I believe in miracles cause I have you.

Twelve years ago today was a day very much like this one here in lovely Virginia. Autumn was creeping in, the morning air greeted me with a crispness, to walk out into it was like biting into a granny smith apple that had spent time in a refrigerator. I remember the sensation of taking in my first breath as I exited my house for the short walk to my car. I remember noting the infant car seat in the back seat, a glare from the sun forcing me to squint through the reflective plane of glass to see it. I remember every motion I made that morning, how it all felt tainted with a million different meanings, a million different possible outcomes could occur. Would the tart apple air, mark the last breaths of ease I would ever inhale? Would that infant car seat make an endless empty journey and eventually have to be removed while I tore my hair out on the familiar bathroom floor where I always went to cry? Nothing about that day was singular. The country had just suffered an unspeakable terrorist attack and the community of American citizens were still reeling from a numbness, a disbelief and a horror, that is still so difficult to articulate. It is a rare experience that every person you encounter is thinking of the same thing, America was that way on September 17th 2001. I of course was thinking of my country too, but on this particular day I was thinking more about how the terrorists had terrorized me specifically, sending me into the day of a million possibilities without my best friend and birthing coach. Mary was grounded from air travel and grounded to a phone line instead of grounded hand and hand with me while I faced my destiny unknown, the unknown always such a hard concept for me to wrap my head around, even on days where possibilities were just part of the landscape and not my very horizon line. I was angry and I was scared. More scared than I have ever been, an anxiousness so much a part of me by this morning that to remove it, would have effectively left me with no identity whatsoever. For nine months I had carried a child inside of my body, felt him grow, heard his heart beat, memorized the squiggly lines on one half of his brain and read a case study sent from Israel on unilateral hydrocephalus until I had it memorized line by line. The words postmortem examination, cerebral spinal fluid, ventricle, compression and death were the words that I heard in my head with each one of his tiny kicks inside my womb,I said them in my head repetitively to comfort myself, a familiarization process, like counting sheep and making close friends with the enemy. I was living a life that I had grown somehow accustomed to and now, one outcome or another, it was about to all change, my son was about to become his own case study, either by postmortem examination or life. All of my life I have seen things in detailed scope. Mary and I say "we go there because we have to" as if playing out the most acute details prepares us for the worst possible outcome should it come to call - I remember thinking that very morning in grave and disturbing detail that if Matthew were born dead, I would ask them not to cut the umbilical cord until I was ready to be severed from my life and that I myself, not a doctor, not my husband would do the snipping. I cry now to remember that, how I pictured it all in my head, that crazy fighter stance scaring Doctor Blommel into submission as she motioned to the nurse to call down to the psych unit because I was definitely going to need grief counseling and maybe some drugs to quiet the screaming. I missed Mary there with me in that moment, I remember missing her desperately as I envisioned the scene that would ensue - I couldn't share my craziness with Dan because he never understood me, Mary however would have pushed my face into her bosom and said with a hint of humor only she could have gotten away with, something to the effect of "Honey if you need to let that cord dangle from you for all of time, I will go out and get you some long skirts." I needed the safety of her so badly, she was the only one who would have thought preserving his cord was a totally legit and sane thing to do. She has always given me permission to be me. I set out that morning having to be me in the most me moment of all my life, completely and utterly alone. As Dan and I drove to the hospital I held my hands tight around my belly, rubbing at my baby thorough the layers of my body that separated us, I was grateful that he was, at that moment very much alive and wondered with each kick, how many more I would feel? I concentrated hard on each one, giving them the same attention I would for a graduation day, a wedding day... I felt like I had to live a lifetime of gratefulness in every movement he made on that car ride to Martha Jefferson hospital. I remember being overwhelmed in a way that I had never ever before encountered. My judgment day had arrived....I would never insinuate that God gives us tragedy to punish us for out sins, I don't subscribe to that crap for an instant. I do know however after this spiritual journey of mine, that God was testing my grace under pressure and challenging me to rise above the confines of simplicity. I had met the challenge with courage and knew