Disappointed

Five hours of sleep after being up for 39.  I've been lying awake for a couple of hours watching my ego make up stories.  I am so triggered.  Why did you ask me if I feel old? I'm pretty flipped out about being old right now.  I'd like to crawl out of my skin.  I haven't cried in 6 hours.  Hopefully my eyes will be a bit less puffy today.  I need to be to work at 7:00.  I don't know what I'm feeling right now.  Sideswiped.  Depressed.  Confused.  Dumb.  Mostly numb.  But Aphrodite is waking up.  I notice her in the background with her "Fuck you, how dare you!" attitude.  She is prideful.  And pissed.   Mostly I'm just tired and my heart hurts.  I'd like to go to sleep and either not wake up at all or wake up having this all be an awful dream.  I'm so disappointed.

The Consequences of Falling

The rain is falling as if the sky is shedding tears in sweet companionship.  I'd call a girlfriend except I know I couldn't talk.  I can cry though.  It seems as if that's all I can do.  I can't sleep.  I laid awake all night, the tears flowing silently until the uncontrollable sobbing would erupt.

A couple of weeks ago I found a lump in my breast and it was quite sore so I made an appointment for a Well Women Health Exam.  I wasn't too worried about it but having it checked out seemed the prudent thing to do.  I've been feeling extra vulnerable in my body lately.  Fucking menopause.   My daughter had a cancer tumor in her leg.  A friend died of prostate cancer.  The appointment was early this morning.  After crying all night with no sleep, I walked into the clinic like a zombie, where they hit me with a slew of paperwork that needed updating. As soon as I sat down to work on the stack of papers they called me back to the exam room with a quick stop at the scales for a weight in.  As if that wasn't enough to make me feel like shit, I was told to strip naked and given two small pieces of rough paper to protect my modesty.   I couldn't even figure how to unfold the damn paper covers  and that got me crying again before my health care practitioner made it back into the room.  Bereft of any ability to cope with her professional incompetencies,  within a few minutes I had her running out the door for backup protection from the crazy lady. When she returned, I was fully dressed except for my bra.  In the end I pulled off my top and allowed her to do a breast exam (I already had enough negative body issues going on that I was bound and determined to forego cutting off my nose to spite my face.) But I declined her offers for other medical interventions including their mental health services.  Fucking bitch.

Lover Who Is My Lover is no longer my lover so I'm confused as to how to refer to him here.  I already have one Lover Who Is Not My Lover.  Maybe I should call him Lover Who Is Not My Lover Too, or Lover Who Is Not My Lover Two.  I am not a Well Woman, that's for sure.  My heart is broken.  Not really looking forward to dealing with this lost.  Fuck.  For the last few days I've been listening to k.d. lang's song, The Consequences of Falling, obviously preparing myself for this, and every line speaks to my experience and what I have been dreading.  "...if I'm alone with this, I don't think I can face the consequences of falling.  As it turns out, I am definitely alone in this,  LWINMLT, is not in love with me.  Well, to be more exact, he is no longer sexually attracted to me.  Wow, typing that sentence sent a pang through my heart.  I've been dealing with the not in love part pretty well up until this point.  You know, just letting what is be what it is, accepting the sweet love that is there and not making up too many stories about the rest.  But I really don't think I can face his new disclosure.

are you breathing
what i'm breathing
are your wishes
the same as mine
are you needing
what i'm needing
i'm waiting for a sign
my hands tremble
my heart aches
is it you calling
if i'm alone in this
i don't think i can face
the consequences of falling
are you thinking
what i'm thinking
does your pulse
quicken like mine
are you dreaming
what i'm dreaming
i can't read your mind
one step towards you
two steps back
feels like i'm crawling
if i'm alone in this
i don't think i can face
the consequences of fallin

Well, those questions are answered.  He is not breathing what I'm breathing.  He is not needing what I'm needing.  His pulse does not quicken like mine.  Fuck.  I got my sign.  I don't have to try and read his mind.  I'm alone in this and I don't think I can face the consequences of falling in love with this man.

