There's magic in that old umbrella....

She wouldn’t let me do it. Post it to her blog. Copy the words and share them on the pages of Hand-me-down Levi’s where she is the biggest contributor, and has only ever typed thank-you's and love you's in the comment boxes. Where the walls are painted with love. She only let me listen. And in the quiet Sunday morning after, I sighed and tried to take it all in, one big whoosh of love….tried to save it in my mind, freeze dry the words in a forever state of limbo….

Love letter to my oldest child from Kimbies…..
Shared moments before she sealed the envelope and sent it sailing, a paper kite…..

It won’t be the same here, because I’m not the author and the words were fairytale perfect, captured just as they happened, as they were felt, as they became magic in the making, but the story is so beautiful and if the world, for just a tiny second, could capture life in their hands, the way Kimbies does in her heart, we would all know……peace and love…..

Dear Sweetest Child,

How could I have ever known that day, in the sandy gritty parking lot, when you lugged that old umbrella, stuffed into it’s sack, and plopped it into the back of my mini van, the gifts it would bear? But you knew, didn’t you? Keys in your hand, checking out, counting heads, pulling away from the beach…..your babies faces smashed up against the windows blowing kisses as you drove away, you knew……

And there it lay, on the carpeted floor of my van, waiting….

Thank you , sweet child…..

For shelter from the sun I love so much, for the little tent we’ve camped under over and over again. Alana and I. Sandy peanut butter sandwiches squished between her fingers, sippy cups melting in the heat. Our toes buried under treasure sand. For the rooftop over our heads, Grand-C in her long sleeves, shadowed from the very light we love, protected. We drag the umbrella closer to the water’s edge. A squiggly trail of where we’ve been left in the wet sand. And dig to China. The ocean sees us there. And comes to greet us. Three generations of girls. She knows I can’t come to her and so she plays birthday party at our feet. Dropping trinkets, a thousand years old or older, just within Alana’s reach….And Alana names them all….. “Umbwella chells, buttafwy chells, fingahnail chells” and drops them in her tiny plastic bucket. “Twehsures”…… she chases the frothy bubbles of the mermaid’s breath at the oceans edge, catching them with her butterfly net…..and we splash, and laugh, and precious, precious memories are made…..

When it’s time to go, when the tide reminds us by climbing a little higher, talking a little louder, pushing us a little harder, we follow the squiggly trail of the umbrella’s footsteps, back to the car…..and turn around, amazed at the vastness, the bigness behind us.
Alana raises her little fingers to her lips and blows….softly, butterfly kisses to the sea…..
“Tank you, ocean, Tank you……”

I thank you sweet child, for the gift you’ve always been….


In April of 2006 Kimbies was diagnosed with breast cancer, Stage IV, and the last year and a half has changed all of our lives forever, the sun became taboo and the race to live began. We are celebrating remission now, in all it’s hugeness, but the treatments continue, the mountain climbing an always present task. Kimbies is going to the beach again. Hand in hand with her tiny grand~daughter and in the sand, right behind her, our Mom. Love grows.

And we all fall down......

We really did go to the beach, I swear. We just spent a lot of time at the Tiki Bar. I mean, they put it right there. We had to trip over it to get to the ocean! So as soon as we emptied the cars, hurling stuff through the motel room doors, we trapsed our little fannies down to the bar and parked it there. "Woo, hoo! We're at the beach"!

The deck teeters over the edge of a steep dune, haphazardly reconstructed by the hurricanes, and the wind howls through the railings at night, making the tarps billow, the ceiling fans sway, and the bartender's tips, if not scooped up right away, blow to the next lucky recipient. Dollar bills scurry across the splintered planks like tiny runaway rodents and float like lost kites in the sky. Little kids, whose parents, hours ago trusted them to the sandbox, chase them in the neon night.

And so we danced. In the sprinkler mist piped in like Musac from the Tiki Bar roof. Barefooted with beers in our hands. Over and over again. We danced with each other, with strangers, with lovers, and hubbies. We danced with other peoples hubbie's, bikers, and the boys from The Brotherhood of Death (you know who you are.....precious skin headed just-turned-21 friends) We danced til one of us had splinters in her toes and one landed on her rump, feet to the sky. We danced until I fell off of a perfectly good chair, cracking a rib, and got up to do it again. (Kind of like when the music stops, the safety bar rises and you have to exit the Tilt-a-Twirl and walk on perfectly flat earth again....Just another day at The Fair!)

We danced until we were silly......

Enough to do other silly things... To roll down the dunes, into high tide, biting the sand straight from the ocean's lips. To give out our email addresses to people we wouldn't give our names to.

Sometimes you have to runaway.
To do what you really want to do.
To heal.
To find the reason.

June 18th, 2007.....
Report from the "he's so handsome" Doctor......

What have you been doing, Kim?
You went to the beach?"

yeah, I did.
And oh, yeah, I drank beer.....

Come here and give me a hug.

and then go do it again....

You're in remission!


Feel the Love......

We are Family!

Brothers and Sisters and Me!

And sometimes "we have to fight for our right to party!

So here's to "If I coulda, woulda, shoulda bought a lotto ticket and if I woulda winned, I coulda binged and bought a value jet ticket and we woulda go out partying again!"

Or something like that.

Late night conversations are always the best!

Timmy Toes, Skinny, Curt's so Heavy, and Me

The Yellow butterfly of San Marino

SUMMERS, SISTERS, and THE SEAWALL

She wasn't a figment of our dreamy sunburnt imaginations. She really lived there. Her salty wings somewhat summer blonde, a little tattered on the edges. She'd flit and swoop and dance in the baking florida sun, this tiny little sun goddess. At night, like a firefly, we would catch glimpses of her, swirling, twirling in the moonlight (And don't you dare say butterflies don't fly at night!) She was always there. Everytime. At the seawall of SanMarino.

There, with our eyes to the ocean and the heavens, and our sandy bare feet propped on the seawall, we dreamed. We met the sunrise and watched her fall. We spent days and days, nights and nights, lounging at the seawall of SanMarino. We met strangers and best friends. Old souls and newborns. Lost kitties and lost kites. Lost souls. We made promises and we made pacts. We built sandcastles and made periwinkle soup. We drank coffee, then bloody Marys then beer. Bottles and bottles of beer. We sang, and danced, and told stories. We made up stories and laughed. We began to believe.

To believe in borrowed peace. To believe in the promise of tomorrow. To believe that we could make it no matter what. We spent stolen days and stolen weeks during stolen summers at the seawall of SanMarino. And the yellow butterfly, the tiny little oceanic ballerina, was always there. Reminding us to believe.

And then "poof it was gone". Our precious, tacky little paradise plowed upside down for high rise, concrete condos. God, it almost killed us. Where would we go? How could we escape everyday hell if there was no place to run to, to hide, to accidently stumble on?

And then, we saw her. The yellow butterfly of San Marino. And we remembered. To believe.

When this is all over, when the world as we know it is well again...we will have peace, and we will laugh and dance under the serious moonlight in barefoot sandals....

We will follow her...as she has followed us....

To a place called peace