TAKING A LEAP

THEME: TAKING A LEAP 
All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience. ~ Henry Miller

         

She Could Have Had It All

Carolyn B Healy

I get temporarily popular every time a celebrity overdoses, suicides, or runs into some sort of ditch. Given my therapy background, people want to hear my attempt to explain such behavior. With Whitney Houston’s death, the question seems to be a three-parter: Why couldn’t she 1) kick that Bobby Brown aside, 2) get clean and sober and stay that way, and 3) get back to singing like she was supposed to?

There is an angry question lurking just below: How could she have a gift like that voice and squander it?

As I sit here I contend with dueling earworms.  With Whitney singing, “I will always love you…” and Adele belting, “We could have had it all…” it’s hard to think. But I’ll take a crack at it.  MORE . . .

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Echoes of Marian Hall (Part Two)

Ellie Searl

I arrived home at four. The twenty-eight mile drive from Marian Hall hadn’t erased my agitation.  Katie hugged my knees; her world of joy reminded me of normal.

“So, how was it?” Ed asked.  “Do you love it there?”

“Where to start,” I said.  “Do we have any wine?”

After an hour of relating my day, Ed had it all figured out. “So these are troubled girls from dysfunctional homes who do something bad, go to court, get sent to live with other troubled girls from dysfunctional homes all in the same colorless, cinder blocked, stinky-bathroomed, linoleum-floored, musty-furnitured room of a dead-bolted apartment inside a locked institution surrounded by a chain link fence and watched over by a bunch of nuns who patrol the building clattering keys around their waists.”  He took a chicken out of the fridge and rinsed it under the faucet.  “Now that’s living.”  He slapped the chicken onto the cutting board. “What, exactly, did you expect?” MORE . . .

GOOD INTENTIONS

THEME: GOOD INTENTIONS
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be. ~ Douglas Adams

ECHOES OF MARIAN HALL (Part One)
ELLIE SEARL

I wonder if it smells the same. Rotting citrus. Meatloaf. Sour milk. Peanut butter. Disinfectant over vomit. Like an ignored school cafeteria.

Or if it sounds the same. Whispers, flushing toilets, sobs, pounding on metal doors, screams, record player needles scratching on forty-fives, keys clanking against the swish of black robes. 

I remember my last conversation with the director, Sister Mary Esther, who by that time was Jeanne Marie in street clothes, but to me she was still a Sister of the Good Shepherd, regardless of the switchover to secular management.  MORE. . . 

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MY BRAIN ON FREDDIE MERCURY

CAROLYN B HEALY

           Sometimes I wake up with a song in my head. Often the tune quickly dissipates, like the last wisps of a dream I can’t hold onto, fleeting and forgotten. I may recognize it as part of a commercial jingle (“1-800-588-2300 Empire”) that I hear all the time, or a line from a familiar song (like “This Land is Your Land” which I heard the other day). Its unimportance helps it go away.

But other times, the song stays with me all day long and into the next. My blood seems to pulse to its rhythm, and the words run like a news crawler in my brain, no matter what else I’m doing. When it finally lets up a couple of days later, it’s a relief.  MORE . . .