Tis the Season to be Quiet

Just thinking about how blessed I am. I've had several wonderful invitations to join family and friends at a distance for Christmas this year. Family in Michigan, Texas, friends in California and a couple of other places opening their hearts and doors to include me knowing that this is a particularly poignant time for me. How much I love them, not only for the invitations, but for the understanding that this year is one I'm not yet ready to share, one I need to spend at home...very possibly alone.

There is a magic sometimes in the quiet; a meeting of heart and soul that allows cherished memories to swirl and dance, to intertwine and caress the spirit, not sadly, but with all the revisited joy they held when they were originated. There is magic sometimes in the quiet.

I think this is the season for that for me. I'm looking forward to it.

From a distance...from now on.

Once upon a time I think I enjoyed the riddle of "why". You know, there was an odd romance to trying to figure out what made others do the things they did that sometime left you guessing, and, if it was a matter of the heart, stinging. There was an ego need to try to reverse or alter or prevail or even win, and, when determined enough, winning was often the outcome. Or, was it?

There is a unique joy in living long enough or maybe wise enough to no longer be driven by fruitless challenges. No one is more amazed oftentimes than you when you find yourself shaking your head 'no' and easing away without malice or anger, frequently still feeling all the emotions of caring or love if there is a person involved, yet not needing to subject yourself to the hornet sting to prove your worth or theirs.

Whether agape, phileo, or eros, friend, family, or intimate, accepting abuse, thoughtlessness, disrespect or disregard is not a prerequisite of proof of commitment to genuine love. True love can be just as eternal and just as genuine... from a distance.

Photo Credit: ©Peggy Love
Image: ©Nudgies Greeting Cards - All Rights Reserved

A Haunted Memory - The Day the President Died

I kept a scrapbook of the events as they were unfolding when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. I was a school girl and the grief was impossible to comprehend, so page by page I posted the images as they were printed in the newspaper that spoke to our collective grief as a nation.

Eventually that scrapbook found its way into a box that found its way into the dark corners of my parent's garage. One day, a couple of years ago, I found it tattered and brittle, the pages fragile and the images fading, but touching it then and touching it now is to revisit those moments as if they happened moments ago.

Fifty years sped by and I am grieved that the nation we knew and enjoyed before this event never returned.

50 Years Ago "The Knoll Frames"

 

Fifty years ago she was a 13 year old hidden in a janitor's closet with her 9 year old brother on the 7th floor in a building in Dallas, Texas in Dealey Plaza. Her mother's fiance, the janitor, had slipped them into the building so they could see the President's motorcade as it drove through, but she had slipped something else into the closet with her. It was the second-hand movie camera the woman her mother worked for had given them...the camera she'd captured something on that day that would forever alter the course of her life...

  "The Knoll Frames"

 a screenplay

 by Peggy Eldridge Love

For additional information  Click Here.

Happily Ever After

Interesting day. An extraordinarily decisive day. Making large steps even when they aren't easy, even when they carry with them a few tears. It's just time. Time to move forward, move on, and to do so while goodness still prevails.

