rainbow pouch

J asked what was in my rainbow pouch.

"A ruby," I said.  Ming and I were at this hippie store I like in Santa Barbara, that day last year that felt like my birthday but wasn't. I bought a small ruby for energy.  It likes being in that little pouch, by itself.

She was giving me a blessing yesterday, as we're leaving again.  I'm dropping out of things, in crisis mode.  I'm supposed to serve in the morning and go to the meeting, but some things just seem impossible.  I'm hoping Ming will go as my emissary. 

When my aunt saw this pouch, she marveled at the smallness of the stitches.  I said my mom did the same.  Made with a tiny crochet hook like a needle. 

She was in her living room, the piano living room, making some slippers out of this colorful yarn my mom had given her.  It was variegated, and I loved the orange in it.

I'm not the best midnight selfier today, but here's the rainbow pouch, bright against the black moon hoodie.

Our friend is driving us all night.  We'll make the trip without a hotel break in the middle, something we haven't done in years.  Desperate times call for whatever.  

I want to go to the beach--the actual beach and the pier.  I need to talk to my dad.  I know he's not really there.  But the cool night air and sealions barking in their sleep, maybe--it seems appropriate.  Oh Dad.  What will we do.

Christmas always makes me cry.  R read out loud the card I wrote to him, which thanked him for the ways he helps people, seen and unseen, acknowledged and unacknowledged.  I didn't mean for him to read that out loud, and it made me cry a little.  I also thanked him for having integrity and for being a good person.

If I'm the black sheep, carrying trauma, saying what I'm not supposed to say--there it was.  We go around serving a lot of hungry people and making music or pretty sentences, joking, running errands, doing our things.  

But thanking R for having integrity--it's the most obvious thing in the world, but maybe it doesn't happen all the time.

He learned his lesson and didn't read the second card out loud.  Who knows what I said in that one.  I usually have no idea afterward what I said to people.  His birthday is coming up.

A person is who they really are, but a person can also be an example.  When I left the Worker, I said, "I love you all," to my community.  Later someone emailed me, saying to be safe.  We'll try.