In case you've never had the man you love tell you that he isn't sexually attracted to you, I can share with you first hand that it feels really shitty. Damn, talk about a body slam.  As if I haven't been slamming my own body enough as it is.  I'll be 57 years old in one week and I gotta tell you, I've been in a wretched place with my body image and this whole menopausal pack on the fat phase.  Slam dunk K.  You know where to hit a girl where it hurts.

Not that I blame him.  I mean, what was the poor man to do?  If he's not sexually attracted to me anymore, what else is there for him to do but tell me?  He obviously didn't relish disclosing this little (huge) piece of information to me and it was a truth I was not happy to hear.  But the truth is, I'm not sexually attracted to my own self right now.  I'm quite aware that I'd be more physically attractive if I were holding less fat on my body.  But you want love to see beyond that.  I'm fairly full of self loathing.  And now to add to that, my feelings are hurt.  My ego is bruised and busted.

I told him I never trusted "us".  I guess I've always held some trepidation.  I definitely hold some post traumatic stress from when he contemplated breaking it off with me two years ago.  How could I fully trust my relationship with a man who never told me that he was in love with me? At the same time, our friendship was deep and I had grown to trust his love for me and I was holding big appreciation for his presence in my life.   I hold confusion about the difference between "loving" and being "in love" with someone anyway so I just accepted his love for what it was, without needing to put a label on it.   He is kind.  He is truthful.  He is a good man.  A sweet lover.  I had let go of many of my attachments about how I needed to be in relationship with him and I was simply allowing myself to be happy and content.  Comfortable.  Mostly.  But I suppose that I was secretly hoping that he had fallen in love with me and would come around, sooner or later to figuring that out.  I feel like a fool.  When he told me that he wanted to have a "candid" talk, I knew, in one way or another, what was coming.  Although after my immediate tachycardia I told myself not to jump to conclusions.  I imagined a number of different possible topics.  Maybe he even wanted to tell me that he was in love with me, that he was "dreaming what I'm dreaming".  I didn't imagine hearing his words telling me that he was no longer sexually attracted to me.  I've never had a man tell me that before.  It stings.

It's weird, as k.d. says, "one step towards you, two steps back, feels like I'm crawling".  K was a wonderful lover to me in many ways and I'm feeling pretty fucking devastated to lose this aspect of our relationship.  To face this reality, that he isn't physically attracted to me, doesn't want to make love with me,  doesn't want to fuck me.  WTF am I suppose to do with this information?  It makes me angry too.  My sexuality is a huge piece of my identity.  Who and what I am.  Jesus fucking Christ.  Talk about the ultimate rejection.  God fucking damnit.  And the truth is that I constantly held myself back from him sexually too.  It was obvious that he didn't desire me as much as I desired him and I chalked it up to a difference in our libidos, and the fact that he holds his sexuality differently than I hold mine which is always in the forefront.  His is more compartmentalized.   I was always hungry for him but I learned to control my cravings, waiting for him to make the first move, always stepping back, never wanting to pressure him.  I consistently felt like I was crawling in our relationship.  And the crawling wasn't bad.  I wasn't complaining.  And I'm not complaining now, about how it was.  I accepted him for who he was, how he was.  Instead of wanting more, I practiced wanting what he gave me and I was pretty much satisfied with that.  But I don't know how to begin being satisfied with this.  I am complaining about this.

And I never got to get my tramp stamp tattoo and surprise him with it when he took me from behind and fucked me.  He told me that's how he wanted to discover it.  I waited too long.

I've always said that we fall in love with who we fall in love with, and then we create a relationship from there.  Our lovers are real people, acting out their own karma, living their lives and trying to get their needs met to the best of their abilities, just like we are.  When we love another, we have the choice of either loving the real person or loving a fantasy, a made up story that we create in our mind about who and what that person is and how they will meet our needs and make us happy.   But real people don't always come through for us the way our fantasies do.  They improv in the roles and scripts we make up for them.  I'm so let down.  I invested so much of heart and body to this man and he never fully claimed me in my totality.  I knew that.  And I knew not to trust that he wouldn't do what he just did.  Why am I so insistent on falling in love with unavailable men?

