There is a place I visit when I am in Italy where "smiles are free".

It is a place where they remember you after a month's absence; they see you walk in, clear off your favorite table, and serve up your cocktail of choice - all the while bantering together with smiles that are free.

And what if love were free. And what if peace of mind were free.

If hugs, and acceptance, and tolerance, and hope ... were all free.

 If you are a dreamer, come in

If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,

A hope-er. a pray-er, a magic bean buyer…

If you’re a pretender, come sit by the fire

For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.

Come in!

Come in!

It was one of those summers middle aged women talk about in self-help books; where the kids have grown and gone off to camp and they find themselves alone with their laundry, their jobs, a dozen realizations that life has passed them by; where you lay the damn book down halfway through and decide to dance to Lyle Lovett in the kitchen just to keep from crying on the bathroom floor.

They grow, you know. One day they go out to play and it isn't just down the street, it's to southern France. You ring the dinner bell and three instead of six sit down to eat.

It's an age-old game, nothing new. There isn't anything anyone can say in a bestseller that will make it any easier. No one is wiser - no one knows better - no one has it figured out. It's the same for each of us, and it will be the same for those after us. 

That is the thought that has made it bearable. I walk with my daughter to the end of the street of an evening just to look out over the fields. She dances in the moonlight; her hair glows; our bare feet pad along the asphalt. 

It was the same for each of us. And it will be the same for those after us.

Tomorrow school starts again, which surprisingly means they're still mine for another year. :)

"Real isn't how you are made; it's a thing that happens to you."

- the skin horse

America a Venezia

Sometimes life is just the long ride to the place you're going.