often occurrence

"It's alright. He's prepared me. I'm good with this," I tell her and am surprised at how I believe it.
She nods. I schedule walks with people. She runs outside to wave goodbye because she's not used to me not coming to see her, but I was too busy being an asshole a jerk. It's an often occurrence.

Today I am grateful to forgive and be forgiven, to walk and swim, to have a nice meal.

focus

Today I am grateful for lunch, hot dogs and chicken to eat today.

dreamscape

Today I am grateful for plans of early morning walks and long afternoon naps.

lyrics, Manchester Orchestra

gonna give you my heart in spite of my soul
does that bore you?

(it sometimes does me, too.)



Today I am grateful for the word "acoustic".

stretch

Stay in the tent until you absolutely can't make it another moment without peeing. Your headlamp should be to your right. The sleeping pad needs to stay inflated and smell okay. In the hundred mile wilderness, know that there will be days you struggle and days you let up. And it would've been like that at home. Stretch. Go forward. Keep walking.


Today I am grateful to walk.

vitamin G

She says, "It's over."

She calls that short but intense fragment of my story telling imagination a textbook example of this time in my life. Never had any common sense. Nobody ever thought I did.

I nod and will accept that she's always right because she has been my whole life, and I'm tired. Restless and tired and sad and happy and everything rolled up into me being an asshole a jerk.

Today I am grateful for a group of imperfect social misfits who fail, succeed, laugh, love. I am grateful I didn't get what I thought I wanted. I am grateful others know better than me.

"Wish I had strong hands and a whole lotta insight to fix up this mess I insist to write."
Cue source music.

thank you card

She is amazing and proud and brilliant and I'm having coffee. She's having water.

"No common sense," she says.

She reminds me of my daddy.

Beside her sits a powerhouse of thought and voice and reason. Brittany is writing a story, and I can wait, and I will wait, but her take on anything is filled with research and discussion and this little place could be Oxford writers at a pitch meeting. This child, grown woman, lady is writing about the internet but on the internet.

This should be the best one yet.



Today I am grateful for dinner, for writers, for stories, for people who are generous enough to give me their time and ear.

plenty of questions

giving everyone else a break...


That famed five-word line was the title of the first chapter of Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media? Source: Trivial Pursuit, Genus IV


Today I am grateful for one more day, a bag of rocks for show and tell, and plenty.

that time of year

She is robbed. She provides a list. She nods. She says this. She says that. She longs for the day but wishes time would stand still. just now.

Today I am grateful for today.

breaking down the project (point of view)

It is the morning after of finally filming a video on the list of things you better get done. His music, his dance combined into a high contrast light coming directly from above. The kid is going to Full Sail University into a music production program. And he's good but he's leaving and he's staying and this was the last time to (sorta) get them together.

Today I am grateful for video, for the first project of this type, for a collaboration which broke down into tiny steps until only three were remaining.

the first time you held hands you were praying

Driving past turkey road is not the best idea on a Sunday when traffic is light. But he asked me to come and it's for our kids so I'm in one of the cars asking for directions. It is a small place, and that's a comfort, though I think the music could've filled up a space even larger. When she sang, when he smiled, and they pleaded, hugging a mama, taking a picture.


Today I am grateful for an invitation.

him

Every once in a while on a Sunday morning in the calm, quiet stretch before a walk I need some music. And I know just the music. You've heard it. Dinner with a preacher on Friday night, texts with a superstar, swimming in the summer of '19. I forgot to call him. Today, promise.


Today I am grateful that we'll talk.

switchback

The turn is sharp enough to put a point in the day, and the walking sideways is getting a request from a coach and being sent something about needing one. The saving grace was that I was continuing the climb, but I was sure whining. Then he answers the door and she's prepared a feast and my bowl is looking as pitiful as the day of making it halfway up the hill. But still I made it.


Today I am grateful for their youngest who smiled so sweet, the poppyseed chicken, sweet tea in a thick glass, a pillow, and a conversation. I am grateful someone considers me a writer and allows me to bully my way into people's lives.

listen

Today I am grateful for the lights and sounds and he wears a jacket and she wears a dress and the placement of the shoulders and the chin. The posture tells us.

I would like to thank them for this year's biggest lesson, but I am grateful for communication.

notes on the summer of '19, note two

She runs to sit with me.

I say, "You know better than to run."

She runs 1/100,000th of a second slower when I mention that.
Still I can tell that she at least listened to me.
So I let her have it until she falls again.
I will say, "You know better than to run."


Her sister jumps, and she watches.
Then she jumps and her sister watches.
It's a back and forth of jumping and sitting and watching
until we're exhausted from the swim.

selfish

It was a selfish move. A quote about the importance of education featuring our children. I suck at selling. I force it, push with the important. But it just seemed so right when I read it, and then quoted beside photographs I adored.


Today I am grateful for yesterday, a large room, light everywhere, and music.

a case history, question

The question is: Where were FBI agents told never to put their hands upon meeting J. Edgar Hoover?

Source: Trivial Pursuit GENUS IV (definitely trademarked)

Today I am grateful that he reads the questions with a British accent,
that he too likes honey mustard,
and that I could hear him smile when we talked on the phone.

out of all the happenings, there was this one happening

The first photo is selected before she even walks into the room. She took her own on my phone weeks ago, but she has no idea we are going to use it. It's my only strategy to make her laugh as payment for the interview.


