I became friends and our walks in the rain changed me. The daily deluge, the realization that someone thought I was pretty, the sensuous layers that puberty brought to the table, the humidity and my first lipstick, Revlon's Persion Melon all captured my heightened senses. Jeff told me on the phone I was the first girl he had ever kissed.
But Panama was the icing on the cake. Luscious lagoons, mountains and the fragrance of mango trees did me in. Soon, my time in Panama was up and I was to move back to live with my father. But I wasn't going to be satisfied until I got back to the tropics. Twelve years later, I flew to Miami for training at the Pan Am training school on 36th Street in Miami Springs, the building and grounds known as the Taj Mahal. After one short year based out of Dulles airport, I was flying out of Miami to South and Central America and the Caribbean. That would last two years. Eight years later, I would come back to South Florida.
I would leave one more time from 1992 until 2005 when I came back for the last time like exiled royalty feeling the same homecoming I always felt. Best of all, the man I fell in love with while flying to Panama, found me again in 2006 and rekindled what I had always known.
To be continued.........
I moved to South Florida for the tropical moisture, the rains that come in every afternoon as they did in Panama when I was a child. That moisture builds up over the Everglades and the clouds carry it eastward toward the ocean. Once a day until November we get drenched. Then things taper off. November is cooler and sunnier. Ideal for the plants and our skin, the humidity in the air functions like a natural moisturizer so we all look younger and healthier, unless we go out in the sun and end up looking like cowhide.
At the age of 13 I few to Panama with a stopover in Miami. It was arranged that I stay with friends of my parents. George, the father, was, like my stepdad, also in the airline industry and his wife was away visiting relatives in Lebanon. George picked me up from the airport.
"Jeanie, be careful because I have two boys. I'm worried about you."
I wasn't exactly sure what he meant but ventured a guess.
"Oh I'm sure they'll be gentleman."
"No, no, it's not them I'm concerned about. It's you."
I laughed. I was only thirteen. I was to learn later, that both boys had a crush on me. Recently, one of the boys, Jeff, called me fifty years after our brief acquaintance. A mutual friend had given him my number.
I told him how fondly I remembered his Dad and my visit. How well I remembered going to a yacht club for dinner and walking out onto the dock to look at the boats. Jeff was a few years older than me.
During the three day visit waiting for my connection to Panama, Jeff and I became friends and our walks in the rain changed me. The daily deluge, the realization that someone thought I was pretty, the sensuous layers that puberty brought to the table, the humidity and my first lipstick, Revlon's Persion Melon all captured my heightened senses. Jeff told me on the phone I was the first girl he had ever kissed.
But Panama was the icing on the cake. Luscious lagoons, mountains and the fragrance of mango trees did me in. Soon, my time in Panama was up and I was to move back to live with my father. But I wasn't going to be satisfied until I got back to the tropics. Twelve years later, I flew to Miami for training at the Pan Am training school on 36th Street in Miami Springs, the building and grounds known as the Taj Mahal. After one short year based out of Dulles airport, I was flying out of Miami to South and Central America and the Caribbean. That would last two years. Eight years later, I would come back to South Florida.
I would leave one more time from 1992 until 2005 when I came back for the last time like exiled royalty feeling the same homecoming I always felt. Best of all, the man I fell in love with while flying to Panama, found me again in 2006 and rekindled what I had always known.
To be continued.........
Sunday, June 28, 2009
How To Marry a Mermaid
Once upon a time there lived a mermaid. She was a rather strange looking mermaid because she did not live in the sea. Well, let me explain. She did live in a sea of sorts. But it was a well-known sea called the Sea of Humanity.
She was rather the well-turned out mermaid and heads turned as she swam by. By no stretch of her long beautiful flowing golden hair did she think that she was any better than any of the others in the Sea of Humanity. She was merely an observer and would sit by her rock and set her gaze far and wide.
She was peculiar in a way in that she did not live in the past or the future and she liked it that way. The daily happenings around her would rise to the surface and come marching by on their way to somewhere else. And these happenings would often include her in their dramas if she chose to join. These happenings included people from many diverse backgrounds, rich, poor, pretty, short, tall, gambling ladies and onlookers like herself to name a few.
One day she happened to go on an errand, our Mermaid did, and she swam over to the Dollar General Store somewhere near her rock. Swimming for three miles is not unheard of in Oakland Park, Florida during the rainy season and is completely safe for mermaids. It was after work and she wanted to get some things like a calling card and some more water. Mermaids drink lots of water.
Before Mermaid walked inside, she noticed a man in the parking lot who it appeared noticed her. He was young and handsome and alerted to her beauty. Mermaids almost all the time are rather fetching. He stared at her and then went into the store following close to her.
