Hello!
As we find ourselves quickly flowing to halfway through 2025, may this find you are able to be in ease in the current flow of your life, enjoying the scenery along the way and pausing now and again to sit along the river bank and take it all in peacefully.
We are fortunate to have a columnar pine in our yard, a towering backbone of shelter for mourning doves in the night. A fourteen foot if not mightier giant who was once just inches above eye level when first taking root. This mighty giant has grown exponentially in its somewhere between two decades and one decade it’s been our messenger on behalf of Nature.
A messenger of such things as how to stand so very tall no matter what the weather centered in the balance between unassuming and confidence. Of how to always look up and out into the horizon, arms outstretched, welcoming the external surroundings and what each day will bring.
Of how small steps forward, outward, and upward are gigantic leaps in the becoming of what is meant to be.
It is also not lost on me that this regal pine that stands by the path we walk every day is green, the color of the heart if you are one in awareness of the chakra colors. As I celebrate that again this year this pine has chosen more steps forward, outward, upward, a lighter green communicating its time to expand my heart. Even as the winds are more frequent and carrying more speed. Even as the air temp shifts from hot to cool to cold to warm and rain may be withheld when a drink of water would be welcome.
This mighty pine, small steps at a time, leaps gigantically into its big ole beautiful heart!
May the remainder of your May flow with ease as you travel the currents of life, one oar paddle at a time.
-Namaste’
Christine
The Creases Now Speak
Laura
As Laura was putting her mom’s journals back into the cabinet, she noticed an envelope sticking out of one of them. It was her dad’s handwriting, addressed to her mom.
She questioned opening it but then felt her mom wouldn’t have left it in her journal if she didn’t want it found.
She began reading.
My dear Patricia,
I promise I did not read your diary. There are things I want to say to you before our wedding day. Since I am better at writing than speaking, I thought I would leave this in your diary for you to find.
I once had a sister. Her name was Lorraine. She was two years older than me and eighteen months younger than Donny. I adored her and have missed her every day since the day she left home, the day our dad disowned her. I haven’t seen her since. I’m not even sure if she is still alive. It is my fault I lost my sister.
I came home from school one day and heard Lorraine in the living room with her best friend Joni. They were laughing and having what sounded like a good time, so I thought I’d go join them. I grabbed an apple from the kitchen counter and was about to say “Hey” as I entered the living room when I saw them kissing each other on the lips. I didn’t necessarily think anything of it and when they didn’t notice me standing there, I figured I would pick on Lorraine later. In that way brothers like to annoy sisters.
Later that night, after Joni had gone home, we had finished our family dinner, and Lorraine, Donny, and I were hanging out in the living room, I made some wise-crack comment to Lorraine about her kissing Joni. I don’t recall the comment, but I will always remember dad storming into the living room demanding Lorraine explain herself. When I tried to explain I was just joking around, dad told me to go to my room. When I protested, he reached for his belt buckle and vowed if I argued any further, he would let the belt set me straight.
As I headed to my room, I heard dad say, “not under my roof.” I could hear yelling, and then I heard Lorraine crying and running down the hall to her bedroom. A little later on I heard a vehicle pull into the driveway, our foyer door open and shut, and I never saw Lorraine again. Donny told me the next morning that dad had told Lorraine to get out and he never wanted to see her again.
Lorraine is not the only one who I hurt, who I let down, who I cowardly abandoned when they most needed support. When I was in Vietnam, I met a young girl whose mom owned the coffee shop I would frequent to write my articles. Her name was Mỹ. Her eyes were so beautiful, brown. They reminded me of the perfect skipping stones I would find in the creek bottom behind our house.
I didn’t want to stop looking into those eyes because they reminded me of where I loved to go to when I was a young boy. Where all three of us loved to go when we were kids. Donny. Lorraine. Me. The three of us would go swimming in the creek on a hot day. Donny loved to try and catch a fish with his bare hands. Lorraine liked to climb this one tree near the left bank. It had this big, outstretched branch with a bend in it that made for a perfect seat. Lorraine would shimmy up the tree, climb out on that limb, and sit watching Donny and I horse around.
Lorraine was very good at skipping stones, too. I would always tell her “Not half bad for a girl.”
I wish I’d told her I was proud to have a sister who could skip stones so well.
That creek was a safe haven for me. Innocence abounded. Judgment didn’t exist. There was no anger, no hatred, no obedience. No belt. It was only acceptance, peacefulness, freedom, worthiness. Love.
Lots of laughter, too.
Laura looked up from reading the letter, aware of the sensations running through her body similar to when she would research for writing one of her stories and feel a shock wave of disbelief course through her.
