Timeline - 1. pivotal moment August 1984.

I'd been away from home so long , but home on this day !     Driving through  childhood neighborhoods full of sunshine and beauty and health, I suddenly remembered that , as a girl,  I had a pronounced septum in the center of my upper lip.   I thought it pretty at the time.   I blushed , driving, and checked for it - it was gone!   Under the circumstances, not surprised.  I spent some time in many moments that week seeking it.  Found it.  

Better.    In the past three years before that moment, every destructive thing that can happen at a lady was inflicted on my honored and innocent self, till finding that septum was important.

I would be just plain dazed, in-between tasks for the survival of my "nothing bad ever happens to me" self and our gifted and worthy son and daughter.      Oh la!  And now it seemed we were going to make it!  The dust from the troubling of our path was blinding sometimes, so I knew I'd better watch for things - a few difficult ones -  to fix as it cleared, but it looked like we'd make it just fine after all !

I'd seen "us "  in my minds eye  years before there was an "us" - in detail that was scary, actually but grand.  I prepared. I was ready and jubilant and grateful.  My late husband and I did so well , and then even better with the children, and we welcomed all aspects of a good and giving life, for seventeen years.   But then he woke up one morning, we kissed, and his aneurysm burst, he fell and died.  The 1981 moment.

I'd not been a chattel, or dormant at all, ever ,  and yet, not just our lives had been stricken - our matrix had gone mad,  at that time, inflicting further injuries on us while grieving.    In 1981, Praising God was not the sterile act of a dutiful soul, or  the dainty act of a churchlady, but horrible life breaths, in gasps of gratitude,  for the holy strength that allowed us to cope and even win the moments.

Before the promised new sunrise arrived,  there was a very long night - and  I knew the heart of the Mother in the Solomon story and worse.   Even major achievements in life before and since,  were non-events by comparison.   I have been an innocent accused  and slandered and at one point, literally beaten, raped, robbed and left for dead in a ditch.   And obstructed in obtaining justice and even modest compensation.

Therefore:  what I was not able to fix I must at least report and share.  It's stories - true ones.   If it is  true,  if it is real, if it is life - yours, mine , ours -  it is not boring.  May the telling of it support that thought.  Tell me where it bores or oppresses - it is not chiseled in granite - usually easy to fix and still stay true.   

elle