Today, I grabbed the munchkins and drove out to Chestnut Hill to Forbidden Drive (cars are forbidden) to do some hiking. It was the hottest day of the year yet. The leaves on the forest of trees were as still as the dead, maybe stiller. Not a single whisper felt. Horses grunted. People were scarce.

We headed straight for Wissahickon Creek. The water was crystal clear with a slight current and only 1-3 feet deep. The kids splashed and skipped rocks and then covered themselves with the cool water. I joined them. My cut off jeans were soaked from sweat anyway. We had plenty of drinking water and vitamin water and gatorade to go around for a few hours. The kids screached with delight and tried hanging from branches, climbing rocks, running uphill and taking all the challenges that presented themselves. I am a true mother of boys. God knew what he was doing giving the girls to other mothers and the boys to me! My South Philly Milly friends would have been horrified at my behavior. And the bugs! And the mud! And the porta potties!

It was heaven on earth to me. We climbed the 2 mile hill on a trail to Cucumber Tree (the very top) and the boys became pirates and soldiers and hunters and spys. They spoke with each other in code names and I was the enemy or the leader or the old lady depending on the game being played at the time. I took a seat on the bench as the kids tried to climb the 287 year old tree with limbs as wide as some South Philly Streets. A downhill trek lead us to the creek where the kids splashed about again. I found a large flat rock in the middle of the flowing water and took a long stretched out rest. The water flowed all around me and passed me by as if racing to somewhere. I closed my eyes and practiced my yoga breathing as my feet dangled in the water. My LL BEAN sneakers are perfectly water proof (the millies would hate those sneakers..(although di likes them, but she is, as always, an exception to the rules). My eyes opened to find a hint of sky between 100 feet high trees. The sound of the rushing water, the different birds obviously happy and content, bugs buzzing. Lovely.

The heat turned out to be fun. We walked back with soggy sneakers and muddy limbs. We swatted mosquitos and then we found the ice cream parlor at the end of the parking area; cones for everyone before heading home. On our way we found the familiar play ground with handmade wooden castles..and the kids begged me to stop. So ....I stopped. They played freeze tag as I strolled the shops on Germantown Avenue. I found a great shop that sells all handmade products from villages around the world. The store is a non profit and they are all around the U.S. The prices were great and the products absolutely beautiful. I loved the bowls and quilts and drums and other instruments. I chatted with the sales lady as I explained our day in order to shed some light on my dirty appearance. I went went back to fetch the kids who did not want to leave; 15 more minutes and then we headed back home for hot baths and a big pot of gravy. They devoured tons of pasta and meatballs and sausage before running off to play some video games.

Tonight, I went to Temple's Emergency Room to talk to a nurse about a job. I am very confused just about now. I felt out of sorts but excited. I looked around and everything felt foreign but the people were nice and understanding and helpful.

I know today was a gift. A real live offering from some angel to say ..there still is a bit of time for fun with your kids, there is still lots of life to live, there is still things to learn and try and explore. Even though I was only with my youngest and cousins and a friend..the others gathered around later on and remembered when they too went hiking and to the castle playground. I am sure they do not remember it as fondly as I do. I hope they do some day.

Tonight,lightening flashes across the sky. My dog is hiding behind the sofa. My kids are all home with smiles on their faces and bodies tired and happy. I listen to the rain and remember the sound of the flowing water of the creek. I think about the woods in the city and again think I am lucky to have found that spot.

I suddenly long for my dark quiet bedroom with rain drops rhythmically hitting the windows.

Tomorrow, if the rain has stopped, and after the gym, and chores, and errands, we will head to the shore for the rest of this summer. There, we will have to find some new things to explore and appreciate.

Another thing I want to tell my kids is that: Everything Matters.
Everything we do, all our experiences, all our reactions and conversations and daily activities matter. We are like a well licked lollipop that falls in the sand. Each and every grain of sand representing the moments of our lives.

