the ying and yang of life

When I was about four my older sister went to school and I was left home. We lived in Michigan at the time on a dairy farm and now that my sister was in school my Dad had to take me with him to town to get food. We didn't have a car and so he pulled a sled for the food and I was on one of those round sleds, I remember it was red. As we passed a little lake my father thought it would be fun to both sit on the round sled and slide down the hill on to the ice and it was fun until we were out on the ice and we fell through into the freezing cold water. Thankfully it was not really deep and my dad was able to hold me up so my head didn't go under the water, only my body was wet but it was freezing out and we didn't have a ride. Wet and freezing we started walking back home, I was crying and wanted to sit on the sled but he made me walk to keep warm. I can remember the pain of the cold and I wouldn't walk any more and fell to the ground in protest crying so he carried me. Thankfully a tractor came by and gave us a ride. We were traveling a little faster but the wind was shockingly cold, I remember the driver put me up on the engine where it was warmer, he kept saying "don't touch the pipes dear there hot" I remember the pipes and trying to get as close as possible without touching them, my dad was in pain, wet from head to toe.
My dad was a big kid, he thought life was a big adventure and he liked the struggle of life, his attitude was great fun on the most part but sometimes not so much.
The town folk never talked to my father for he was a Hippy with long hair and they didn't have any Hippy's in Michigan back then. The driver of the tractor befriended my father on the ride home and he had invited us to a basketball game at the high school. Word had gotten out that we had fallen through the ice and now everyone wanted to know about the weird Hippy guy they had been afraid of, now realizing he was a single father of two little girls. I had never seen anything like a gym before and hid behind my father as much as I could, I remember everyone staring at us.
That Christmas was one of the most amazing things that had ever happened to us, the hole town got together and one by one, car after car came Christmas Eve, they would talk to my father for a few minutes out on the porch and then leave. No one ever came to our little trailer especially at night. Dad kept telling us to go to bed but we would run out of our room to see out the window, we couldn't see much just the head lights of the cars. Dad would catch us and chase us back to bed, it was great fun and finally we fell asleep and woke up Christmas morning to find presents stacked to the ceiling of our little trailer. I remember I got a snoopy with wheels I could ride around.It had a little saddle on it, I loved that! Wow it was the best Christmas ever! Toys and more toys, I didn't understand fully at the time, it was just a great moment but later I was embarrassment that I was a charity chase, always being so pore.
I hate being cold, it's one of the things I worry about, I guess you could say it's a fear of mine, I never wanted to live like that again, Michigan is so cold, the snow would be so deep we couldn't get out of our trailer, dad would have to climb out he bathroom window and dig out the door. We moved back to California when I was four and a half, I grow up in a shack without any insulation, just wood and tar paper but it was warmer than Michigan. My dad would build onto our shack when he could find free wood and so their wasn't any real planning involved, our bedroom were down stairs from the wood stove so every night was cold in the winter. I think about that now and it seems crazy we didn't have any heat in our rooms. We would heat up water on the wood stove and then dad would pore it over us on the steps out side. It was truly miserable!
I hated the fact that my father didn't see anything wrong with looking through the dump for things. I would sit on the hill with my arms folded, refusing to look through the trash. My sister found a cool doll but I didn't care I was not going to dig through the feakin trash and then my father found a plastic Bryer horse with three legs. Being a horse crazy girl, I jumped in there looking for the other leg so I could glue it back on. I was heartbroken when I realized I wasn't going to find it for that was why it was in the trash in the first place. I kept the little horse and loved it anyways. The free adventurous spirit my dad had was a great thing sometimes but those experiences made me embarrassed when I grow up, making me not let others help me in my adult life.
With everything that has happened in my life lately I am coming to understand so many things more clearly.
I went out of town last week looking for work and when I came home my propane was out. I couldn't pay my bill. Growing up with only a wood stove now as an adult I really didn't want to mess with building a fire all the time so I have Propane but now it's a holiday and I can't get any until Monday and my house is 42 degrees. It's funny to think with my up bringing that I am not prepared for something like this but I'm not. No hot water, no stove to cook on and I'm cold, son of a bitch how is this happening to me.
I called my mom for help witch is really hard for me, she make me crazy always critical of me because I'm so much like my father but I didn't know what else to do. We have not been talking much the last few years and with my fathers passing things got really strained between us, in my asking her for help I have to work through my pride a little but in letting her help me we are both blessed. I realize now she needs to help me because she needs to heal from the pain of abandon me when I was a baby. Her guilt is over whelming to me, for I never missed her because I didn't know any different, I was only four months old when she left. The fact that I couldn't cry over her in her mind I never forgave her but in my mind I just don't have the same kind of pain she carries and I can never reassure her enough. I went to live with her when I was in six grade and she cleaned me up and showed me how other people lived, with a nice warm house and hot running water. She bought me nice cloths and brush out my hair. Because of her I got to step out of my life I knew and into a hole different way. People treated me differently when I was cleaned up. I got a tutor and started to learn to read. It change my life in a very positive way, but I was still my fathers little girl at heart and she hated that. As nice as all that was I missed my dad and moved back with him in seventh grade. I move back and forth in my teenage years, me and my mom had a good relationship but I grow up as kids do and she wanted me to stay a child and couldn't grow with me. She took it personally that I wanted my own life and everything came back around to me not forgiving her for leaving, when in fact I just needed to grow up and become an adult. It's been a long hard road between us to say the least but I am very thankful she came back into my life.

As I'm sitting in my cold ass house reflecting, out of the blue an old friend calls me, Ela Richmand, we haven't talked to each other for years, she said she had been thinking about me a lot lately and when she heard the state I'm in at the moment offer to help me out, letting me borrow her space heater. I can heat one room of my house and I am very thankful. Friends offer their shower and food and money, I am uncomfortable but also overwhelmed with their kindness.

The last few years have been a little crazy, and I have been forced to face my fears and with each new strange thing that happens I realize who I am, amazingly I feel like I'm falling in love with my life again. Facing losing everything I have worked so hard for makes me hungry to hold on to what I love and try! Try harder, trying is the secrets, worrying is wasted energy. I had stopped trying, complaining about everything wrong in my life not moving forward in my thinking, I was miserable! I'm sorry I wasted so much energy complaining. Now I'm scared but not so scared as to stop dreaming! I'm moving forward in my thinking and I feel alive and hopeful.
I hear people talk about the old days how things where better back then but most of the time they have never really tried it. I'm here to tell you that today is the best time throughout history to be alive and we are blessed with progress. Each generation resisted change, thinking it was so much better back when but it wasn't really. If I had been born a few hundred years ago I would have died in child birth. Life is ever changing and thank God for that! If I have to go back to living like I grow up I will endure, I was happy then and I am thankful now for the lifes lesson. We as a race will never go back, life is about progress and I believe we will figure it out together when we start trying, and then life get fun again. Complaining is so easy but go's nowhere, wasting our life's energy.
I am so amazed at the love my friends and family has showed me in my time of struggle and I feel blessed. The things I worry so much about are things of pride and as I'm painfully stripped of my pride I find beauty in others. Those thing in my past that make me who I am, the things that drive me, things I can't always see in myself, I realize my weaknesses are not so bad really. They are actually doors to freedom, freedom from my fears so I can dream again.
give and receive we are all blessed.