The Incredible Lightness of Being

Today is the 3rd day of cloudy skies , gray rough seas, strong winds and cold temperatures. It is beginning to affect my moods and my energy. I find myself wanting to sleep all day or just experiencing a fuzziness in my thinking process. If I venture outside at all it is to stand on the veranda, look out over the water and heave great sighs of melancholia.

How important is sunlight or bright light or light in general to Humans?

What sets the general tone of happiness when communicating to other Human Beings?

If you walk into your local coffee shop and greet the barista with, "Isn't is a beautiful rainy, gray day outside. I woke up feeling so good!" The barista will think you are a crazy person. Ain't no sunshine when your gone, another example of the bad way we feel without the light. Your loved one leaves you and so does the sun. You are in the dark all alone.

So our loved ones are the light of our lives, our children are the light of our hearts and even our religions use light to show us the way. Our Savior is the light of the world.

Light is used to make us feel safe so we sleep with a night lite on when we are children. We have security lights installed on our homes when we want to feel secure when we sleep as adults.

Recently there was a rise in an old fashioned disease called Rickets. Rickets was on the rise again in the black communities of the south because they were using sun block on the children to prevent them from getting skin cancer but it also prevented the sun from getting vitamin D into their systems via their skin and the children developed Rickets! So light is essential to our health.

We use light in art and to decorate our houses and to watch our sports at night.

We cannot live with out it in every aspect of our existence.

I hope the light comes back to Paradise soon. I want to go outside and play in the sun with the Dog on the beach and come into the house with a red nose from an exposure of too much sunlight not from a wind burn!

Remembering First Times

My day usually begins with a hug and kiss for the Husband and the Dog respectively. The I stagger to the bathroom and follow the regular routine followed by most normal human beings. Toilet, hands, teeth, hair and clothes.

I head next to the computer to check out the emails, news, and weather for the day in Paradise, where I am now and Home where I live the rest of the year. While my computer is booting up I head for the kitchen and make a cup of green tea and then I mix a bowl of organic yogurt, raw whole oatmeal and organic raisins. I eat and drink in front of the computer out on the veranda overlooking the ocean while I read and answer emails etc.

After all that it is time to take an invigorating swim in the sea and then take a long walk down the beach with the Dog. Today I am wondering if the swim is worth it. Our normal weather here in Paradise is 80 degrees above zero, sunny skies, calm mornings, breezy afternoons followed by a cool calm night with a billion stars in the sky. Today the weather is more like a day on Martha's Vineyard with cloudy skies, cold wind and a choppy gray sea! I decide not to wimp out and plunge into the water while the Dog takes off on a pelican control mission patrolling the beach to keep the humans safe from marauding pelicans. Or so he says!

After only a few minutes I am out and feeling like I just spent a round in the boxing ring with a light heavy weight for a sparing partner. The waves were brutal! I am shivering and the Dog is leaping around me waiting for the long walk. The Dog has peemail messages to leave for the coyotes and rancher's dogs and needs to get the show on the road so to speak. I am toweling my hair and waiting for my heart to resume a normal beat pattern. As I dry off my arms and legs, I notice the gooseflesh on them and it reminds me of the gooseflesh I had almost exactly one year ago when the Husband and I were loading the Vehicle to head out on the road to our new home in Paradise.

