“Piglet: Winnie, how do you spell love?
Winnie: You don’t spell love, Piglet. You feel it.”

{winnie.the.pooh}

dear photo family…

i will be spending the next 3 days (july 2nd, 3rd, and 4th) away from the computer to observe the passing of my grandfather, who moved on spiritually this last week.

i will return to regular email and computer duties on the 5th of July.

xoxox, amanda.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

{e.e.cummings}

enjoy when you can, and endure when you must….

dear mikki and katie….

never tell this to your father….ever.

our secret…

pinky promise?!

we good?

okay…..

sometimes, i realize mid argument that i am {cough…cough…}

WRONG.

while this is devastating {and also very, very rare}, i will often try to continue the argument just for the sake of winning.

and i can fake being right really well, but in the end, i never win.

so, if ever you find yourself in a debate fit for eyebrow sweat and sleeping on the couch, and it dawns on you that you too are, in fact, wrong….

stop arguing.

all my love darlings,

dear Mikki and Katie…

when i was 16 years old, i experienced perhaps the worst possible, yet predictable, tragedy that one that age can possibly experience….a break up. i shouldn’t say that it was just ANY old break up because it wasn’t. my first ‘real’  boyfriend and i had been together an epic 10 months 15 days 10 hours. (no…not counting those middle school drama fests on the play ground where i am pretty sure i got married to a couple of people near the swings…divorces still pending in Thomaston Grammar School District Court). it was surreal, the way it happened… and the moment can still swallow me even though its been (gulp) 14 years. he told me on the  phone (classy, huh?), and after i hung up i closed the door to my bedroom, and puddled onto the floor. i stayed there for hours and disintegrated emotionally….i wish that was an exaggeration, (as i am known for extravagant abundance especially when it comes to the discussion of teenage hormonal imbalance) but alas this is not one of those times, and anyone who has had a relationship fall apart knows this to be true. my father came in from mowing the lawn, his curly black hair still damp from the sweat under his baseball cap, to find me motionless in the same place, creating a spot wet with tears on the carpet. When he pulled up my shoulders and face from my lap and saw the black stains that Maybelline had created on my face, he didn’t have to ask what had happened…he just knew.

“Oh…honey…..” nothing more was said for a long while and his last word drifted into the ugly baby blue paint of my bedroom and into sticky silence. he picked me up effortlessly with his strong arms, and sat me on the edge of my twin bed…he plunked down next to me and let me bury my head into his LL Bean Flannel until dark spread over the hillside and curtained the town in night. before getting up he stroked my hair with his large hands, rough and gentle at the same time, patted my back, and tucked me under my covers as if i was six years old again and i had just had a bad day on the play ground.

“love brings you to your knees, Mand….it always will. and, some time soon, it will bring you to your feet again. its funny like that….” he left it at that but i always felt he wanted to say something more. my father is not an overspeaker…anyone who knows him knows that.

my ribs hurt from violent sobing, and i can honestly say at that moment, his words didn’t make one, single, solitary thing or feeling better.

but time did.

and love did.

its just funny like that.

all my love darlings,

p.s. “i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart). i am never without it.”  {e.e.cummings}

p.p.s. girls, i don’t understand love. i never will. i just know it feels good most of the time, and hurts just some of the time.

“if the eye does not want to see, neither light nor glasses will help”

{german.proverb}

well Super Cat now has some SUPER vision thanks to her new glasses and the help of the the great people and doctors at Mountain View EyeCare. of course, true to Katie form, she HAD to pick them out herself…which I am glad she did, because the ones i picked for her were kind of boring {blue is also her favorite color…at least this week}.  hopefully she won’t go trying to fly off any more couches (see scar underneath chin for said evidence of Super Cat’s flying adventures) and brake them.

it was a sweltering summer afternoon on the Terrace and the ocean breezes of the morning had wilted. the humid, high 80 degree temperatures had won the battle this time and my best friend forever and i were drooping into a puddle on the swing set in her overgrown back yard. our only reprieve was a promised run through the sprinkler later that afternoon. we had brokered this deal with all the 7 year old solemness we could muster, and vowed that we would stay out of the house, the kitchen, and most of all, the refrigerator for at least an hour and half… a tough pledge  indeed considering the stash of Popsicles sitting inside the freezer.

