14

She was but one of 2,996 innocent people whose lives were cut short by an act of terror so unspeakable in its scope that even now - 14 years later - it is difficult to comprehend.

Hers was a “soft” countenance and spirit – meaning that everything about her was kind, non-threatening, approachable - she was a perfect reflection of all that was good in humanity. She loved her family fiercely and was devoted to her parents. Those parents are dear friends whose lives have been ripped to pieces by the acts of monsters.

Her wedding to her gregarious, wildly successful fiancé was to have been early October 2002. By now there would likely be a child or 2 running around – she'd have made a wonderful mother, loving her children with a ferocity that is equal parts love and fear. Any child of hers would have been a much beloved niece or nephew and would have been deeply spoiled grandchildren. She was cherished by anyone who knew her. She had a thriving career – much sought after in the fields of real estate and finance. Her future was bright – filled with promise and surrounded by love.

The end of her life can be summed up in a few, meager sentences: Heather Lee Smith woke up at 5:00am on September 11, 2001. She kissed her fiancé good-bye as he snoozed and she grabbed a cab to Logan Airport. She went to the American Airlines counter to get herself on a stand-by waiting list where she was able to board Flight 11.

And just like that, Heather’s story ends. No more memories to be created.

The stories of nearly 3,000 other people ended on the same date – leaving a hollow place in the lives of so many. Think of how many people in your life would miss you should you leave them suddenly - think beyond your family, to your friends, coworkers, the guy at the coffee truck who always gives you a kind smile with your morning shot of caffeine. Is it 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 - likely more? Each one of us touches a few hundred lives in the course of our existence – multiply your own “number” by 2,996 – the number of actual victims of 9/11/01. It’s more than staggering isn’t it – all those people with a howling void in their lives.

Like so many others there isn’t a grave for Heather’s family to tend; no final resting place the family can visit for holidays, birthdays or no special day in particular; no place to leave Heather’s favorite flower - the humble sunflower.  No physical place to ensure she is never forgotten. For her parents and their family & friends there will be nothing more than a marble panel or granite sculpture at a public museum to mark the final resting place of their much loved daughter. They have their memories of a life cut short at age 30; her mother once said to me that the hijackers stole her future.

As I have said in years past – we talk of these things, these unpleasant things like the pain and suffering and terror of the passengers, the nightmares in the WTC when people jumped rather than be trapped when the buildings collapsed, the brave souls on Flight 93 who forced the hijackers to die never reaching their target – so that we remember. 2,996 lights were extinguished by pure evil and we must remember them; we must show great courage in remembering them, for the memories can be so painful.

But remember them we must. For their sake, and ours. We must remember the sacrifice they made unwillingly. We must remember those who perpetrated this crime against the innocent people of our country. We must remember the pure nature of the victims and the evil nature of their killers.

Remember them we will – as Americans we share the burden of grieving for the victims of 9/11/01 and their families. If we forget Heather or the other victims, or if we abandon their families & friends, we do so at our peril.

The Weekly Muse

What an absolutely glorious morning. Crisp air that hints at the coming autumn; bright sun bringing warmth without the harshness of summer's light. The last of the Hydrangeas in a small vase on the deck; fresh coffee on the table beside me. The Oracle, my gentle husband, curled up next to me.

On days like this - struggles seem very distant and all things seem possible.

Like the fingers of Michael Jones, passing so lightly over the piano keys, my spirit feels incredibly delicate yet as clear as the opening notes to the magnificent song above.

Life - has continued to kick me around more than I would like.  There are good days, like today, and I revel in them.  Like a cat giving cherished "bumps" to a beloved human, days like today are metaphorically bumped by my very soul.  I drink in the scents on the breeze - Lemon Grass from the deck plantings, Basil from the herb garden, the sweet smell of decaying plant life and the dampness from the deep woods behind me.

It all gives me hope that maybe, after 5 weeks of the deepest, darkest torment and pain of my life, the good days will finally outnumber the bad.