I'm alone in this and I don't think I can face the consequences of falling...

Fuck.

Portentous Portals. Powerful Passings.

Portentous portals.  Powerful passings.

Birth and Death.

My friend Rudy died a couple of days ago and my heart cracked open.  I have been so touched by this beautiful man and the sweet love he offered me for so many years.  He was not a close friend.  But he was.  We didn't know each other well.  But we did.  I never spent long hours talking with Rudy, getting to know the intimate details of his life. Nor him mine.  And yet, our souls recognized each other from the beginning, and when our eyes met, we fell in love.  We fell into love.  That's the effect Rudy had on me--I would fall right into this big puddle of love and get soaking wet every time I saw him.  He validated my beingness.  With Rudy, I remembered that I was love.

Rudy was a well known person around town, big in the jazz scene, he played the alto sax, and was a professional photographer.  Everyone loved him.   How could they not?  Rudy had a wide open heart.  Sparkling eyes.  Infectious laugh.  Rudy hugged and kissed people.  Rudy gave big love and was loved big in return.

When my husband texted to ask if I had heard of Rudy's passing I remembered that I had dreamed of him the night before.  I walked into a party and he was there, off to my right with a group of musicians.  Our eyes met and he smiled at me as we exchanged that simple acknowledgement of  friendship.   He had come to say goodbye.  What a gift.  That sweet, sweet man. 

Oh precious one, your presence in my life has blessed me.  I cry, already missing your sweet face and embrace, and that love offering of a smile that bore the fruit of happiness in my heart.

It was Ryland's birthday.  He is one of my son's best friends and was born in one of the bedrooms in my home.  I lit a candle for him and Rudy.  A flame to celebrate Ryland's birth and Rudy's death. 

I'm dealing with my mother's passing.  It's up big for me.  I don't know when she will be gone, but she is going.  I've had two death dreams of her passage.  One by water and one by fire.  Yesterday I went to an audition for a local celebration of death that will happen in October.  Through spoken word I performed my dream of my mother's death by water:

Mother Carry Me, Your Child I Will Aways Be

It was assisted euthanasia.  Like a water birth, and I was the midwife.  Only this was her death.

We were in a large pool in a creek.  The water was low and I was allowing it to fill up, like in a swimming pool, or a bathtub, until it would cover her and take her under.  And I would let her go.  I would stay with her and hold her hand until she went under the water and drowned.

But all of a sudden the water was deep and it took her when my back was turned.
She was gone.  And I wasn't holding her hand.  The water was rough and murky and I couldn't see under it's surface.  I was walking around searching for her with my hands in the water, trying to find her.  But all the while I was afraid that I would find her, her body, floating in the water, dead.

I stepped down into another pool where the water was calm and clear.  I saw her lying there, convulsing and bleeding on the gravel floor of the creek bed.  It was like she was lying in front of the hearth in a living room.  A sacrifice on the altar of her watery grave.

The sight of her scared me at first, seeing her there.  Still alive.  Struggling.  With her blood swirling in the water above her head like a spiraling halo.  I ducked behind a corner to hide so I wouldn't have to witness her death.  But I turned back and went to her.  I couldn't let her die alone.  I reached down and took her hand as I crawled between her and hearth.  It's not so easy, lying on the rocky bottom of a creek bed, holding on to someone you love as they die.

I maneuvered myself in next to her.  And I was holding her hand.  She looked at me.  As our eyes met, I told her, "I found you mama, I'm here."  It's not so easy speaking underwater.  

I held her head in my hands and kissed her as she died.

Mother Carry Me, Your Child I Will Always Be

I miss you mama.  Already.  And you are still here.  I miss every moment I'm not with you.  I regret every moment lost to my inability to be present with you in love.

I love you mama.