we were limply swinging, when through the back field we saw a fright so terrifying the drip of sweat running down my face dried mid-cheek. we both stood at up simultaneously, not sure whether to run inside and risk loosing our one chance of sprinkler soaked fun, or to stand ground in our matching pink jelly shoes. the neighborhood bully, a terrifyingly tall boy with far reaching arms and large hands seemingly created for the sheer purpose of pulling my pigtails, was approaching at breakneck speed in his behemoth, black Air Jordans. demise was imminent and we stood in silence while awaiting our total annihilation (annihilation or a sore, burning scalp…same thing).

before we could say Sally Sells Shells by the Seashore, his shadow enveloped both of our bodies and he was looking down at us….deciding who to make weep first. a dirty expletive rolled out of his mouth with ease, and we gasped at not only the word itself, but his proper usage. i prayed under my breath that our utter stillness would prevent trauma….the only thing moving were my eye balls as he drop kicked every single item out of the sandbox and then moved on to deflate the Pogo Ball by jumping violently up and down on it with his mammoth, 12 year old body.  in his final act of adolescent fury, he gave a quick tug to my braid and walked on valiantly….off to terrorize the girls on the upper part of the subdivision no doubt.

after he faded from sight we plopped down onto the swings with a sigh of overwhelming relief. his reign as the neighborhood bully had shrouded our beloved summer months, and we had spent precious sun soaked, nail biting hours playing outside worrying if he was going to come clopping down the road with his untied, overpriced sneakers and ruin a perfectly good day. our swinging matched our frustration. our talk cultivated an evil plot of epic proportion….mud pies. oh yes…you heard that correctly. putting our afternoon of saturated sprinkler satisfaction on hold, we created the most magnificently messy mud pies that two seven year olds could contrive. by night fall, we had used practically all of the sand in the sand box, and the dirt filled masterpieces lined the back of the half acre….sure to lure any repugnant beast or teenage antagonizer for miles around. we each went to our separate houses with a sense of triumphant supremacy against all those who committed vicious acts of overall meanness.

at almost 30 years old, i still worry about him. that bully with ripped flannel shirts and scar under his left eye. what was his hurt? what was his pain that made him so mean? i survived my teen years because of loving, patient parents and persistently laced and amazing friendships. what did he have to survive? (other than our mud pies…which, for the record were impressive, but obviously went uneaten by monsters…teenage or otherwise) i wish i had asked him…i wish i had dared to.

Girls….i understand the hurt that is caused by the meanness of others. there is no excuse for it…it is painful and can even be life altering if you allow it to be. malicious teasing is so degrading. but, when someone is mean….there is something behind it…a quiet, festering ache in their heart and in their mind. they have been damaged somehow by someone or something or some situation in their lives that simply cannot be fixed with a band-aid and a trip to the ice cream shop. ask why….in a peaceful moment on the play ground, or in class, or ask a teacher to ask or mommy. ask why they are hurting….and then give them a hug. because they need one.

we all do sometimes.

all my love darlings,

p.s. daily mantra: “in each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. we’re each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. we’ve got to forgive ourselves that. i must remember to forgive myself. because there is a lot of grey to work with. no one can live in the light all the time….libba.bray

p.p.s: apparently…my mud pie skills still rock.

dear Mikki and Katie…

so much of my life has been defined by a pair of thong flip flops and the mistakes i have made. at 21 years young, i walked into the post office in downtown bangor on a rainy afternoon, in my dark gray american eagle flip flops and too big for my head hoop earrings and signed up for a private post office box. this seemingly meaningless, mundane task to the clerk who handed me the keys (box #361) was perhaps the single most exciting, horrifying, and liberating moments in my adult life. i signed my name, amanda young, to the user agreement form. it seemed almost disingenuous to write it…as if i was signing away….a mistake. and as liberating as this one identifying millisecond of time was at my fingertips, it felt as though i was simultaneously penning three years of my life away.

my parents had pleaded with me, begged me, and even tried to bribe me to not get married. their fountain of marital mistakes, and a rather disheveled divorce later on, did not deter me on my walk down the isle. while they never embraced my obsession with wedded bliss in the sunset of my teen years, they did eventually surrender, and supported, if nothing else, my stubborn persistence to tie the knot with my high school boyfriend. i can say, with all honesty and the comfort of almost a decade of personal growth and arduous personal reflection since,  i knew that day in july 2000  that i was making a huge, life altering mistake. a little over a year later, i was in the middle of my own divorce…something i vowed i would never, ever, let happen to me.

