It took an endless number of games ...

of Solitaire to get myself to write tonight. Nothing seems important enough to share... Like one of those days with many starts and few endings. As if I'm somewhere in the middle of something not yet defined ... and I won't know what of the many little things I engaged in today will have any meaning tomorrow -- or the next day... . The kind of day that causes you to feel tired and suspended in space ... listening to silence as if expecting ... what? Not sure. Maybe the next phone call will ground me. The last was from Dorian -- and there's always an unfinished quality to those.

Not sure that I've told you that Dorian lives quite independently in her own apartment across town, about 30 minutes away by car. She is a client (I believe the new PC word is "consumer") of the Regional Center, with a case manager and ongoing services that makes it possible for her to live on her own. She travels on public transportation to a job in a "sheltered" situation -- a few hours at small pay, but with a sense of service.

Over the years she's had a series of such positions. She is assigned a job coach from one of the many nonprofits in the area. This has enabled her at different times to be trained as a dog groomer, collater at a local print shop, a soft-drink-machine-filler-upper, a stock girl at Long's Drugs, etc. Two days a week she spends in a marvelous program called NIAD, a comprehensive arts studio where she can dabble in any of the visual arts and does well at it. At the moment she's involved in block printing, but she has a number of cat portraits in tempura in the gallery.

She goes skiing in winter, is an enthusiastic Special Olympics athlete with medals in almost every sport (but so does everybody else). She goes camping in summer and has taken at least one cruise to Ensenada. All such activities are with people of her community and with capable staff to run interference. Over the years she's grown less and less dependent upon me, but thoroughly participates in and enjoys all family holiday activities. We shop together several times a month and go together to do ladies stuff at the beauty salon now and then.

There's some sadness in her life and an unrequited love, (maybe that should be unreturned love) that causes her (and mom) pain from time to time, but what woman doesn't go through that experience throughout her life? He's also mentally disabled and despite all, I often feel that they have compatible neuroses -- at least to the extent that she's earth mother and he needs one. Like all mom's, I want far more for her than life can deliver. Guess we want that for all those we love, and for ourselves as well.



Wrote this after my first marriage ended, and some time before divorce and remarriage:

Alone Dream

Wishing to be alone ... far from the world I've known,

a candle for lighting ... taking delight in

daring to be my own ... all my own

I'll wish me a cloud to fly, and maybe a moon to sky

I'll wish me a world within a world where there can be

a love with his own dream to share this alone dream with me

I've many a wine to taste and precious few hours to waste

So I must build me a world within a world where there can be

a man with his own dream to share this alone dream with me.

There's an interesting thing going on in my head when I'm remembering these lyrics. Each song comes back whole. The music remains etched without change -- note upon note -- as composed many years ago. A few made it to tape, but many are simply in my head, still, complete. Fascinating.

I wonder how many more are waiting to be revealed to me?