These are my hands and feet.

These are my hands and feet.  As you can see they are as ordinary and original as they come.  I consider myself a simple woman.  I am 46 years old this year, an older mother to be sure.  I sometimes worry that I am running out of time but then I wonder what that might mean as surely a certain maturity has come upon me in recent years.  Looking back, I see how I might not have seen things as clearly as I do today.

I do not require much in the way of luxuries anymore.  I don't long to paint my toenails or fingernails.  I can't even imagine why women indulge in such vanities.  The most I strive for is to provide a loving life for my children.  If I would long for luxuries it would not be for me but for my children.  I would hand them all the things they never had if only I could.

As I sit here in limbo of employment, a guest in my friends house, I only long for food to eat and shelter from the rain.  I long for experiences that will strengthen my relationship with my children and relationship with silent being within everything.  It's a precarious perch on some days and during some moments to be present for what my eyes behold in the concreteness of the cramped housing and the dirty floor that longs to swept if there weren't so many things strewn about on it.

It's nearly 4 pm now and still no offer just silent indifference.  If I could do anything in the world I would not even leave my children to go to work.  I would make a living from the home I do not even have yet.  I am sure there are many others who would follow that if they could but they are few and in-between who can take a seemingly broken life and make it work.

I had a chance to talk to my friend who is so graciously sharing his meager home with us today.  It is indeed rare that you might find a friend who knows first hand the struggles one faces in these waning times.  My friend who also lives well below the poverty line is a kind and gentle soul.  We met when his only prized possession, his house, burned down about 4 years ago.  Since then though a photographer by trade for years, he lives off of his inadequate disability check.  He has a heart condition that keeps his health from ever healing.

At any rate, we talk about how we might make an sustainable living wage (in case my job never materializes) perhaps together by pooling our talents.  I will look for things for him to photograph and he will photograph for my writing pieces. 

These are my hands and feet.  They are attached to my body but they do not belong to me for I am not really just that.  I am so much more if only one cares to look beyond appearances.  Write to me and tell me who you are.  We are only here to share what we have with each other.