Daydreams and Roses...

This is a hard story, with edges and tough parts. It's been that kind of week, chewy and biting.

But you get to write the end....

...a few days ago I was late to a celebration for my parent's wedding anniversary. In the car, I fell into a daydream about their wedding's yellow roses.

Approaching the intersection, I had the green light to make a right turn. In a flash, he turned left, his car crossing in front of mine. After rounding the corner, now behind him, I honked with certain righteousness. He raised his hand high to flip me off, as his fancy convertible steered into the food co-op parking lot.

It all happened fast, as these things do.

Well I continued on my way, with a burning sense of something. Afterwards, I wondered why I had not followed him into the store. Why I had not limped over to him, with my prosthetic leg. Why I had not told him that I was learning to drive left-footed, that it was harder for me sometimes now.

I wondered why I had not asked him...

...what made you think it okay to cross in front of me, and then flip me off?

I wanted him to know my story. Me, Julie, she is me and I am her. I wanted him to know my story.

Now his gender is not of import, it is not. Even on this day of all days in our country. For we could flip our genders in this tale, easily. This sort of scenario plays out all the time with different characters, a thousand ways to Sunday; and I am different characters in it myself, depending on.

Day after day, time and minutes rush by, stuffing us with experiences that wound us, expand us...but move us always, in some direction or another. Desire, revenge, jealousy...ambition, error, friendship. What is of import and striking here is that we often know little about one another, at least in some deeply thoughtful way.

And we have important things to talk about, lives bound together, how we live with one another. Horrifically difficult and hard matters to address...

...as we seek to exist in union.

We speak, assert, we act and decide...in the middle of complicated, messy stories.

Together, our stories.

And many days we can't absorb our own nuanced story, to say nothing of trying to understand another's life. Sometimes we try to listen, we do - but we like to speak more, usually we do...and from our own certain point of view. It seems human nature for most of us, save for some other cultures or saints like Hildegard of Bingen...though this is not sure, even for her.

So he knew nothing of my story, no, and yet he felt it appropriate to flip me off.

But then, I knew nothing of him...

...why he was angry, entitled, arrogant...full of himself on that day. Perhaps he had just had a fight with his best friend...where he was belittled and shamed, told to stand in a corner, out of their way. Instead he got in his car. Perhaps he had had a perfectly lovely morning, sipping tea by his pool, as the sun rose in the east.

Our time and way is rarely clear, our lives often curvy, too curvy for comfort and assurance most days...

...perhaps we must open a new book, discover a new story, for a new day.

So this morning I opened my mother's childhood copy of Alice in Wonderland, which she gifted me last night. Opening the pages gingerly, not wanting to tear the aging fragile paper, my gaze fell to these words:

"Who are you?" the Caterpillar asked of Alice.

'I hardly know sir, just at present - at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed, several times since then."

In confusion, Alice moves through her story to reach its end and this conclusion: "Ever drifting down the stream - Lingering in the golden gleam - Life, what is it but a dream?"

So I hop in my car again and head down the road, with yellow roses returning to my daydream.

Another car approaches and...