12/08 4 eme semaine/ 4th week

Bien qu'elle soit encore jeune pour tout comprendre, il n'empeche que Florence aura quand meme appreciee ses cadeaux. Submergee par les paquets, nous nous sommes rendu compte qu'elle a ete vite depassee et qu'on aurait pu faire moins cette annee... Bon, on compense vu que sa famille est plutot petite!!

C'est aussi le dernier post de l'annee est comme d'habitude, j'ai fais le decompte des heures de vols cette annee... Plutot l'hecatombe en fait, alors que j'espere toujours faire mieux chaque annee. Florence grandissant, il est difficile de me mettre les fesses dans un planeur lorsque je suis deja parti la moitiee du temps a cause du boulot. De plus la formation sur le "Sovereign" m'a empeche de faire de la ligne.
Alors resultat, 390 hrs de vols dont 25 hrs de planeur et seulement 3 hrs de monomoteur!

Bonnee annee a tous!

A year is gone. I know not only from the more southern position of my patootie (aka tushy, aka behind, aka ass) but also from the various map routes now outlined around my eyes, crevasses etched deep within the flesh which, if followed, would lead you past my days passed over the hours, weeks, and months since that fateful day of birth so long ago.

Another roll is added to the expanding middle waistline which also could tell the tale of my life, like rings in a Sequoia, betelling of trips to McDonalds or late night love affairs with a Hershey bar.

And, sadly too, are wrinkles added in the head flesh itself, etched deep in the tissue of the brain, forming furrows and fissures, disconnecting thoughts from one another, leading to the inevitable going into a room and sitting down for a while, as I could not remember why I went there in the first place. Or using a word like "fishers" instead of "fissures" until I realized the unlikelihood that my brain was inhabited by tiny, minute fishermen. Though perhaps it would be better if it were, as they might have better opportunity to catch a word for which I often seem lost to recall, it sitting thusly on the tongue for hours until remembered in the wee hours of the night when I roll over the rustle my husband from sound sleep to announce "Oh, I remember now what I was trying to say," his bleary eyed look of horror at being woken bespeaking of not only wondering if I lost my mind but my sanity as well.

And like the sounds of birds in the morning or the sweet cries and calls of the loons at dusk, do the cricks and creaks of my joints and bones play a merry tune as I move to and fro, up and down, down and out.

Ah, time and tide.

Today my daughter sat in amazement and amusement, looking into a cheap mirrow sold at a grocery store as we waited for Dada to finish checking out the food at the register. I sckrunched down with her as far as my knees would allow, to eye spy her in the mirror and partake at her eye level the jocularity of the moment. And in spying her I spied myself, all wrinkly crinkly, looking a far cry from the girl just a few years ago, aged by late motherhood as a presidency ages a president.

But I did not shudder. In fact, a smiled back at myself, who was smiling at her smiling at herself. Because, indeed, these wrinkles now tell a story worth retelling as the years meander by.

It is not the passage of time I fear, but the ability to be aware of all that passes.

I needs must not fall alseep as the brief hours and weeks pass of her life, my darling daughter, and that of my dear husband, and the intermingling of our lives together as a whole. Like a bowl of spagetti, my daughter the pasta, my husband the sauce and I, of course, the meatball.

For although I sit, now with numb legs, next to her in a nothing grocery store, waiting for husband, during a mundane errand, on a dirty floor, the moment could be of no less importance should I have been humbling myself before an emperer or king.

I lay humble before them.

And these moments, the sound, the smell, the very essence of them I shall attempt to enrapt myself in for as long as the mind remembers.

In this my life is worthwhile.