Because the bad - are bad. The put your head down and push through kind of bad. The days where you don't want to make eye contact with anyone because you know they will see into your heart; defenses are nil.  The kind of day when you go out to lunch with an old friend and insist that you sit outside on a very hot day so you can wear your sunglasses and the friend won't see the pain behind your eyes.

A succession of those bad days puts you down for the count in equal quantity.

But then a day like today comes - and you believe in the deepest places of your existence that the struggles you have faced with such courage - you really believe that you will overcome them.

With air this beautiful, that smells so sweet...how can it not be possible.

The Weekly Muse

Hmmm - I started this new blog to give me a place to release inner thoughts, to put my words "on paper", as it were, to rejuvenate my inner artist.

Since my last post is a month ago - I'm counting that as a not great effort.

At. All.

Life - has spent quite a bit of that time kicking me around.  Hard.  The past few weeks I've been barely functional - dragging my sorry self around mostly going thru the motions until I can collapse in bed.

It's been a dreamless sleep for these past weeks; for which I am truly grateful.  Any dreams my sub-conscious might conjure up would most surely be nightmares.

Times like these give a person - pause.  Reflecting on decisions made that are long-past correction; coming to terms with difficulties that you never thought you'd experience.

Realizing that perhaps, just this once, God has over-estimated your strength and indeed given you a far greater burden than you can possibly bear.  In fact, wondering what exactly the Heavenly Father thinks of you since he seems to truly believe that you are capable of more emotional endurance than YOU believe one person should have to experience in multiple lifetimes.

It comes at you from all sides - no angle of life-impact is left out of the mix.  And it attacks your Faith - the Faith that saved your life once upon a time, the Faith that nourishes you daily with its rare and unparalleled beauty. That one area of life that provides a calm moment in what has become, at best, a sea of irrationality.

When you realize that even that calm moment is harder to pursue and achieve - you have to stop the clocks, clear the social calendar and "go to ground" - something you thought you were done with having to do.

And so - you go to ground, you retreat within yourself and try to reconnect to that voice, that voice that spoke to you when it saved your life; that voice that guided you through what you thought would be the worst experience of your existence.

In search of that voice that you hope will get you through the current experience - which makes the "other" worst experience...pale to nothing at all.

That voice - God's voice - speaks inside my head.  He says to me, over and over again - "Kris, be calm my child."  He implies that the burden I carry is a shared one, that he is ever-present, by my side.

I try to be calm and to feel that presence.  My success rate right now is about 50%.  Which is a vast improvement over 2 weeks ago.

You keep telling yourself that "this too shall pass"; your inner-circle of amazing friends assures you that it will pass.  You trust them - not because they have equal or greater experience with this burden but because they love you and you love them.  You trust them - because you know that if it all falls apart, if it doesn't "pass", they will be there to help you pick up and move forward.  You trust them - because they never lie to you and they only want the best for you.

God - is my innermost circle.  And he told me to "Be Calm" - and while my heart races and thumps like a freight train inside my body...I just keep repeating the words.

Be Calm. Be Calm. Be Calm.

The Weekly Muse

The muse is a little bit - battered.

It's been another rough week here at the Oasis.

On Sunday morning just past we woke to the sound of - empty faucets.  After a few hours of fiddling, driving back and forth to the local plumbing store (thank God for the word "local") and generally mucking about - The Oracle determined the culprit was - the well pump.

The submerged well pump, in the 325 foot deep Artesian Well.  Once this was determined there was a distinct, pause, in the house and then - the air became blue. We will spare you the sounds and syllables.

A phone call to a local business recommended and we had the appointment for replacement for Monday AM.  Which meant 24 hours with no water.

Not the best of situations but we managed to get thru it.  A new, and larger, pump was installed and water began running freely from all faucets.  Took me the better part of the week to get caught up on things like doing the dishes and laundry.

It added a stress level that we decidedly did not need.

No.

