Waiting for the Sun

Another day older is how I felt yesterday. Today, not so much...I did get some sleep last night. And so here I am, really awake and not exhausted by my habit of waking up early. Only the dog is dissatisfied. And you know where the unicorn meat eating cats are: hunting. Myself, I am waiting for the morning glory to open. I am not dissing my zinnia, but something wild and free and beautiful coming to see me is a treasure.

My friend, we'll call her Mary, came by yesterday to swim, accompanied by her large family that changes at the edges, like a wiggling octopus. She is a friend who helped me with my mother the last 11 years she was alive; cleaning the house and serving as a contact to the world I had lost touch with. I don't know where my mother found her.

The picture I carry in my mind is this: she stands like a quiet goddess in the hallway waiting to cleanse and dress my mother's body, in a ritual as old as humankind. Her hair falls to her hips, and a towel is draped over her arm. I remember nothing and no one else from that day but her unusually quiet presence.

Mary has a great soul, though she doesn't know it. She adopts people and takes them in, helps them, and then off they go to make room for someone else. Her choices can be quirky. She adopts homeless, young couples with children. She adopts rich people, pining in their large homes alone. She adopted me, when I had a home, but no sanity, and my mother, the widow, the bereft half of a whole.

She is the quintessential female, feet planted solidly in the earth. She is no angel of self-denial. Her passions are equally earthy. Her arms thrown around you make bad things go away. Her girth serves as witness to the children she has borne, and quiets the children she hasn't. Unusual in our cultural thought, she is a large woman with a sexual appetite to match her. She has the sense of humor that I learned to appreciate in barns. That is where mating, growing and life changes are a matter of course, the chief topic of conversation. The view is limitless from there.

Something is always moving around Mary, like the morning glory moves restlessly in the dark, waiting for the sun.