Yes you are the glue.  The one, my best best friend………my guide…. my world……my strength……….my well, my everything.  Yep it is you, the one who will hold my hand and yet tell me I am wrong all at once.  I love you so much and dang it…….. dang this all……….

can’t we just have a flippin rewind? really?

lets go dance in soquel……with that damn lamp that no one wanted that I covet now.

we can go and get the oakie blues together…..

or be hung from the fish in cabo…….

maybe you can steal a blanket? or two?

i love you more than the moon……….. more than anything really.

you light up my life.

I wanted to title this……….. “goes good with beer” I’ve listened to that over and over tonight………… gotta love John Michael Montgomery!  So I started listening to “friends” and it took me back to twenty.  Tonight we had karaoke night again, with Miss M’s sweet friend A.  We danced like heck to party in the USA and worried about having a kid Miley Cirus’s age who would dress and dance like that.

I was much older when I acted a fool………. much much older.

It doesn’t make me any less sorry.

We talked tonight J and I about my dad and my life before, and how I thought he was mean and strict and how really…….. he just loved me.  Miss M was so embarassed that we danced with her……… MORTIFED even……… and, well it made me sad.  I never remember feeling that way about my parents……. scared maybe……… mortified no.  I remember softball, and goodies and lots and LOTS of dances…………..

and so we danced………..

potato mashers, spatulas and all……….

did the cotton eyed joe……….. laughed, cried (ok only me) and wondered what the future will bring……………

really, if you would have told me this 15 years ago I would have laughed………………… no, no not me………….. I will never dance to 2pac at 34 and sing into a spatula……………really no I won’t.  No, not me, not ever…………

but dang it, I did… and I loved it…. each and every moment… even the ones when M looked like she may cry……. someday I will tell her about the tile, and the fried eggs, and the lessons that I fought so hard to learn.  I will tell her things like, I am glad that people have fear…. and that we are proud to be her mom and dad………..

I know that in the moment you were embarased, but honey

beetle,

bee

……. someday………. we will be *best friends*

and you will enjoy….

the dance.

I have missed your light………

I have missed the way that you catch not only the insides, but the stuff that matters around us.

I have missed the view where I can see more, where I can focus on the little things and be reminded of the bigger things…….

I have missed you.

I have missed the sunlight dancing on my children as I still see my toes in the frame…..

you have made me feel more alive,

more there,

more a part.

See, not many would realize why I missed you so, not even him…..

and I can’t really put it into words… or make it make sense, but you force me to see it all… every teeny tiny bit… at the far edge of the frame……… all of it.

and honestly,

sometimes that scares me…..

and then I pause, and I am mostly…….

completely

amazed.

Sometimes months later I forget just how amazing a session was…… sometimes I forget the light and the warmth and the connection between a mother and her children.  Sometimes I get caught up in winter and mud and well, the chaos and I forget.

and in those moments, when I need to remember them the most I am forced to revisit them.

So I sit here in the frozen desert….

And I soak in the rays of the California sun, and the laughter and the good vino (thanks C) all again……..

and I sit here in the dark and smile about our wonderful conversation in that parking lot…..

too many years had passed….

but it was just the same.

If not better.

So I promise to me…

to not forget

or at least

to try

just a little bit harder……

just some random ones that I loved from my recent trip/work….. so so many that I just fell in love with….

maybe I should catch up so that I can actually have time to change my watermark………

She reminds me so much of her mommy…. what a sweet sweet teeny baby girl.  Happy Birthday AW.  We can’t love you more!

me & my beautiful cousins………..