This is a turning time for Maria and for me. I’m sitting on the porch writing by the glow of my laptop, Frieda on one side Lenore on the other, border collies circling.  I hear owls and coyotes. The dogs  always know when something is up, and I’m sure in their own way they recognize a book tour by now. I get edgy, distracted, phones ring, overnight mailings arrive, suitcases and bags appear and the atmosphere changes.  Frieda is a remarkably sensitive dog, and she misses nothing. She is hanging close. There is a lot happening here.

Maria is also in a turning time, a couple of weeks away from an art show – the Pig Barn Art Gallery Show October 8-9 that marks an enormous evolution for her, and a very significant one. She did not imagine a few years ago that she would be doing her art again, and showing the work of nine gifted artists on the farm in a barn.

We went to dinner the other night and got into a fight about which event we were celebrating – my new book or her new show. We each tried to pay. She won, as is usual. We both remembered Patty, a Tarot Card reader in Brattleboro and a friend, telling us that if we shed the baggage we had been carrying around for years, we would have great creative leaps and accomplish significant things. We drank to that. We both have taken risks and found great rewards – not the least being one another. We are on the same path, and on it together.

At dinner, I said it was so important to have creative risks to mark and celebrate. Life itself.

I told Maria that I think most people – most days – fall into two categories. People plant seeds and nodules, either of fear or of life.  They bring one or the other, in their stories, messages, presence. That is the choice we all make each day, often more than once. There are people who bring fear, darkness,  illness, warnings and conflict. And people who bring life – hope, heart, light, encouragement and promise. The choice is which of these people to surround yourself with and listen to.

If I believe the people bringing fear, than that is how I will live, because they will reach inside of me and open up the parts that do not move to farms, seek love, take risks, write books about animals and grieving. I have no idea if these choices are good or wise – nobody knows that in their lifetime – but my spiritual work has made it much clearer which way I want to go. Maria feels the same way, and boy, does that make a difference.

So it is a turning time for us, and we are shedding baggage and taking leaps. If everything crashed around us, I said, I would not regret taking the plunge. We drank to that.