Photo Credit: Peggy Love

Sometimes It Is Only a Caboose

Sometimes It Is Only a Caboose

by Peggy Eldridge-Love

Last Monday I thought I'd leave home early so I could make our business bank deposit before I got caught up in the demands of the day. We've recently moved so I decided to take a route that bypasses much of the work day traffic and the ever increasing street repair projects that clog our city's roads. I remembered that there was a railroad crossing near the bank when you go the direction I was heading, but I could not imagine a train halting traffic during rush hour when people were pressing to get to work on time.  The thought of encountering a train was fleeting.
            As I rounded the curve near the bank where the railroad crossing is located I was stunned to see nearly a dozen cars in line awaiting the slow moving train that was already on the track to complete its crossing. My first reaction was one of anxiety and immediate thoughts of alternative routes started to flood my mind, but common sense took over. The bank was less than three blocks away once I crossed the track and any alternative route was going to be filled with its own obstacles. I decided to wait it out.
            To my surprise, I found myself using the time to quietly reflect and meditate on things my busy life rarely allowed me to give any quality energy. I made mental notes of people I needed to reach out to, small tasks I needed to complete, and thought about what I needed from myself to ensure I was being considerate of myself. Before I realized it I was saying a long overdue prayer of thanksgiving for all the many blessings I hadn't had time to even realize I'd been receiving.
            I noticed the lights on the truck in front of me come on and saw, to my delight, that the long, slow moving train that had been crossing the track had completed its journey and the track was now clear. I happily shifted my car from park back into drive preparing to move with the rest of traffic the moment the crossing guard rail lifted. It was at that moment I looked down the track and noticed the big bright headlight on another train coming from the same direction the one that had just cleared the track had come. About that same time I also heard the loud piercing warning whistle coming from it and my heart sank. The flashing lights that had just briefly gone out were blinking red again, and the guard rails we were expecting to lift stayed stationary. Another train was coming right behind the first!
            The sense of well-being I'd gained while waiting for the first one to past was lost in a flash. Anger, frustration, impatience and disappointment replaced the magnificence of those few uninhibited moments. I began to think about all the negatives that I was sure were awaiting me now that I'd be forced to wait on the passing of another train. Prayers were being set-aside for expressions of disgust and then I saw that what was moving across the track was not another long, slow moving train, but rather it was only a caboose.
            What a lesson that was for me! What a revelation of the different dynamics of being in a state of thanksgiving and the all too common state of negativity we tend to fall into so quickly and easily if we are not vigilant of our spiritual state of being. I made myself a little promise, and I hope you will too. Next time it seems that what's approaching is probably a trainload of trouble I won't panic, instead I'll remind myself that in all likelihood it's only a caboose.

Copyright 2008 Peggy Eldridge-Love

Photo Credits: 

Image credit: sgbf59 / 123RF Stock Photo

You have what it takes to sell Avon

You have what it takes to sell Avon: It's more than selling beauty. It's earning money by simply making connection and letting your personality shine. Learn more today.

Don't Wallow In It

I can still hear my mother’s loving, yet stern caution to “just don’t wallow in it” tiptoeing through my mind’s ear as my heart deals with disappointments or misdeeds by others now and then. This caution from her didn’t come immediately in those days. She knew I was a little girl, an adolescent, a young adult, a striving career woman, or a young wife trying to filter my way through my own unfolding life. No, she would allow a time for a heartbreak to wreck its temporary havoc or a disappointment from a lost opportunity or poor result from a valiant attempt to run its course, but when she determined that any further nurturing of self-pity was entering into a totally unproductive zone she would gently draw me aside, take hold on one of my hands while I dried tears with the other, and, in her low, beautiful, reassuring melodic voice she would begin to tell me all the reasons life had taught her not to wallow.

Given to drama as I was sometimes back then, I didn’t necessarily want her to cut my pity-party short. I was enjoying the so-called ‘sweet sorrow’ or that ‘justified outrage’ I was feeling. Darn it, I’d earned the right to suffer for as long as I wanted to I’d find myself thinking, but try as I might I could not drown out her truths, her logic, her sharing, her tools that she was offering me to move to a higher place within.

Lately I find myself wishing my mother were here to talk to our nation, to take it by one of its hands and have it dry its tears with the other so that it too could hear the voice of reason she would impart with such tact and grace as to why we’d all wallowed long enough. I really wish she were here to do that because undeniably we all need a road map paved with love to take us to that higher place within.

  ©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013

Toxic People: Emotional Food Poisoning

This is from another blog that I write entitled "The Rattle Within". Thought I'd also share it here.

Toxic People: Emotional Food Poisoning

I recently had a sudden encounter with food poisoning. I was awaken by violent cramps and a revolting feeling that lasted for about an hour, an hour in which my body was doing everything it could to eliminate and expel the violating intruders which had invaded my health.  Fortunately it was short lived and about a half-hour later I was thanking God for the return to physical calmness and  thought how I never wanted to feel what I’d felt during that episode again. The thought that rushed to mind immediately thereafter though caught me off guard, but I’m certain it came from that same source of healing as that which had relieved my physical suffering. I am sure it was a thought from God.