without a doubt that whatever the outcome, I was prepared to handle it and then, share my appreciation for my new found knowledge whatever it may be. If it were loss, I would go out and find Mothers like me and hug each and every one of them so they didn't feel so alone. If it were gain, I would not live so selfishly wanting to gain more but rather share and again, hug a lot. I knew I was ready for whatever was about to happen, I just so desperately wanted my baby to live and to have a shot at his own life beyond me and our chord. There are endless complex thoughts that accompanied me throughout that day, if I shared each one with you they amount to a book and me missing his cake and ice cream celebration this evening for I wold still be here at my desk, typing and crying. I just cannot share it all....I will however tell you that I will never forget the moment before my doctor inserted the tablet and placed it on my cervix to induce Matthews birth. It was one of those moments that could only happen to me....I was spread eagle, my privates just a hanging out in the natural light of the hospital room, I was laying back trying to relax, the TV just beyond my knee cap was tuned into NBC and there was Matt Lauer and Katie Couric doing their morning gig. They then announced that wall street would be reopening after the 9/11 tragedy and that there would be a moment of silence to honor the victims before the ringing of the opening trading bell. So, there I lay with my legs spread as far east and west as legs can go, Doctor Blommel before me with her blue gloves on, her right hand high in the air and a small white pill on the tip of her middle finger, encased nicely in a dollop of gel that sparkled in the streaming sunlight like the hope diamond. We paused, because what else do you do when the Nation is taking a moment of silence and for a moment held suspended in time just as we were. The bell rang, cheers rung out on Wall Street, I was told to "take a deep breath, a little pressure...." and game on, the birthing process was open to bidders. I suffered that day like all laboring women do it was a long hard day full of conflicting and overwhelming emotions. At about five that afternoon my doc began talking about epidurals and my need for one despite the fact that I wanted to go naturally and without any intervention at all. we fussed back and orth at each other and finally I caved when she insisted I have one, explaining that my stress over Matthews outcome was working against the progression of my contractions and that I was stuck at 7 centimeters for two hours because I was working against my own body. I needed numb and I needed pitocin and I needed to push this baby out and face my destiny once and for all. Looking back on that afternoon now, I realize my brain was trying to keep him inside of me where he was alive and safe - I was in fact working against the process of childbirth successfully by controlling my labor with my mind - the human brain and it's emotions, undoubtedly the most powerful power tool ever. I hated the needle being inserted in my spine, I was an absolute basket case as I envisioned paralysis and a dead infant all on the same day, I begged the anesthesiologist to not heap any more on to my already full and overflowing plate - he was so kind to me as they all were, they knew I was a special kind of fragile and handled me beautifully in absence of my best friend Mary who I told each and everyone of them about - they missed her being there too, we were all so worn out by the affects of terrorism...the meds began to work and I couldn't feel a thing, I had no idea that my contractions were suddenly much stronger except for watching the numbers grow on the monitor which stood by my bed. Just then my two dear friends and coworkers, Heather and Jenn appeared in the doorway hesitantly - they were just dropping in to share some love. Doctor Blommel had also delivered Heather's babies and suddenly a very still and anxious room became alive with energy and smiles. The nurse checked my cervix as the spirited chatter went on around me, she interrupted that I had reached ten centimeters and was ready to push. I was in shock and felt like the room began to spin furiously like those damn tea cup rides at the county fair. I was not ready. I was not ready. I was not ready and it's loud in here. This is it.....he will live or die now and I am not ready WAIT WAIT WAIT STOP - how about another moment of silence of like a hundred WAIT I am not ready. But I was and the pressure between my legs grew stronger and I had no choice but to let my muscles move his precious abnormal ventricled head out of my body. Heather took a camera, jenn took a video camera and everyone got quiet then. I was so scared. I was so very frightened. I remember it now and tears are streaming down my face with such force, it takes my breath away to go back in time to those moments. I pushed once and it felt wrong because I couldn't really feel my legs, I took a breath and remembered how I had done it so effectively with Brian and Kevin, legs out, thighs down, push from the bottom and bear down at the top....I pushed again, I felt him move outside of me, I paused for the next contractions and I prayed in my head the same prayer I had prayed at