Thursday night/Friday morning, I dreamed that I was carrying my oldest cat on my shoulder down a driveway. There was a house on the left, maybe my grandmother's house, abandoned when she couldn't stand living there surrounded by ghosts. Across the driveway, instead of the old chicken house and shed that stood there, there was a big pecan tree. Underneath that, a wooden picnic table. At that table, my grandmother (she passed to the next world last year), my very-much-alive-and-resenting-it maternal aunt and her son, my cousin. My cousin was drinking whiskey, which he may or may not do. He was a bartender and he and his wife hang out at bars sometimes. My grandmother and my aunt were shelling pecans. There was a white and blue speckled enamelware bowl on the table, half full of shelled pecans. It was quite the scene - a place where I would feel comfortable. It was, it could have been, home.

I spoke when I approached. My grandmother stood up and, in a voice that was not hers, with words she wouldn't have used, said quite a lot more than this: "You have nineteen days." The other words fled quickly - this was the important part. I have nineteen days.

Nineteen days from Friday morning will be February 8.

I have searched and searched for meaning. Here's what I've found:
- The nineteenth card in the major arcana of a tarot deck is The Sun, always a good card, even when reversed.
- Brigid had nineteen priestesses keeping her sacred flame lit.
- Nineteen is a prime number. It can only be divided by one and nineteen.
- The most quoted bible verse that has "19" in it is the one where your body doesn't belong to you, it belongs to God and so you should take care of it for Him.
- Today is the nineteenth day since I ovulated this month.
- The nineteenth Womanrune is The Dancing Women - celebration, community, shared power, solidarity. 

I have no idea what it means. I have my . . . suspicions is too strong a word, even hunches is still too strong. I have my inklings? But, nothing I want to share yet.

Notes on Transformation

"Transformation" is my Word of the Year for 2017, if I haven't told you that already. And, even if I have . . . .

This is from "When You Fail an Ordeal" by John Beckett on his blog, Under the Ancient Oaks. Paraphrased for context's sake.

"Instead of looking for initiation into a specific tradition, some people are looking for a transformative initiation experience - and that's something that can happen in many different ways.

"I say this: 'Is the candidate prepared and are the God and spirits willing?' because the effectiveness of an initiation often comes down to something most initiators are reluctant to create: truly transformative ordeals <like the Eleusinian Mysteries.>

"Ordeals challenge and test a candidate, but their primary purpose is transformation."

"There are three ways you can fail a Gods-sent ordeal:

"#1 - You fail to recognize what's presented to you. You weren't ready to begin with and you haven't noticed a transformative ordeal because one hasn't been sent your way.

"#2 - You give up too soon. Christianity - which still dominates our mainstream culture - presents the Damascus Road conversion of Saul as the model for spiritual transformation. Sometimes, it really is that quick and that permanent. More often, transformation is slow and gradual.

"#3 - You reject the offer."

"Courage is not having no fear. Courage is being legitimately concerned about real risks and then doing what needs to be done anyway."

A few things that have been best for me:

- Avoiding situations in which others decide what is best for me. 
- Releasing perfectionism.
- Accepting that my worth as a person is not decided by how much I can do from day-to-day or what I choose to do. It is inherent.
- Choosing to be replenished by my boundaries, instead of limited by them.
- Allowing my daughter and husband to cook for me.
- Releasing my brother and his family to live their lives without thought for me.
- Diminished clutter.
- Sunlight
- Doggy kisses
- Reading
- Hot baths
- Releasing homeschooling.
- Coffee at the end of the day, instead of the beginning.
- Nerd Fitness Academy
- Limiting my time on social media.

It all starts here: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/johnbeckett/2017/01/divination-coloring-book-preview-2017.html

I, too, am a fan of adult coloring books. I'm working through The Secret Garden, although, only while watching Arrow, and I've ordered the Buffy the Vampire Slayer one through Amazon. It should be released this month.

I don't actively choose what color to put where. I have a cheap box of Target Koobi colored pencils and I dump them all out on the bed and let the colors come to me.

Beckett writes, "In 2017, we're going to meet the monsters. What will we do when we meet them?

. . . . .

"If your thought is to rescue them, then I suggest you think again. Perhaps the Brides of Dracula are in a queer/poly/kinky four-part family that works very nicely for them, thankyouverymuch. Their story was written by their enemies - you might want to hear their side of things. Perhaps the human servants of Dracula have lived in the Carpathian Mountains for so many generations that the idea of being "rescued" to London sounds like kidnapping and torture to them. And maybe they're grownup individuals who neither want nor need your help."

That last sentence struck me. Maybe, they are grown-up individuals who neither want nor need my help. I like to think of myself as a charitable person. A person who helps others. I give cash to the men on the side of the road, the ones who hold signs: "Need Help." I started a business with the intent of being able to help my friend without her feeling like it was a handout. I took care of my mother for six years while she had terminal cancer and I took care of my father, as much as he would allow, while he was slowly dying between heart attacks. I help animals on the side of the road. I give advice. I have been struggling with a friendship in which my friend likes to complain to me about how much her life sucks and I made up a plan in which she could solve her problems and she has not taken me up on my generosity (to use my storage locker) or made any changes that I suggested. I have taken that as her choice to not change her life, to live within her misery. Yes, no maybes about it, she gets to make choices about changing or not changing her life and her happiness/misery.