I Was Frustrated

I just woke up from a dream about MLWIML.  It was morning and we were in bed, waking up together, trying to make love but we kept having interruptions.  We were at my house, and his daughter was there with us--she was about 5 years old.  It was one of those situations where the adults are in bed, cuddling, kissing, really wanting to fuck, but a child keeps asking for attention.  She didn't need much.  She was happy and dressed, entertaining herself with various things but she didn't know my house well, or what she was allowed to play with, so she kept coming in to my bedroom asking very sweetly, a question about this or that, wanting to know if it was okay for her to play with something.  I got out of bed to help her and then came back and we started back up again and then MLWML got a bad pain in his head and I tried rubbing it for him.  He kept talking really softly with his head under the coves and I couldn't understand what he was saying.  There was a radio on making racket and that was annoying.  I wanted to turn it off but I thought leaving it on might be better so his daughter wouldn't hear our lovemaking sounds.  Time after time we'd start kissing, pressing our genitals together, feeling the sexual energy rise and then something would happen to distract us.  I was frustrated.  Happy but sexually frustrated.

Jayananda Krsna Das

My fifth child.

We named you after a very sweet man.  A sanyasi.  Devotee of Krsna.  Disciple of Swami Prabhupada.  A friend.  He died of cancer many years ago.  

You were born just 17 months after your sister.  She was incredibly calm and gentle around  you.

I was so in love with you.  In love as a lover loves her beloved.  I couldn't take my eyes off of you.  I just wanted to hold you and stare at you forever.  Everything else was a distraction.  There was no greater pleasure than simply being in your presence and attending to you.  I loved all of my babies and experienced great joy in caring for my newborns--each one of them.  But with you it was different.  The love I experienced for you was profound.

You scared me a lot, doing newborn baby things that I had never experienced before.  You projectile vomited for weeks.  You had blood in your stools.  You came down with a strange "diaper" rash that spread to your armpits and the folds of your neck.  I cared for you with herbs and other natural remedies and you healed.

And then I got very sick.  I had no pain but I knew I was dying.  The doctors, and I went to many, couldn't figure out what was wrong with me.  My life force was slipping away.  I had no energy.  No strength.  No blood pressure.  Well, my blood pressure was so low that they always thought they missed it and would take it over several times.  This always happened.  They couldn't believe it was so low.

I had no desires.  No desire to live and non to die.  But I felt okay with dying.  Except that I had 5 children and a new born baby to care for.  I thought it wouldn't be in their best interest, to leave my children, so I attempted to live, not with any great effort but with a calm and detached resolve.

I laid in bed and nursed you and slept.  I changed your diaper now and again when your father was busy with other things.  He cared for your older siblings and the house.  He cared for me and he cared for you.  I eat little bits of food and drank fluids because I knew I needed to in order to continue making milk to feed you.  This continued for a few months until slowly I came back to life.

That was 29 years ago.  March 24th, 1982--the day of your birth.  My vernal equinox baby.  My aries fire child.  Happy birthday my son.  My sweet boy.

My Sister and My Mama and Another Dream

Another dream but first a little background.

My sister was born on my mother's 39th birthday.  Her third and last child.  I remember when she went into labor and my step-dad took her to the hospital.  I was seven years old.  A few days later my mom came home with a baby girl.  There were five of us kids at that point.  My step-brother and step-sister, my brother and me, and now my little half-sister. 

My step-father was a wheeler and a dealer.  A deacon in his church.  He was also a swindler.  He could sweet talk anyone.  Except for me.  I didn't like him from the get go and I think he resented me for that.  I had his number but I paid for it.

My mother once told me that they never paid for groceries throughout the four years of their marriage.  I remember the grocery store and those Saturday afternoon shopping trips with my mom pushing the grocery cart up one isle and down another.  It's a cheap furniture store now.  There was the meat counter where she picked out hamburger, chicken and pork chops.  We eat meat every night and they were big meals with several courses.  She was a good cook.  And we always had dessert too.  It was my job to set the table. I can still see her signing the credit slip for the groceries, never paying cash.   The store owner went to our church and was friends with my step-dad.  At some point, when my mom's relationship with my step-dad had soured, she had a meeting with the owner of the grocery store, requesting that he stop allowing her to charge groceries.  She told him that he would never be paid for the groceries we bought on credit, week after week, year after year--that my step-dad would never make good on the bill.  He told her not to worry, that her husband was a "good boy", that he trusted him whole heartedly.  She felt like she had done her part, she had warned him and he chose not to heed her warning.  She kept charging groceries and he never got paid.  Years later he told her that he wished he had listened to her.  He couldn't believe that my step-dad would cheat him.

