Word Search

I lost my words last week.

I was gathering them all together like Scrabble tiles,

arranging, rearranging….

Then Boston exploded,

sending my words in a thousand directions.

It has taken a good deal of effort to gather them all back in.

When I was finally able to go about retrieving them,

I found that they had been changed by the shock wave.

Some words, like “celebratory” and “success”

became “sadness” and “confusion.”

Some words, like “serenity” and “tranquility”

are still missing, though I haven’t given up hope of finding them again.

In the meantime, I will busy myself

gazing at the waning moon, watering my roses, exchanging exclamatory text messages with my teenaged granddaughter about the CD she loaned me

and continuing my search for the next good dog who will serendipitously bless my life.

Oh look—it appears I have found a few more words….

Retrieving the Gauntlet Thrown

I am removing the sod from a 15' x 15' patch of my back yard, digging up the sod myself, shovelful by shovelful. 

I am doing this so that I can plant a garden.

What I mean is, I am doing this because a foolish man said to me, “You won’t be able to do that.”

As soon as he said that, I knew that I would do it.  Knew that I would be in the back yard with a shovel on as many days as I could spare the time, plunging the sharp new spade into the earth, dancing on top of the blade to make the bite as deep as possible, bringing up the tightly woven clump of grass torn from its tapestry and tossing it as far as I could so the impact would knock off some of the clinging soil.  I knew I would keep at it, back-straining as the work may be, without calling The Grandson over to help (though this would be a project he would love).

Don’t misunderstand me; I like the foolish man who looked me in the eye and said, “You won’t be able to do this.”  He simply needs… a paradigm shift.

And I am writing this blog post today for another foolish man… one I don't like so much... one who criticized my writing earlier this week… the stranger who said, ‘You can’t have a paragraph that’s only one sentence long.  It’s not really a paragraph, is it?’

Is it?