Colored shoes in her trunk

After reading Velvet's 300th post last week, I was curious. I checked my own figures and at the time, I had posted just over 610 times since January 2005 when I started this site. Tonight I spent a couple hours going through those posts. How funny to have archives, I thought. I started out wondering what in the world I had to say all those times I put my fingers on the keys and hit publish, and then I got caught up in a journey with myself, where I've been, what I've thought, what I felt, where I've laughed and when I've cried. Where I've been and where I'm going.

In a way, it was like catching up with an old friend. But there's no overall theme to this particular friendship, no high school or college connection, no binding moment or shared connection. There is no central plot here. I realize that I cannot categorize this site beyond my journal. And that's okay, it just makes it unclassifiable, like when you're left no choice but to check Other in the answer box of a survey response, or perhaps looking in the odd bins. Or even maybe writing etc., when your words fail.

So be it. This is other.

What I've posted about most often is my father. I had just under 25 posts when I lost him. For those 25, he loved that I was doing this, enjoyed reading my words. But then his life and, naturally, this site became something else, something other. Death and loss seeped into my heart, my life and my words. IWSI became the journal of a grieving daughter. And it's still saturated with that, as am I. I'm always keeping my eye out for the white feather.

For the past year, my mother has figured heavily into my writing. Her strokes, her unraveling, the long nights, the many hospitals, the communication and the sadness. The realization of the horizon. The love and heartbreak of my journey as a daughter mothering her mother.

Always throughout there has been the little brown dog Cheyenne, and nature observed, hope realized, travels chronicled. Friends. Pictures. This spot has been a place for the daughter, friend, griever, mourner, photographer. A place for the woman who shares her observations through words and photographs. In an odd way, it's been a place to hide. In plain site, but still. It's been a place for me to express myself as desperate, fortified, hopeful, hopeless, prayerful, loving, knowing, positive, negative, angry and, yes of course, happy.

And it's been a portal through which I've discovered friends, some briefly connected and others landed. Honestly, I've been given some true gifts through the landings. In particular, Ghost and Just Golden, and NG and Sass. I've been through hurricanes and birthdays with them, first dates, anniversaries, newborn sons, new puppies, and new ventures. Which reminds me of Velvet, a delightful story and history discovered on my internet doorstep, one that I'm still savoring as my own but will share in due time. For different reasons and at different times, they've each made me feel welcome and understood, and allowed me to offer it in return.

The title of this post? That's from a conversation I had with Mom tonight. She's somewhere else in her mind at the moment, somewhere where she needs to tell me that there is a pair of colored shoes - size 4 or 8, she can't recall - in the trunk of her car, and she wants me to have them because she got them for me. I smile at her, tell her I'll be sure to get them. And I thank her.

I don't have to go to her car, I know there's nothing there. It all makes as much sense as anything else I've experienced and expressed here. Happy, blue, hopeful, colorful. Life. All of the above, and Other.