Shadow Puppet Storyteller

Family Alchemy

Mark it up to my letting the mind wander today. Vacation; and I do not need to get up to go to work in the morning. Full Metal Alchemist is playing on the TV in the background. We saw our daughter off after breakfast at the Duarte IHOP. She's starting a week-long visit with her grandmother. When I rested my eyes for an hour, not long after, it was plenty peaceful. I got an image of my daughter spying on my sleeping body but not speaking a word. When I worked graveyard shift, she may have done that more than I am aware. The article on open adoption mixed in to all this brain fluid picture.

I can admit that the financial insecurity I feel by being behind in certain bills and knowing that history has always been sloppy is what makes me identify with the mother who gives up her daughter. I know the struggles of any one income family generally parallels the financial questions for the mother in the open adoption story. There's this kind of questioning that goes on in everyone, right?

I want to see the good that each member of my family creates. When one is absent from me, it all feels different. Yet in a spiritual sense, I need to take the time to not see things with my eyes or even my heart and emotions. Some day my children will be on their own and not present so much in my day-to-day activities. If I can work toward the peace that it will take to let the environment that I am used to change, that day may not be so dramatic.

I want to practice seeing the good on this earth, especially among those my soul recognizes as family.