I saw your photograph at the Gallery and I must say you are beautiful as well! Oh and thank you for the compliments of my avatar. It is actually a couple of years old only, but I think I've added some weight since then. Seems age is beginning to straddle me
with this tummy that too well remembers pregnancy, and this jawline that spites me. What does give me comfort along this odyssey is that our eyes do never change. The soul we see in them sings loud and long until our dying day...I love that you triumphed in obtaining your undergraduate degree! Your journey towards it amazes me. I did try one other time for mine ~ at the University of Illinois in Chicago, I studied two years. Received best poet award in 1991, kept up a 4.8 GPA despite the declining health of my new baby and the fact that his father had left me. But at the end of those two years, with Oliver's epilepsy worsening, came the diagnosis of autism, and the accusations of his doctors that I was somehow directly to blame, even though I had not touched a drop of alcohol during my pregnancy ~ well, it really flayed me. I said to the Universe, I did my part and this is what you give to us?
It would be several years before I would come to grasp what I now believe, that each of us makes a contract for our lives well ahead of time. That our souls always know exactly what we need and we choose who'll we become accordingly. And that allows me to more deeply appreciate my son Oliver's bravery ~ for who could be so courageous as to choose a life in a body that quakes and that cannot communicate too fluently and exists in fight-or-flight's nightmare reality? I struggle, but at least I can speak. At least I can reason through some of my anxiety. Oliver is like an animal in a zoo who cannot fathom WHY he is caged. It breaks my heart.
But do I believe Oliver's soul has been here a while. His Craniosacral therapist saw him in a past-life vision as a Viking on a ship that was sinking in a violent storm. He had a massive dagger in his neck. And it's strange, his neck still bothers him to this day. She said that his shipmates were being tossed by the wind into the sea because the storm was so deadly. But my Oliver, he laid down in the bottom of the boat and waited for the Dying, bravely. So Lizzy, who am I to question his courage in taking on a life of autism? It's just that in the day-to-day maelstrom I can forget this lesson so easily...
You know, I decided recently that if I ever write an autobiography I was going to name it "Waiting for Cancer"
but now I think I'll change that title, at least temporarily. Do you have any ideas? Again, have a gorgeous journey this next week.
Sincerely,
Hillary
Have a terrific birthday weekend and I look forward to your keen poetic insights on Monday 
I really should return to the realm of the living one of these years, shouldn't I? I'm not quite ready to resign myself to life as a recluse.
~ I'll spare you the details, which baffle me with their sudden arisings 
] appearance ~ there's some kind of momentum that takes hold without our permission. Thank G~d for our eyes. You're so right. Yours hold a depth of expression and beauty. Your words also remain timeless. 
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