I want to nap...so want to map...in fact, bed is calling me...(just noticed that map came out of my fingers instead of nap...probably a Freudian slip, meaning to map out my life?)...Where, exactly, am I going, in what direction am I headed?

My mother is in town.  It’s been a mixed bag of feelings for mwah.  If I write that she’s ninety, your empathy will most probably immediately side with her...not that I want your pity, dear readers.  Yet there are moments where I feel I could easily curse and strangle her, ninety years young or not.  After all, she’s my mommm.

When we meet her at the airport, she is waiting, sullen-sulking-empty-eyed, behind the glass wall.  My daughter leaves the car to go get her Bubby; my mom is glad to see her.  A few seconds go by and I leave the car as well, going up to her to say hello.  Her sincere and warm greeting takes me by surprise—she says she is glad to see me and seems relieved; the hug and kiss she gives me, I return, in gratitude and love.  I don’t remember her being this real/sincere/glad to see me, before.  I am open to her love, something that has taken me years to open up to.

On the way home, we stop at the grocery store.  I look at the onions, thinking that I choose my onions like I choose my men—carefully.  (Yet by recent indications with the last two men, obviously not carefully enough.)  This onion has funny bumps on it; this onion looks perfect on the outside, yet has some softness to it on the inside; this one doesn’t have any intoxicating scent to it, seems bland for an onion.  Men can be like that.  I most definitely don’t want my onions to be bland.  If anything, they must make me laugh.  Making me cry is not acceptable, onion or not.

At one point in the store, we all stop and chat, which of course causes for aisle/traffic congestion, since there are three of us and we usually stop dead-in-our-tracks wherever we are, at the moment, our focus on the conversation.  We tend to be a planet of our own, us three.  Hayley notices mom’s beaded eyeglass necklace-holder around her neck, holding her glasses and mom proudly says that I made it and gave it to her.  It’s true that I gave it to her; however I found it at a yard sale (in fact I think it was given away for free) and gave it to her because I decided I didn’t want to use it.  I said that I didn’t make it and mom argued with me (of course she knows better than I do, what can I say).  I let that one fall and absorbed the credit for the damn beaded eyeglass necklace-holder.  What the heck.  What difference does it make, anyway?  None.

We keep running into people we know...it’s obviously the day to see and be seen at Vitamin Cottage.  My friend Katherine is there, with her son and we connect and talk.  She asks about my latest beau.  I tell her that it’s a “no go”...done, over, kaput.  Only two months in the making, still, it had beautiful potential.  There were a lot of cool connections and Katherine had really loved that he had told me, “I know you’re missing me, because I’m missing you.”  Her boyfriend sounds a lot more tentative, less willing to commit, yet so far she’s still with him and here I am solo, again.  (They have been dating about a month or so and I had been dating/communicating for two solid months.)

Katherine does something unexpected: she dashes up to me, as if we had just lost our home in a fire and kisses me, right on the lips.  It was almost sensual and I reel a bit, knowing that her last relationship—a long one, ten years, I think—was with another woman.  It’s a bit titillating, to say the least and kind of flusters me.  “I’m sooooo sorrrrry!” she tells me, soooo sweet and loving.  It takes my breath away...her open-hearted love to me.  For a few seconds, it almost makes the break-up worth it.

We leave the store, climb in the car and I just want to cry.  And now I want to just nap.

I go out on another date, with someone who is decent, well mannered and knows how to write a “mean” paragraph; in fact, he’s finishing a manuscript and wants me to edit it.  The guy writes like a pure angel, making me wistful about my own quality of writing.  Still, the chemistry is not there for me, the energy is missing.  I’m talking about the energy that guy number two (of the two latest) exudes together, along with me.  Perfectly.  In fact, the energy makes us laugh over the phone, before we even say anything—all we have to do is breathe...sigh.  Will I meet another guy with similar energy?  I am sooo damn picky.  And I also don’t plan on settling. 

Days and then two weeks go by; I can’t get this guy Rick out of my head, maybe it’s the energy thingy between us.  We effect streetlights, turn them on and off just by being near them.  When he and I are together, it seems there are always wind storms approaching, then madly whooshing in, if only just for a few minutes.  There’s most definitely some kind of static going on, there.  In my case—static cling. 

I think that my most important lesson here on earth is to experience then let go.  Let go of any perceived/yearned for outcomes.  As a balloon takes off into the infinite sky, in a gust of wind, carrying it ever so much higher, a speck on the horizon, until it completely disappears.  As the bear in the movie sings, “I’m gone, man—solid gone.”