I haven't written anything in a long time, though my brain has been very busy and I have lots of ideas and lots of things I want to write. In the coming weeks, I'll write more. I promise myself that. And I promise YOU, too! (All two of you!)

Life is good. I'm adjusting to a big change and loving it. I've been regrouping and reconnecting and reorganizing. I've been hanging on. I've been letting go. I've been singing aloud. I've been being quiet. I've been struggling to sleep. I've been greeting the dawn. (and those of you who know me know that greeting the dawn is NOT a common thing for a night owl like me!!).

I've been working at...... working at.......... hmmmmm......... I guess I've been working at living the life I thought was hanging in the upper branches and was too far out of reach. I've been stepping into a dream that I've had for more than fifteen years. I've been realizing that coming home is really and truly, and simply, stepping into the beautiful picture that you painted for yourself out of hope.

And I am here. And I am happy to be here. My husband joins me soon. His dream goes back even further than my own and is much more ethereal. I say a prayer every day that it will become solid so that it might hold him up and propel him forward into a world where he will thrive.

Peace all. I'll write soon, I promise.

Almost home...............

For every slow, soft lob that comes your way - the ones that you can spot, take aim, and over the back fence for a home run - for each one of those, there are hundreds of fast balls and curve balls and those bizarre, twisting knuckle balls that'll come right at you so fast, you won't know whether to swing or duck or bunt or run or just, by God, throw down the damn bat and walk away from the game.

It's that way in baseball. It's that way in life. I get tired sometimes of swinging at the hard ones, trying to make a connection. I get tired sometimes of ducking the ones that are just coming too fast, the ones that leave you out of breath and grateful that you were quick enough to dodge another. And I get tired sometimes of running the bases, only to get tagged out trying to make it to home. Just when I think I'm going to make it, I'm diving in, I'm almost there..........

Is it okay to just sit the next inning or two out? Please? Could I just do something simple, like carry water to others and carry the bats and the balls back to the field house? Would it be okay if I just had one little bitty breather?

Ah. I didn't think so.

Peace all.

The power of music.........

My new CD is finished. The recording, mixing, and mastering are done. Now on to the graphics and then, once I save the money, off it'll go to Oasis for duplication. I have listened to each song at least fifty times, probably more. Bruce Roberts, who produced the CD along with his wife Lorna, has been sending me the songs as mp3 files while they were in progress. I'd listen, make notes, send feedback, he'd make changes (or not) and send them back to me again. He sent me the final version last Monday, so I have listened and listened, making sure everything is just right, double listening for any errors, glitches, or otherwise. And I am happy and satisfied with the finished project.

And then I listened more. And I've continued to listen to it. Not because I want to hear myself, but because I want to hear the songs and hear their stories again, let them take me back to where they came from. Music is such an incredibly powerful thing. And for me, this music tells my own story - my thoughts, my feelings - it has the power to pick me up from where I am and transport me - setting me right down in the middle of all its history. I listen to this CD, its sixteen songs, and it takes me so many wonderful places and through so many different experiences and feelings: the edge of Linville Gorge in the early morning hours watching the sun rise; "the old house", Crystal's place up at the foot of Roan Mountain (where so many of the songs came to life); the windy coast of Ireland; the Mayan ruins of Guatemala; Russia and the orphanage there; the bedside of a praying, brave Guatemalan woman who changed my life; my father's hospital room; the backyard of the house I grew up in or at the kitchen table with my mom and dad; curled up in the big brown chair with my son, Jacob; sitting in the kitchen, listening to Daniel tell a story about Ashe County; Ashe County itself; Boone; a little cabin in the middle of the week in the middle of January at Smith Mountain Lake State Park (where I had the entire state park to myself and wrote two songs to keep from being spooked!!); the little back porch of my house in Morganton (probably the only house that will ever have been my own); sitting beside my friend Bobbi, with her expectant smile and her gentle way of coaxing a song out of me; gathered around Cindy's firepit............ it just goes on and on. Each one, with its story, its birth, its meaning inside my heart. I can't stop listening. They are my story. They are my heart.

My father always understood the power of music. He surrounded us with it as we were growing up. All kinds of music. And, just a few weeks before he died, when words befuddled him and he struggled to say what he meant, he found meaning and comfort in songs that he could hum, whistle, remember. In the hospital, he said to me, "I keep going back to the music. All those little notes and how they line up. There's a lot of love in those notes. You have to pay attention or those notes will just pass you by." I understood part of his message at the time, but not his whole message. Now I'm being to understand the whole of it. Because it isn't just the little notes that need our attention. And because it isn't just MY music that does that - all music does that. It holds love, sadness, joy, tenderness, fear, praise, thankfulness, happiness - you name it, and I'll bet you I can find you a song that holds it inside.