I want them to know that just because they don't get in trouble or they don't get caught or arrested or just because they aren't openly and outwardly rewarded or recognized for their efforts or talents does not mean what they do will not affect them in the deepest and utmost fashion.

I want them to know that certain things linger and grow and the times of the past are in the folds of our minds at all times.

I feel lucky to remember lots of great times and people and exact moments when I did, said, or heard things. When a fragrance first entered my memory, when the heat of the bus fumes entered my cells, when the hot black top streets cooled by fire plug water wrote it's line in the scripts of my life. I remember other things that I am not so proud of, and things too that were fun and outrageous. There are times that have accumulated and snow balled and nutured relationships and love. There are friends that were bosom buddies that I have no idea where they are today but I remember our days and hours and moments. I remember dancing to 45's with Theresa, I remember going to 48 flavors with Lisa, I remember learning to use a curling iron with Shawnee and then again with John. I remember how they influenced my life. I not only remember but I still feel those feelings, I still use those emotions, I can still transport myself to certain moments and actually be in that moment. Isn't memory grand sometimes?

I want my kids to know that their wet lollipop may be crusted with sand and even when you try to rinse it away, it sticks and reminds you and shapes the way you think and live.

Life isn't all about having fun. Some of it is, but the rest of it is making us what we'll become, shaping us, and at times ruining us. Our decisions and actions, whether no fault of our own, will capture us and take us prisoner. Some of us have terror in our hearts and minds and others have love and respect and integrity and happiness and then others have a bit of it all. Some of us experienced horror and make good out of it but we never forget. Oprah Winfrey comes to mind regarding making good out of a bad situation but never forgetting. Some have luck and love and support and still mess everything up for themselves and everyone around them.

Another thing I want my kids to know..our actions affect hundreds of people around us...it trickles through people like rain water in the cracks of the earth...sometimes you never realize the damage..or the good but we really do influence more than we ever realize.
I know how my parents, grandparents, husband, children and friends influenced me (a bit) but there are others, strangers, neighbors, church members, public figures that infiltrate my mind and change me every second.

So I want my kids to know to be aware of the control they have over themselves and this world and to use it properly.

Did you ever see someone from your past and you stop to talk and and are glad to see them but feel like you don't know what to say? Did you ever keep in touch with old friends and feel like you didn't know if it "was worth it" because you see so little of them and there really isn't a relationship there? Even when there is nothing really between you but your past it brings those sand granules back into focus...it jars your memory, it stirs your emotions. It reminds you of what you may have forgotten. It shows us how we really never forget and what the other person remembers about us. How someone remembers us affects us too.

We can't change our past but we can be more conscious and be more in control our future.

I read a good article today about growth. Dr. Carl Hammersclag, MD (a Yale trained psychiatrist and public speaker) explains growth is really ALWAYS about letting go and not about adding on. He talks about shedding our skin in order to grow. That made me think of snakes. The pain and difficulty of this shedding of our skin actually facilitates growth.

I thought about my life's circumstances and about how all change is loss and the steps of grieving must be met and overcome before we can proceed on and on until finally to the last stage; acceptance. I thought about the idea that change adds to growth and I understand, especially at my age, how growth does not mean adding on but shedding parts of ourselves in order to make room for something new. Think of a house that is being renovated: a part of the house may be removed in order to redo the area or add an addition. The whole process, when complete, will be a growth of some sort..even though there may not be any additional space.

We resist change all the time, being comfortable in what we are familiar with, clinging to past emotions. The ease of some things being less than a challenge is hard to shed or give up. It would be easy for me to find a job in the field I was working in: home care or field nurse case management. I haven't decided how I am going to finally proceed but I am almost sure traditional home care is part of my shedding skin. I speak with employers and recruiters every day. Some days I feel like I spend so much time talking about things that will never come to be but I have to say I am learning a great deal about the health care system and how it works and about the trends. It is interesting to listen to how other people spend their time at work and what they perceive as important enough to devote 40 hours a week or more towards. WOW, 40 hours sounds like a lot of time for just one week! I also feel more confident in pursuing my interests and obsession with writing and maybe even reporting. I am looking into educational options. I am also finding a new respect for my profession.

