"To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float." - Alan Watts

The rain is here again in sunny southern California.  It's quite chilly (well, for us here). I've spent the day at my computer in my cozy pajamas, wrapped up in a blanket, sipping tea and catching up on a website I needed to update, and press releases I needed to write, listening to music and bits of the democratic debate.

I've been pondering flow quite a bit lately.  Lots of changes in my life at present, and possible changes, which is good, it's in ways I like (well, not all, one is a bit sad but the right way to move forward just at the moment), but I want to make sure to move forward with as much grace and balance as possible and not over do it.  I'm still dealing with trying to avoid and diminish migraines (thanks to all of you who have shared such good thoughts on that) and so I'm doing my best to avoid getting too wound up.  Which I'm apt to do, even though I can put a calm but interested face on it to the public.

It's so easy to grasp, to get this idea in your head that this one "thing" or "person" you come into contact will be THE answer for you, when really there is no real answer, there is only the path and unfolding and becoming.  There are ideas and thoughts and philosophies which are right in one moment but perhaps not the next.  And the only one who will know for sure if something is right for you is you. 

This is why I no longer like trying to set myself up as any sort of expert on anything, nor am I finding myself drawn to those who believe they have the absolute answer.  I'm preferring to be a dilettante for the time being, as in dilettare, to delight, from the Latin dēlectāre.

Thank you dictionary.com.  I'm such a nerd.

"There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy" - Robert Louis Stevenson

I am ironing my clothes carefully this morning.  I've chosen my brand new button down shirt and an orange sweater (courtesy of Banana Republic and my sister's great Christmas generosity) because orange is one of my Grandmother's favorite colors.  Last night, at the flower shop, done with all of my other work, I created an arrangement of white daisies (more correctly marguerites), small orange spray roses, beautiful peach gerber daisies (more correctly gerberia I believe), and small dark orange gerber daisies (of the likes I've never seen) because we didn't have any carnations at all or any super fresh chrysanthemums, which are also her favorites.  It is the last arrangement I will have the privilege of making her.

I am taking such great care because I am heading down to Palm Springs in a couple of hours with my brother, and my sister in law, to what is possibly the last visit to the matriarch of our family, Wilda McGaha.

I am crying now in hopes that I won't cry so much later.  Grams doesn't cry.  She is 88 years old and has a tremor in her hands that she's battled for almost forty years.  She has emphysema, and a failed kidney, and arthritis, other things I can't spell and now she has acute leukemia.  Suddenly, bam, out of nowhere.  First they gave her two days (as of the night before yesterday), now at home she's rallying a little, but no one knows.  At Christmas she ate little but cracked witty jokes, as is her way.

So we are going today to possibly say good-bye.  Probably for me, I do not have another day off until Sunday.

The irony of it all is that it is Papa, her husband (who has been on hospice now for over the six months they give you to live when you're accepted into the program), we thought we'd already said good-by to.  But he is happily still with us, still delighted to wake up each day and be with the woman of his dreams, the vivacious Wilda. 

A beautiful child in the requisite bob haircut who looks at us from family photos with even features, clear blue eyes, a serene expression and a dimple that hide the maverick and will of iron that lurks behind.  This strength will save Wilda and keep well her when at five her mother is struck first with a nervous break-down over the railroad strike (her husband worked on the railroad) and then rises from her bed a cripple when arthritis attacks her knee while she is down.  The depression starts.  Wilda is sent to live with family in the country.  She learns to be a farm-girl and has to gather eggs and a myriad of other chores that such young children used to be responsible for.

And when she can return home months later she must be the quick feet and arms her mother can no longer be.  Her mother's knee is forever bent and she must wear special shoes to allow her to walk, one a platform.  So Wilda must cook and clean and keep house.  But Wilda thrives.  She becomes an athlete, a dancer, and a high-diver when an uncle creates a lake for locals to swim away their depression blues in.  She is a gorgeous girl, a star basketball player who catches the eye of her young high-school coach and to date she hides under the dashboard of his car when they drive by those who would disapprove.

But it was a different time, and a young handsome high-school teacher with a college education and good intentions is a catch when the world is in the grips of economic despair.  Wilda, who must also work, goes to beauty college after high school, and from then on she will almost always earn her own keep. 

Later, when her beloved young husband Ralph dies from complications after one of the first open heart surgeries, she will gather up her two small children and her parents and head west to California like so many others after the war looking for a new life.  They will settle first in Compton, then in Long Beach, and Wilda will buy a house and support everyone by working two jobs, one of which is for the Bullock's department store in downtown Los Angeles.  She rides the red car to get there.  She dates and breaks hearts.  She is stunning in the elegance in the era.  She marries a man often away at sea (Long Beach is a navy town), but it's best as he loves Wilda but doesn't like her children too much.  Eventually she decides she needs lets him go. 

