Dreaming in Blue…

This week has been filled with running around with boat parts brimming from our car and truck…taking our teak table to our friend Tipper who will be repairing the fracture from the air conditioner that landed on it during the ‘no name storm’, our friend’s boat’s port lights that need to be replaced, and other bits and baubles.

We have traveled on land and sea.

I helped a friend move her things out of her condo and into her house that she shared with her husband until he died last month.  They had married and she had left many of her things in her condo where she lived before they met.  She is an incredible spirit and whenever I am around her she is a living reminder of Faith, Love, Joy, and just pure Trust in the Universe.

We had her moved out by 2 p.m. with the help of another couple of her friends, and four Knights – of the Knights of Columbus.  What an incredible organization they are!  Here in the New Bern, N.C. area these men and women stay extremely busy supporting their community in a myriad of ways. Because my friend volunteers many hours of her time to the organization they helped move furniture to various locations, and then take her donations which were many.  It was a day that just lifted me up.  While lifting chairs and tables, packing up her belongings, I witnessed such love and support and the balm it was to my friend during this time when she is missing her husband so much.

She moved here from the West Coast, knowing no one.  While she had a comfortable life, surrounded by family and a Grandchild, she told me she felt she was living a life in one dimension. Not the exact word she used, but the description.  She prayed to God and looked for signs where she should pick up and move, and New Bern, N.C. called…the rest of her story, while not mine to tell, is one that reminds me that truly living life sometimes requires that you have infinite Faith and just step off into the deep end, and in answer, your life has the potential to be one of technicolor, new connections, and opportunity, even great Love, has the space to rush in…

I watched her eyes as she surveyed the empty living room and dining area of her condo from the kitchen…her blue eyes were subdued and reflective, and my ears detected an ever so small whisper of a sigh, as she turned to leave…it was a sigh of acceptance and remembering her first home when she arrived to create her new, shining life.  I am humbled to have been able to be there as she witnessed the transition she is going through.  How she is finally combining her earthly possessions completely with the second love of her life’s home.  How she is making a home of theirs even in his absence…What beauty there is in her strength – if I become only 1/4 as adept as she is in living life with arms wide open, I will feel I have become the woman I want to be in the coming years.

The world is my classroom, and I am trying to show up every day even when I would rather hide in the shadows contemplating my own belly button lint.

All week the common theme was transition, the power of friendship and community, the healing from loss, the getting on with it when you could really just collapse in a heap and hide, the mending of those things that are broken…what an amazing week it was…

Friend’s of ours who had a boat in Sandusky near our first boat the Westerly back when she was new at the same dock in Ohio. They were very good friends. Imagine their shock when the Westerly from so many years back was one dock over from them in North Carolina when we arrived with her.

Ferry ride

The table on the ferry heading over to Tipper’s for repair…

Blue bottles in our friend’s home…