Rainbows in the Darkness

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Ah. My favorite memory of my father is when he would sing with me in church. He would lift me up on the pulpit in my lacy socks and Mary Janes and sing "Jesus Loves Me" in Spanish while I sang it in English and American Sign Language. I can still remember the signs for most of it.

My paternal grandfather... he came to visit, once, wearing his rumpled suit and fedora, and he gave me a silk pillow with a cartoon burro on it. It had little rhinestones studded on its halter, and fringe all around the sides of the pillow. I still have it, forty years later, a little worse for wear and the rhinestones are gone, but it's part of the memory.

My maternal grandfather... he let me paint his aluminum fishing boat. Anything I wanted. He gave me a brush and white paint, after he'd painted "CAROLINE" on the stern of the boat, and I painted. Waterfalls. A spidery sun. Birds, flying around, spitting raisins. Hey, I was six.

Both of my grandfathers crossed over in 1997, both of them at the age of 90. Dad will be 76 at the end of the month, and I'm lucky to still have him.

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You know what? I am disgustingly independent of everything except the need for money to keep body and soul together. So I can't say I'd declare independence from anything in particular, or anyone, for that matter.

I suppose if it was "freedom" from things, I would like to wish everyone freedom of awareness, compassion and understanding, so that some of the ills that plague humanity might resolve themselves naturally. Freedom to love and be loved. Freedom to be free in our skins.

What I celebrate on Independence Day is my ability to think and express myself, to wear what I like, to drive a car, to love who I wish, to be educated and employ myself with things that nourish my spirit. I hope that someday everyone can celebrate that.

[Error: unknown template qotd] I don't have any personal memorials of soldiers who have passed in military service; my father and stepfather were both in the service, the former USAF during Korea, the latter USN (ret) during and after WWII. My husband was USMC in Vietnam. I honor them all, for their sacrifices and for their strength, and I am very glad that they lived to be in my life.

In the locket I wear, though, is a photo of my father's mother and my Aunt Margie's first husband, the Orozco she married and the father of her daughter. He died in Korea, and it was his passage that put my father on his spiritual path. Inadvertently, I suppose, he also led to my being a spiritual seeker, since that path of my father's exposed me to a library full of books on comparative religion, psychology and spirituality I'm not likely to have found in most homes.

So a tip of the hat to my uncle, who I never met, but whose picture in my locket reminds me that a person's life, and death, can leave ripples in the web that resonate for generations.

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LOL... trapped in an elevator with any of the denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood might be a little less than ideal. Maybe Christopher Robin. The rest of them are all his neurotic alters :-p

Of these two, I believe I have been trapped in an elevator with Tigger... not an experience you want too often, unless you like having all the air sucked out of a room by a manic vacuum.

So I guess it would have to be Eeyore. Hey, I've worked with geriatrics for years, I think I can handle a little bodaying and oy veying while waiting for maintenance to get us out of there ;-)