Serendipity

In an article I read yesterday, it spoke of someone who had stepped-up and helped a freezing man who was a long ways from home. A " good Samaritan ". An act of kindness that isn't often reported.  The story goes that the man had gone to the  Seneca Niagara Casino, in Niagara Falls, NY with a friend, but had gotten stranded at the  Tonawanda Reservation   when the 'friend' had left him stranded without  his wallet, identification and his cell phone.  Try as he might, no one would help him or let him use their cell phones so he could call for help. So off he walked and hitch-hiked...landing in Hemlock, NY. By the time he ended-up on the gentleman's doorstep...he had been exposed to the elements for some 17 hours, wearing only " work boots, good jeans and a New York Yankees sweatshirt". Joe Cicero...although cautious...helped the man, warming him up in his garage by having him stand near glass ovens, and fed him left-overs from the supper he a...

From the time I was a child, who had a younger brother and sister, and later a step-sister and four step-brothers...into adulthood, having no less than one child with me (and up to 6 children in the household--my three and 3-step-children--at one time)...then living with my daughter and her three for most of the last decade, I have not known "silence". There was always, always the sounds of children in my home where-ever I have lived. For all those years in my adulthood, the need for silence, peace and quiet, away from the daily influx of noise, was a thing I coveted. It was my way of recouping and maintaining some degree of sanity...away from children and husbands. What little time alone that I did get, was rare...and there were times that I was lost because that silence was deafening to me. Call it a misguided sense of co-dependency. When I moved away from my daughter's home last September, away from my grand-children and their daily noises, I was like a bird t...

Most of us go through our daily lives not thinking about much beyond that which we are familiar with on a daily basis, yet every once in a while we are directed to something that we know is there but we keep hidden in the back of our minds. I am just as guilty of doing the same. In 1990, I wrote a poem which is heart-breaking yet just as relevant today as it was then...about a child who was unwanted, abused and finally run away. I named him: "Disappointment" because a single word can relay so much hurt and anger, loss and loneliness. A Child Named 'Disappointment' He walks with head bent Against a cold insistent wind, His shoulders are pulled forward  In an effort known as defeat. He struggles with his emotions, Humiliation and loneliness: unwanted friends, Never sparing him more than a glimpse  Of life as it could be...should be. Disappointment is his only name, Born with him, beaten into him By a cruel, drunken father, Nev...

Sunrise, Nov. 3, 2011 Over the years, I have been aware that as time went on, I was loosing more and more of my 'self'...and for a long time I really thought it had everything to do with my depression (PTSD) and breakdown (in 2001). But then again...although they were a part of it, there were also other factors that had a direct bearing on what was happening to my loss of self.  I have been spent most of my life caring for others, beyond the capacity of just being a mother and wife. For a couple of years, after the death of my mom when I was 16, I became responsible for running our household, doing all the things my mom did, which included taking care of my brother and sister, and being a student myself.  Into adulthood, I became a mom at the age of 18, and a wife just before my 19th birthday. When I had my second and third child, I was in my second marriage...and was a full time step-mom to three children as well.  Marriage three...wasn't so draining, as ther...