These Zen Questions

With an unsure pace
she slowly proceeds out her room and down the hall.
I grab her hand and guide her towards the back door.
"Which car is yours?" she asks. And again once more.
"It's the silver one," I respond, pointing towards the car.
She opens the passenger door and sits in the seat.
"Where are we going?" she asks with a slight smile.
I repeat the plan, as I have numerous times in the last 2 minutes
"We're going to visit your son, my brother. Do you remember his name?"
She looks at me with a puzzled smile, "You know his name," I say, "it starts with a W"
"William," she says. "That's right," I assure her.
Conversations like these are common place and may seem simple.
But they are everything.
She is my Mom.
Some days she can't recall who we are or our names. She never can quite remember our birthdays, though too true she brought us into this world.
Often I regret the questions I never asked before her memories got buried.
Questions like what it was like to have 3 kids, to have so many untold secrets, to build your life around so many others. I miss and grieve for what I wanted us to have.
But it's not about me most days.
It's about these simple questions.
Guiding her through uncertainty and panic.
I grasp her hand and tell her I love her.
She smiles back at me
and even though she'll forget this all in another moment,
I relish in this opportunity.
She teaches me to be present in that way.
A zen master in her own right.
She only knows now and some of the past.
Some days she seems broken, as I feel broken
but other days she is the smartest person I know.
Teaching me, even now.
To live this life the only way we can-in this moment. In these simple questions.
I turn the key in the ignition and shift the car into reverse.
"Where are we going?" she asks me.
I smile, in this moment.

I Think I Thought that I Thought.

"What do you feel....right now?" he asked me intently.
I sat there dumbfounded, so sure I was feeling everything. So sure that I felt it all. Every little teeny thing. And why....because I know how to cry?
I smirked in disbelief...I felt nothing. I felt that I was thinking. THINKing. Thinking about what it meant to feel. Thinking I knew how to feel how I felt. No, but I know how to feel about others. Intuition instructs me the best means to comfort them....these ones around me that inadvertently generate how I think I feel. This emotion that molds me into what I think I feel.
I feel that I talk. Talk much. Talk often. Talk fast. Talk about deep things that generate numbers and fascinations and sensationalism. "Thinking isn't your issue," he assured me, "you are very smart." But do I.....feel? Do I impress them with my feelings? With peace, you say? Do I feel peace or know peace or just think and talk about peace? And what of passion? That fire I seek in others as I know to be within me. HA....as I think about feeling I am reminded of the path and how I feel, with the deepest bits of my soul that this path is so necessary and righteous and will lead to where ever I need to be, surrounded by the best versions of what I hope to be. We could talk, but all I want to do is feel it. I want to look with these eyes. Feel with these hands, this skin. This very moment and until forever, even if it never comes. I take it as I take you into my life.
My life. My strife. So right.

I am my own Doctor, Shaman, and Healer.

Session II

These thoughts of mine mask feelings. Distort perceptions. Craft my reality. Ostracize and chastise and brutalize. I use them. And I am ashamed of them. All of them. To feel them, acknowledge them, give them a thought or two. For me you crafted a safe haven of expression and acceptance. Who knew what to do with such freedom? Not me. Ill equipped was I. 

So many questions have I posed. "It's really all gonna be ok, isn't it?"

The thing is, I don't need to worry and worry and worry sick about it being ok.

Cause it already is and I already am. So very ok. Great, even. 

In the right here and right now. With or without outside intervention. 

Walk like a boss. 

Talk like a boss.

With or without Ne-yo. 

It is an odd fate. A new course. This strangely startling fate. Of, course. 

It is and this is.
I may break my own heart, but I also know exactly how to heal it. Better than anyone. Ever.

I can't wait to live the rest of my days. 

With me....

.....As me.