Rather than forget how you felt, my mind seemed to say, you want to remember this agonizing twisting and turning when you encounter people whom you know are invaders in your life bringing with them toxic dysfunction, deceit,  needless drama, anxiety, confusion, chaos, and hurtfulness. Just as your body fought with all its might, even though for a while it was painful and difficult to endure, to drive out whatever you had consumed that was poisonous, allow your wisdom and your truth to recognize and fight a sometimes equally as painful and difficult internal battle to loosen and expel that or those toxic poisonous people causing you anxiety from your system as well.

Not easily done in many instances. Especially not if we are dealing with friends, family, long held relationships, or perhaps those whom hold sway we believe over financial health or well-being. But recognizing the sound of this ‘rattle within’ is a great place of beginning, a great opportunity to begin the process of letting go.

©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013 

Parched

Words fall,
raindrops on parched soul,
not enough though
to end
the lingering
drought.


©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013 

Photo Source: 123rf
  

"CENTRIFUGAL FORCE" REVISITED

Every now and then I revisit this very early poem I wrote. Today is one of those times.

CENTRIFUGAL FORCE

I am a butterfly
who does not
yet understand
centrifugal force.
©Peggy Eldridge-Love-All Rights Reserved

 Photo Credit: Dimonspace

Hail to the Chief!

I revisited something I wrote in 2009 that now seems to me to have been somewhat prophetic, sadly. Here it is. I wonder, what's your take on where we stand in this regard today?

Hail to the Chief!

August 15, 2009 at 9:46am

Whatever your personal politics, however you voted in this or other elections, it is the attack upon the office of the President of the United States that ought to concern you most as you observe what is being fanned across this country today.

We ought to be ashamed of ourselves; those of us who say we hold this country dear. To look and listen, to hear and ignore what is taking place in an attempt, not to save us from some impending social monster that is encroaching upon our future well-being, but to paint a picture of fear, inferiority, and hatred, without calling it what it is and doing what we can personally to squash it. To ignore it is unforgivable.

I remember another time like this, a time when hatred and allegations flew, when they were falsely created and perpetrated across the airwaves by right-winged voices carefully designed and orchestrated to reach and trigger a certain element of the nation’s population into heinous action. I remember feeling as I do now, listening then as I am listening now, and seeing, sensing and, with deep trepidation fearing, what the outcome of such hate pandering would be. It was 1994 and 1995 and it cumulated with the domestic terror attack upon American citizens in the Oklahoma bombing.

The flagrant distortions of truth, the shameless manipulation of facts, and the recruitment of segments of the country known for their vulnerability to hate-baiting and racial prejudices in order to dumb-down the most revered office in our nation’s history and to suddenly lessen its worth because of its current occupant is an act of hubris that, were it once achieved, would be virtually irreversible on countless fronts. The world is watching us! They celebrated with us when the majority of the people elected the current president, and now they are shaking their heads in dismay and disgust as they see what is unfolding.

These efforts to “cheapen” the office of the Presidency now “cheapen” and will minimize the office of the President of the United States from now on, regardless of who is seated there in the future. It is a slippery slope that we cannot afford.

©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2009

Until

Let's talk until the cows come home

If home is where they want to be

And perhaps by then we'll solve life

And all it's misery.

c Peggy Eldridge-Love 

Day Break

All the things I want to say
play musical chairs
in my frontal lobe.
Questions older than dirt
 swirl as though
 typhoon swept,
 landing here, there,
 places hard to reach,
 yet always easy
 to hear
 in the dying wind.
Is it, did we,
 when, if,
 maybe?
 Surely time will tell
 when light returns
 and day breaks.

  ©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013

A Widow's Whisper

I used to be

the most important person

in the world

to someone.

Not anymore.

Now I am

a fleeting thought perhaps

on an otherwise

unhurried day

once in a while.

I used to think

I’d grow accustom

to knowing that.

Now I realize

I was really,

really, really

wrong.

©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013 
Photo Credits: Peggy Love

Real Pulp

Letters splattered across sacrificed trees
Pressed down, squeezed to pulp
Bear the stains of the pains
That claw forth in single syllables,
Four letter cries for mercy.

Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013

Here's the key to The Trilogy!

 

Here's the key...

to three romantic suspense tales you won't be able to put down

 and you'll never ever, ever forget!

HIS WIFE'S DIARY

Was he really so callous he was getting it on 

with his lover while she was in the other room

dying... 

THE JEWEL THIEF

What's the real story behind the gorgeous TV anchor

she's depending on to help launch her career

and the intriguing man who is determined

to force his way into her life...

THE VIEW FROM SUITE 2100 

Some dark secrets aren't secrets at all, especially

if they get into the hands of the one person

who hates you most, the same person who is closest 

 to the man you are just about to marry...

Now you can get all three of these romantic 'love bites' and novellas under one cover when you order 

THE TRILOGY: A DIARY, A THIEF AND A SECRET

by 

TESS ALLEN

Buy THE TRILOGY Now!

How to Feel Better about Yourself in 5 Seconds!

How to Feel Better about Yourself in 5 Seconds!

Inhale and exhale. There's nothing more relevant to feeling alive than breathing...Enjoy! 

 

This started off as a quirky little wake-up I posted to Facebook this morning, but the more I thought about it the more it resonated with me. How easily we take for granted the gift of breath, the wonder of life, and the joy of living. How amazing that we do.

 

If we are plugged in to any form of media, whether TV, radio or the Internet, we are bombarded with the heart wrenching news of how many of our fellow human beings aren't able to exercise this privilege any longer, often due to unexpected circumstances, far too frequently due to tragedy or crime. How are we processing those realities? Where are we filing that knowledge away? Do we really know?

 

Is our grant of a brand new day something that truly penetrates our inner levels of gratitude, a fact that we recognize for some unique reason we have again been privileged, or that we understand is a wondrous continuous opportunity to do something that will improve our own life, the life of those we know and love, and the world we still abide in? It should be.

Do it. Inhale and then exhale gratitude for your 'now'. If you feel the rush of that knowledge make each one you find yourself aware of today a memorable contribution to your being. It uniquely belongs to you and you uniquely belong to life.

©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013

DE-SEN-SI-TIZE

de·sen·si·tize

Moments circle
the mantel clock
tick by tick
yet it stutters,
hesitates like a comedian
skilled at timing
for shock value
when truth is funny
only because its pain
dangles like long blond
tendrils on a tie-dyed
brunette in a rewound
nightmare with staring
roles played by men
with gavels, women
with high pitched voices
staring down hope
with dead blue eyes
on a Dali canvass.

©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2013

Photo Credit: Image credit: wavebreakmediamicro / 123RF Stock Photo

Want to buy, find, or order works, interview or contact the poet? Email requests HERE.

TRIBUTE TO 9/11

Two poems from 9/11

No Thought of Surrender

(Written September 11, 2001)

Anguish spreads blood red

across heart and mind

numb with inability to

comprehend the unrightable

written eternally

on our national psyche.

Never began today with

blue sky and warm

smiles and no thought

of nightmares raining

ash and cinder,

no thought of surrender

of all we once knew

as norm.

Our knees bend with

involuntary motion, while

our souls roil in

anguish,

and blood red images

of all we hold sacred, dear,

safe, secure

spreads across our broken hearts

and minds and the cry rises

in unity:

dear God help us.

Peggy Eldridge-Love

YOU BECKON

 

For This Purpose

(Written in response to September 11, 2001)

We grapple, of the opinion

there are answers buried deep

in the inner linings of

our experience.

We are humbled, broken into

shards of the humanity

we had almost forgotten

was the purpose

of our being here.

Peggy Eldridge-Love

YOU BECKON

These two poems I included in my first poetry collection, "You Beckon". They were a direct response and reaction to September 11, 2001. Thank you for allowing me to revisit and share them with you today on this twelfth anniversary of that horrific event. We are still searching for the same answers we found ourselves asking that first day.

NOTE: If you have a problem ordering "You Beckon" from the link provided please EMAIL REQUEST HERE and we will handle your order directly. Thank you!