We are carrying the clothes carrier out our front door to secure it to the roof of the Vehicle(a big monster, 4 wheel drive all the time, reinforced steel doored, able to drive over a small building etc. etc.) and when we get to the Vehicle we realize that the carrier which is filled with all the clothes we are bringing to our new house in Paradise is too heavy for two middle aged people to hoist up on top of a monster Vehicle! We take the carrier back into the house, unpack it, and carry it back out to the Vehicle. We then go into the garage and get two small step ladders and go back out to the Vehicle. Up goes the carrier and the bottom half gets secured and the top half is taken off and put back on the ground. Back into the house goes the Husband to start carrying out all the previously carefully folded and packed clothing so I can repack it in the carrier now safely ensconced on the roof of the Vehicle. I am standing on one of the stepladders and packing in the clothes when I find out that,
1. The Husband is not being very careful about keeping the clothes folded that he is carrying out to me.
2. I have to refold the clothes and pack them in the carrier while standing on the step ladder.
3. I am unable to reach all parts of the carrier from the perch on the step ladder and now must climb up onto the roof of the Vehicle to pack the carrier safely so said carrier does not fly off from the roof of the Vehicle and deposit our clothing over many miles of highway so....
4. Up on the roof I go causing the Husband to have to climb up the step ladder to hand me the clothes.

The rest of the day resembles the pattern set in the morning with the clothes carrier episode. Everything we thought we had planned so carefully weeks in advance seemed to go wrong. At approximately 7:30 pm I was lying on my back on our driveway underneath a boat trailer with a flashlight in one hand and the other trying to figure out why the ball of the trailer hitch on the Vehicle would not fit into the receptacle of the trailer. The Husband is lifting up the tongue of the boat trailer that is carrying two big wave runner water craft fastened securely (we hoped) and putting it on and off the ball as I shout out directions from underneath!

Finally about 9:00 pm we are completely packed and ready to leave. The Husband wearily turns to me as we stand in our kitchen and asks if a hot shower and a good nights sleep and an early departure time for the next day would be in order after all we had gone though. Much to his surprise I say, "NO!" " If we don't leave now there is no telling what will happen to us by tomorrow. Let's just get out on the road, put about 250 miles behind us, find a motel, sleep late in the morning and start again tomorrow and go till we can't go anymore."

The Husband is astounded! Is this the woman who was so totally against the whole semi retirement to a place in a foreign country on the beach in one of the remotest places in that country thing that it took him almost 6 months to convince her to just try it? Well yes, it is me!

I sat in our kitchen tired as hell and reflected on our day. We had worked so hard together to get everything ready and we had a pretty good time doing it. I could stay here one more night. I could have stayed here the rest of my life. Our house is beautiful sitting next to a nice little lake. Our kids are grown and moved out but still close enough to see whenever we want to, my parents and the rest of my family are also close by and I love to spend time with them. My girlfriends and I get together often for dinners to discuss books and politics and our Husbands and children. It is a darn good life here. However, when will I do it if not now? We have our health and our love and why not start one more adventure?

So we get into our Vehicle with the Dog in half of the back seat with his toys and dishes and blanket. The other half filled with a cooler with our drinks and healthy snacks like fruit and cheese and veggie sticks. Next to it are my cameras, purse, makeup bag, cases of CD's and a plastic file protecting our important traveling papers. In the far back of the Vehicle is the Dog's kennel, more camera gear, extra dog food, and things for our house in Paradise that are fragile and practical. In the front seat on the dash board is a photo of our destination with the phrase "Keep your eyes on the prize!" written below it and a travel log with a leather cover and an old world map on the inside page with an inscription from a dear friend wishing us a safe journey and reminding us to come back home again.

So, the Husband and I are buckled to our seats and are driving down the driveway and I feel the gooseflesh on my skin and it reminds me of the other first time we left our home state. We had been married 3 days when we packed up a different Vehicle, kissed our families and friends goodbye and left for another life in a place four states away from where we were born and raised. I had only been outside our home state one time before when I was 13 years old and the family went on at driving vacation to visit friends in the state next door. Now I was scared and excited and wondering what life would be like with the man beside me in the driver's seat.

They say life is a circle and I can attest to the truth in that statement. I have come around again
Older inside and out, still in love with the same man like the first time we left together. Scared and wondering what life will be like with the man beside me in the driver's seat. Both times were and have been so so good.

I look around at Paradise in the rough due to the weather and it is still beautiful. I shout for the Dog who is investigating a crab hole in the sand and we head out on our walk on the endless beach.