On Looking Out

This morning I was gazing down from my sitting room window to the snow covered earth below. How many times have I looked out this window? How many seasons have passed? It seems only yesterday when I was little and I shared this very room with my sister. Her side of the room was always messy, and my half, as neat as a pin. She used to throw pillows at me in the night, hoping to stop me from snoring. Funny, but I never got mad at her.  Sometimes she could be so mean...and still, I don't think I ever raised my voice to her.

After she grew up and went to college she never came home again.  Oh...she'd stop in from time to time, but..she was never...quite...here with us. It's been 40 years since we shared anything as intimate as this room.

Last week she died. I never had a chance to say goodbye to her...not then when she left, and no time in between visits. So today I say farewell to you Lauren...I hope you find some measure of peace in your soul, at long last.

A Sad and Long Overdue Goodbye

I never said goodbye to my sister Lauren.  Ever. All the years she has come and gone in my life and never once did we ever say goodbye.  There were stony silences on the end of the phone line, angry words shouted and then dropped into complete silence, and e-mails never answered. So few hellos, and not one goodbye.

Until now.

Lauren died last week.  If it wasn't for a strategically placed obituary in a puny local paper here that pretty much no one ever reads, we might never have known. So, here goes.

Goodbye, farewell, my sad and lonely sister. We mourned you for many years, and now it's time for us to let you go.



Lauren and I...late 80"s



No longer in Limbo

My toolkit has finally been updated. After much waiting and wonder, I called the Office of Medical Services last Monday and asked them whether or not they would release me from deferment.  I thought it prudent to find out soon, as I had received my staging instructions and was scheduled to leave for my assignment in Ukraine in 4 weeks.  After much chit chat and information discovery, the nurse declared me well and ready for duty.

Ukraine here I come.

Suspended Studio

The studio is on hiatus at the moment. Two of the occupants have moved on to higher plains, and the third (me!) is moving to Eastern Europe to become a Peace Corps Volunteer. Stay tuned for little bites of this and that while I travel about the world in search of a place to house my teapot.






                                                                                                                                                                                          

Leaving Home or Going Home?

It's hard to believe that in just 5 short weeks I will be leaving the comfort and familiar surroundings of my home and venturing forth into the unknown for 2 years, 3 months, and however many days it will take for me to land back on American soil.  With a mixture of excitement and disbelief that I am actually on my way to live in Eastern Europe, I am curling back up inside my memories of childhood and trying to discover what part of me has always lived in another place. What is it that makes a person more comfortable away from home? Away from their birthplace...almost like you knew that you never really should have been there in the first place? Is it my wandering soul? That celestial fabric of existence that lived before I reached the current plain that I am living in now? I have been told before that I have an old soul and I believe this with all my heart.  I was someplace else before I existed in the here and now.