each and every visit to the hospital chapel "Please God make him well". He was pulled out of me and raised n the air before me. What I remember most is Heather's laugh/cry it is a sound that will never leave me - it was the sound of relief. Matthew Joseph Poulin came out of my womb and into this world with his hands extended above his head like his favorite team had scored a touch down. He cried like Rocky Balboa after a bout, screaming into the crowd for Adrian, his mouth open and to the side in full on wail. he reached forward then as Dr. Blommel wiped him clean a little, grabbing the mask that covered her mouth just as she said to him "you have no idea how many prayer lists you have been on little one, do you?" - he pulled it back from her face to reveal a smile that was as big as the sky. I remember that all I saw were smiles as I lay on the bed below all the standing people around me, I was forgotten for a moment, all attention turned appropriately to the miracle in the room. I asked over and over "is he okay?" "does he look healthy?" I must have repeated those words at least a dozen times in the span of just a few moments - I needed reassurance that this was real and not just some wild fantasy I had concocted in the throws of hormonal surging. Everyone answered back in the same Heather laughing/crying voices - "he looked perfect." When he was finally given to me, I un-swathed him from his receiving blanket and took off the little blue stocking cap they put on every newborn baby. I looked over his head afraid to make contact with his eyes until I knew that I could. His head was so beautiful, no swelling, no abnormal skull formation, no trace of everything that had gone on in that little head for five months. He was so strong, he squirmed in my arms distracting me from my obsessive inspecting. I kissed him all over the left side of his head, the sweet smell of my womb dense in his fine baby hair. I looked at his face through the swell of tears, his eyes tried to focus on mine as I drank the details of his face in, every drop of that moment like a water bottle appearing in a desert sand dune. He was so beautiful and looking at him, I realized I had spent so little time on what he might look like in my day dreamy moments - what he would look like barely came to mind - I was so focused on will he just, please dear God, live. He lived.....I can never adequately express the gratefulness that I feel for the gift of my sons life. There are just no words that can ever get it right. It is somehow too sacred for words, too privately mine to be shared in totality. It is a pact of emotion and meaning between me and God and me and God only, only we know what we know. I will say, with every year that passes between me and the moments leading up to and following his birth, I gain more clarity and remember more vividly - I am not losing details with time, rather gaining them. I think this is Gods way of reminding me that I must continue to evolve in the gratefulness of my life, these moments are not meant to pass but rather resonate. Today is Matthew's 12th birthday. It's my birthday too - the birth of a completely and totally different me. Matt and I came into this world on September 17th, 2001 together in a new life for us both. I look at him sometimes and get overwhelmed by emotion. I am overwhelmed right now. I know I will never stop being overwhelmed. Happy Birthday Matthew Joseph, may you know each day how much I love you and when you get older and life keeps us from one another may you look back on these writings and find me again whenever you need me. I love you my Matteo xo

unexpected visitors - McCarty and King

Years ago while in college, I took and ethics class with a professor who I immediately fell in love with. She was an older sturdy woman who looked like she could kick my ass if needed and made clear with the softness in her eyes, that this need would only ever arise, if I did not rise to the occasion of my own potential in her class. I told her upon first meeting that I was afraid I wasn't fit for college, that I had a major failure complex and that I was a Mother. She assured me that I would succeed and meet that success with flying colors because it took a special kind of openness to wear my hearts truth on my sleeve so visibly and with such rawness. I believed that I would make it through her class because she told me that I would. Of course, I did and earned myself an A for her class and, all the others. My professor was the kind of woman that I respected. She detested ignorance of any kind and found it plain and simply put, intolerable. Ignorance is what leads to the demise of everything good and just and true and fair. Before this Ethics class, I had already claimed the same belief set as my professor did, claimed that I was so powerfully intolerant of ignorance too, felt superior somehow in my stance, as though I knew all there was to know. I learned very quickly that I was wrong when I was given an assignment on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I had always been a huge fan of his, had always loved his words and wisdom, found his courage remarkable in the deepest meaning of that word. Then I read more and more and more. I had an insatiable hunger for his writings, the ones