dream cafe

I'm sitting at the bar with Joe, sipping a mojito, trying to get my mojo back.  Writing mojo, reading mojo, cooking mojo, appetite mojo, joie de vivre mojo ...  I'll settle for any one of them.

Truth is, I'm sipping a cucumber martini but the writer in me knew mojito worked the sentence, so maybe I'll grasp that as mojo and be content with it.  I'm certainly not content with much else.

My life with Spoke was bliss.  My life with Spoke was defined.  We had our rhythms, our patterns, our traditions.  Life was so good, until that day it wasn't.

It's been six months now.  The white plastic Baylor bag stuffed with his clothes removed in the ER, still sits in the corner of the mud room next to my green, rubber garden boots.  I am not ready to look.  I am not able.

I watch Joe run the bar.  For hours, I watch Joe run the bar.  I think.  I think a lot.  And then, last call, I think some more.

There's a new life awaiting my design.  I am free to make it anything I want it to be.  Oh, yippee.  How does one build a life they don't want?   

Had it been possible, the day after he died, to plop me smack into my new life, it might be easier.  Old life gone, new life here, that was then, this is now, get over it.  

But it's all on me now; my days are slow and hours can seem to stand still.  I'm not yet well, not creative, not willing, not myself.  The new life is laying itself at my feet in baby steps allowing reality to settle in; redefining will take time and it's a steep, long, and winding path. 

My rhythms, my patterns, my traditions will emerge.  Hopefully, one day I'll be joyful again. 

But for now, I'll sit with Joe at the bar.  It is a home away from a home that's not yet a new home.  




Dream Cafe, Lakewood, Dallas