My birth father, who I had never met, tried to make contact with me, my brother, and my mother once, a couple years after my mom had married my step-dad.  Knowing that my mother was a church going woman, he called one church after the next in our hometown, looking for us.  When he finally found us, the pastor told him it would be best if he didn't contact us, that my step-father was like a father to us, that we were a happy and a stable family, that my father should leave well enough alone.  I spent my whole childhood yearning for the father I had never met.  My birth father was a wheeler and a dealer who swindled people too.  Interesting, the men my mother chose considering what a kind, upstanding, hardworking, honest man her own father was.

My step-dad would drive our whole family up into the mountains on Sundays to a prison work camp where we would sing gospel songs to the prisoners.  Then he would bring one of the prisoners home with us for Sunday dinner.  I remember my mom complaining that she didn't like it.  She didn't think it was safe.  Another thing we did was read the bible every morning before school.  I think we read for an hour but maybe it was only a half hour.  Each of us kids would sit by ourselves, reading our bibles. We did this when I was eight years old and I remember the passages too, not really by heart but some of them from Genesis and John, "And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters..." and "In the beginning there was the word and the word was with God..."

He was an odd man. Two weeks after my mom and him were married (after two weeks of courtship) he told her that they would no longer have sex, that the time they would normally invest in this pastime, would now be spent in prayer.  That didn't last long but the proclamation disturbed my newlywed mother.

He was also mean.  And abusive.  He beat me with a skinny leather belt when I misbehaved. I misbehaved a lot.  The skinny leather belt wasn't his only method of punishment but it was one of his favorites.  I received the brunt of his physical abuse while my brother received his verbal/emotional put downs which caused him to stutter for many years.  Well, come to think of it, I got a heck of a lot of the verbal/emotional abuse myself.  I remember one night at the dining room table when my step-day chastised me for eating with my mouth open, like an animal.  He said that if I was going to eat like an animal, I should eat where the animals eat and he made me take my dinner plate and eat under the kitchen table. My mom didn't allow me to stay there for long.  I remember her coming in and pulling me up from the floor and sitting me up at the table.

My step-dad saved the sexual abuse for his own children.  My step-brother who seven years older than me and a strong supporter of keeping it all in the family, passed it down line to me.  At the age of ten, my mother divorced my step-dad.  She was in the hospital recuperating from a hysterectomy after being diagnosed with cervical cancer.  During one of my step-father's visits he informed my mom that he had gotten his secretary pregnant.  Two weeks later my mom had moved me. my brother,  and my little sister out of the house and into the new home she had purchased (with no money down) for 11,000 dollars.  Besides having no money for a down payment, she was also unemployed (she had been working for my step-father in his carpet store).  Things were different back in 1964, but even so, years later when a bank manager was reviewing her loan, he looked at her, shaking his head in disbelief that her loan had ever gone through.   My mom always did what she had to do to take care of herself and her children.  In her own quiet and shy way, she made things happen if they needed to happen.   A while after her divorce, a minister who was a friend of the family, told my mother that my step-father had visited him shortly after their breakup, asking to be castrated, based on the biblical tenant of..."If your right eye offends you, pluck it out..." So there she was, my mom, a forty-two year old, newly single with a pending divorce, freshly out of the hospital,  unemployed, new home owner, with three kids, ages fourteen, ten, and three years, to support. 