Nursing is hard work. Most nurses are not paid enough for the responsibility they have, the SHIFT work required, the constant stress. It is also rewarding and all about life. So many professional nurses are educationally advanced and advocate education and expertise in their specialty. They take their work very seriously as they work with grace and ease, even if they are seemingly forgotten the minute they walk out the door. Some are recipients of grants and funds that their own hard work and perseverance allowed. They will see their research to benefit many others come to fruition. Today, I spoke with someone who is conducting a 5 year research study on Neurological Emergencies such as strokes, seizures and head trauma. Certain responses and protocols will be meticulously followed to see how better to serve patients with these problems in the future. Work like this takes many, many hours, days and months and years to analyze and organize in order to get to a professional conclusive determination.

What better kind of job then the ones all about life.

Dr. Hammerschlag also says that his native relatives taught him: that nothing really belongs to us except us. We come with nothing, and whatever we accumulate, we will leave behind. What we keep forever is the love which gives our life meaning, the discovery of joy in each other, and the joy of challenge and growth.

An article worth sharing with my blog friends!

I grew up much differently than my husband in that I was sheltered from the real world as much as possible and he was not (sheltered). In some ways that kind of childhood made me curious and interested. I still am niave and am easily shocked by the real world each and every day; that is one reason I shun the news. When I delve into the daily reports I am haunted and hurt and shocked and outraged.

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Remember the movie "A Few Good Men"...in the courtroom scene when Tom Cruise is pressing Jack Nicolson, a military officer, to tell the truth. "You want the truth?" Nicholson snaps. "You can't handle the truth."

Those of us that long for the truth, who want to analyze the explanations, the reasons, the human existence, and the twisted points of view, there are times we just can't handle it.

Most of the problem in the handling of it is when it affects our own lives directly, when we are shocked to hear something we were searching for but hoping to be wrong about or to realize the world isn't a Cindarella castle afterall; most of the time it is after midnight in the land of reality.

I like to dwell on the ball, though. I like to keep on hoping for that prince to bring me my lost glass slipper and turn the world, once again, to perfection. You see I may have lost the slipper a couple of times but I never forget it. I know it exists and I keep on hoping. God and prayer coinside with hope. Trust and courage and faith come in handy. As I dream, I live in the real world, as hard as that may be sometimes. Some other people really do confuse fairytales with real life.

When I was young certain words were never uttered in our house. Sex, pregnant, junkies, weed, bongs, thongs, pimp, whore, prostitute or faggot were never spoken. We were not vulgar in our house. We were as politely spoken as possible unless it was Saturday morning and my mother was vacumming under our beds calling us Sons of bitches while she cleaned and we slept...that did happen on occasion but I dont think my father ever knew about it. My parents never said the F word. Neither do I..usually. If we were watching TV with my dad and the DoubleMint gum commercial came on (where the couple kissed) the channel was immediately changed. Forget about words so commenly used today...there are lots of them. My point is the world is a lot less dignified today and we were a bit more sheltered than the rest of the world. Seemingly anyway.

Our family was like most others. We have genetic connections to criminals, divorcees, drug addicts, bucket mouth women and probably even homosexuals. When my aunt told me all about french kissing I had nightmares for a month. Nowadays, I think my 10 year old (or at least some of his friends) can tell me all about french kissing as well as other things he shouldn't already know.

(I tell everyone)I always thought one of my neighbors, who was a couple of years older than me, was retarded, but it turned out, I learned when I was an adult, he was just your run of the mill junkie.

