The Winds of Time

I think she was welcoming me back, in her own way. Her "voice" has always spoken to my soul. My memory of her is most reminiscent as a young man, walking to church at 5:45 am, cold snow crunching under foot and then hearing her calls whispering through the pines, pretending to say .. something. I was certain that she would speak louder as  I approached her in the the pine trees and then die down as I passed. Was she disappointed?

Her voice was not her only attempt to gain my attention. She knew early on in my life that I had a hidden fantasy for her. I looked forward to her loud yet unannounced arrivals with her siblings; rain and snow, but especially with the summer rainstorms. I felt she was was whispering only to me; whispering and then announcing her presence and quietly leaving.

She exercised all of her womanly assets; ability to evoke the deepest of emotions with gentlest of caressing touches to my face; the cold and bitter emotions of rejection and anger as biting, stabbing knives in the dead of winter. She would use her strength coupled with desert heat to inflict stifling, breath-taking pain. She would touch my soul and make me wish she would never leave when accompanying early fall drizzles.

She didn't forget about me on the night of December 7th, 1988.

The night before Eric was born

She certainly was going to announce his birth. 52 MPH wind gusts!!! Yes my dear you got my attention. He has deserved all the trumpeting you brought that night to his arrival the next day.

The last two nights, your whispers have been of a different, quieting, calming nature; almost as if you were telling me, begging me, pleading with me, to have faith, to calm down, to not give up. That all would be well. I realize you were giving me a gift. A gift from an old friend.

You haven't been just the winds of time in my life. You have marked the moments of my life in a way that a friend wants to not be remembered as much as to have had an impact. You have helped me remember the cold that can be so sadly and maliciously directly between humans. You have reminded me through displays of strength, the power that I own and only need to bury the fears that hold that power at bay. The most important and touching impact you have had, is how you have caressed through your soft ripples of the curtains, the gentleness that resides in me.

I think I will remember you most though, through your passionate almost lust-filled approaches; the nights in late fall, when you would gently accompany the light rain and carrying the sounds and smells of the rain gently falling on the roof.  You would passionately seduce me, with thoughts, feelings and longings for the embrace of that passion in my life, or missing from my life. Your gentle breezes brought the smell of the freshly fallen rain to my being, accompanied by the rhythmic beatings of the rain  and even occasional sprinkles to my face as I lay near the open window wishing you would never leave.

Stay close dear fiend. You are more than the winds of time. You are the balancing of the ebbs and flows of life, emotion and passion.