Blue Butter

I was plundering through various sites tonight, looking for a topic to post that included a legal angle for a blog.  This is a daily routine for me, as I’m contracted to post at least five times a week.  I always get sidetracked with some of the insanity I find.  With headlines describing in five words or less of how teenagers are killing their classmates over a girlfriend, mothers who are using the Nebraska safe haven laws to drop their teenagers off in front of hospitals and other designated areas, only to return to another state with the freedom to do their drugs all day and all night and other equally disturbing displays of human nature, I’ve realized the charmed life I truly live.  Couple this with the privilege of being able to cast a vote in only six hours that will play a role in this American life I live, I’m really beginning to see things in a different perspective. 

As I’m sitting on my sofa, able to watch at least a hundred channels, thanks to satellite TV, I look around and see this:

I have books on my shelves that will take me anywhere I want to go, books that have the power to broaden my horizons simply by opening a page and learning the definition of a new word and even books that remind me why the movie version is one of my all time favorites.  Think Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.  To this day, Gregory Peck is the ultimate movie star in my eyes because of this classic.  My eyes scan to the walls that are solid and provide shelter for me and hold pictures and physical trinkets that are a witness to my having been on this planet.  I have a picture of my mom when she was around five years old. It’s still in the same frame that it was probably displayed in when my grandmother had the picture made.  Her tiny hands remind me of my own at that age and her little pink socks match the pink summer dress she’s wearing.  Hands in her lap and her legs crossed at her ankles - she was such a cutie.  And then, I look two feet to the left and I see a picture of the one reason that makes my life so spectacular - a picture of my son.  He’s sixteen in this picture and is sitting in a boat, watching the pier with his hand on the boat motor.  His baseball cap is on backwards and I can tell he’d spent the entire day on the river because his shoulders are already a dark shade of pink. There’s the shelf my dad nailed to the wall when I moved in to my little place and on this shelf, is a framed photograph of my niece and nephew.  Bittersweet thoughts when I look at this picture.  My heart hurts and I say a prayer.  And so this slow dance goes, from these treasured pictures to the area in my tiny living room that holds a desk and printer, but is seldom home to the computer since it’s always on my lap on the sofa or on the counter as I’m checking email and waiting for my Pop Tarts to warm.  And of course, the dogs are driving me crazy.  Trixie can’t stand for Little One to be near me and Little One tolerates it until he finally gives up to wait by the door, ready to dart as soon as I open it. 

These daily things, mundane and routine, are why our votes count.  We honor the freedoms by recognizing their meanings.  Let’s face it, there are places I could be right now that my nail polish and tattoo wouldn’t be allowed.  And my ability to let my mouth overload my ass (as my mom says so eloquently)?  Not in a million years would I be allowed to live to tell the tale.  And speaking of moms and dads, mine would never have abandoned my sister or me in another state.  There were times we wish they would have, but each new story that comes out of Nebraska makes me that much more grateful and too, it makes me that much sadder for these kids who live with that knowledge of knowing they were abandoned. 

So tonight, I choose a safer topic for my blog posting, one that doesn’t hurt my heart and after it’s posted, I pull the Pledge and dusting rag from under the sink and begin polishing my treasures - well, most of them.  The dogs tend to make a run for it.