Tiara Me Sue

I’m a professional chauffeur. Today I had to pick up a young girl from her school to bring her home. The school is not your typical school building on its own property; it shares a parking lot with a few other businesses, so pickups need to be structured. Basically, all the parents and guardians wait in line in their cars until they get to the front of the line and their child gets called to the car.  The pickup cars are in two lines, with two rows of parked cars between them. I am in my car in the right line, which is considered the first line because it’s closest to the building. While I’m waiting, I notice a man from the left line, parallel to me (with two parked cars between us) jump out of his car and run up to the front of his line. I see what looks familiar to me: two parents show up for one kid, or a child/parent swap. I looked in front of me and moved my car up when the car in front of me moved forward, then looked over at the swap – and realized I had completely mi...

Are you ready for the next leg of the journey? The train’s going to be leaving soon. The same direction – with different stops along the way. New faces getting on; familiar faces getting off. That’s what this is, this new year coming. Another ending, another beginning. It’s the same, and it’s different. It’s a circle; whether we realize it or not, we end up back where we started. The idea of celebrating the New Year is the same as celebrating a birthday, with the New Year being the collective birthday and all of us celebrating it together. The Earth is in a certain position (the beginning) and circles around the sun until it returns to that same position (the end). The beginning and the end are the same . Every end is a beginning, and every beginning an end. Proof that life is all about the journey. We all do know this; the concept pops ups in movies and song all the time – but do we really understand it? More to the point: do we really believe it? Our lives are our cr...

When we are very young, our first friends are determined by geography and our parents. After we start figuring things out on our own, we gravitate towards certain ‘favorites’ and even later we begin to choose. I am one of the lucky ones, because those that were chosen for me back then are still the ones I choose now. Chosen for me. I like that. I met Michael first – but I don’t remember ever not knowing him. Our parents were high school friends that stayed close afterwards. He was born a month before me and we were always together. We have pictures of us taking baths together.  Even when our parents moved out of the city they moved to the same neighborhood, three houses apart – even closer than they had lived before. Michael is as much a part of me as … well, me . That move to the new neighborhood just before our 7 th birthdays brought me to Donna, my first best girlfriend. The three of us were always together. It was a great neighborhood; those were great years. ...

I’m 50! I was going to start off this blog with a list of 50 things about being 50, and had been thinking about it all week with no real idea of what to say. Duh! I wasn’t 50 yet! I have been 50 for all of 45 minutes now and realize that I’m not qualified to make that type of list yet, so it will have to wait until this time next year. I was able to begin the list, though: 1.      All the chewing gum we swallowed as a child is probably digested by now. (I do hope I know more than that in a year’s time!)