During the year I have not posted to this blog, understand that I have spent much time writing. I have spent much time looking through a viewfinder. I have spent countless hours researching. I have dedicated less and less time to silliness and negativity. I have let go of a number of habits, foods, and people. I have walked over and through the comments which sent me away from this place. If you are still following, thank you.
I took this photograph at the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory in St. Paul. It was a gorgeous day in May and I was enjoying a visit with two of my best friends and the daughter of one of those friends. On this day, we saw gorillas, giraffes,wolves, birds, multicolored stingrays, neon spiders and a sloth. What I remember most though is the incredible joy I felt that these two women would put a child in a car and drive what became fourteen hours to visit me. These two wonderful, crazy women actually put themselves in a car and drove here. This, to me, is beyond the scope of friendship and common sense. I loved them for doing it. I still do.
This photograph remains one of the best I have ever taken, and one of my favorites of all time. This photograph will remind me of that day, forever. It is tender and tough, soft and strong. It is wild. I loved how the petals of this flower were tipped in tendrils which reached toward something to anchor them. The plant was tall and strong, the leaves, deep green and ribbed with life. The flowers would never lose hold. Still, they reached for each other, and felt better while they touched.
I have never enjoyed a life which would be considered "normal". I don't know what that is like, and neither do most of my dearest friends. On this day, walking through tropical gardens, viewing exotic animals, watching my niece Katie see all these new things, wide eyed, I was thinking, "I have the most spectacular family". I realized then, as I do now, that while we are strong and we stand alone, we reach toward each other. We feel a little bit better if we can touch. We are a family. We are something like normal.