lesser known and not, generally speaking taught in school. What I loved so much about him was the absence of any anger. He had so much to be angry about, it would have been completely justifiable for him to have exhibited a more Malcolm X type attitude (also a brilliant man and completely self taught)but he didn't - not for a second it seemed. In every word I have ever read of his (and it's a lot) there is not even a hint or hue of anger. I know that he studied Eastern religions and looked to the most revered spiritual leaders for guidance in how to promote non-violence action when it was common place at the time to be sprayed by a water hose in a street or have a cross burned on your yard. Whatever words of wisdom he received were the words that he required, because his writing is the most peaceful and intelligent that I have ever read. His words leave me, as they always do whenever I open his collection, with a yearning to be just like him. I want to learn to meet ignorance with love. I want it so badly that it plagues my mind sometimes, that no matter how hard I try, I still get so angry so quickly. I am a highly emotional human being, I am super sensitive and have always described the sensation of my experience of this life, like living without skin - everything gets in me. Today as I was doing my dishes and preparing to start a load of laundry, clean the bathrooms and tackle the other household chores that are reserved for Monday mornings post kids on the bus, I heard a news report detailing the horrific shootings in our Nations Capital. I was torn in two by my need to know and the equally strong desire to look away as fast as I could - the no skin thing makes these reports a little tough to absorb. I don't know too many details as I worked hard to access the level of threat and then disengage from the horror before it ruined my entire day. I know that 13 people died and that it was possible the numbers would increase. I heard both my professor and Dr. King in my head as thoughts of anger began to form in the recesses of my mind as I clenched my jaw tight, grinding my teeth the way I do when something awful is just too awful and I begin to react. I thought about wearing my truth on my sleeve so raw and Dr.King's grace under violence. I thought about what I want to teach my children by way of the sleeve.....I thought about words of anger, tones of anger, voice inflection of anger and that all those things are both detectable and note able when it comes to my children. I thought about the shooter and wondered if his Mother also wore her raw emotions on her sleeve? Is there any correlation between me and him, he who takes life so freely and me who hates the ignorance that drives anyone to commit such a heinous act? Hate and anger are correlative factors for us both. I crushed my anger immediately remembering that I want to be driven by the good doctor and not by the shooter and that my sweet professor Marietta saw in me a woman full of potential and expects me to show up in colors that have wings. Anger is almost a useless emotion because most of what it inspires is a waste of positive energy. I am so sorry that more people died in this country today, to yet another incident of gun violence - It's far too common place like lots of things rooted in ignorance, it saddens me - all the issues that are pervading our society and stealing lives. I wish I could fix it all. I wish everyone could find a way to live in peace. It is not very likely.....As I went about my day and took the dreaded trip to the grocery store, I encountered a school bus in oncoming traffic, its red lights flashing. I rolled to a slow stop and sat with a smile, one that I felt take over my whole face. Kids are so wonderful to watch as they go about their kid business. Getting off the school bus is such a grand occasion and met with such eagerness. The group of squirts were mostly little, could not have been one child over the age of 8, they were all so tiny next to that big bus and squirmy - my Nana would have said "those kids have ants in their pants" - none of the kids I watched today were mine and yet the joy I felt was as if they were. There was so much promise crossing the street before me and I became overwhelmed by it, I began to cry. Maybe before me in the road was the next great activist for human rights and equality, maybe a philosophy professor, maybe a Mother like me, maybe all of those things and more. I continued to watch the children while I both smiled and cried and I said a quiet prayer. I thanked God for Dr. King and I thanked God for Professor McCarty, I thanked God for the desire in me to not give any of my positive energy to ignorance and the anger it so rightfully can inspire - I thanked God for the promise inside of me to do better and lastly for my children, those cute little itchy britches babies in the road. It is so hard not to be consumed by anger in a world that is full of such damning ignorance - It is really really really hard, but....I put it to you this way, anytime in anger is simply being ignorant to love. I am so grateful for the people in my life who have had such an impact on my thinking....I pray for the victims of today's massacre and their families, that they may experience some comfort and peace.