It is so powerful.

I miss my dad so much. He is with me; whenever I sing - ah! there he is! Oh but that I could sing all the day long.

I can't wait to share the CD with you.

Peace all.

The angel in the snow............

My Blue...........

My blue is back. I've been waiting for her, expecting her to show up on my door step. I'm a bit surprised she didn't show up weeks ago. But here she is, all decked out in her tears disguised as smiles and her weariness heavy as a wet winter coat. I am sad with her. And all I want to do is curl against her back and sleep until the chill is gone and the sun is too bright through the window pane.

Her company makes me homesick. I am so very homesick today. I am missing my North Carolina mountains and my North Carolina friends, and my North Carolina familiar. I want to go home. Home please. For so many years I was not sure where home was, but I know now. I understand where, and more accurately, who my home is. And I want my home to be all in one place. And I want to BE home. Blue's company makes me long for home because she sometimes can keep me from it.

I don't imagine this makes much sense to anyone who doesn't know Blue. Who hasn't kept her company, especially in the winter. I wrote in one of my songs about that. It's one of my favorite songs at this time of year. It goes:

"I know you'll find no reason in all I do and say.
Blame it on the winter - this need to sail away............"

Blame it on the winter is the name of the song. I guess I blame a lot on the winter. Poor Old Man, he's just doing his job. But Old Man Winter, he's the one that brought Blue a-callin'. He brings her to my house most every year.

I miss my home - my children, my mom, Bobbi and Steve, Cindy and Hannah and Dylan, the familiar road heading out of town with the view of Table Rock or the other with the view of Grandfather, the feeling of belonging.

Peace y'all. Keep the back porch light on and a fire in the stove. I'll be home before too much longer. Until then, my friend Blue will keep me company. And Scott will do his best to keep me warm.

It's always something..........

That was my status update on Facebook last night. "It's always something......." And it's true, isn't it? No matter how smooth the waters, no matter how easy the course, something always happens to rock the boat just a little, sometimes a lot, and sometimes even turn it over and send you out into cold water! This week it's the septic system at the house - too much water in the ground and the drainfield and now the freeze - certainly not things I can control, but there you have it. The thing is not working right. So I have to try to remember not to flush. Do you know how hard that is? Unless it's already a habit, you will find yourself, more often than not, flushing. And then, "Oh man!! I wasn't supposed to........" and then you sweat bullets for a little while, hoping it'll go down anyway! I'll be glad to see the sun and feel some warmth in the air. I think that'll be the only thing that'll actually cure the situation!

The other "something" is whatever it is that's making that horrible sound under my left foot in the car. It's kind of a grindy, scraping kind of sound. Brake? Wheel bearings? Strut? CV joint? Who the hell knows?! (My guess is that it's the brake doing something that it shouldn't though the man of the house [hence the auto expert] says there is plenty of brake shoe and the rotor is not wearing so it's not the brake?). The car has been in the shop more times in the past six months than it has since I bought it, new, in 2003! I shouldn't complain. She's been a great great car. She's got 170,000 miles on her and I've driven her hard! I kind of wish the trips to the shop could have been a little bit more spread out over the past seven years instead of the past seven months! I guess I'll have to take her back in. It's too blasted cold to work on her in the driveway!

You know, the thing is, in the winter time - "it's always something" seems to happen more and it is way more difficult to make light of it. I was talking to Jacob about this very thing early this morning when I called him. We were talking about Seasonal Affective Disorder (which I capitalize because I have a lot of respect for it and because then when you write SAD, folks know what you mean). I have it. Scott has it. Jacob's pretty sure he has it. I think, in actuality, most all of us have it to some degree. It's because our natural instinct right now is to hibernate. To put on a big layer of body fat and to hunker down and be still. That goes all the way back to our days in caves when body fat and hunkering down is what kept us alive. So it's our bodies natural instinct but life is in conflict. So we have to go and do and work and have Christmas and New Year's and all that stuff. When, really, what we want to do internally, is sit still, sleep more, and come out when the sun is warm again. There are a lot of people that just absolutely love the winter - when someone says that to me, I just think "you ain't right!" - and they just truck right along, happy and energetic. I think maybe that's where the "sad" part of SAD comes in for those of us who can't quite perk up to that level. We have so much to be grateful for, we live in warm houses, our cars have heaters, we have good food, we can go to the Y and work out, so why do we feel so blue, so lazy, so damn tired?! They say it's lack of sunlight. I think it's lack of warmth, too.

So when you got this SAD thing going on, it makes all these pain-in-the-butt kind of stuff harder to take. "It's always something" becomes "it's always something, damn it, and I can't take it any more!". Granted, those feelings pass, but it sure can bring out the grumpier side of a person. I know I get quite a bit grumpier in the winter.

