The Romance of Adolescent Bliss

It's so funny to watch young couples now.

They are so unaware of what a beautiful and simple space they are in.

Whether it's simply lust, simply infatuation, or a simple love accented by both the before, they are unaware of how beautiful and adventurous that moment in life is.

The moment when touching fingers causes a lightning strike of electricity to flash through your awakening body.  The moment you kiss in a shy but eager fashion, your tongues touching for the first time in an unsure but fire filled movement.  And once the rhythm is set you become satisfied or too frightened to go further so you kiss for hours!

The moment your dream girl sits on your lap and you're unable to contain your physical excitement; she feels it too but doesn't quite know how to take it from there.

Those moments filled with fear, pain, lust, love, heat and fire, uncertainty, desperation and delight.  If we only knew at the time just to sit in those moments and to embrace them with abandon (although I'm sure some of us did...me included). That in a few short years our lives would be increasingly less simple, that money, children and 'knowing better' would destroy or at least taint our adolescent pursuit of pleasure and love.

Not that we don't need it anymore, we just won't give ourselves the permission to occasionally act with such reckless abandon.  Maybe 'cos our brains have taken the whole consequences thing and run with it.  (Party poopers).

I like to think that we have something to learn from these young lovers.  How much fun would it be to go out and pash your husband disrespectfully in a public place (ensuring that you get dirty looks from grandmas!) or hold hands and make stupid eyes at each other in the supermarket and make people think "why don't they just get a room".

Our love(s) should never stop being an adventure, and if it has... be a hero and change it!

Single?  Pashing some random in the nightclub mightn't be the classiest move, but gosh it is naughty and fun - makes you feel like your alive and nasty!

So don't forget to occasionally pay homage to the adolescent inside you, she/he is still there waiting for that fire to be lit, for that bit to be groped.... And just thank God...after all these years at least you know what to do with it now (I hope).

The Power of Pissed Off

I had coffee with two of my friends at a local community cafe with excessive child friendly benefits simple fare and OK coffee.  One of my girls is a married teacher with two beautiful children and the other a happily separated freight forwarder with two children also.

With birthdays aplenty, naturally the conversation was flowing towards turning forty and the despair that seems to be so common in approaching such an age.  I shared my recent experience with a female family member whose fortieth I had recently attended and who had approach our cocktail table in her figure hugging black lace dress.  A dress that wouldn't look so good on a majority of women of any age, that alone on their fortieth birthday.

She sashayed toward our cocktail table where my Aunt, cousin and Uncle stood, where when she arrived her shoulders slumped forward, her head hung down and she raised her eyes while sipping her drink.  "I'm depressed"...

"Really?" I asked.

"Yes.  Awwwwww.  I think it's got more to do with I haven't achieved anything that I thought I would have by this age you know".

And that's what it comes down to doesn't it?  By having so many dreams visions and high expectations of ourself, we kind of set ourselves up for failure and disappointment if we haven't ticked all those boxes by age twenty, thirty or forty.  I think we always need to remind ourselves though, life is unpredictable, the boxes we are meant to tick, are written by ourselves.  So when you feel the looming anniversary of one of your decades of birth.... do your self a favour, grab that mental list look at it,  size it up and then imagine yourself an eraser, some white out and a lighter and take to it with a gusto that makes you feel alive.

Then write a new list that includes

1. I shall say 'yes' and 'no' at my own discretion.
2. If someone wants you to jump out of a plane....see #1
3. If someone wants to marry you....see #1
4. I shall create my 'own' life in a way that fulfils me spiritually, mentally and physically and honours my personal truth without reference to anyone else's opinion of 'who they thought I was'.
5. And yes I shall wear this dress/skirt if I want to...I'm grown dammit!!

And then march forward with your head held high, as no ones life has been a walk in the park, there has been hardship and you are still standing, sitting or riding on a mobility scooter through your life.  You have earned every day, every moment and every sunrise and every muffin top.  

So every time that you feel pissed off at being whatever stage of life you are, use that, use it to change what you don't like about your life, source it as one of those brief moments of motivation and seize that power in your pissed off. (and if you don't their be another opportunity in twelve months time)

Sisters From Another Mother

Family are a body of souls that we choose to gather around us, they are not as many choose to think, something that we were born into and cannot get away from.  A fact that is demonstrated millions of times each year when people simply walk away from their 'family's' world.

