Life I love you, all is groovy...

5th Grade

As I sit here almost one year from the day of my surgery I am filled with feelings of joy and sadness.  I think facing and deeply accepting my own mortality was a journey I began when I was about eight, that was when I first began to obsess about the fact that I was actually going to die, some day.

Me when I was four, Madrid, Spain.

While standing at the sink tonight washing the dishes and listening to Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits album I was transported like some cosmic Proustian moment back to my childhood.  My mom had this album when I was a kid and it brought me back to the days of playing in the basement with my toy horses, watching Sesame Street and dreaming about what I would do when I grew up.  My brother and I would listen to all of my mom's albums while she at work at one of her three jobs.  I knew every single word on this album...  and it is amazing that I still do.

My brother and me in Madrid, Spain, I was not yet four.

There is real hope, a positive energy, an adolsencent lullaby in that album for me…  Each song felt like home as I belted it out at the top of my lungs feeling so happy to be alive and knowing as I washed the dishes that it has all been a wonderful gift, a wonderful journey.  Despite the darkness and the pain, I can still feel and see the light, the beauty in it all.  My memories are of love and happiness.  Tears of joy and sadness met with a breath of reality and it streamed through my heart.  I am not afraid now, not afraid to live and not afraid to die.  I am so grateful that my spirit feels the beauty more than the pain….I love whole the story.  

El Condor Pasa, what a song…

My beloved Betty and my cousin in suburbia, 5th grade.

But the song that best captures my feelings now, the words I want to shout into the universe as February 2nd approaches are…

Slow down, you move too fast.

You got to make the morning last.

Just kicking down the cobble stones.

Looking for fun and feelin' groovy.

Ba da, Ba da, Ba da, Ba da...Feelin' Groovy. 

I look just like my son in this picture and little like my friend Hannah too, don't ya think?  These are the days I listened to the album with my sweet little brother, right there next to my two, very best, best friends, Maryanne and Karen...

Hello lamp-post,

What cha knowin'?

I've come to watch your flowers growin'.

Ain't cha got no rhymes for me?

Doot-in' doo-doo,

Feelin' groovy. 

My birthday party, it was always just about the horses.

I've got no deeds to do,

No promises to keep.

I'm dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep.

Let the morning time drop all it's petals on me.

Life, I love you,

All is groovy.

 The 59th Street Bridge Song 

Simon & Garfunkel

I am truly, honestly, completely living that song, everyday, thankfully.

My dad, my brother and me!  My brother lookin' like Glen Campbell.

Fifth Grade Pilgrim village, my mom could sew!!! 

My dad and I at Shakey's or was it Pappy's?

My mom in our little kitchen...

I wonder where Mrs. Robinson my music teacher is now?  She was one of those amazing hippies that touched my life, she had us singing this song in music class at Town Point  Elementary school in the very early 1970’s.  Thank you to all of you amazing open minded, progressive hippie teachers and adults that influenced me, that saved me.  God, it was good to be a kid in the seventies…