a change has come

Good quiet and peaceful evening blog readers (if there are any of you left after my terribly long hiatus) I find myself tonight pondering which one of the many topics in my head it feels most pertinent to write about....There are so many things that I want to say at this juncture of me. I guess I could begin with the sense of serenity inside of my mind that has kicked out the ever present storminess. This has been a long time in the works, an extended stay on the battle field in the fight to love myself enough. I read some of my previous blogs from last years horrendous summer and it is so clear to me just how desperately I was fighting to overcome the persistent patterns of emotional self abuse that have dictated my adult life. I was hurting so badly and yet, willing to stay in a state of pain to prove that I could, prove (at least I thought at the time) that I was tough, prove that I could go the distance, prove that I had the answers and that if I believed in them enough, they would take hold. Recently, after two years of going in circles, I discovered that the person I so desperately wanted to save was truly better off without my presence in his life and....I cut the ties that bind me to so many things that seek to do nothing but destroy everything in its path. For so long I clung to ownership of the concept that this person and I were so alike, the same, the threads that bound us together were from the same spool, we were tied to each other by a unique understanding of this life. I was wrong. It is not a unique perspective on our humanness, but rather a unique and rather sick perspective and need for self inflicted pain. My pains are totally different from his, his are despicable on so many levels, and yet.....so are mine. I yelled and screamed about all the things that he does wrong, all the things that should cause him shame, all the ways in which he devalues his existence and everyone involved in it....I heard my voice saying the same things I has said the day before, the week before, the month before, the year before AND then.....I heard my MYSELF. For the first time in over a year and a half of extreme emotional suffering, I heard myself, my voice...I heard the words myself as though I was speaking aloud to no one other than me. I was saying "everything that you bitch and whine and cry about, everything that earns you the self proclaimed victim status you so freely adhere to, all of it - YOU HAVE CHOSEN AND DONE TO YOURSELF. Looking back over my adult life, there have certainly been moments of hell that the world gave to me without me going out and asking for it, for sure. But, the things that I cling to which steal my spirit and energy - those things, I have chosen. Suddenly I realized that I am as guilty as him, because I keep him in my beautiful world and allow the destruction of his self abusing ways to diminish the light of my life. That is my self abuse - keeping people like him around and giving them precedence over me and mine. I have thought all this time that if I remained his voice of reason and truth, I would help him realize the error of his ways and in cadence earn the best friend award for sticking it out in the shit heap. The shit heap is not where I belong, not where my kids belong, not where I should spend another minute of my life. I have been fighting myself this whole time - not to love him enough, but rather to love myself enough... All the energy that I have been scraping the reserve tank for, all the moments I was not present in my life because I was talking him out of reprehensible behaviors - that was meant for my life - not his. I chose to give it all away because I didn't care enough about MY LIFE to turn the attention on myself. I love this person and care about the outcome of his life, very much. I pray that he has an awakening, one that will allow him to finally be alone in the quiet with himself and be okay - I wish for him that he will feel about himself, the way that I now do about myself. I in no way shape or form want to hurt him or cause him anymore pain than he inflicts on himself on a minute to minute basis - I am not shit talking here or hoping he will read this and it will instigate some dialogue between us even. The dialogues have ended for us because they are going nowhere and I have places I want to be, things I want to see, good feelings I want to feel. This isn't about him at all, it is all about me - this relationship and all it's emotional pitfalls have been the catalyst to major change in myself, the path was never to him, it was always to right now.... My marriage was a nightmare and the relationship following a continuum of the same misguided dreams with a few new characters... The elements that caused the past twenty years of pain in my life were not all my fault, and certainly, I did my best with what I brought to the table after a confusing and broken childhood. Hard to have an identity in a relationship when you barely have one in the mirror that is remotely identifiable to the person looking into the glass. My biggest mistake is that I have always chosen to stay when I should have long since said goodbye. I put more value in saving the "relationships" than I did in saving myself. I have flip flopped back and forth on this for the last twenty years.....Having fleeting glimpses of reality and proclaiming readiness for change, only to forget as quickly when the