We weren't an emotionally close knit family.  My mom worked 8:00 to 5:00, five days a week, came straight home to make us dinner, and took care of her home on the weekends.  We loved each other enough.  I fought with my brother and was a bully at times to my little sister. None of us had much interest in the others but my mom dutifully went to at least some of my brother's Little League games and to our school functions.  My little sister looked and acted like my mom--dark hair, dark skin, shy, and high strung.  She was a mama's girl and the baby of the family.  Matter of fact, my brother was kind of a mama's boy himself, in a different way.  I was not.   I was a rebel.   Although I was also a caretaker in my own right.  After my brother moved out of the house at the at the age of eighteen and then two years later I moved out at the age of sixteen,  my sister had her mommy all to herself and I think she liked that.  I think my mother liked that too.  They were like two peas in a pod and remained that way for years.

A funny (or not so funny) thing is that my eldest daughter and my sister are SO MUCH ALIKE, it's uncanny.  As adults, I could never tell their voices apart on the phone.  There was 15 years between them in age and both of them thought the universe revolved around them.  They never liked each other but my sister set the precedent by never being was kind to my daughter since the time she was a very little girl. She seemed jealous of my daughter's close relationship with HER mother and saw her young niece as an interloper. She didn't appreciate my daughter invading THEIR space.  She didn't appreciate me or any of my children taking any of my mom's attention away from her.  She and my mom were best friends.  I was not best friends with my mom.  She was just my mother and we weren't all that close.  But we weren't not close.  We loved each other and enjoyed a greatly improved relationship once I moved out of the house at sixteen.  I loved my mom and I knew she loved me.  She was a good mom and helped me out a lot.  But my sister was her baby and they were extremely close.   Some might say that my mother was codependent with my sister, always bailing her out of trouble. Not that she never bailed me out, because she did.  That's what moms do.  But it was different.  That seemed to be the nature of their relationship until my mom's Alzheimer's started really kicking in and she couldn't be there for my sister in the ways she had been before.  And even though my sister thanked me profusely, time and again for my role in caring for our mother, I think she ended up feeling very isolated and perhaps annoyed with some of the decisions I made in regard to our mother's care during that time even though I ran everything past her while she still showed some interest in being involved, even at a distance.  I was here in the thick of it, and she wasn't.

This is the point where I'm sure my sister's story diverges greatly from my own.  Well, actually, I suspect there is a great divide with most of my story versus the way my sister would tell it.  But she isn't telling it here.  Well, maybe I won't tell anymore of it either.  Perhaps I've said enough.  For now.  Or  maybe I just don't want to put anymore of this story to print.  It feels private I suppose.  And I notice that I feel protective or her, and of our mother.  Of both of them.  It's just a story after all.  It's my truth but it's not THE truth.

But I will say this.  It's been over a year since my sister has come to visit my mom.  She lives only a little more than two hours away.  And before that, it had been almost a year since she had visited her, when she came for a short visit on the birthday that they share.  I feel sad for my sister.  I feel sad for my mom.    My sister has a child also, my niece, who is eleven years old.  She hasn't seen her grandmother in all this time.  And it's possible that she may never see her again. My sister may never see our mother again.  She will most certainly never see the mother she once knew.  The mother that she abandoned.  I angry about that too.

Actually, I think I will put a little more of my story to print...As we've grown older, I've also grown to appreciate my brother and my sister more.  Up to a point, before this current great divide with my sister.  The feelings were mutual too.  At least I think they were.  My brother and I have become good friends over the years and we enjoy one another's company.  It's not that we are super close and see each other all the time, but there is a mutual respect and we do visit fairly frequently and don't let too much time go by before we connect with a phone call.  We've spent most Christmas Eves together over the last thirty years, along with some graduations, weddings, and a few other holidays and birthdays sprinkled in.  He usually makes a point to come and visit me when he comes to town to visit our mother. We genuinely like, as well as love each other.

I've had good times with my sister also. When she lived in San Francisco and other parts of the bay area, we visited her often for many years and she always put us up.  We also connected during her frequent visits with our mother and there were many shared, sweet moments and laughter.  It warmed my heart getting closer with her over those years.  I miss her.

So, this morning I had a dream.  After my husband left for work, instead of getting myself up and ready for work,  I fell back asleep and dreamed about my sister.

