Day 10: Spontaneity [Be Gentle, Be Love]

I decided to take my camera to church and took some great pictures of some of the kids in childcare. And when I came home the camera gave me something even better... roses. Apparently I've been living in a house for three years and didn't realize a rose bush was on the side of the house! I went and celebrated by deciding last night to go get flowers painted on my toes along with a pedicure. Okay, I get pedicures once every couple of months, not for celebrations. It used to be a person could tell when I was stressed by how short my hair was--I would get it cut and styled when I was stressed. Now its pedicures.

I have a strange relationship with spontaneity. I can be very scheduled and in format and that can last for a really long time... then I break out and go do something completely random. It is usually because I'm tired of whatever is going on around me. When I am happy I'm fine, but when something is... complicated... anything can happen.

After my mom died in October, the next Easter I packed up the kids and took them down to Austin and Bastrop I decided on Good Friday. We drove down and went to the cemetery where my step-dad is buried. I couldn't find the gravestone. It was supposed to be under a tree in the East part of the graveyard, but I couldn't find it.

There were better parts of the trip than that. We went to a children's museum, saw the people of Austin trying to break a world record on people walking dogs... there were a lot. We went swimming and Preston swam for the first time in a pool at a Holiday Inn. He went and slid on his first slide as well.

It was therapeutic. I went to a place that was comfortable to me. I don't belong in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. I don't know when I will ever get to live there again, but my heart is there.

My mother lived her life on a whim. She was constantly moving around places and experiencing new things. After my step-dad died she dated a black chef, Russian weirdo, and lesbian biker in the space of a year. How's that for spontaneous! She rarely acted like that when I was young. I think of her in phases of life... her sort of Donna Reed phase until I was in 6th grade, her I'm trying to be responsible but failing phase while I was in high school, her hippy/druggy phase and then finally her putting her life back together phase. I think that is why I try to make sure my life is structured, because that kind of stuff scares me. I don't want to be "out of control." I'm also jealous of how she was just able to do it. She seemed to fundamentally change who she was each decade I knew her...

"The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots." (Erich Fromm)