Do you...

...wander ?
If so, where?

Do you wonder?
If so, on what do you wonder?

And when you wonder, do you find answers or do you bother to ask? I wonder if wandering and wondering are connected somehow. Even though I do a lot of wondering while sitting, thus not wandering in my shoes but all the same, my mind does wander through new thoughts and old thoughts.

A cousin joined facebook today. We are about the same age. He grew up mostly in the northern parts of Washington while I spent the majority of growing up all over the U.S. in military bases, behind the high wired fences. From time to time in our youth, we met on common ground - grandma's house in Riffe, which later was covered in lake water by the new dam. Then the grandparents moved to Mossyrock.

Far from each other, cousins still, we have grandma in common. We have the memories of crawdad fishing at the end of Godfrey Road. Taking raw bacon from grandmas fridge and sitting on the muddy bank of the very narrow stream and making fishing poles from old string, long twigs and bits of the bacon dangling from the end.

We played Get Smart using the small pantry in the garage, pretending he was Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, and I was Agent 99. The pantry was narrow. The door was small. It was our makeshift telephone booth that would deliver us to Headquarters.

Grandma knew about all of the ways we entertained ourselves except one....Grandpa smoked cigars. Grandma didn't like the odor so he smoked them in the garage which is where we stored our bucket filled with water and live crawdads. The cigars did not intrigue us but the matches did. We wanted to try striking one, just to see if we could light them and just how they worked. We talked about it for days until one day we gathered the nerve, took one of the wooden kitchen matches and after several attempts to light it, finally success. However, the joy and success of the moment left quickly. My oldest brother drove up. It is kinda sorta hard to cover up the smell of a freshly lit match but we danced our way around the reason for the sulfur smell, both defending the other.

It was comforting to know that he, my cousin, still remembers our too few times together with joy. As our minds wandered back to those days, one memory after another came flowing through.

Have you ever heard it said that colors aren't meant to be true. They are only present to hide all the black and white that lay beneath them. And the reason for the black and white beneath them is in that no one wants to see only gray.


...and if I take the colors of the day to form my memories, what will I be left with at the end of it all, if all along the colors were not truly there at all, that what I was grasping onto was nothing more than air. Kind of how I feel when I talk to certain people, I feel as though I am talking to the wind when I see the disinterested expression on their face.

Life can be long and life can be a difficult process. I recently read the Exodus story of Moses bargaining and freeing the Israelites from the clutches of the Pharaoh. It was a long and torturous fight for freedom but in the end, they were free and no longer wandering in the desert.

Can you, in your life, relate?

They knew it would not be an easy walk but I wonder if they knew just how long they would find themselves wandering through the desert.

Through this life, my life, I have been wondering and wandering. Most recently, wondering if I will ever be totally rid of and free from depression and insecurities. I wander about and wonder if I will ever be happy again. Many days as I face the next day, it is with all of my ability to put one foot in front of the other. I won't grumble in my desert because I know this is God's plan.

Living in a world of young people, the Finding Nemo movie quotes are heard often and come to mind this morning. Some seem so very fitting for my mind wanderings and wonderings. Mind if I share a few?

"That's a funny thing to promise. If nothing ever happens to him, then nothing will ever happen to him."

"Nice trench!"
"Something is telling me we should go through it, not over it"

"Yes, trust. It's what friends do."

"Suivez-moi." (Follow me)

"Don't give up, just keep swimming"

Thanks Dory, I won't give up, I will keep swimming.