phone rang or a text came in, immediately sucked back into my role as victim of my own self. Truth is, I believe I am a good person. I believe that I deserve peace in my life. I believe that I am human and always learning and evolving and CHANGING for the better. I believe I am worthy of LOVE... I know I am worthy of love because I really do finally love myself, everyone is worthy and SHOULD feel that way about themselves. My life has been painful and hard and full of disappointments - but it doesn't have to be anymore because I have the power of selection and I can choose to not let anyone or anything into my life that will threaten my sense of well being or test my resolve that this life will be what I want it to be. I have been given great tests of my faith and my strength - Matthew comes immediately to mind - but Matthews issues I handled with amazing grace because it was a REAL test of real value and NOT something I put myself through, throwing caution and time and well being on the wind. I can be graceful in times of trouble and undoubtedly there will be more.....I am sure I am not done learning and the karmic process although working me like Rocky Balboa, has not rung its final bell in my corner - I have much work to do... But....it will be the God given kind from this point forward because I am giving up the need to fight myself just to prove I am a fighter. We all know that I am, and that I will, BUT I don't want to anymore unless God calls me to take arms for a cause greater than my old self. There is no purpose to living in the past - it only keeps you from being present in the now. I can't go back to my childhood or even five years ago and change the relationship I had with my Mother or the wounds that I suffered. I can only love my own daughter and three sons, today. I am done dwelling on all the things and people that hurt me - their misconceptions have never belonged to me anyways. I am done choosing to believe that I can change or help or fix anyone that does not FIRST, want to help themselves. I am done needing chaos and noise and drama, because the truth is - I love the quiet and I love being able to hear the brilliant stories and poems I am always writing in my head without interruption from things that just don't stack up to the things inside of me. I met a woman the other night who looked me in the eye the way I look people in the eyes. She said to me "I see how much you have struggled and I appreciate that, I also see that you are coming out of that phase - you have done well, you are a powerful woman." She had that look to her - the one where the aura vibration is so strong there is a visible light to a trained and perceptive eye. She saw me as I now see me and acknowledged it - I am no longer looking like a storm, I am looking like a beautiful sunrise that comes the morning after and I am grateful. There have been many false starts in the last two years - this is not one of them I assure you. I am so quiet inside that all I can do is smile to acknowledge it. Like....am I really quiet or is it just a fleeting stillness? Nope - still quiet. How bout now? Yup - still quiet. Quiet is a deafening sound if you are not well within. I hear crickets and a car outside, the fan on my laptop, my heart beating. My ears don't hurt at all, I think they might be smiling too. It's been a long time coming said Sam Cooke. Yes, yes it has and well worth all the wait time to know that no more moments will be wasted..... Shhhhhhhhhhh. Goodnight y'all. Blessings and Peace.

I remember it well.

Good Morning blog followers, I apologize profusely for being so absent. At the crack of dawn, as I woke my two youngest children for school, I took a quiet moment to really look at them as they attempted to rouse from sleep. The way the stretched into their limbs, pulling and pushing awakeness into their extremities leaving the comfort of dreams behind for a new day of reality. It's a tough thing, waking up and retiring the restfulness, we Poulin's especially seem to struggle with the roosters call. I sat beside Emma on the bed and took notice of her feline like posture, intently took note of how consciousness becomes her and she becomes it, she reaches up to the sky with her very tip of her long fingers and stretches hers toes to the depths, she opens up with a creak like the legs of my Grandmother's old ironing board. Her blond surfer girl hair twists about her face on the pillow and she reminds me of the pictures she herself composes of the sunshine, her strands are rays of light that frame the intense heat of who she is. I was quiet with myself inside as I drank her all in by the rising light that had just begun its cascade from the bottom of my bedroom window sills. A quiet child in the first moments of a new day are without a doubt one of the most beautiful sights to behold. When she became aware of me, her robin egg blue eyes not yet visible beneath the cloak of crusty little lids, she reached her arms into the air towards the space where she could sense my presence and said in her first voice of this September 11th, "Momma hug me." Of course I did, held her tight and exhaled all the air in my lungs so that my embrace could make more room for her in my arms, my chest could invite her into the place she belongs, encircled around the space where my heart beats. I then made my way into Matthew's room where he lay twisted up in blankets facing the wall