Remembering what's important

It's Thursday night on a beautiful sunny summer evening in Amsterdam. My neighbors are outside barbecuing and I can hear them from my bedroom window. I'm listening to Django Reinhardt and trying on dresses. I just got my hair cut. I'm making peace with my life - trying to obey my horoscope and see the beauty everywhere. Enjoying the sun on my face as I cycle home. Ignoring the scar from my fall in Colombia on my knee as I try on neglected sandals and high heels from DC. When I open my email to find a note from my sister in South Carolina. She's got old letters and my mother's old diary which I gave her after I found it in my mother's bedside table. My sister scanned in a letter that she found that I wrote to my mother when I was so young offering to start doing the cooking and washing around the house if I could start washing my own hair.

Suddenly all the ridiculous self imposed stress from work and the petty dramas which make up my every day life seem so small and far away. And I miss my family. I miss those who knew me when I was 8 years old and thought cooking with my mother was the coolest thing in the world. Hanging out with my dad when he walked down the street to pick up the Sunday papers. Riding bikes with my sister around the neighborhood and putting the cat into ridiculous costumes.

Sometimes I love my life - so "glamorous" living in Amsterdam, hanging out with fabulous and beautiful women, drinking wine in the park, and traveling to dangerous lands to try to help people. But right now I would trade it all just to come home again to 2 Warren Court, Sumter South Carolina and eat my dad's potato salad and catch up on the gossip of the court with him and just be home. Home Home Home. Where I often felt 14 years old and ridiculous but always loved and accepted.

Thunder and Lightening

There was an amazing thunderstorm in Amsterdam last night. The whole sky was lit up with lightening and the thunder made my house shake and the cat hide under the covers. It was truly impressive in its force. It makes one aware of our tenuous position on this flat little spit of land that reaches out into the sea.

I love thunderstorms - especially heat lightening on a hot hot summer night in South Carolina. But this one kept me up for hours and I couldn't get to sleep. My mind kept racing around the different worries that I have and rather than being comforted by the overwhelming power of the storm and my reminder of how insignificant I am in the face of nature, I instead was plagued with incredibly realistic dreams about my worries.

Getting through the Day pt 1

"What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it."

— Gabriel García Márquez