Ice Dreams Echo

Laughter echoes off the ice and I see the shadows of children in the moonlight, the snowy moonlight of last night. Kids skating at midnight on a shoveled patch of a recently frozen inland lake in central, southern Michigan. It simply made me feel good. It really did and that sort of surprised, sort of didn't. I want to be a happy boy again. I smiled, because it most certainly tapped into that part of me that spent countless hours on frozen water or snow covered hillsides. In my mind, my toes are still so frozen that I'm sure that when I get home mom is going to have to take me to hospital to have them amputated.It's going to be hard to break the news to her but.....that can wait for one more trip down the hill or one final game of pond hockey.

I don't really count the years anymore....I tend to take things day by day. Not the "live for today the hell w/tomorrow" philosophy of days gone by but the "squeeze the most out of each and every day I have" philosophy. This is better....take my word for it.

I've recently found myself drawing in the snow on the driveway. Not sure why exactly but it is kinda cool. I do think part of  my changing philosophy in the last few years has allowed me to feel OK being a kid again. Perhaps it's not so much being a kid as feeling alright in my own skin. That includes releasing emotion through artistic expression, could be writing, painting, poetry or simply the way I dress these days. I remeber a time in the not-so-distant past when in was quite difficult for me to just be me. I felt horribly inadequate and disconnected. Not that I am so together today but maybe I just don't expect to be and don't care about that so much. It isn't important in my world today.

OK, I know....why is it that every time I start writing about something, in this case about kids skating in the snowy,midnight, moonlight I end up reflecting or wondering or trying to figure something out? Shit, just did it again, didn't I? I do not know. It is the way I work I suppose...

It is New Years Day, 2010....I have always liked this day, it brings back memories of football and food, pleasant memories for me mostly and one profoundly unpleasant memory that I don't think I've even dealt with yet psychologically and it has been 4 years since it occurred. I won't let that define me or what I am becoming, a day at a time. Eyes focused firmly on living each and every day to it's absolute fullest, starting of course with today.....I will now don the old snow pants and head out onto the ice to listen for the sound of my own laughter, echoing through the years, it's been waiting for me all night.