Summer Oh Nine

Mmmm... Summer Oh Nine Volume Two. Welcome.

It is Saturday morning and I am sitting with a group of women I hardly knew one year ago. We are in Lincoln Square's Over Easy delighting in delicious granola crunch blueberry pancakes & Mexicana omlettes. We are squeezed against each other in this little retro diner of a place and we are giggling and indulging with each other what summer has been to each of us so far. A year ago I only recognized the faces as cuties in a movie theater but today, as I sit here, I am so thankful for this little knit group of women from my church who know how to make marriage lovely, funny, ironic, heartbreaking, and hopeful. For their honesty and encouragement, I owe so much.

Jackie, dancer & pontificator extrodinaire, is a small gift of inspiration on the Saturday before my week off. She is explaining to me how she has taken the month to dance in nature: among the prairie gardens in Andersonville's church gardens, next to the little fishes and creatures that strive to come ashore but are ultimately washed back and forth by the tide of the lake waters, and imitating the leaves as they shake and clutch to branches when the wind picks up. "I may look a little nutty and someone is bound to pass by and wonder what I am doing but it is my own research in the properties of movement within dance."

So I have my writing nitches carved out for each morning and after that, I am going where inspiration draws me. I too want to sit/ dance/ speak/ sing/ drive/ write nature's inspiration all week long.