Tidbits, raw from the writers' group

5. Other peoples' germs are wiped off the eight by ten tray, the sleazy seatbelt, the stale air. The transport is not to another city, but to a bowl, where I release my joints and float, like Elvis in green Jell-o. At last, we hit the channel: the altitude that signals time for the cart and the crossword. I can be totally alone, tightly packed. A seat apart from fear or change or cost or time. Where should I go? Home.

4. We laughed as uncle chased you around the den. He wanted what I had and didn't know what I would miss in a friendship flushed, a story with its middle ripped out. Thirty years to atone should feel better. A new place. Deal? Deal. And so it is time for coffee. A paper napkin of safety and photos. You look like all is well. I am alright.

3. Music prompts memories of birth, of joy, of times untouched, of memories twisted toward a good end. Singing loudly to roll in the joy of being in that other place -- sitting on a kitchen counter where you shelter me and I found the bone on the back of your neck.

2. Is too private. It concludes: "There is no because that doesn't sound cheap."

1. Is too private. It concludes: "Why now?"

Pencils up

Having missed my writers' group in April, I realized tonight how much I'd needed it. My pencil was moving faster than my brain, as I purged thoughts confused onto a yellow legal pad. I heard my friends hearts and laughed at their wordplay. It is a joy to be in honest company.

Dotted and crossed

In eight days' time, I have entered officialdom in two important aspects of my life. On day one of the eight, I officially changed my church. I signed the big book, marking my membership into a community markedly different in theology than the one of my upbringing. I am joyous about my new affiliation but am grateful for the hallmarks of my old, which are ingrained in my spirit. Those heritage elements of color, symbology, wonder, and outreach to the marginalized set the stage for my expansive step into a faith community that fits my mind, heart and spirit.

On day eight, I gathered the first of five signatures that seal my course to the general examinations that are the gateway to my doctorate. It's real. It's in writing. The years of hard work that show in my crows feet not withstanding, I am giddy having seen the I's dotted and the T's crossed. It is just that simple.

Bread dreams

I awoke suddenly and far too early, enjoying the lingering image of a ciabatta. I had baked it, sprayed it to ensure its crunchy crust, and thumped it like an expectant belly to test its readiness. I could smell it.

Bread memories are like that. English muffin bread takes me to the kitchen of my mother-in-law, who although she could barely see could turn out bread like an ancient master. Focaccia takes me to Seattle, with J., who walked me through the delights and sensory thrills of an open market. Big fish, flung onto piles by Italian men with even bigger upper arms. Not that I looked.

And so my bread moment passed. My sensation of a hearty slipper bread, calls me to put my mind at rest and create, if only for the holiday, with my hands.

Crave

I am not much of a chocolate eater. On a given day, faced with an offering of blackberry pie or delicate mousse, I will throw it down for the berries. So all the more unusual it was that during both of my pregnancies I craved the brown:  chocolate milk with my daughter, Ferrero Rocher with my son. Long after those indulgences, a nurse de-romanticized the cravings by telling me what my body sought was magnesium.

Faced now with an elemental void of another sort, I cannot attribute it to a deficiency or cure it with a mineral infusion. The void is an absence:  the distance between my heart and my traveling first-born.  Reflecting a week into her three week journey, I could barely have imagined the longing I would have for my daughter. I will be whole again when her warm hand is in mine.

Buzz

How fast the mind wanders, especially when driving. I soaked in the colorful landscape today as I allowed my mind to hop from thought to thought, place to place, dream to dream. Along my way to Oklahoma City, I found myself in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Hot Springs, Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and home. I skated among and snuggled close to friends long gone and newly near. I arched over plates broken and hearts shorn. I wondered. I laughed. And it all happened instantaneously.

Our minds are incredible.

Canned pumpkin and road kill

I am enchanted by the good spirited checker at a grocery, which I frequent only irregularly and when there is a BOGO sale as is the case today. Chatting over my two-for-one staples, and the indulgence of canned pumpkin (which is rumored to be scarce this year), the checker and I once again discussed recipes.

This friendly banter recalled to my increasingly short-term memory the last such conversation. That time, however, the two of us were joined by another customer, a stranger, who enjoyed our discussion about stew and goulash enough to join it. Her addition to the conversation, humorous as it was, provided a potent reminder of our abundance. "I knew a gal at work whose Mama cooked up a stew every time they had a good road kill," she said.

There but for the grace of God go we. My family's protein intake tonight is not contingent on a squirrel's happenstance. May we be at peace with what we have. It is enough.