We are spending most of our days now at the “swimming hole”, another “Oasis” found close to my Heart. From where we sit there is no bridge onto the other side. While there, I hand wrote those few words about my own imaginary bridge, our day, and those are some of the photos taken.

It is 17.8 degrees right now outside. The sun is making its way up slowly lightening up the skies, the days are back to their own unit as when the calendar popped up I realized that Christmas is only a few days away. There is no snow, just cold, not that severe actually when bundled up outside for a few minutes. There is no neon lights here or bells ringing or even for that matter anyone looking for a parking space on this empty and beautiful land we have borrowed for these times. There are no sales, no bargains, the prices here are always the same, we pay with our senses and feelings. They are I know joyful times for so many, I hope they are. I hope they are even if throughout these moments the desires of gifts throughout this Christmas tradition cannot be totally fulfilled, as long as the children can bypass this sometimes sad reality we have encountered on this material path of ours. They need to be spared, they need to continue seeing the colors brightly lit with no shadows or even threats to their well being. These are times, we adults, must take care of “all that stuff”. And yet as innocent as they are, there is not even within the shiniest wrapped package the gift of Love that can be unwrapped by human hands. Love should not wait for Christmas or a Birthday, it should be in the air weighted down to their shorter heights for them to breathe it so constantly. They need to be filled and refilled, they need to feel as one within the sentiments we should never stop exchanging with them.

A hug and a kiss, a gentle hand on their delicate hair, a smile and a laugh, brightly lit eyes wrapping them with warmth, words of Love and affection, so much they deserve as yet their path has not been carved and so much of their unknown future is still at stake. I came across my bridge today, it used to be a bridge with no tolls, it was a bridge so easily crossed in years passed. No matter where we met, on this side or the other, in the middle or on the right or on the left, arms open for our embrace, fingers ready for their familiar touch of skin and hair to experience the magic of genes passed on, today the bridge was up, its waters from under are torrential, I cannot cross it, I cannot even take a glance of the other side, memories of my mind have replaced the reality of my past vision seeing Lance. And yet I know that he is there, his presence is within that tall tower we ourselves have not visited yet. I know as I feel it. I only wish the bridge would come down just for a moment, I would not tell anyone of this miracle wish if it ever happened as I do for every second that I myself live.

I don’t know how to feel lately. I keep saying how bitter sweet this Journey is, but I am not bitter which is a facet I know “ugly”. “I miss you and I miss you…” as I could fill the pages with those words and shouted over and over into this horizon of ours until no voice is left in me. I have reached so many times without a grasp that my arms sometimes have no strength left and I could just curl up waiting for that miracle to happen thinking maybe, just maybe the bridge will come down. The coin keeps flipping and spinning over and over. As night and day it has its two faces and sometimes the shadows obstruct its shiny and brightly lit one. “Sweet” is the welcoming face, the one filled with Friends, the one where “Mother Nature” resides with its beauty and grandiose messages trying to make me understand to accept my faith for the short time I am here within these centuries past and future.

The “sweet” face of the coin makes me feel safe, it gives so much to me always leaving me feeling as to what can “I” give in return? just as my Friends that have so much supported me and extended their own arms. How can one including myself turn their back to such richness my path is filled with? And again, I just don’t know how to feel lately as so often both sides of the coin have blended in emanating joy and at the same time sadness for my inability to share it all with Lance. How can this be? I keep thinking… Has he truly sacrificed himself to show me the path I am on today, a path that did not remotely exists just a few years back. A path that was only just a dream as I know it is with so many but cannot leave their present Life behind and embrace this day to day presence on the road as this is, for myself, the only way to fully experience our stage.

What is time but a Human marker that maybe is needed to keep us from going astray, to maybe keep a certain sense of dimension throughout those tasks imposed upon us. And why is it that some “times” as these days the heart opens its ways for us to feel so much more than other “times”? There is only one Christmas Day, there is only one Birthday per year, their immensity and own space suddenly becomes so vast that their moments lingers interminable for me remembering in years past how in opposite direction so quickly they passed, as I wished “then” their length of time would be as of today’s! How confusing all this can be… how much I wished a coin would have three sides for me to enable myself grasping the balancing act of Life with a bit more ease. But it is not so… Every moment is “now”. Shiny or dull it is with no choice of mine to only borrow my strength from the good times as I step on this bridge too steep to climb up unable to jump over its other side.

Lonely however this bridge is not. My words on these pages have brought forward so many traveling within the same direction on the path of this destiny. The World is filled with so many having lost so many more dear ones, close ones, children, husbands, wives… Family and Friends. We all grieve our own way, we reach for each other in words and embraces we “need”, we all laugh and cry all at the same time, we all have in our pocket this coin we all share as we try so hard to keep its shiny side up. It is never the wish of the missing ones for us to give up, so we go on the best we can and hopefully never forgetting to embrace, Love, and cherish the “present” ones around us “now”, the present Children, Family and Friends that keep us going when that coin at times flips to the dull side.

This is to “Thank” and more everyone that is here today, that has reached, that has embraced the present and helped in so many more ways they can imagine as without the “shiny’ side up I would never reflect the sunshine present throughout our days. This is to “Thank” and more everyone that is “not” here today as we also live for you, as you fill us with no end of the memories you have given us in past times.

“Happy Holidays”… Love your neighbor… your Friends… your Family… an extra hug from us!   

Till next time…

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Two years of Photography is finally in order on SmugMug… In “Your Favorites”, in “States”, some labeled “first year” and second year”, now also “Texas the third year”. Feel free to browse, you can even use the slide show mode and have fun.

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Be well, always.   Ara & Spirit