A MEMORY .....

I was cutting up some ring bologna tonight for a snack with cheese and crackers and my mind was wandering as usual. I don't know why I remembered this so clearly but if I close my eyes I can picture it anew.

My children are small and we are visiting their grandparents, my deceased husband's parents. Grandpa is slicing up some ring bologna and the grandchildren are standing there waiting for the pieces he always cuts for them. But it's the cutting of the bologna and the look on Grandpa's face that I remember the most. It was a look of utter enchantment! I didn't think anything of it at the time but tonight when the memory came flooding back I wondered why I didn't see it then.

Grandpa and Grandma loved those children with there entire hearts. Especially after their son, my children's father, passed away. But the love on Grandpa's face as he cut the bologna for those much loved grandchildren was absolutely beautiful and I wonder now how cutting up bologna can be done with so much love. He painstakingly cut the thin skin off every piece so they wouldn't choke on it and always winked at them as he handed each piece to them. He seemed to gain so much pleasure from doing this simple task for these small ones. In the eyes of small children, Grandpa must have seemed like a giant. I guess I found it strange that this giant of a man would take such great care and reap such pure unadulterated pleasure from this pastime.

This probably doesn't make any sense to anyone who reads this, but it is my memory and I'm tucking it away as a keepsake to tell those grandchildren, my children, when I feel the time is right.

PLEASE HEAR WHAT I'M NOT SAYING

Don't be fooled by me,

Don't be fooled by the face I wear

For I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks,

masks that I'm afraid to take off and none of them are me.

Pretending is an art that's second nature with me

But don't be fooled, for God's sake don't be fooled.

I give you the impression that I'm secure

That all is sunny and unruffled with me

Within as well as without, that confidence is my name

and coolness my game, that the water's calm and I'm in command,

and that I need no one.

But don't believe me. Please!

My surface may be smooth but my surface is a mask,

My ever-varying and ever-concealing mask.

Beneath lies no smugness, no complaisance.

Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, in aloneness.

But I hide this.

I don't want anybody to know it. I panic at the thought of my

weaknesses and fear exposing them.

That's why I frantically create my masks to hide behind.

They're nonchalant, sophisticated facades to help me pretend.

To shield me from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only salvation,

and I know it.

That is, if it's followed by acceptance, if it's followed by love.

It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself, from my own

self-built prison walls, from the barriers that I so painstakingly erect.

That glance is the only thing that assures me that I'm really worth something.

But I don't tell you this. I don't dare. I'm afraid to.

I'm afraid you'll think less of me, that you'll laugh and your laugh would kill me.

I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing, that I'm just no good and you'll see this

and reject me. So I play my game, my desperate, pretending game.

With a facade of assurance without

And a trembling child within,

So begins the parade of masks, the glittering but empty parade of masks,

And my life becomes a front. I idly chatter to you in suave tones of surface talk.

I tell you everything that's nothing,

And nothing of what's everything, of what's crying within me.

So when I'm going through my routine do not be fooled by what I'm saying.

Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm not saying.

Hear what I'd like to say.

I dislike hiding. Honestly. I dislike the superficial game I'm playing, the

superficial phony game. I'd really like to be genuine and spontaneous and me.

But I need your help, your hand to hold

Even though my masks would tell you otherwise. It will not be easy for you.

Long felt inadequacies make my defenses strong, the nearer you approach me

The blinder I m ay strike back. Despite what books say of men, I am irrational;

I fight against the very thing that I cry out for.

You wonder who I am?

You shouldn't. For I am every man and every woman who wears a mask.

Don't be fooled by me. At least not by the face I wear.

~Author Unknown~

SOME KIND OF FUNK

I erased it all.......all gone. I was angry at something, someone, everything. I gave into that anger and by doing so, let someone else control me. Wrong, so wrong to let that happen. I won't do it again! I am my own person, my own self and I am in control. At least in as much control as any of us are in this world. So with that, I am back! Hello World!