The work week wasn't much better.  Oh, no disasters befell us but at a time of year when you expect that things might - slow down a bit - they have not.

And so it is that we reach Saturday and feel a bitt - wrung out.

Of course the news of the week doesn't help this situation. Not in the least.  We won't belabor any points as they are just too painful.  But...

Baby parts sold for profits.
Four Marines and One Sailor murdered by a Muslim terrorist.
Iran nuclear deal-that-is-a-disaster.

One of these by itself would be tough to take but all three in just a few days...the mind does more than reel.

Is it January 20, 2017 yet?

In the meantime, it is a vacation we need - most desperately.  The mini-breaks we take here and there help in the short-term but what we really need is a pack up and getaway on a jet plane kind of vacation.

Since that won't happen until November - oh yes, my dear friends, we will be jetting away for 10 days in a much warmer place in November - we have a couple of days planned this coming week to head to the one place that heals our very souls.

The humble Misquamicut Beach in Westerly, RI.  We'll definitely manage 2 days mid-week; we may even squeak out 3 days but that's unlikely.

We'll take what we can get at this point. We haven't been to the beach at all this summer and as it is our go-to place for rest and meditation, even The Oracle observed towards the end of this past week - "If we don't get to the beach SOON it's going to get ugly."

And we can't have that.

The Weekly Muse

I have been told I'm mercurial, a real free spirit.

I choose to take that as a compliment...because sometimes I think it's someone's nice way of telling me I'm moody.  I prefer to think of it as being hard to pin down.

The truth is - my moods are, in many ways, like the tides. Reliable, shifting with the pull of an external force.  Extreme highs, far out lows.  I do my best to find the middle ground that keeps me focused and balanced.

This past week has proven to be an impossible task. I am - definitely off-balance today.

The Oracle suffered an eye injury at the hands of a new eye doctor; a 4mm corneal tear.  He said it felt like he had broken glass in his eye - poor man!  Since Tuesday this has been a bad scene - eye gel every 4 hours to stave off infection; eye patches, lots of sleep & rest.  The Oracle doesn't do "sick" very well and this past week has been awful for us both. (Yes, there will be a complaint filed with the State once The Oracle is given the all clear; a poorly trained, unlicensed member of the doctor's office performed an eye pressure test with a machine that actually touches the eyeball; took her SIX tries to get the right contact...in both eyes. It's a major miracle that she didn't tear both his corneas - which would have left him, essentially, blind for about 5 days...moron.)

All I see turns to brown, as the sun burns the groundAnd my eyes fill with sand, as I scan this wasted landTrying to find, trying to find where I've been.

I can relate.  We really do have a scorched earth situation in my mind; aggressive music is the order of the day for certain.

My job - well, it nibbles away at me some days. Most of the time I can restore myself on the 45 minute commute to our oasis of a home but others days, like yesterday, the sum total of myriad stresses of the week took their toll during that commute.

By the time I got home I felt like those nibbled pieces would never return, leaving craters on my body in their wake.  I walked thru the house, darkened the bedroom, laid down and slept for an hour.

I never do that.  Maybe a 15 minute lie-down after work but not a full out, dead sleep nap. And I slept for 10 solid hours last night (though I confess that was aided by the ever-delightful little dark peach colored pill known as - Ambien).

Today I'm not feeling much better, to be honest.  My mood is very low; I feel abused - like I've been spit out as an unsavory appetizer by a whale shark.

How's that for poetic.

Abandoned tanker car in a defunct railway yard in northern VT

Aggressive. Abandoned. 

Yup - mood is very low indeed.  

Anyway, back to the job.  I am an Executive Assistant to a Fortune 100 senior level executive. He is demanding, can be either extremely fair or incredibly unfair; he is also a little mercurial - one day he's an open book, the next he's closed up tight.  It's taken me over 3 years to train him to even see that I'm there, that I am more than just a body at a desk.  Once I got him to figure that out, it's been a pretty good gig.

