Someone once posed a question to me in regards to the worst feeling I could imagine. I guess depending on the place you are in at the moment the answer could be multifacted. But throughout my winding journey in experience, I would have to say heartache/lonliness is at the very top of my list. Lonliness encompasses such a vast array of other emotions that it can overwhelm one at a moments notice. The evenings last for an eternity when one is alone. The nights are darker, the fears magnified, the sadness of loss of all that you have been and the unknown of what will become of the 'you' in the future. The heartache of lonliness brings one delving into what could have, should have, might have been done differently. Where did one go wrong? Was all the past a counterfeit? What was real? Was there anything real and genuine and sincere at all or did it just slowly die along the way? 3:00 am the inner alarm clock goes off and one finds themself sitting in solitude of every kind. Tears flow freely at that time of the day. No need to put on the happy face for the rest of the world, and for yourself for that matter-got to keep it all together-otherwise you might have to see yourself as less, as a failure in some way.

I have two friends in my circle who I thought were two of the happiest, most compatible wives for their respective husbands, who were the best mothers, the epitome of homemaker extraordinaire....we all know them! We may even be them. When both of their marriages came to this sudden, out of nowhere, nightmarish end-and for reasons not compatible with happily ever after, my heart aches for them both. I know their pain. I know their feelings of self worth-mostly that it is in the toilet right now. I know the loss of themselves and what they have invested soley in for the past twenty or more years. Where does this leave them? What does this say about them as women? As wives? As mothers? As friends, neighbors, members of the PTA and so on. I see them going through life stoicly and with a firm determination to come out alive and on top somewhere. And I see that their heart is crying over the simplest things they observe and wonder if they will ever have that again. So heartache and lonliness are at the top of my list. But knowing the pain increases empathy and compassion and genuine feelings of comraderie. And hope.......

Now, since I have rambled on to a lighter subject. Brylie has been tko'd by the team of trampoline/swingset crew. She was jumping on the tramp and then jumping to the cross bar of the swingset, swinging like Mowgli and jumping from the jungle vine to the entangled jungle floor and low and behold......she slipped-probably on a banana peel-and landed on her right elbow. She had just been told to knock off the monkyshines so she was coming to me, trying to control her sobs and with her 'tail between her legs' . And by joe, it looks a little out of alignment. The pain doesn't seem to go away. So off we go to the emergency room where she is checked by the very same doctor that mended her broken left index finger in March. I'll probably have child protective services knocking at my door. Low and behold it is broken. So she gets a neon pink cast from shoulder to fingers. And it is the second week of June. And she can't go swimming now until the cast comes off in six, yes, count it, 6 weeks. Summer without swimming-one might as well be in a monestary. She is taking it like a trooper though. She is a determined and willful fashionista diva. Do you know how hard it is to keep a 7 year olds fingers/fingernails/cast clean in the summer time when everything is done outside in the dirt, the grass and the rocks? Climbing trees. Riding bikes. Being seven. Not good. But we will survive. And today is anticipated and heralded as another jaunt in our summer adventure. Yeah, Bry!!