The stress of her job at a bank, where she does her own work and that of her boss, has her eating baby food and coming down with migraines (sick headaches as her mother Nana calls them).  But one day, persuaded against her will to go out on a blind double date at the officer's club, Wilda goes and meets Fred.  They have a lovely time dancing.  Wilda loves to dance.  Fred is good company, and good to his own mother.  Wilda decides to try love again and this time it sticks. 

They are a pair through thick and thin.  They epitomize the Protestant work ethic, but they play hard too and love to have fun.  They win dance trophies and are the "go to" people for their families.  They wear matching outfits because Fred is very color blind and Wilda picks out all of their outfits.  Wilda is an ace shopper.  She has it down to an art and a science.  Which is good as they have children with growing families and they both have elderly mothers who they take care of financially and emotionally, seeing to their needs.

But Wilda will not be shopping anymore now.  That time is over.  So I will dress with care today because she likes a sharp dresser.  And I will wear one of the little bracelets she gave me a couple of holidays ago (all apparel gifts came with matching accessories, so you were ready to go).  And I will do my best today to think about celebrating a life rather than the sadness of loss, or how my mother will deal with the loss of  her dear dear mother. 

I'm crushingly tired tonight and will soon climb into bed. My grandmother passed away around 2:30 or so yesterday afternoon, quietly. The matriarch (and she was so with a capital "M") is gone. How very strange and fascinating how life both gives and takes away at the same time. My papas beautiful bride is gone, but now here for the first time since he's been together with her he is now the center of attention. Today he sat and shared with my stepfather and sister's boyfriend stories of his own past, his time in the Korean war, of Long Beach California when it had some glamour. Before it was always her stories. But oh we'll miss her.

Life continues to unfold in fascinating ways, with interesting bits of synchronicity (now two old friends have popped up out of the wood work after 20 some year, one just at the grocery store).  

I would love to not feel so tired, but that's to be expected.  I am still sad over the passing of my grandmother and the break up of a seven month relationship, sad but understanding, sad but open, but still sad.  I just am.  And I decided at the end of last year to wean myself off a combination of a muscle-relaxant and sub doses of an anti depressant my neurologist had given me to help decrease the migraines I experience.  How's that for delightful dinner conversation?  I write these details not to be self obsessed but to track what the hecks going on with my health, and in the hopes that it might help someone else somehow feel they're not quite so damaged with their own health challenges.  Real people, working honestly to be their best, searching for enlightened spiritually and yada yada yada have health challenges.

I do believe the combo worked, and I'm grateful for it, but it made me also chronically tired and I'm doing so much better weaning off the migraine pain killers (though still have daily advil and excedrin to kick) that I decided this combo was next.  I've switched to taking melatonin at night, which works well to help me fall asleep, but I pop awake at about 5:45 in the am, still dead tired, but with my mind wound up.  Oh well.  It was very hard to go on anti-depressants so going off can't be that simple, right?  I'll just take it day by day, and sometimes moment by moment, which is all we really have.

Of course at the same time the health things are going on I'm getting involved in exciting new projects, including meeting some very wonderful, positive, creative women and feeling so much more supported in who I am and what I want to do (one of my New Year's resolutions) and possibly organizing a V-Day event for my hometown.  I'm waiting to hear if my application is accepted and trying not to get too wound up about it one way or another.

What an interesting time it is for me right now, so full of blessings and fascinating insights (to me anyway).  My two biggest New Year's Resolutions were to have a real live in person social life rather than just emailing people while huddled up at the computer, and to reach out to my social network and let it be known that I was available for creative marketing and p.r. projects and other interesting things in order to find projects I really loved to work on, and of course, increase my prosperity.

So it's been really wonderful that both have been unfolding so gracefully in my life, in quite amazing ways.  I just got home from a local "Green Drinks" meet up and met some great people, Sunday I'm

To be sure I still have the tendency to think I have to work work work all the time, so I am doing my best to be open to what a healthy balance really means to me right now.  And right now that means that I'm staying focused on how I feel - do I want to stretch, meditate, eat a delicious meal etc. etc. rather than write another article, blog, email, etc., or am I "in flow" with the work and want to keep going?

Nuance and intention feel so important right now.  I am constantly seeing how coming from ego puts my guard up and disallows me to connect with another's humanity.  If, instead, I come from kindness so often something shifts, and even the most annoying situation eases a bit, or radically, and I realize the person who originally acted in a way that brought my hackles up is just tired and frightened and worried - like the rest of us.

At least those of us who haven't reach full enlightenment yet - which would certainly be me.

But oh it's lovely to feel so much happiness, and moments of real magic and wonder.   To relax into what is right now.