My husband's family was different. His house did intrigue me a bit. His mother was a sort of recluse, his dad an angel. Each day they smoked hundred of cigarettes and liked to keep the house lights down and the coffee going at certain exacts times of the day. They talked about the extended family and neighbors very openly discussing the drugs people took, the affairs they were having and the most intriguing story of all to me was the one where one neighbor actually changed from being his mother's daughter to being his mother's son.

Thinking back about all that, I realize WE were, many times, the odd ones. I am still learning my life's lesson: that the real live world is really much different than it looks. The truth is always hidden. I am not all together mistrustful but I do doubt the stories as they are told, I do realize everything is relative, I do wonder how so much is put on and made up and done for publicity. I like revealing the unobvious. I still am naive at times and even dum about certain things, but, we all are, we all are fooled everyday by what we see and hear and lots of people who think they are smart are really not so smart (and that really makes them dummer). Isn't it "normal" and compassionate to want to feed the poor, avoid struggle and war at all costs and increase social services? My enlightened self knows the world is not so easy to understand. My thinking seems against the grain but it is really a carefully thought out and very long answer. I really do not want to get political but I want to show the comparison of my childhood and how not seeing things the way they really are sometimes creates a liberal mind. I feel like life's truths need to be seen in order to do the right thing. I also know that life is very contradictory. I admit the struggle between my faith and my politics. I see the need to be conservative to have a more stable world and the unrealistic thinking of some of those issues. I see public health and welfare needs and I wonder how turning our backs can be good and right.

My 10 year old son who thinks the WWF/wrestling is the salt of the earth since he was 3 years old is wondering about one of his favorite wrestlers, Chris Benoit. This man's and his family's deaths were used as publicity last night. The downright ignorance that went into the televising of this public figure's death like he was some kind of martyr is outrageous. Is my son old enough to tell that this man, probably physiologically changed due to steroid and other drug use, strangled his wife in a rage and then suffocated his little son with a pillow and then, hours, maybe a day later, finally hung his sorry ass soul.

How can I even utter the words "he suffocated his baby with a pillow"? It is not possible.

And as I write this, the WWF is using this story to make money. I wonder if anyone called him an idiot, an asshole, or a fucking loser. I wonder how to appreciate freedom of speech regarding this fiasco. An evil circus.

Can I smash all the glass carriages and slippers and bring the real live world to this 10 year old child? Or do we try to ignore it and take a liberal way to say how upsetting it is that these victims of drugs are now departed. Or do we sit our kids down and tell them that this man, knowingly and willingly took many drugs to make himself bigger than life, to make himself larger than ordinary, to make himself something otherworldly. Do we point out the horrors of drug use, the reality of WWF, of steroid use? Do we say "when you do it wrong, you get it wrong" ...like a friend of mine says...and that

he deserved it.

But what about the wife, the little son?
What about the truth? Is the son better off not living that life? Is there a bigger reason for these things to happen?
AND this is the second or third similar story this week (of a father killing his wife and child)
WHAT is WRONG WITH US? WHERE ARE OUR MINDS? WHERE ARE OUR SOULS? Starving while we get richer?

Would stricker laws or lifestyles of higher integrity or more conservative living make things different? better?

Do we want the truth?

I don't think we can handle the truth.

That is why we so very much love fairytales.

Today was bright and sunny, soft breezes carried fragrances through the streets: chicken cutlets frying in house with an open window filling a street with hunger, freshly cut grass even feels clean, damp earth orients me to what is real and organic, honeysuckle makes me feel lucky; summer.

I thought of the wind and time. Is time like the wind? Fleeing. Passing. Barely noticed and then missed. It's un-grabbable, frustrating, it's barely manageable, and that too is frustrating. Can we waste it? How do we keep it, cherish it, make it last?

I think of my uncle who is terrified of the microwave. Not the "waves" or the radiation or even the "unknown" aspect of it, but the way time is calculated backwards. He says it is really scary that 3 minutes passes so quickly and then beeps so loudly to let you know it.

