I have sent you my invitation
the note inscribed on the palm of my hand by the fire of living Don't jump up and shout, "Yes, this is what I want" Let's do it." Just stand up quietly and dance with me.

It is early Sunday morning, and I am once again sitting in my library at the
House at White Picket Gardens. It is chilly outside as spring is slow and
lazy this year. But as I write and look through the window the palette of color
is ravishing with the new greens of trees, the redbuds have just come out in
full flower as have the crabapple trees and apple trees. My tulips weathered
the winter storm of last week end and seem to be responding to sunshine.

May is corn planting month and here in the North the earth is beginning to
awaken. Aaron picked fresh asparagus over at the farm this week and looks daily
for the morels that are the delicacies of spring in our area. My grass is so
long that I am afraid the neighbors will be protesting soon with signs...this
afternoon, I say, I promise to get that mower started!!

Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart, And I will take you to the place where the earth beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.

It has been a busy week...storytelling, school, sonnet-a-thons for fourth
graders, the Mariachi band with colorful children dancing and dancing... Yesterday I taught a full day workshop of beginning storytelling at a library
in Indiana. There were 12 of us (mostly middle school students)..we started
the day sitting in chairs with arms and legs crossed, but by 3:00 they held
their own concert and emceed the whole event. Needless to say, I was so proud
of them. It was a good day for all of us. But there was one young lady in
particular that I became attached to. Her name is Nikki. She came to the
workshop with a friend and was to leave at noon, but stayed for the entire day with
a performance at the end which was wonderful. Nikki is fourteen and is crazy
about boys and poetry...I had my doubts about her at the beginning. It was
not where she wanted to be...so it was wonderful to watch her take shape as a
young and beautiful butterfly emerging. She is the one I will keep my eye on in
the future!

Show me how you offer to your people and the world
the stories and the songs you want our children's children to remember, and I will show you how I struggle, not to change the world, but to love it.

The week has also been a week of accepting and adapting as it was Aaron and
Karen's first full week here with me. We are all learning to co-habitate here,
respect each other's space, understand each other's patterns and life styles
(yes, I know I work alot!), and keep the toothpaste out of the sink! There
are still a few issues to deal with...Aaron's dirty work clothes piled up
inside the kitchen by the back door...dodging Tonka trucks...but there are also
sweet baby kisses from Matthew and Jonah...watching them change each day.

And when the sound of all the declarations of our sincerest intentions has
died away on the wind,
dance with me in the infinite pause before the next great inhale of the breath that is breathing us all into being, not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within.

There is still so much to say...like the sound of the peepers when I walk
late at night..or that I just read A Thousand Days in Venice and wept through
most of it...that my house smells like cinnamon rolls that Karen made early this
morning and brought to me with coffee as a coffer of Thanksgiving for living
here with me..or that Friday night I worked late and drove home looking in
windows with couples laughing and I missed Philip so much in that moment...that
two of my best friends are engaged to be married...and two other best friends
have decided it will not work out for them. Life is strange. Life is a
dance....(today's poetry by Oriah Mountain Dreamer)...so take the hand of the one you
love...and dance....but dance quietly...dance through the night and watch
Jupiter set in the Western sky at sunset and walk home with your shoes in your
hands and stars in your eyes.

Lou Ann

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