Ms C, Ms H, Ms J, Ms M, Ms N all drunk from fruit juice and crepes

The family that I choose to belong, is composed in part of many astounding, beyond beautiful and powerful women who, with all there bumbling through life, manage to sit in the centre of their good with the nobility and wisdom of a Queen.

We come from all across the world, in many varied colours, cultures and beliefs to meet and simply 'Be'.  And today in the midst of my chaos I sat, and I was...  I was engaged, I was praised, I was awed and I was entertained - all within the space of maybe two hours of which time passed without being noticed. That's what joyous people do, pass the time without effort or tension.

What did you do you may ask?? (or not - but I'll tell anyway, create a new tab if can't stand the tone of the post), just went to coffee with friends, nothing AMAZING...and yet it was.  It is every time it happens, I'm sure part of it is because it is so seldom, but it is also because I feel these women in a sister to sister way.

It struck me during my post event pondering, during my 20/20 hindsight moments, while wrestling with my children during the almost two hour ride home; that the small table of us was like a diorama of the evolutionary scale of the 30 something woman... or maybe all women.

We have me... bitter and twisted (well not really but I do have my moments of wishing he would die-Die-DIE!!) single mother of two after a 12 year relationship that elevated into Domestic Violence during the final death throes of the relationship.

We have J - gorgeous new Momma, just enjoying (and not) those first few weeks of being the goddess and sacred cow for one of Gods latest creations.  Her relationship heaving under the pressure that only a little innocent can bring, but determined to pursue each day in love and understanding (conditional on the amount of sleep in the night preceding)

And we have Ms M - Beautiful 30 something, down home girl with the carriage of nobility and the swagger of a Heterosexual miseducated blackman with a Hip Hop addiction who's been bustin rhymes in jail for the last 15yrs; married for two years to a man she truly loves (really... even when she's MAD FRUSTRATED).  Baby talk is now on the table given there's stability in the relationship and they both really want to start a family 'she's ready'....LOFL (no body's really ready, don't let the Huggies ads fool ya).  Smooth sailing as soon as they can find a free night (morning, dressing room) and schedule it in.

I love the evolution!  It really is something to behold, especially when ten years ago we were all in hot pants at Goodbar busting a rhyme and a move.  Yay for growth...

So when you get a moment, if you too are sitting on a city platform playing go fish with the mini cards from a Christmas Bon Bon waiting for the signal failure to clear, just take a look around you, any moment of any day and consciously choose for the people in your life to be there, ask yourself - who is family to you? And what kinky exciting human beings are you connected too and yet you've never consciously given them their worth and felt the love that vibrates under your sarcastic comments about the weird guy that just took your order at the pizza bar and your mutual agreement that okra feels like snot on the inside.


PS...And if you're wondering when I got time to write this much exhilarating passage... I didn't do the washing up.

The moments in between

My grandfather celebrated his 90th birthday yesterday. A momentous day; we had planned a lovely quiet luncheon at the local rowing club on the river, but instead I found myself huddled over his large vulnerable figure as he lay oddly huddled to one side in the hospital bed.

I had got the "guess what happened?" phone call this morning as I was getting ready to leave. It was my aunt telling me that my pop had had a fall and they think he may have broken his wrist.

"how are you pop?"
"awww terrible chris, awful".
My pop a male and therefore general over reactant to pain, winces. This time it's extra hard, and keeps on getting harder as Alzheimer disease tightens it's grip on his sanity. Every couple of minutes he's not sure why he's in pain, where he is, or who all these people are. He can't make out unfamiliar shapes in his broken eyes that fell victim to macular degeneration some years ago, nothing he sees makes sense, but he still tries to.

Happy birthday pop! A wry smile brushes across his lips... Yeah real happy.

My uncles and aunts passed through one by one , while I take turns with my younger cousin chasing my youngest daughter up and down the hospital corridor.

It's funny, these times are the nothingness of life, and yet in the scheme of things, they are what family is about, they are when love fills in the gaps.


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