This was posted on my blog, Wanderlust, where it truly is my 100th post.
In honor of my 100th post, I offer you 100 bullet points.
- 100 posts
- 5 months
- 58 sexy flags
- A web of connections across the continents
- new friends, more than I dreamed
- a world opened up before me
- one marriage, lost
- one voice, found
- one future, unknown
- Tonight I sorted through boxes in the basement looking for things to give away
- digging deep into the past and pulling up armloads of clothes and jetsam from days gone by
- I found an old purse and realized it had never been divulged of its contents
- One by one I pulled out pens, lipstick, chewing gum
- Then I froze
- This was my mother's purse
- The purse she had been using when she died
- Here was an address book from 1990
- and she had carefully written in and scratched out my various addresses, tracking me across the country, across continents
- and her last paystub, dated January 3, 1993
- The chewing gum was still soft
- I stood there for a long time
- When the purse was empty I handed it to Jim to put with the rest of the stuff we were giving away
- He handed it back to me, gently, told me to smell it
- I did
- but it didn't smell like her
- Too many years gone by
- Here is what I want
- To hold a mirror up to my children so that they may never doubt
- the incredible light of their own souls
- To never stop writing
- To travel the world, all of it
- To speak my truth, all of it
- And come late June, when the days stretch long and coreopsis and phlox and coneflowers blanket the prairie floor and the sky is a thousand miles wide
- I’m getting in my car and driving to western Kansas
- to Amy Leigh’s farm
- where I’m going to run naked through a field of wheat
- with or without you President Obama
- And that’s not all
- You know that new URL I have (wanderlustlust)?
- I didn’t buy just one
- flaghussy.com
- Uh huh
- And what the hell
- Australiancrush.org
- That’s right
- I’m an org
- Care to donate?
- But on this, my 100th post, I'm thinking mostly about you
- Without you
- all of this wouldn't exist
- and to me you are more than just someone who reads my blog
- because when I fell
- you were there to catch me
- and I’ll never forget that
- People can say what they will about virtual friendships
- and people have
- but I know better
- I know that you are not just a name on a screen
- that you live and breathe and love and hurt and write a piece of yourself into every post
- that you are gloriously imperfect
- as am I
- as are we all
- We are nevertheless blog gods and goddesses
- are we not?
- Expression spilling from our fingertips
- onto pages
- so that we may rest another day
- tame the wild beast
- Well, quiet her at least
- And something in the telling helps us know that we are not alone
- in what we feel
- in who we are
- because we are not alone
- ever
- ever
- ever
- And through each other’s eyes
- we see ourselves
- reflected back
- in all our wonder
- and in that reflection
- we hold a vision of each other at our best
- Mothers, fathers, sons and daughters
- we become our consummate selves
- courageous in the face of pain
- gracious in the face of slight
- We are artists in the medium of life
- dreaming dreams of who we really are
- fearless explorers
- genius creators
- lovers of venusian proportion
- hot bloggy sex on a popsicle stick
- That’s us
- you
- me
- we
- shine
