When The Shoe No Longer Fits

 It’s ok if the favorite shoe doesn’t fit any more. The arch crushed, the heel worn from age. The soul tired from walking, and the laces long broken. They don’t hug your feet like they used to, or compliment your gait. Goodbye isn’t always so simple as throwing them away. They’re companions from a different life. All the paths and trails and mountains and puddles and rocks. They hold your secrets and are part of what made you...you. The very grit and sweat and blood and tears of you.

 But the shoes aren’t you.

And you can let them go.

It’s okay.

Thank You Iceland

 Clearly I am not very good at writing every day. Well, I write, but I don't always blog. I tried keeping a diary of days when the pandemic started, and I did great for about a month. But with kids home from school, and life soldiering on, I really didn't keep up very well. 

I did take pictures, though. Some selfies to chronicle mood, some of all the hiking we did--and we did quite a lot. I just returned from a solo trip to Iceland, and there's a lot more story there than I can fit into a single post. 

I found my words again in an AirBnB that creaked with every footstep, and felt like a home. Sitting on a  mountain, staring out over the land, the river and the sea, the words came flooding in like a dam broke, and I submitted to their will. I sat at the kitchen table and wrote until my hands hurt, slept and wrote some more. I will share the fractured pieces of what came out as time goes by--fiction, mostly. But fiction is like a painting and the words are my colors. 

I fell in love with that place. Like I was always meant to stay there. But "staying" was not what this trip was about. Another trip, another time. 

But as I said, more on all that later. For now, I'm just happy the words are back. 

So Thank you, Iceland. I love you for what you've given back to me.