One of my watch-phrases for 2017 is "Give birth to my own power."

Maybe they are grown-up individuals who neither want nor need my help.

I have been taking other people's power away. Those people are all grown-up individuals - they have the power to change their own lives. Me attempting to do it for them doesn't help them own their power. If anything, it makes them feel more powerless, doesn't it? When I say to my friend, "here is how to fix your life," she hears "Jennifer could fix my life; what's wrong with me?"

I, too, have felt powerless. My problems have always been fixed for me, by loving and gracious parents who came to the game handicapped by their own experiences. What else were they to do with a child who was incredibly intelligent . . . and had mental health issues? I have been taken care of so long, that I have trouble believing that I know what's best for me, that I have the resourcefulness and the sound judgment to be able to take care of myself.

It seems somehow wrong to say that, in 2017, I will not help another person. That sounds Scroogish, doesn't it? But I think that is where I have to go with this. I will witness others' struggles; I will cheer them on. I will be the voice of empathy - Yes, I see that you are struggling. I see the efforts that you are making. No, I cannot fix this for you. I love you. I see the light of humanity within you. No, I cannot fix this for you. You have the power to change your life. You, alone. I will not compound the problem by making you feel powerless.

"If you think people who don't want to adult are lazy, you haven't been watching some of them pour hours and weeks and years into making and perfecting their arts. They're not averse to work - they're averse to meaningless work that makes the rich even richer. If you think they're entitled, you haven't been watching them work to feed the homeless and to advocate for policies that would eliminate homelessness. If you think they're fragile, you haven't been watching them pick themselves up over and over again after the system smacks them down for being unable or unwilling to get with the program." 

 From the blog Under the Ancient Oaks by John Beckett at Patheos.com

It's that last sentence that gets me. John Beckett is that "voice of reason in a time of great madness." His interview on Damh the Bard's Druidcast podcast was the first time I had ever heard beliefs like mine, spoken in the same accent as mine. It changed my world.

Tomorrow, my father dies.

Our relationship is one of those things <better unheard, better unsaid> and my life now is unrecognizable from that one.

Still, I sit vigil with those days.

It started on a Wednesday. I was carried to the hospital by my mother's friend. My father had gone into surgery that morning to clear a pick line - a tube he had implanted for use during dialysis. This is a fairly common outpatient procedure. He had a heart attack during the procedure. He was brain dead.

<They said I was in shock. Shock is underrated as a coping technique. I remember telling my mother about how excited my brother and I were about the rental car we had to get to attend my grandfather's funeral when I was twelve. It had electric windows and nooks and crannies to explore. My father was appalled at how thrilled we were.>

They put him in an intensive care unit. My aunt, my father's oldest sister, came to sit with us. He was taken off life support. We waited for him to die. It did not happen like I thought it would happen. I thought he would shuffle off this mortal coil in a timely fashion. Not so. He was no longer in residence. The body would sit up, eyes wide open. If he were there, he would have been said to look like he was pleading. My mother held his hand for eleven hours. I was ousted when my aunt arrived.

My then-fiance picked up the children from school and stayed with them at our house. I had to tell my children their beloved Papa had died. We went to stay at my mother's house, with my uncle and cousins. I drank tea and put the children to bed. I got five hours of sleep, then got up and went to the hospital to sit vigil with my mother.

I was too late. My mother and my aunt were on their way to my mother's house. He died without me.

He was angry at me the day before. He was not an affectionate person, not to me, anyway, and he had told me he would stay with me as long as he could. I asked him if he meant that and he was angry that I would doubt his word. Later, my mother liked to joke that he died as he lived - angry with me.

It was nasty weather that winter - ice and snow. We don't get bitter weather often in west central Georgia.

<Today, this weekend, we are predicted ice and snow. The first time this has happened since Daddy died.>

The National Guard was supposed to come out and do a salute at the graveside. They couldn't make it because of the weather. He was a Vietnam veteran.

There was a service here, where he lived, and another "down home" in Tunnel Springs, Alabama. Monroe County. He was buried next to his father, with a space in between for his mother, and another space on the other side for my mother. Both of those empty spaces are filled now, too.

I had to clean out my mother's house this time last year. In her closet, I found the clothes that he wore to surgery, still in the bag from the hospital.

I want to share with you how happy I am tonight. For the first time in a long time, I am full-to-bursting with happiness. Tonight, I get to be myself. We are celebrating Yule as a family, for the first time ever. It has been a long road in the past year. We have moved houses, from my mother's house into our rental house - the first house I've lived in that has been in my name. My husband and I have been together for ten years now, married for a year and a half. My oldest son has moved out and is working and lives with a roommate and has a girlfriend that he is bringing home for Yule dinner. My younger son has a girlfriend and is a junior in high school - can you believe he's fixing to start applying for colleges? My daughter, the light of our house, is the very embodiment of the holiday spirit - she has been the one responsible for cooking today - though, I heated up the ham! - and she has done all the decorating this season. We have a little potted live tree that we plan to use for the next five-to-seven years. Our house, our life, is not perfect, but it's ours. I am so blessed behind/beyond measure.

I hope there's a happy Yule/Christmas/holiday season for you. I wish you all the happinesses in the world.