Shiny Brights

 

I still have my parent's ornaments from their first apartment (a fifth story walk up) in New York in the early fifties. I sometimes just stop what I am doing, and just gaze at them absent- mindedly. I  notice them nestled, and shimmering in my tree. Some have flocked writing  (hard to see) while others now wear dull metallic age spots with honor.

    Nothing lasts as long as those Shiny Brights.  Many an ornament set I've bought at either a variety, or drug store has bit the dust yet the Shiny Brights live on. Come to think of it- even some of the Shiny Bright boxes ( although some of them are hanging in pieces) are still miraculously intact.

   I love looking at those ornaments.

Caffeine Thoughts

   

    On a weekend morning I love to just sit outside, and smell the wet grass with a huge cup of coffee in front of me. Lately, the mornings have been so cold that the steam wafts off my coffee in curly wisps disappearing seamlessly in the brisk air.  I sit pensive at the black wrought iron table missing the summer cushions but still grateful for winter. My fingers grasp the sides of the cup eagerly, and I think of nothing or sometimes just a few things. . . 

     Some of my best thinking happens on those mornings.

Patterns

 I said "good-bye" to my mother when I was three years old.   Of course, I didn't know I was saying, "good-bye,"  to her. I just thought she was taking a camping trip with the other siblings, and honestly I was happy to be pawned off on my grandparents.  There were four of us, and I was relishing the thought of some one-on-one time.

    Coincidentally, I had an eerily similar parting with my alcoholic sister just a little over four years ago. I haven't seen, or been with her, since she dove, full bore, into her alcoholism.

   The irony isn't lost on me- nor are the familiar family patterns that are often repeated generation after generation.

   Right now, I am just busy holding both.