A sanctuary for me, tiny little things that no one else might find of import; Grandpap's rose, and Evie's daylillies, Mom's irises, Nancy's primroses, and the foxglove April's crack-head neighbor dug up and gave to me in that little paper Dixie cup, when I admired hers on the fourth of July last summer. (The poor thing traveled with me as I camped down the Oregon coast for several weeks, and seems ok, although not flowering or showing any likelyhood of doing so this year...) And the peony my son got me at Aldemons gardens, and the belladonna I took cuttings of and rooted, because muh lover likes it so... And of course, my callas. =) Forget-me-nots and lavender and stock and pansies and violets. Oh, I love the violets!

I've been watching my calla lilies' (not really lillies at all, but I don't think they mind the nickname) first sprouts pop through the soil and grow into foliage. I can sit for several minutes looking at them, just wondering at their ability to simply exist. I don't think my calla's are fighting over who gets to be the leaf and who is the bloom, or who will be pink and who white. They simply grow, live, exist as they are, and sing their tune in harmony with nature. The leaf never angers that he isn't the flower, nor does the flower desire to be the leaf. Isn't that the beauty and elegance of it? Of it's entire growing cycle. It does what it can with the nutrients it is given, and grows to be what it is going to be, without worrying that it isn't something else... Calla's are my favorite. =)

My mothers day was simply beautiful.

When it comes down to a fight between logic and biology, logic doesn't always win...

I've been knocking around the ideas of love and sex -- and the idea that they go hand in hand. I keep getting choked up somewhere in the stage where one does love another human being immensely, but doesn't wish to engage in sex with them. How to explain this phenomenon? I'm not sure it's a different kind of love, but perhaps just another stage of it that is less recognized as love by our society.

I love, and will always love, every man and woman I've ever loved. It will always be there, and I would always drop anything in my world to be there for the circle of people this love embodies. From J.W.K. -- my very first boyfriend (about whom I was told repeatedly *and wrongly* that what I felt was puppy love)-- to B.K.G. whom I had passionate affairs with, but never a real relationship--to J.P.G, whom I married and spent 10 years of my life with--through to R.M.D., who currently and for the last two years, has driven every bone of passion I have in me to new heights. I will never stop loving or wanting to help any person that ever made their way into my heart. Anyone who tells me a I should stop is WRONG. Wrong for me.

Love evolves, yes. But sex drive and chemistry do not seem to evolve with love--not in the same direction or ways. What an unfair and tricky game biology plays. Biology must be trisky to outwit logic.

How then, if one were inclined to do so, would one maintain the partnership between sex and love and the individual with whom these passions are shared?

Everyone knows a cheater, or has been injured by one, or has been the cause of inury because of cheating. And repeatedly I see people who clearly LOVE their partners turn around and cheat on them. It is not for lack of love. (Though many would argue that respect goes hand in hand with love, and cheating is certainly disrespectful...)

I've been thinking about why... This time, instead of the Moon, I intend to propose that we blame biology. I think this drive to find bigger and better and more exciting adventures is not in any way due to a lack of Love for the original partner. I think it is (left over*?*) biological drive. The way to propagate is to multiply. In the days of cavemen, for both sexes, the world was very dangerous and life was short lived. If you stayed sexually loyal to one person, they were apt to die hunting down your dinner or while attempting to bear your child... It wasn't then, about a lack of love, when they propagated with others, merely about survival of the biological DNA.

Well, maybe, just like the cave men and women didn't know why their drives were so, but looking back scientists can explain it as natural selection, human are still and ALWAYS will be engaged in biological battles with Natural Selection. That's why I question whether it is left-over biology; couldn't it be currently vital biology that we simply can't see without the benefit of hindsight?

And what about this study I read a while back? They selected men and women in the early stages of relationships of "romantic love." They monitored how their bodies produced enzymes and broke down fuel, and which hormones were released and all the other good biological stuff we humans have going on inside us. They found that in the first few years of any relationship our bodies are healthier in a measurable way.. We create the necessary components to run at maximum efficiency. We digest more efficiently, we have more energy, we have that glowy in-love feel, we are blissfully swept away. Our bodies are running better than during any other time when we are in this stage. But they also showed that after between 2 and 3 years, this increased efficiency we have when we fall in love dissipates, and we slow down production and subsequently hormone levels drop, and we no longer feel that glowy in-love feeling, but rather a warm encompassing comfort. We are not running at maximum efficiency unless we are in the first few years of a romantic relationship.

When I pair this with the well known fact that most women will continue to feel the biological "clock" and feel the drive to bear more children--even when they are already living beyond their means with the number of children they have--I can begin to trust that there is definately something biological that drives us to cheat on each other. Really it is biology -- driving us to survive, to increase our efficiency, not just as an individual, but as a species.