and people will tell you that there are no mistakes in this journey of life. but there are. there are mistakes where you hurt people…not really on purpose, but because of single mindedness on your part that wasn’t really an accident because you knew, consciously, that you were doing it. there are definitely mistakes… minuscule ones, little ones, big ones, huge ones, gigantic ones….unforgettable ones. and while these typographical errors in your life story cannot be rewritten with white out and a fresh Sharpie Pen, they most often help you transcribe the next chapter, a better chapter, when the page turns.

and that day in the post office, in my $7.99 flip flops and torn in the right, back pocket jeans, was the first day i ever truly walked on my own. and it felt really….bitter sweet with a side of tornado.

all my love darlings,

p.s. no matter what mistakes…however big or however small…that you make in your life, you can always come home….

p.p.s…daily mantra: “and i don’t want the world to see me, ’cause i don’t think that they’d understand, when everything’s made to be broken, i just want you to know who i am.” {the.goo.goo.dolls}

sunset street was on sunrise terrace. it really was the best place in town to see the sunset too, or the sunrise, and the Maine State Prison.  the subdivision had blossomed with young, hardworking married couples in the 1970’s, and soon there were sprouts of little people all around the same age. we went to school together, played, and grew up at the same time. grandpa would always talk about how he would love to have more privacy, but i have to say from a kid’s point of view, privacy is over-rated…especially when trying to get together a solid game of baseball in the back yard, or even some jump rope in the street that was shaded by the big red maple trees in front of my house.

yesterday, while walking through our own little subdivision, almost a replica of the one i grew up in, i could smell the Maine mud thawing  from the winter freeze. this was my favorite time of year growing up on sunset street….when the days started getting longer and we could all play outside until the sun ducked behind the ocean, and without fear of the teeth chattering bitter cold of New England winds. our parents would congregate in the front yards to watch us play, talk about the Red Sox, or the drama of small town politics and the high school softball season. this was the prelude to endless summer fun, because when you are 8 or 9 years old summers are separate years all in themselves. We would lay in the freshly cut grass, barefoot {or with our new jelly shoes} and look up at the sky and dream about being adults, in an adult world, or playing in the sprinkler in the afternoon when it got too hot to do much else other than that and eat Popsicles on the porch. life was perfectly imperfect.

its funny that something like mud can remind you to stop and smell the flowers while they are blooming, huh?

all my love darlings,

p.s. daily mantra: “if you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought”….peace.pilgrim

dear Mikki and Katie…

i remember the day i brought you home from the hospital, Mikki. we entered our third floor Bangor apartment for the first time as parents, and i sat on the couch while i unbuckled your sleeping body from the safety of your car seat. it had snowed on the ride home in the car, uncommon for April even in Maine.  i laid you on my chest, and the feeling that came over me was a blanket of overwhelming  peace and comfort. rare  in motherhood, at least for me, are these instinctive and relaxed, conscious moments. that is probably why i remember them all.

what i did next left a vivid imprint on the inside of my heart and a lump in my throat…i turned on the television. CNN was on…i must have left it on the morning i left for work before i had gone into labor 3 days before. loud bombs and gun shots rose from the screen and wrapped the living room in a distant yet ripe fear. at that time, the war in Iraq was just beginning, and the reality that we had brought our baby girl into a violence saturated world was too much for my post pregnant, hormone overfilled, drama inclined anyway,  self. tears gurgled in the corner of my eyes, and i changed the channel to Trading Spaces on the HGTV network.

peace won’t always be at hand easily, girls. even in our souls and within our individual lives, that innate need is rarely indulged or sustained. as the world absorbs you and holds you as its own, as young people but more importantly as adults, promote, ignite, and just radiate from your very existence, a genuine sense of peace…for others, and for yourselves.

all my love darlings,

p.s: “maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. a happiness weapon. a beauty bomb. and every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. it would explode high in the air – explode softly – and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. floating down to earth – boxes of Crayolas. and we wouldn’t go cheap, either – not little boxes of eight. boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. with silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. and people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination. {robert.fulghum}

daily.mantra:
there is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt….{erma.bombeck}