Words of Wisdom

I guess it takes time - more time than anybody wants to imagine - to sort things out, inside, and then try to put them together, and then try - not so much to make sense out of it all - as to see. Maybe that's why what seems to be past begins to be clearer than what seems to be present.

-- James Baldwin Just Above My Head

When I need my mother most, she comes to my dreams. I remember holding Finge, counting his toes over and over again - Smith toes, like hers (onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten). She wanted boys in the family. She would have loved this boy, I thought to myself, she would have wanted to hold this boy - she would be holding this boy at this very moment. One of my first nights home, she was in my dream. She told me that she taught me everything I needed to know in order to raise a good son.

When I left my marriage, I of course, questioned myself and felt like a failure. She told me the only failure is in sitting idly by as a spectator to your own destruction.

Sometimes, when I feel like I can't do right, I have dreams where she is sitting on our old couch, ratty as it was, she pats the cushion urging me to sit next to her. Sometimes she advises me; sometimes she tells me stories; sometimes she just lets me curl up and cry while she massages my scalp.

The thing is, I don't believe I'm having supernatural or out of body experiences. I don't believe that her "spirit" is coming to me. I believe that her presence in my life was one so powerful, I had to sort it out. The things she says or does in my dreams aren't "new" things. The dreams are indicative of her handprint on my life. The signature of the artist.

I guess I can't say that I have a real "reason" for this post. However, I was hard pressed not to share.