She got her phone card and bottles of water and walked smartly over to the check out counter where she placed the water because it was heavy. It was there she heard someone say, “one beautiful mermaid.” She turned her head to the right and no one was there…she turned her head to the left and the young man was a few feet away.
She said, “What?”
The young man walked up behind her and then stood next to her and said boldly, “You are a beautiful mermaid.”
She was shocked and stood there like a statue, but managed to say quietly, “Thank you.”
When he turned to leave, she paid for everything and walked out.
She had seen many things, being an observer of life, but she had never had such an experience like the one that had just happened. And it seemed to take hold of her mermaid spirit and turned her around into something more. What exactly, she could not be certain.
She swam home and decided to nap. It usually takes a long time for mermaids to lie down. Soon, thoughts came swirling around her pretty mermaid head. This young man was so polite and handsome and had effectively turned her mermaid self into something - wonderful. She knew then she had to speak to him again. She remembered what he looked like and she remembered the beautiful colored shirt he wore. It was turquoise, the color of the sea, her beautiful, beloved sea that she adored so much and spent so much time in.
It wasn’t that the man wanted something from her. And it was not a line to start a conversation so they could go out on a date. Although they were lovely words, it was his intention behind them the mermaid felt. The purity of his words went like a missile, directly to her mermaid heart. And she knew all of this because being a mermaid, she didn’t exactly have a perfect shape. Her shape was round in places and scaly in others and while she had drop dead gorgeous hair that shone in the sunlight like spun gold, she knew his words had nothing to do with her looks. She knew he looked beyond all that. She was after all a princess of mythic proportions and very much an old spirit.
And so the arrow, aimed at her heart, lodged there for days and weeks and months. So long it was with her, she decided to do something about it. She decided to go back to the store at the exact time of day and the same day of the week in hopes that he would be there. But alas, he was not there.
A few days later, she decided to place a note on a website in search of him. And what started as a genuine interest in telling the young man a genuine thank you and how much his words meant, ended up being a record number of emails from other men in search of the perfect mermaid. Many were kind and thoughtful… and hopeful….saying things like “I wish I had been him, I’d say more than that.” Others wanted other things…like, “I lost my keys in the ocean, could you go out there and retrieve them?”
But Mermaid didn’t mind that. She found it all amusing. Amused though she was, she also kept up her search. She had heard of a princess and a glass slipper, but this was different. She was a mermaid and she was looking for the man with the golden words.
She didn’t want to marry him. She didn’t want to date him. She didn’t want anything more than to say how sorry she was that she didn’t turn in his direction and give him a proper thank you. She wanted to extend herself more than one millimeter. That....and maybe she did want to hear the words that felt like a warm embrace just one more time.
Eventually he showed up. It wasn’t the same day of the week or the same time. And she didn’t go there expecting to see him again because she usually never has expectations. But on this particular day, he was there. And here is where the plot does a trick. He handed her a note. In his note were all the emails he had sent her using different names and email addresses. It could happen. And because she turned down the men who emailed her and asked her out, or wanted a relationship with benefits…………….
……………just how THAT would happen will have to be in another story…...
…..or who wanted to see her or call her…Because she turned them all down, because she wanted only to see him once more…he told her he wanted her all to himself and would she come to his glass bottom boat where he lived near the Intracoastal Waterway in Hollywood, Florida where he would support her forever. FOREVER.
Today, if you pass by their big glass bottom boat, you will see the two, the mermaid and her young man….sailing in the early morning. And if you run and get your binoculars, you might just see a great big splash. A REALLY BIG SPLASH.
Meanwhile, back at the Dollar General, things are the same. Of the people who were hopefuls but didn’t have the courage to write or send her an email, some still hang around the parking lot on Fridays, praying like they were driving to New Jersey that Mermaid might just come swimming by.
For now, Mermaid and her young man are settled in their lazy boys on board the “Maiden Voyage” and when they start up the engines and sail out the inlet, Mermaid gets her early morning swim in and she laughs and she sings and she’s happy as is the man in the turquoise shirt with black hair. And now the young man and Mermaid are living happily ever after.
She was rather the well-turned out mermaid and heads turned as she swam by. By no stretch of her long beautiful flowing golden hair did she think that she was any better than any of the others in the Sea of Humanity. She was merely an observer and would sit by her rock and set her gaze far and wide.
She was peculiar in a way in that she did not live in the past or the future and she liked it that way. The daily happenings around her would rise to the surface and come marching by on their way to somewhere else. And these happenings would often include her in their dramas if she chose to join. These happenings included people from many diverse backgrounds, rich, poor, pretty, short, tall, gambling ladies and onlookers like herself to name a few.