Today I am grateful to sit across from a young lady, from a few in a room, and listen and ask questions and brilliance shines.

rock from stirring trail

the trail of stirring and back to work

It is a natural phenomenon
in a time when that word
means the water
and sand and
a layer of dead leaves
moving,
being stirred without someone actually stirring it
on the right before the fork in the road.

He asks, "Did you see how clear that water was?"





Today I am grateful for calls, walks, texts, a swim, and a perfectly cooked steak.

breaking down the Mother's Day failure of 2019

The greatest a gift I didn't give her would have been to have her phone fixed. It would have cost nothing to call the phone company from my working model and say to them, "I'd like to report a problem."

He's amazed I didn't.

He should be.


Today I am grateful for a woman who will make her Mother's Day breakfast this morning, for the flowers she receives, for the cards. I just wish I was aware and smart enough to have been better to her (and him) four days ago.



I took the girls to the store. There was this laugh, and I wish I could have looked at Willa and said, "If you ever find you can make somebody laugh like that, make them your best friend. Stalk them your whole life. That person, her mother, your mother, let them know that they are appreciated."

"She say anything about me?" he asks.

lists, lists, lists, everywhere

1. Type. Three stories this weekend.
    A. Her
    B. Them
    C. Them

2. Calendar. Publish.

3. Upload photos, complete video and senior project (2 videos). No excuses.

4. Don't think about that guy. Call him and him. Put their numbers in your phone.

5. Listen to the rain and the music.

6. Call the girls. Play in the rain.

7. Buy a present.

8. Write in a card.

9. Tell her how you love her.

10. eat, brush your teeth, shower, sleep.



Today or all weekend I am grateful for her and him and them and the phone call we received yesterday morning, that she jumped in our car and we got to drive her around the parking lot, a palace lunch with a queen, and a hard rain.

having a high pitched, drawn out, unpleasant sound

It is like that time when we made that left turn into the woods and discovered the color blue. Blue on the rocks, in the stream, the drops of water in the air lifting. A glistening blue in nature.

"I need my camera."

He looked back at me, smiled, and shook his head.

"It's just that you can't capture that color blue with the phone. I need my camera."

Proof that I'm whiny.



Today I am grateful for those people who do what I complain can't be done.

for the heres and theres

To here, to there, to there, to here life races. It sounds like an excuse.
It is, I think, but I hope to be forgiven.


Since I'm grateful.

gift

Achievement, accolades, appreciation, everyone gathers this time of year while at the same time standing through one of the most rigorous job evaluations I've ever seen. The contrast is marked by silence and smiles and I get to be in a room with her.


A teacher.



Today I am grateful for a teacher, for so many teachers.

backpacking

It is as close as you can get to watching so many people think, and they're allowing me to take photos.

He taught me when he was in 2nd grade, and I beat him like the most obnoxious winner dancing and shaking my hips. He hated it. After 6 months I never won again. Now he can annihilate me in three moves.



Today I am grateful for his tenacity, his persistence.

my bad

It's always someone's fault and a person to blame and in this case and most others is the responsibility falls on me. I don't like responsibility. It means I have power to hurt you, to not give you what you need, to not be there, to get tired of being asked and ignored in my what seems like a simple request. I don't want to fight. I want to admit that I can't handle being a friend.

I aspire to be an acquaintance which makes me an asshole.

quiet

Today I am grateful for messages,
a gorge, a meeting, a walk,
strawberries, grapes, salmon, and steak.

a perpetual state of awesomeness

A young woman who throws a party takes the top floor of a restaurant. She sends out a digital invitation that suggests you can call her, scan the QR code, or visit the website. She is together and beautiful and so brilliant in that she became the answer to questions, the person to know, the writer, the photographer, the world traveler, and she is still working on it.

Three weeks, she tells me. She gives me three weeks.


Today I am grateful for a drive, for a rain, for a generous soul.

book

When you read a book about cattle mutilations, one of the best things people can ask you is what are you doing?

You time it just right.


"I'm reading about cattle mutilations."




Today I am grateful to know the legend of a writer, of a thinker, of a photographic memory, of is this fiction or an elusive prey or ohmygosh in 84 pages Samuel Adams lays out a scene.


I don't want to see anyone in red shoes which means I'll see red shoes everywhere.
Thank you, Mr. Adams. You are, as the kid says, a true teller of stories.
Thank you, kids, for the book.

the summer of '19

Reba's introduction to the music we belted tonight with the windows down and the rain coming. Our bathing suits on and them laughing. Two times we jumped in that pool and two times we ran because of the lightning. Ice cream from town, and Matthew McConaughey looks good for an old man she said.

Next time we'll perform this.



Today I am grateful for time.

so much

It's one of those mornings when you get to see a million shots you missed, when you wonder how many hours until, when focus is important but not as much as feeling, when your muscles are knotted, and the air begins to heat. I've been pouty this week.


Today I am grateful for so much.

this young woman

There's a shine to it, this evening. The previous eight hours have been filled with music, singing, cleaning, dancing, laughing, eating, hugging, reminiscing, celebrating achievement, eight years of goal setting, planning, going, doing, working, studying, reading, listening, sharing, and being married.

And being a friend, a daughter, a granddaughter, a sister and just now from a further distance.

Today I am grateful and honored to be asked to do something for this young woman.