I'm sick.
Not morally or anything(no, really), but physically. I don't know why, but when I get a cold I sit up at night and just feel like I'm gonna die. I got to feeling better after about 5 days, and then got slammed again. Same routine. After about 5 days I felt like life might just be mine once more, and whammo. So this is now 2 days into that 3rd cycle and I just could not stay awake today. Went into the doctor finally(i hate doing that)and now have a nice little pile of meds to fight what my body just couldn't do on it's own. Why do I bring this up?

When I got home again I heated up some bean and ham soup. Oh golly. Beautiful. The smell instantly took me back to every kitchen of every house that my mom and I lived in when I was growing up. When I felt crummy, which was often, mom would pop into the kitchen and create sunshine. She had such an ability to transform an empty room into a palace of warmth and friendship, where you couldn't help but feel safe and secure. We lived in some really old houses, some real dives in fact...but once mom got in there, you just couldn't tell. Whether she opened a can or popped a "few little things" into a pot, the house would be filled with a most delicious smell. It just made you feel physically warm all over.

Mom grew up on a ranch in Colorado. It was one of those situations where the ranch had been owned by her grandfather, a well-known and highly respected gentleman in the region...a judge, in fact. But when he passed away, the ranch was sold for some reason and my grandfather, the eldest son, ended up working as a hired hand on the ranch where he was raised. The family lived in a small house, very sparse and bare. Grandpa came down with yellow fever, of all things, and while ill and then after, he was no longer able to do the hard work of the ranch. The family moved into an even smaller house...about the size of my entire kitchen. The children, all girls, were sent to live with other family members from time to time, and one left and lived with some folks who were better off. I'm thinking that it was during these times that my mom learned how to make beauty from nothing and to create an internal flame of security in the midst of a storm. She just had such a gift.

So here I am, without mom and feeling crummy and wishing beyond belief that someone would walk in the room and stroke my hair and whip friendship and warmth up out of the air so that I can just relax into the peace of feeling safe and cared for. Okay, so that's alot to ask of a can of soup, but it helped. I just needed it to be a much bigger bowl!

Thanks, momma. I love ya. And yeah, I took my meds.