glancing out my office window, I regard a gently falling rain from low hanging, smoke coloured clouds. In the steady cascade, some drops pool on the windowscreen while others find their way through the barrier to caress the glass itself. I gaze longer still, until the falling water against a backdrop of bright green virgin foliage holds me tansfixed. Closing my eyes and turning my focus inward, I begin to hear the melodic, blissful, sounds of the symphony.

My mother plays the chimes, a soft, understated harmony of sound that one hears only when the auditory senses seek it out, yet all the while the subconsious is ever aware of its presence. While family therapy sessions were not as productive as I had hoped, they succeeded in breaking the year long silence that existed between Mother and me. We are able to share a phone conversation every week, and while the conversation is rather mundane, it is a stone or two in the foundation.

Dawne is on the tuba, and her sounds are grand, omnipresent, reververbant, deep. Recent epiphanies and major life changes will hopefully, finally, lead her to a peace, tranquility, and love in life that she has never experienced yet always longed for. May her road this time have far fewer forked paths.

Dad is strumming and picking on the acoustic. He has always played guitar, and anyone fortunate enough to hear him realizes instantly that there is something spiritual happening between wood, strings and hands. He plucks each chord with the near precision of the professional musician he should have always been. He is older now, and I am sure he finds it more arduous to keep up with the rest of the players, but he makes a valiant effort nonetheless. Sometimes, he even adlibs a little. When he is not playing, Dad is spending his time between work and, now that warmer temperatures are here, the golf course. He calls often, and drops by from time to time, and I am now feeling as though we are where we should have been all along.

The Goddess takes up the drums, beating a sure, steady rythm that marks the pace for our euphony. On occasion she misses a beat, but is not beyond trying to make up for it, if at the very least merely carry on. Our days are currently absorbed with work and garden. We more than quadrupled the sowing plots this year, and soon we will be enjoing the asthetics and fragrance of wildflowers, a hummingbird garden, a buttergly garden, red, blue, yellow and white gardens, assorted Holland bulbs, sunflowers, gladiolas, impatiens, nasturtium, cosmos, sweet peas, marigolds, portulacas, flowers for drying, grasses for drying, basil, chamomile, thyme, and dill, to name a few. Next year, we hope to be able to double even that. Until I began to trun the earth, pull the sod, chuck the rocks, and dig for roots, I did not appreciate the labor a garden entails. I was ignorant, too, of the theraputic value, which is rather invaluable.

For my part, I have taken up the harp. It is a subtle, gentle, yet exquisite instrument whose sounds try to blend in with everything. And in case of emergency, I always have Lowlandz, Alyx, and Freda to pick up a piece and play along.

I ascend from the trance of orchestral melody to the once cascading, but now pounding sound of rain as well as the sight of night fall. The rise was jarring, and perhaps more the responsibility of a clack of thunder and blind of lightening. Nevertheless, the remnants of the orchestra remain, as does the music we play. They remain residual in my auditory senses, the Goddess-beat still sounds in my heart, and the sheet music is now burned into my soul.

Be Well