Martha's Vineyard, Isle of Dreams

... because commonsensically speaking, a room full of good books had to better for your health than a room with no books in it at all.

My dad could go to work, he could get raises, he could be thanked for his contributions, he got a pay-check for his labor, but that didn't happen for moms. The best they could hope for would be a crayon valentine or a squashed, limp dandelion flower offered up from the damp hand of their wide-eyed and innocent child. Which wasn't nothing. In all my days I'd never considered anything to be more important than home. In a chaotic world, it was sanctuary; it was where love grew.

Feed your soul with silence. That's where dreams are born.

Once upon a time .... I want to have a little house with sunlight on the floor, A chimney with a rosy hearth and lilacs by the door. (Nancy Bird Turner)

During a snowstorm we built a fire, and made my grandma's stuffing and my mom's layered Jell-O, and mashed potatoes with lumps and my mom's delicious gravy and every other family thing we loved. We filled the house with the fragrance of sage, pumpkin, apples and cinnamon.

I left the door open so I could hear the music, grabbed my clippers and went out to play in the garden~~the best place to count my many blessings. And then I though, if I can't get through one door, I'll try the next, or I'll go through a window. Something good is going to happen. Red-Letter days are not provided by others....

With times the way they were in the 1980s , I was worried that moms might have gotten the mistaken idea that what they did didn't matter. What I understood from the women's movement was that we had free choice to be anything we wanted. We could choose to stay home with the children or work out of the house, depending on our personal needs, and each of those choices deserved equal respect. But sometimes , watching Phil Donahue in the Pre-Oprah days, it felt like women were being pitted against each other.

but it finally occurred to me that the time was going to pass anyway, I might as well try to have something to show for it,

It was easy to see that I was made up of exactly the same basic material as the people who built the Golden Gate Bridge and the Statue of Liberty, heart, blood, bone and dreams. And desire too.

I also learned that my heroes had heroes of their own. They had stood on the shoulders of those who came before them, learned from them, were inspired, took what that learned and wave it into their own originality, and made something brand new for their own times. Everything was connected. Everything stepped up forward in though and genius.

The stories of my heroes provided me with MUCH better things to think about. Important things, meaningful things, real things that mattered and didn't depend on ratings. Learning about them, reading their words made me want to be a better person.

Despite my broken heart, or rather, because of it, I was grateful to be where no one knew me. I was totally invisible here. I didn't have to pretend to be happy or nice or that everything was okay.