His management team is amazing.  Six other senior-level executives whom I support in varying ways and who all show me their appreciation each and every day.

In all this - I am blessed.  Sometimes they can each be proper wankers - but can't we all.

It's the staff or the people outside of our area who can eat me alive.  They don't let me do my job; they think they know better or they just beat me up until I give them the answer they want.  In fact, the more someone chews away at me to get what I can't give to them, the less likely I am to try to find a workaround for them.

They fail to recognize that since the "big boss" believes I walk on water - then I do.  He trusts me to do my job, to know my shit and to only bring things to him when I feel I've exhausted all other options.  I do far more than manage 7 calendars, answer phones & schedule meetings.

I do all the office management for the needs of nearly 90 people.  And I don't screw up...ever.  I'm one of the best in my division, indeed one of the best in the company. I've had nearly 9 years to build up my reputation as someone who lets nothing fall thru the cracks, who is always prepared for every eventuality and who is usually one step ahead of everyone else.

And the staff - they know this.  Yet there is always a group of them that think they can pull one over on me, go over my head to get what I won't or can't give them.

Trust me - my boss and his directs don't like to play that game, especially when it comes to me. Because they know I don't lie and I move heaven & earth for everyone, all day long.

It's nice to know they have my back that way yet it is utterly exhausting to deal with these people day in and day out.

I never opened myself this wayLife is ours, we live it our wayAll these words I don't just sayAnd nothing else matters

At the end of such days as these lately, The Oracle is my soothing balm; he calms me with his presence.  His words of comfort - are just the right thing that smooths my ruffled feathers and brings down the anxiety.

And he wasn't able to be there for me this week.  Not his fault - not at all!  He was suffering, poor man, and I hated to see that.  On top of everything else - it's just been...

...a wasteland.  And so here I am, pouring my heart out to the Internet.  Putting the words out into the void in the faint hope that they will leave my heart and mind, giving my soul some rest.

Meh.

Fizziness, Peace and Static

Photography - it is one of the sweetest spots in my life.

My inspiration and motivation for it comes in fits and starts; I can go weeks not even touching the camera bag and then - BAM! - you can't keep the camera out of my hands.

Sunset on Anna Maria Island, west coast of FL.

Of course vacationing in a place like the west coast of Florida gives many opportunities for gorgeous photographs like the one above and the one below.

Sunset on Anna Maria Island, west coast of FL

And of course living in New England - it's a bounty of opportunities nearly every day.  And that's where the motivation comes in.

Inspiration is everywhere and I used to carry all my camera equipment in the car wherever I went.  It's how I got images like this one:

Lake Terramuggus in Marlborough, CT

For some reason, years ago, I just stopped carting the equipment around.  Maybe I got bored... there was a time when what I saw was all one-dimensional and flat.  No inspiration was going to come when I could barely see colors.  Believe me, even though I tried the results of those efforts during that time were - not publishable.

These days the camera goes where I go only when I travel.  A dear friend recently purchased a gorgeous house in the northern mountains of Vermont and it's given me ample opportunity for some really unique and, quite frankly, jaw-dropping photographs.

Lenticular Clouds forming over the Summit of Mount Washington in the White Mountains of NH.

I need to find a way to hold onto that feeling in the pit of my stomach when I capture such pictures; it's a fizzy feeling.  Laughter bubbles up from deep inside my soul - joyous, happy laughing at my great good fortune to be present for such visual feasts as this.

Early morning fog on the CT River in Northern VT; White Mountains in NH in the background.

The laughter can turn to happy tears as I contemplate the wonders of nature and the handiwork of God.  It can be - overwhelming.

Holding on to those feelings during the grind of daily life these days can be daunting. But I must find a way - with the bad news in the world coming in from every side I feel that I need to cling to those things that give my soul peace.

My camera bag. My tripod. The Oracle. My Faith.

These are the things that matter.  All else is just - static.