I will be so glad to see the spring. (I know, I know - it's only the 10th of January! it's awfull early to be longing for the spring already! February is going to be particularly long this year!!). In my mind's eye, I see a picture of myself in the spring, emerging from a muddy, damp cave, squinting up at the sun, eyes trying hard to adjust to the light, looking around and seeing green and thinking - "Ahhhhhhhh!".

Peace to you. And thanks for listening to my whining!

The Long Wait............

It's a little after one in the morning. I am at the hospital, waiting on a baby. It's a major part of my life - this waiting. I realized this evening that I've spent a large part of the past fifteen years doing just this - waiting patiently. Sometimes, like tonight, the mom has had some pain medicine and is mostly sleeping through labor, so I am waiting in my little home-away-from-home. Sometimes I wait out at the nurses' station with the nurses, hanging out, telling stories. Lots of times, I wait in the room with the mom and the folks she's asked to be with her. I have learned that my role in that room is a fluid thing and moves in whatever direction the mother and the baby dictate. Sometimes it is an active role, coaching, talking, soothing, coaxing, encouraging mom to sit or stand or turn or walk. Sometimes I just sit quietly, listening, watching, waiting......

I've learned a lot being a midwife. When I think about it, from that perspective, I always feel a bit humbled. Because it's taught me so much. For example, it's from that sitting quietly - just listening, watching, being present - that I've learned the gift of "being with". My friend Cindy told me once that my greatest gift to her as a friend was my ability to just "be with" her in her stuggles - her grief, her heartache, her fear; not trying to change it, not trying to direct it or make it go away, but just being there with it. I learned that from being a midwife. I know that I cannot take the pain away. I can't really even relieve it that much. But I can be there with it, be there with the mom, be the presence that says "let it happen", "trust yourself", "you'll be alright after awhile."

I've learned a lot of patience. One of the things that midwifery has taught me, through experience, is that when I get in a rush and I try to make things happen faster, I generally end up wishing I'd just let things alone to happen on their own time and not mine! And I've found that to be true in my life as well. Trying to hurry things up and make them happen faster, or pass faster, or get done faster - you lose something in that and sometimes you make things a lot harder. So I've learned this great patience as a midwife. And it's overflowed into so many areas of my life. I think about how much I've enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) watching my boys become the people they've become (are becoming). Watching their spirits unfold and take flight. I've tried not to hurry it. Sometimes I worried (and I guess I always will worry for them in the ways that mothers worry - do they have enough to eat? are they happy in their relationships? will they find careers and jobs in which they are happy and fulfilled?), but I didn't try to change the process. I've tried to be patient and let it happen - and they are both such amazing people!!All of the waiting for these little babies I've done has taught me to be alright with the wait. It's worth it.

This patience - it's like the patience of old age, but even more so. I think it's made me patient in a way that's even deeper than that. I find that I am patient about most things. Not only patient, but glad to be so. I can flow with things much easier now than I could even five or ten years ago. Because I do it all the time. Almost every day, I wait and let things happen, and encourage other people to do the same.

It is a miraculous thing watching a baby being born, guiding a baby into this world with your own hands. It really is one of the coolest things I know. I've delivered just under 1500 babies now. Those are just the ones I delivered with my own two hands. There are many more that I took care of in labor that had to be delivered by cesarean. And before I became a midwife, I witnessed many many births in the seven years that I worked as a labor and delivery nurse. It thrills me still! Every time. It is just such a wonderful thing to witness - a new life beginning. And from that, I have learned how amazing we all are. Unique. And perfect in our own way. At the beginning, we are all incredibly beautiful. I haven't seen a single one yet that I didn't think was beautiful.

I know that it is an incredible blessing to love your life's work. I am intensely grateful for that gift. I'm like anybody - I can whine and complain sometimes; I get overly tired and can be pretty bitchy about it; it takes me longer and longer to recover from those all-night waits; and my back complains more now about the work it has to do keeping me up. There are women that I see that frustrate me and some that drive me a little crazy (though less now than even a year ago). I am glad that I chose this path. Even when I am at the hospital at almost 2 in the morning, waiting again, instead of sleeping warm in my own bed. I am still glad I chose this path.

I am missing Daniel and Jacob today. I wish they lived closer and that I could see them every couple of days instead of every couple of months. I am missing my father, too, especially yesterday and today. I miss the sound of his laughter. So I turn to the patience that all these mamas and babies have taught me and rely on its comfort. Soon I'll be in company with my sons and it'll be sweet and warm and fun, as always. And when my time here on this earth is done, my father will be waiting patiently for me on the other side. Time is so very short. I have learned to savor every minute. (The women I take care of in labor would tell me unprintable things if I asked them to savor every minute of labor!).

Savor it. Be grateful for it. It is a beautiful thing.

Peace.