through the fog

I cannot get warm. It is 37 degrees outside, so I layer heavily, put on my Nike hat and purple mittens, my big white-rimmed glamor sunglasses and head out for my daily walk. The sun is shining (thank heavens), and the wind is low (thank more heavens), but my nose has gone numb somewhere around Lindenwood so I push my pink Buff over my nose and keep walking. The moisture from my breath fogs my glasses, and I notice the haze with interest. I can still see, but everything now looks fuzzy and foggy. I wonder what it would be like to have bad eyesight - would my world permanently look like this? A wind blows across my face and the fog lifts. My world is clear again. But it quickly fogs up again with my breath, and the whole cycle starts again.

What in my life is fogging my vision? What can't I see clearly? My beautiful daughter? My amazing oldest son? My fabulous youngest son? My amazing husband? Myself? When I look in the mirror, what looks back? For it isn't a "who," but more of a total package. I'm certainly not just the body that stands there. When I was younger sometimes I would stare at myself in the mirror so long that it felt like a stranger was looking back. That freaked me out at age 10, kind of cool to think about when I'm 47.

What's real? I know, I know, it sounds abstract (forgive me, Christianne, but that's my life), but it's a question I ask myself throughout every day. Is this tree really a tree? No - someone CALLED it a tree, but it really just IS, at the very core of its being, just like I am, and you are. Is then anything real, I wonder, and I'm thinking that if I keep pondering it enough, the answer I'll come up with is ... no. I decide what's real for me, but I can't prove it.

I was pushing Bill on the swing at the park yesterday, and I asked him if he wanted to go to heaven. "Going to heaven" means to lean back on the swing, close your eyes, and let your mom push you - it feels like you're in heaven. I then joked and said, "or maybe you could just go to purgatory."

"What's purgatory?" Bill asked.

"It's a made up place that's sort of between heaven and hell - you just float there and don't do anything."

"I don't believe in hell," Bill answered, matter-of-factly.

"I don't either," I answered.

"I think everything's heaven," Bill said.

"Me, too," I said, smiling, remembering Bill at age 2 saying, "Brownies are God," and me definitely agreeing wholeheartedly, especially warm ones. Warm brownies, or warm God? Well, same same.

So I sit here today with the day off, ready to bake gingersnaps for Mom and Dad, and to include in a care package to Kari, 234 miles away from me. I'm ready to finish reading "A Three Dog Life," a breathtaking memoir that continually takes my breath away. I'm ready to meditate to Andrew Weil's CD that splits me open and lets my energy spill out warmly, just for a while. And I'm ready to take a nap, maybe in the hammock in the backyard, wrapped in a fuzzy blanket. And all of that? That's real to me.