Seeing The Forest For The Trees

Brilliant blue sky.  Warm sunshine (not too warm...).  The air is still.  The birds sing and chirp. The hummingbirds continue their yearly and epic battles, those petite ninja killers.

And I sit in The Oasis...pots of herbs, veggies, flowers and grasses adorn pretty much every inch of space that we don't need to walk in.

From a beautifully overgrown pot of Basil to this luscious Hibiscus - our Oasis is just brimming with greenery and color.  Since we are surrounded by wildlife that enjoys sampling anything in a traditional garden - we grow everything in pots on the deck.  Deer might be willing to come up close the house to nibble on a Tomato plant but they don't come up on the deck - ever.  And while we have had woodchucks eat away at a pot of Parsley...we have finally gotten rid of that particular pest by eliminating their hideaways and burrows.

We really are blessed beyond measure with our home. Built in 1978, we purchased it in 1989. It sits on one pristine acre of land that, at one time, had 68 trees on it.  We are below 40 trees now - took us 15 years to get to this point!  There are still a few skinny trees that could come down but that's always a rather tense discussion in the house; The Oracle would rather let it all go back to nature and while I agree with that - it's only to a point.

Anyway, I digress.  The true beauty of our home - our Oasis - isn't in just the house or the property. It's what is behind us that makes this truly an island of serenity in a world growing inward.

When we moved in back in 1989 there was a large woodland area behind the house.  A rambling stonewall went from one property to another, marking a property boundary that time has forgotten about.  Beyond that stonewall was just - woods.  We took several walks thru them in the early days of living here.  Dense forest is all it was - tall Oak trees growing side by side, the forest floor littered with leaves, decaying limbs and struggling undergrowth.

We figured at some point whoever owned those many acres of land would sell it - unable to resist the filthy lucre to be gained from selling a couple hundred acres of land to a builder.  Even in a town like ours - with one acre zoning for building houses - it would be a killing for a construction company to acquire.

Fast forward about 10 years and at a local annual fall fair, we encounter a booth with topographical maps of town.  As would anyone, we swiftly identified where we live - eager to see what lay beyond where we used to wander in the woods.

The gentleman manning the booth watched us and then approached - "Do you live there?", he asked.  "Why yes, we do.", we replied. He looked at the map, then us and his expression was one of - envy mixed with joy.

"The man who owns the land behind your house once thought to sell it to a builder", our man informed us. Even confirmed something we suspected for many years - that there is a variance road that leads deep into the woods from the road we live off of.  Then he revealed the reason for his envy and joy - "He had a change of heart and when he dies he has deeded the property to the town for open space."

Open. Space. Stipulated in the man's Will...unbreakable.

I recall we simply stood there rooted to that spot. Staring, slack-jawed, at our man.  I think one of us might have squeaked out a "Really?"...beyond that, my memory is frozen at the moment we learned that for however long we lived here - the land behind us would remain a lush, untouched forest.

No neighbors - ever.  No disruption to the serenity of our backyard - ever.

Even now, 15 years later - as I look out at that dense green space, grown thicker over the years with undergrowth and big green ferns as far as you can see - I am struck silent by the grace of our good fortune.

On the busiest day in this neighborhood - when people have guests over, music blaring - we can retreat to this glorious space and let all that hubbub just...fade away.

As I get older, I am less inclined to travel; thankfully The Oracle feels the same way.  And while we will take trips to that most excellent, magical home-of-friends in VT; and every so often head south to the pristine beaches of the west coast of Florida - we are becoming more and more apt to stay home for our times off from work.  Even in the wintertime, there is a cold, clear beauty to the forest behind us, to the silence of our Oasis.

True - there are foreign places on my Bucket List - the Highlands of Scotland, the cosmopolitan thrum of London, the vast beauty of Tuscany.  And maybe someday we'll get there.

In the meantime, I live out the majority of my Bucket List right here at home - where I have an Oasis to escape to, I have a piano indoors to soothe me and I have The Oracle by my side, with his quiet strength and gentle ways.