8. Never laugh at anyone's dream. People who don't have dreams don't have much.

The last e-mail that I opened was from a childhood friend.....one of those "if you don't forward this to fifty people your cat will die" kind of things. Now y'all can just imagine that I don't clutter up cyberspace with that kind of stuff. If you get an email from the Poopster, it's personal. But I read through the list, and number eight caught my eye, even though I'd read it a kazillion times before. " Never laugh at anybody's dream. "

That got me to thinking about how many dreams I've had that seemed monumental when I was on fire, and then life turned the water hose on. The dimensions of a person's life tend to be defined by societal roles....employee, spouse, parent, sibling, child...in-law or out-law. Yet deep inside all of us are seeds just beggin' to be planted to see what grows. Often, it is friendship that provides the nourishment to bust all out in flowers. During one particularly grueling period at the day job, during which..by the way..the marriage was shredding itself....I spent hours studying greenhouse plans pining away for days in shorts and dirt with happy customers dropping by to browse through the green, each choosing something unique and different to take home. A guy who owned such a place just a mile up the road put it up for sale and I failed to followed that dream. Now it's home to a roofing contractor. He followed his though. Once an artist, always an artist.

I've always been a sort of "feel me touch me" kind of gal. Until Mama talked practical to me, I was gonna be a psych major in college. That fascination with human relationships and cultural nuance followed me into healthcare and turned into involvement outside of the walls of the cold science of the lab into a broader perspective of the delivery system itself. Thank you Elisabeth K-Ross :) For many years I read she and Melody Beattie and John Bradshaw and just about everybody else famous for their writings about the process of acceptance as a means to an end for healing. Hurt like hell...I'll tell you right now. For about two years, I cried every.single.day.

But then one day I didn't. And then for a week I didn't. I was on a roll with this happy not sad shit. That, my friends, is when the dreams really started getting vivid. The camera and keyboard became my constant companions...comfortable friends who never expected anything more than my participation. I began to lift my voice up singing things that make me happy and selecting music that soothed my savage beast. Don't look now but I may be a rock star before it's all over. Hey! Look at Rod Stewart..he's a bunch older than me.

Here's a birthday shout-out to YaYa. She's as old as I am for two months and don't you doubt for one dang minute I'm gonna let her forget it. After all...what are friends for?