with a fan about a foot from his body on super high setting, he apparently cannot sleep lately if he isn't in the throws of gale force winds. (Side note, was that expression born of Dorothy Gale and her twister? If it wasn't, is that why the author chose Gale for Dorothy's last name - if I had written it, I sure would have...) As I stood beside his bed looking down on him, I snapped off the fan and listened for the silence so I could hear my heart beat and try to hear his. It is a ritual of mine, to listen for his life sounds before I say my school morning words. My mind is always in a different place from my other children when I approach him sleeping, for he is the child that they said would not live. His living therefore, for me, is always something I need proof of and approach with a breath stuck in my lungs on pause, like the one you take before diving in the deepest end of a pool. I listen for his heart and mine together, like the day he was born and plopped on my chest, his bare and breathing chest a top mine, flesh of a mother and flesh of a child, the first breathing we do together that is not one inside the other. Matt was breathing and so I could too, our together hearts made that familiar music that gives me permission to live easy, something that for twelve years now I have been trying with all my heart to appreciate - the luck in my lucky and the gratefulness for the simplicity of just being.....If you have never read my epic 5 part blog about the months in my life reading up to the terrorist attack of 9/11, I suggest that you do - it seems a prerequisite to understanding all my blogs and my words, me in general. Today we mark the passing of another year since that fateful day that changed not only the Nation, but me and my son, the day that took so much and yet somehow, gave me everything that I need to be who I strive everyday since, to be.... Funny the way it is. I was aware when I woke this morning what this day is an anniversary of - this date, until the day I die, will never slide by me no matter what the chaos or busyness of life may throw at me - it will never be an "oh shit, wow I almost forgot today is September 11th" kind of day. I take this day very seriously and always will as I wrote once upon an anniversary in the epic blog of a tribute...Today is no less epic, I am more grateful today than I was in the days of composing that section of my personal history - so many more days of love have passed between then and now, my daughters legs have grown longer and Matthew's brain more witty - in fact I am thrilled to report he is beginning to come out of the boy haze that so often plagues young men between the ages of nine and a half and twelve, he is actually becoming a person I can tolerate being around without feeling perplexed and confused. Mothers of sons, can I get an AMEN? I am so blessed and lately more quiet, quiet is one of two things - the most deafening sound or the most welcome. I am pleased to announce that just as Matthew is becoming a person I can tolerate being around, I am as well, becoming someone I can tolerate being alone in the quiet with.....This has been a long well fought battle and I believe I have made great strides in winning the war inside myself, sigh - pause - tear up- be grateful - love my kids - love my life - know what matters - truth - composure in the face of truth - strength - humanness - forgiveness - LOVE. I get very emotional on this day as I remember the morning when my life changed and the lives of so many were horrifically altered for all of time. I promised my Grandmother I would always hear every name when they were read and appreciate them all the same, in the back of my head hear Matthew's first new born cry in the space between each one. We all remember things differently as each experience of this life, same event none the less, is so unique to who we are and what we are. For me personally, September 11th is a day where I let the light stream slowly and forget the alarm clock, I look at all 40 fingers and toes on my young children, I listen to them breathe, watch them stretch and creak, and remember that life can and will, turn on a dime....This life is precious, more precious than I have words for even on my most emotional and verbose days. The preciousness comes in the simplicity of loving those that you love. Period end of story nothing more to teach. No fancy car, no new iphone, no possession or position or titles - just being able, each day, to LOVE the human beings you love. I guarantee, every family member who lost a loved one on 9/11 would say that there is absolutely and unequivocally nothing else in this one life that matters.....Today as we remember all those who were lost, I say with equal time, look at those in your own life who were not, and imagine for just one moment of silence that they were gone - just gone. And then, hold them with all your might and for another minute of silence, don't let go, let all the love you have for them seep into the nooks and crannies of their spirits so that they have the same experience and then spend the next moment of silence reciprocating the love exchange. I think that is 3 minutes well spent and a damn worthy tribute. Do it.....Go.....Now. To all the families of the victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, I hold you in my three minute embrace of appreciation and love - my heartfelt prayers are with you all.