Who then, can blame another, for being tempted to submit to this drive? It's the same as blaming a mother for bearing her young. Why does she do it? Because it is a biological imparitive. Having worked for Planned Parenthood, I know that it isn't planning and thought and logic in 75% of the cases. As bright as we are, us human beings, we just keep wondering "how this happened?!" But even given that most babies are not well-planned or well prepared for (anyone who has them knows it's impossible to decide that it is logically good for us to have more children). If one sat down and pro'd and con'd it, we'd always have a bigger list of con's than pro's... Pregnancy and child bearing IS NOT LOGICAL! But somehow we manage to believe that the intangible pro's are worth it, and we do it anyway. Despite the hit to our finances, our free time, our persuit of carreers and bigger and better possessions...

We irrationally choose to bear children. And we love their grubby little fingers to their squirmy little toes. And we quit our jobs to teach them to read. And we give up the huge fancy sports cars in favor of economical four-doors. And we stop seeking to do for ourselves and begin to spend our time in desperate attepmt to do for them. Their hopes and dreams become as important to us--more so sometimes--than our own. We will drop anything to tend to them, and skip our own needs to provide for theirs. We take as much joy in seeing them happy and content as we have in our own happiness and contentedness. This is why mothers are amazing.

So Happy Mother's Day to all you deserving moms (whether you are a cheater or not, hehe). Today, I'm thinking about the things my mom gave up to become a good mother. And I'm realizing that her drive to leave my dad in search of the bigger gorrilla in the clan, was just as biological as her need to bear myself and my brother. If I am not going to be perturbed by my own existence, I can't very well hang onto irritation that she couldn't sit still and stay attached to a man she no longer had a biological drive for. And not just that--but I don't believe she was meant to. Nor than any of us are meant to. She will always love him, somewhere inside. Natural selection and it's biological implications can be fought off with a stick, but I'm not so sure they should be.

Happy Mother's Day.

Visiting with my parents has become an incredible joy for me, something I could not have claimed in years past. Last month, when my mom came to visit, I asked her to tell me the story of how she and my father met, and of their subsequent separation, which had occured six years into my life. With great honesty, and without reservation, (and for the first time in my life) I heard my mom's story voiced as if it were a close friend telling it to me, rather than a parent protecting her young from the cruel realities of the hard world... What an amazing connection we made that night--a connection I've desperately sought for as long as I can recall, but never seemed to have been able to previously effect... But that's not really what this post is about--I digress...

This past Sunday I went to visit my dad. He found a good deal on a new set of wheels for me, and I took the old greyhound to Spokane to pick up my Bravada... I stayed a day longer than planned, because, having just heard Mom's story, I wanted to hear his. And so, helping him fold laundry and organize paperwork, "Papa, tell me the story of how you met Mom?" And at the point that he began to censor, I said, "I asked you to tell me, Dad, because Mom finally did. The truth dad, she told me the truth!" Spewing forth some personal details that he knew my mother had never shared with me before, he continued -- and told me his story.

A blogger we all know and love here, asked me, after my post about my shotgun, how in the world my parents ever hooked up to begin with. I knew the bare bones structure of the story, but it did still lack the details that made it all fit together and make sence. Well, now I know the whole story, or rather a whole lot more of it, anyway. And, I've deepened my relationship with each of my parents for the investigation of it.

Mr.O, you deserve an answer, and you have my gratitude for the search that allows me to give you that answer. My parents were both in a place in their lives, when they met, that made their marriage, and future demise, inevitable. They had a good run at it, and are a lot more similar than they appear on the surface. They wanted the same things, at the same times. They are both very bright, intelligent people, mensa-type, in a place full of dullness... Anyway, they wanted.... to run away, to be found, to travel, to love and make love, to comfort and be comforted, to see the world--and to enjoy it!, and to have a family, and a house, and a garden and animals. My mom just runs alot faster than my dad. He's an easy-does-it kinda' guy, slow and steady. My mom, well, she multi-tasks in her sleep, and would skip sleep altogether if not for the desperate need of it.

Echoes of Come run with me, or be left behind... run through my mind.

I wonder now, how much of them is reflected in me. I identify with them both. I feel empathy for each of them, in a way I never have before. Life is hard for all of us. It throws us all tricksy turns, and we all make some questionable decisions. But that's what it is--right? A journey, not a destination. You have to get near the cliff to see the ocean. I have a lot more to think about. I want to guide my journey, not let it woosh me where it will. I do admit though--the wooshes too are sometimes uncontrollable! (And I'm all the better for them!)