17 Minutes and A Love Story

From the California Trip. My first morning there.

*****

For the past 17 minutes I have sat here on this balcony with my giant, multi-colored striped beach blanket across my legs, toes peeping out, propped up on this white railing.

My body is facing--across this baby courtyard and across the street--the grand sister that is the Pacific Ocean. My heart is at peace. There is a sea breeze, cool in temperature, and overcast skies. The ocean is green--the green of one of those old 7-Up bottles, that broken and tossed amongst sand and rock and aged with salt water, has now become sea glass.

The waves crash. They lulled me to sleep, filled my dreams and then woke me up again today. That I am here feels like a dream in and of itself.

My heart is a full to overflowing perfect circle of peace. There is no end or beginning and what I was missing yesterday has been filled by today.

This visage before me has been with me from infancy.

I am a Watergirl.

To not have it aches and to be with it is a salve.

Originally, I thought the ocean would be mine forever. I set my feet upon that path. But, life and choices in their conspiratory ways, combined their forces against me and I was carried away from the great blue sea and its life-giving force and sequestered high away in towering mountains in the beautiful high desert.

There is beauty all around me in this place--in these mountains. Green finery of pine and cottonwood and locust. There is the unyielding gray and black of monstrous granite and in the cascading rivers of shale. There is the red of Indian Paintbrush and in the cheerful red and yellow faces of Indian Blanket flowers. There is purple and pink and yellow in the tops of the long-stemmed Columbine. There is beauty and joy in the tweetings of Robins, Sparrows, Finches, Blackbirds, Mockingbirds and the sweet cooing of gray-breasted doves. If I am lucky and it is a very good day I will see tiny quail with their quivering head feathers, running and jumping and hear the cacophony that is a pheasants call.

In this wild west place that is now my home I have seen bear and fox, deer, elk and moose. My eyes and my heart have been opened to a completely new beauty and experience.

I have walked in clear-as-glass glacial icy pools of electric blue and green. The water so clear you almost have to touch to know that it is there. I have hiked through creeks and rivers that have frozen my toes with their not-yet-warmed-by-the-sun winters snow run-off. I have been swimming in mountain lakes so deep that legend says they have no bottom--and I have tucked my feet in close to me as I try to swim, just to make sure that the rumor of a monster of the deep that might nibble on my toes, is not true...because a monster of the deep would not chomp me whole, but would only nibble on my toes...it's logic and reason with me--all day--every day! ;)

I have made this beautiful place my home. Independence brought me here and deep love and passion with a soul with Cornflower blue eyes secured me to it.

We laughed together when he said that he had caught himself a mermaid and that a swimming pool would be in order because everyone knows that a mermaid needs water in which to submerge herself.

He has called me his Angel, his Mermaid, his Artist, his Sparkle. He has called me his Eternal Love, his Joy, his Beauty Girl and he has told me that I have brought him peace. He has said that, through my eyes, I have opened whole new worlds to him that he never would have known. He has said that through me, through my heart, that he understands how God loves humankind.

This soul that I love, this soul that is the owner of these beautiful Cornflower blue eyes, amazes me. He is strong, gruff, all logic and reason, math-loving, brilliant and always pushing the limits on truth, with enormous expectations on humanity that they fail on a regular basis (...it's true honey, you know it...) he is philosophical and pensive, funny, witty and clever, and of depths immeasurable. With his influence and his security he has given me a liberty and freedom that I could have never imagined. He protects me and comforts me but also pushes me to fly higher and to be stronger than I could have imagined on my own. He wants me to be me, even if he doesn't quite understand why I think and feel and love humans the way I do. He *sees* who I am and I *see* who he is.

He is true and I am a better woman--a stronger woman--because of knowing him. Just as I have opened up a new world to him, he has opened up a new world to me.

Some paths are sure and certain and full of focus and determination. My path has been full of plans, of passion in the moment, replete with unexpected changes and compromises. This journey of almost 20 years has marched through bramble-bushed paths and through electric blue skies, and even though sometimes I wish I had made better choices with some things, I would not trade it out.

This life is mine. It is rich in love, in friendship, in color, in texture and there is so much more of it to go. I'll keep the beauty and the battle scars, they are mine, and I earned them all.