I was in a big city with someone.  I don't know who.  It wasn't my husband.  It might have been my boyfriend.  It seems as if he was there in the dream somewhere.  We were in a room in a run down hotel and I was somewhat afraid.  For whatever reason, I didn't feel safe. 

Then I was walking, maybe with him.  I don't know were I was going.  Maybe I was going to visit my mom--then I was walking by her house, the one that she bought in 1964 for 11,000 dollars.  This was our family home that I grew up in, that she sold in 2007.  I looked up into the drive way and there was my sister, sitting outside with a group of people who turned out to be her children.  She was there, at my mom's house with seven or eight beautiful, gorgeous, lovely children.  She was stunningly beautiful herself.  And graceful.  I was so touched.  My heart was so happy to see her.  I went up to her.  I didn't hug her but I was just over the top pleased and amazed to see her and her incredible children.  So that's what she had been doing all this time, in her absence--giving birth and raising these exceptional kids.  I just couldn't get over it.  She, on the other hand, was not happy to see me.  And these children who had never met me, only knew me through their mother, my sister, and her stories of me--whatever they were,   I knew they were not nice stories that held me in a good light.  My sister was angry with me.  Hostile, in a mellow, but intensely energetic sort of way.  But I noticed her beauty just  the same.  And our mother's house was intact, still full of her belongings.  And there were two men there, gay men it seemed, who were the caretakers of my mother's home and all of her belongings and they weren't overjoyed to see me either, but they were friendly enough, and accommodating in a mildly territorial sort of way.  They were aware of their places ultimately, and knew better than to act in a way to usurp me. 

Some of my sister's children I did know after all.  A few of them had light complexions, with blonde hair and blue eyes.  They were familiar to me and we had met before (even though I didn't know my sister had any children).  They recognized me also and were excited to see me also (but not showing it too overtly).  The other children had dark hair and swarthy complexions, dark eyes with long eyelashes and they were very exotic looking.  I just couldn't get over their beauty and I was just totally in love with every single one of them.  They were fairly standoffish to me.  Nice enough.  But not really.  They were being protective of their mother.

I left my mother's home and crossed the street to another hotel/motel type place where I was going to stay.  As it turns out, my sister was staying there with her kids also and I saw one of them as I was walking by one of the rooms.  The door was open and there he was, this beautiful young man in his late teens or early twenties, very striking and I spoke to him, still so excited over their existence and that they were my nephews and nieces.  He said something back to me, something along the lines of, "Cant you just let it go and leave us alone."  It was almost as if I was sort of stalking them.  At one point he stood up to me, as if I was a bully of sorts and he was rallying for his mother's cause.  I spoke back strongly to him, in protection of myself to make him back down, which he did.  I was just so amazed at his beauty.  I think my boyfriend might have still been with me, or was with me for the first time at this point...

I woke up so tired, almost paralyzed.  It was an intense dream.

Death By Fire

Another dream about my mama.  This time it was fire.  And I was in it with her.  I must haven chosen to burn up with her.  But then I changed my mind.  I left.  Kinda snuck out.  And there was someone else in there besides her and me.  It seems like it was one of my children, maybe my daughter or my granddaughter and eventually she came out also but I can't remember.  It might have been another part of me.  I had decided that I didn't want to die.  But then this other part of me came back and got me.  I was wanting her to go back in.  I could see into the fire room where my mama was dying.  Burning up.  She was crying out to me because she was alone and afraid.  I called back to her and she could hear me.  She was relieved.  I told her "It's okay mama, I'm here."  She asked me to stay with her.  She wanted to come out of the fire too but I told her it was too late.  I knew it wouldn't be good for her to try and stop the process now.  I felt guilty too, like I should still be in there, burning up with her.  It was okay that I changed my mind, wasn't it?  I mean, death is something we can back out of, right?  I decided I wasn't ready to die but I felt like I was backing out on her, like we'd made this pack together and now I'd abandoned her to do it on her own.  My mama was dying.  She was burning up and didn't want to be alone.