I walked into the house today to a familiar musty odor. After opening all 32 dirty windows the ocean breeze whipped through the house like a super duster. Now, all the dust is in one corner of the house. Fine with me, as long as it's soft and breezy in here.

The apprehension I always feel when leaving my home in the city immediately dissipates and I take a deep breath as I walk to the beach. Chit chat, obligatory hellos and a bright breezy day were really a nice start. The wind was throwing the sand into our eyes allowing for an early shore dinner by the outdoor grill. Wraps made with grilled skirt steak and all the fixins': corn on the cob, homemade guacamole, real Greek yogurt, salsa, hot sauce, fresh whole wheat wraps and middle eastern bread, shredded cheeses, fried red and yellow peppers with onions. Fast and easy and all the kids (and the dog) were happy.

My youngest ran out, grabbed his bike and flew down the street while his cousin enjoyed her dinner with her aunt. We linger at the table. She is a doll after my own heart. She said "I'll keep you company Aunt Debbie". I wonder if she loves me as much as the dinner.

After dish duty I walked my dog to the beach...leashless she runs and pants and reaches her face to the sky. She stops to take some breaths and then round two, and three, and four. She leaped to the ocean and rubbed her face to the sand and was surprised when it stuck to her, thereafter she tried to use the dry sand to help rid her of the wet sand and accomplished a Santa's beard. She looked up at me confused. I wiped her face with the sleeve of my sweater and she seemed to smile and then took off again. Freedom is so nice when appreciated and savored. I looked at the cloudy sky and wondered how tomorrow is supposed to be a sunny day and then saw, opposite the shore line, the orange and purple and silver and yellow sky; a fully illuminated resting sun, the twinkling Atlantic City lights to my right. I thought of the drinks being mixed and the dice rolling and the cards shuffling in Atlantic City. And then I heard the Margate quiet, the laughter from the fishing pier, the soft ocean waves. We walked back to meet the little kids and offered ice cream to everyone...at the ice cream stand I asked for a "very small soft serve vanilla cone" and ordered for the kids and the dog. My cone came piled high with whipped white cold cream and I was so happy she didn't listen to me I almost kissed her. Olive enjoyed her soft serve as I and we walked home with big smiles on our faces; the kids slurped and chatted trying to ride their bikes with one hand.

My body is tired from a full workout at the gym this morning and I am so glad I feel no guilt over my delicious cone.

I think of a poem and go look for it:

by Gwendolyn Brooks;

Exhaust The little Moment,
Soon it dies,
And be it gash or gold
it will not come
again in this identical
Disguise.

I agree with Anna Quindlen (a favorite author)

There will be thousands that have the same degree as we
Many who work the same job
Lots who create lovely families
Tons of people running around the same circles
But we all have a whole and unique life that is ours to HAVE

"But you are the only person alive who has sole custody of YOUR life. Your Particular life. Your entire life."

This is why I love her so much because she SOOOo gets it...the caring of our very own souls. She knows not to let someone else be in charge of what is ours to be in charge of...she knows not to let someone else or something else dictate our mood or pleasure or soul. It doesn't matter how much good we get or how much bad we're dealt ..it is ours to do with what we can, what we must, what we should. And no one can care more about our souls than our own selves..the better we take care of ourselves, the better we'll be able to do for others and the fuller our lives will be.

A moment can fill us and can overcome a lifetime of heartache. We can step away and outside of whatever is turmoil and just give it to the wind. We can capture the sunset and lights and honeysuckle and savor the sweetness. In fact, we must. If not, the world will not wait, it will go by in all it's glory and we may just miss it. Don't watch time being calculated backwards. Feel the power you have over your soul this minute and the next and the next. And then sleep. Sleep sound and hard and good.

Olive is out cold by the side of my bed. My son is waiting to be tucked in. And the wind, it haunts us: flapping the wooden blinds in a melody, twirling the fans, smacking the awning, and bringing the ocean that is over two blocks away to my pillow.
Sometimes the wind is nice.

Once again, It's summer.