Overcast for one and a half days.  Overcast is gentler on the body than full skin exposed to a Memorial Day sun, but I needed to stay inside.  Aunt Flo scheduled me for some couch time, and when Aunt Flo speaks I obey.

This morning I awoke with an unsteady purpose, mostly just wanting to get through this hour to the next, because that’s all I can do, but a neighbor called and asked for help.  I am blessed because she asked me and blessed because I could answer.  I hope she will take measures to be prepared for the next time, but only she can answer that.

I came home and answered a text to conversation.  Another friend who is in need. I am grateful to be able to be present for them.  I am determined to live my life with boundaries but not in solitude like a prisoner, and that means I am here to hear, so I heard, and she is okay.

Overcast.  The rain has come harder, the sound and feel that I love.  I opened my door so I could feel and hear it.  I see my disgraced neighbor at the office working on moving out. I am sad for him because he reminds me of my son: smart, young, and in party mode.  I want the best for him because young people make bad choices, and the mother of me sympathizes, but at the same time I want them to tighten up and make better choices, as if I am so perfect.   I see them as I see my son.  I see the lease that I read (and I mean read, all the way, like a dork because who the hell reads their lease entirely but me??), the same one they signed, and I know the realtor has rights, even though young man was just being a boy, like my own son. Where does it end?

I write this as a little weather comes in.  What a gentle thunder, a tender dark, something that will move east and the neighbors will fall out for sunset in damp sand. That was no storm, just a rumble.  We are all living in degrees.  What I want for my country more than anything is to accept that we are all of and in degrees, and we must compromise.  Compromise. It’s the only world we have. Some days precipitate comes and it’s a mist, sometimes it’s a little rain, sometimes it’s a prelude to tornadic activity, but it leaves us all, prepared, just in case.  The sand remains damp and my neighbors remain.

What the hell does a pile of twenty-something strangers who might be called upon to put their boots on a land far away to uphold decency, if not democracy and die matter to me, a woman who lives in relative safety matter if they drink hard and play their music hard and puke hard have to do with compromise mean?  I spoke to them, I hugged them– strangers– and only wished, as a mother of a young person, they would have pulled it together and pulled it back.  Living here by the ocean is a paradise anyone would pray for… and they blew it.   Yeah, foolish me, but I can hope can’t I?  I fear for the young persons who will deploy soon just as I care about those who wear blue and show up to a domestic, or those who came to fight a fire when the wind was against them, the coldest night of the year fighting a fire that nature seemingly didn’t want them to win, three days after I moved in.    We honor those who serve, but I expect them to behave decently.  I honor service, but I also recognize rules, the same ones the rest of us have to follow. And I can’t beat compliance into them.  I can only hope the best for them.

Honor.  And fight for peace, so we no longer have to quarrel over monuments.