One day she happened to go on an errand, our Mermaid did, and she swam over to the Dollar General Store somewhere near her rock. Swimming for three miles is not unheard of in Oakland Park, Florida during the rainy season and is completely safe for mermaids. It was after work and she wanted to get some things like a calling card and some more water. Mermaids drink lots of water.
Before Mermaid walked inside, she noticed a man in the parking lot who it appeared noticed her. He was young and handsome and alerted to her beauty. Mermaids almost all the time are rather fetching. He stared at her and then went into the store following close to her.
She got her phone card and bottles of water and walked smartly over to the check out counter where she placed the water because it was heavy. It was there she heard someone say, “one beautiful mermaid.” She turned her head to the right and no one was there…she turned her head to the left and the young man was a few feet away.
She said, “What?”
The young man walked up behind her and then stood next to her and said boldly, “You are a beautiful mermaid.”
She was shocked and stood there like a statue, but managed to say quietly, “Thank you.”
When he turned to leave, she paid for everything and walked out.
She had seen many things, being an observer of life, but she had never had such an experience like the one that had just happened. And it seemed to take hold of her mermaid spirit and turned her around into something more. What exactly, she could not be certain.
She swam home and decided to nap. It usually takes a long time for mermaids to lie down. Soon, thoughts came swirling around her pretty mermaid head. This young man was so polite and handsome and had effectively turned her mermaid self into something - wonderful. She knew then she had to speak to him again. She remembered what he looked like and she remembered the beautiful colored shirt he wore. It was turquoise, the color of the sea, her beautiful, beloved sea that she adored so much and spent so much time in.
It wasn’t that the man wanted something from her. And it was not a line to start a conversation so they could go out on a date. Although they were lovely words, it was his intention behind them the mermaid felt. The purity of his words went like a missile, directly to her mermaid heart. And she knew all of this because being a mermaid, she didn’t exactly have a perfect shape. Her shape was round in places and scaly in others and while she had drop dead gorgeous hair that shone in the sunlight like spun gold, she knew his words had nothing to do with her looks. She knew he looked beyond all that. She was after all a princess of mythic proportions and very much an old spirit.
And so the arrow, aimed at her heart, lodged there for days and weeks and months. So long it was with her, she decided to do something about it. She decided to go back to the store at the exact time of day and the same day of the week in hopes that he would be there. But alas, he was not there.
A few days later, she decided to place a note on a website in search of him. And what started as a genuine interest in telling the young man a genuine thank you and how much his words meant, ended up being a record number of emails from other men in search of the perfect mermaid. Many were kind and thoughtful… and hopeful….saying things like “I wish I had been him, I’d say more than that.” Others wanted other things…like, “I lost my keys in the ocean, could you go out there and retrieve them?”
But Mermaid didn’t mind that. She found it all amusing. Amused though she was, she also kept up her search. She had heard of a princess and a glass slipper, but this was different. She was a mermaid and she was looking for the man with the golden words.
She didn’t want to marry him. She didn’t want to date him. She didn’t want anything more than to say how sorry she was that she didn’t turn in his direction and give him a proper thank you. She wanted to extend herself more than one millimeter. That....and maybe she did want to hear the words that felt like a warm embrace just one more time.
Eventually he showed up. It wasn’t the same day of the week or the same time. And she didn’t go there expecting to see him again because she usually never has expectations. But on this particular day, he was there. And here is where the plot does a trick. He handed her a note. In his note were all the emails he had sent her using different names and email addresses. It could happen. And because she turned down the men who emailed her and asked her out, or wanted a relationship with benefits…………….
……………just how THAT would happen will have to be in another story…...
…..or who wanted to see her or call her…Because she turned them all down, because she wanted only to see him once more…he told her he wanted her all to himself and would she come to his glass bottom boat where he lived near the Intracoastal Waterway in Hollywood, Florida where he would support her forever. FOREVER.
Today, if you pass by their big glass bottom boat, you will see the two, the mermaid and her young man….sailing in the early morning. And if you run and get your binoculars, you might just see a great big splash. A REALLY BIG SPLASH.
Meanwhile, back at the Dollar General, things are the same. Of the people who were hopefuls but didn’t have the courage to write or send her an email, some still hang around the parking lot on Fridays, praying like they were driving to New Jersey that Mermaid might just come swimming by.
For now, Mermaid and her young man are settled in their lazy boys on board the “Maiden Voyage” and when they start up the engines and sail out the inlet, Mermaid gets her early morning swim in and she laughs and she sings and she’s happy as is the man in the turquoise shirt with black hair. And now the young man and Mermaid are living happily ever after.
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