Libby's Journal - April

April 1

I am SO happy it is finally April because I am SO looking forward to finally having warm weather again. Although the Amazing Nature Girl likes to brag about how tough she is in Winter, she definitely prefers Summer. This morning, I woke early as I usually do and slipped out of bed to go downstairs and get the coffee started. I also had to get the newspaper and glanced out the kitchen window to check the thermometer as I always do. It was 50 degrees -- practically balmy -- and raining, but not very hard.

I put on my sneakers and went out on the front porch smelling the rain and listened to all the birds. I felt exhilarated as I stepped out into the rain and jogged down the long driveway to the gate.

Built into our gate we have a mailbox and a separate box for the newspaper, which on Sundays is as thick as a phone book because of all the advertising inserts. On wet days the delivery people put it in a plastic bag to keep it dry.

As I pulled it out of the box, the rain suddenly started coming down harder. I didn't mind that a bit because I love rain even when it's cold. My only concern was keeping the paper dry so I tucked the blue plastic bag under one arm like a football and sprinted back up to the house. I felt so much energy and joy I could have run all the way to the top of the hill, but I resisted that urge.

When I got back inside and kicked off my shoes I could hear voices in the kitchen. It was Andrea and Dana pouring themselves some coffee. I dumped out the paper on the kitchen table so everyone could take their favorite sections. Andrea grabbed Sports and Dana picked Lifestyle & Fashion. I usually start with Home & Garden while Mona is a hard-core national news junkie.

Just then, she came around the corner, her always-wild red hair a delightful mess. She was still naked and I could see delicate pink creases from the bedsheets on her white, freckled skin. I fell in love with her all over again right that second, but heck, I do that a lot -- almost every day.

When she saw I was dripping wet, Mona dashed over and threw her arms around me. She loves hugging me when my skin is wet, whether it is from rain or my own sweat. Actually, "hugging" is an insufficient description. She likes rubbing her naked body against my naked body until whatever wetness was on my body is equally spread on hers. I love doing the same to her when she is the one who is wet. As you might imagine, this is a major turn-on for us both. When it happens on a warm summer day (and we are alone), we usually end up having sex within about 12 seconds -- often on the stairway because at such times our bedroom seems so very far away. Carpeted stairs are actually a pretty good place to have sex, but I think it is impolite to do so when one has houseguests. As Mona and I performed our little drying-off ritual, Andrea and Dana did their best to look like they were still reading. When our now equally-damp bodies finally parted, Mona's eyes told me she was using every ounce of her willpower at this moment to resist smooshing her face into my vagina right there in front of company but that a person only has so much willpower. She has very expressive eyes. I turned and sauntered out of the kitchen, breaking into a dash as soon as I was around the corner -- with Mona in hot pursuit. We made it all the way to our bed this time.

* * * * *

I mentioned here last week that Grandma was not doing well, and yesterday my mom called to tell me Grandma was being taken to the hospital.

I drove out there immediately and went straight to the hospital, and even tho mom had tried to prepare me for what I was gonna see, I still wasn't prepared when I came into the room. I had never seen Grandma not wearing her dentures for example. Mostly tho, I had never seen her look back at me vacantly, not knowing who I was.

And when she did seem to recognize me she called me "Maggie," which is my mother's name, and asked me if I'd done my homework. Grandma has called me Maggie before but it's just when she's fumbling thru all the girl names in the family trying to get to mine. She always did it in order too, starting with my mom and going in succession from the oldest granddaughter down to me -- but she always knew it was me! I sat there holding her hands and trying not to cry, but I am terrible at that and tears were just streaming down my face -- and that's when she recognized me, squeezing my hand and saying "there, there Libby" like she did five million times when I was growing up crying over one thing or another.

The first two days or so were the worst. She was hooked up to breathing apparatus much of the time, not a ventilator with tubes down her throat, but just an oxygen mask and a pump which forced the air deep into her lungs and forced a deep exhale. The doctor said part of the problem was that her lungs weren't working hard enough to expel the carbon dioxide and that the CO2 buildup was what was causing the dementia. That was the first time we realized that her mental state was just a temporary result of her physical condition. Nobody had really told us that the first day or so. Everyone was so focused on her physical situation and what was scaring us so much was that she seemed like a person with Alzheimer's.

So now, a few days later, she is stable physically and being moved to a transition ward where they get you ready to go home, and most importantly she is back to her old self mentally with her sharp clear eyes and her witty sense of humor and her opinions about everything. This morning she was watching CNN and explaining to the woman in the other bed the whole history of the Arab-Israeli conflict! That's my Grandma!

I'm gonna stick around here a while longer to help out. Mom and Anna both have jobs so I can be at the hospital all day if I need to and I can help out at the house and by going to grandma's house to water her plants and feed her cats and get her mail and stuff. This is the most useful I've been to anybody in a long time. Mona loves me and "needs" me emotionally, but she doesn't need me to do anything for her like this. I cook and clean and so on, but she can get along without me in that way. I miss her desperately of course and I miss my own home and bed, but it is also pretty interesting being home in the house where I grew up, sleeping in my old room in my old bed.

Of course, I've been at my mom's house hundreds of times but that has been when visiting with Mona. When she is with me we sleep in the "guest room" which used to be my oldest sister's room and it has a big double bed in it, while my old room just has a single bed so we never use it when we are here together.

* * * * *

April 6

I forgot I wanted to write about my Easter experience this past Sunday. We went to the church I grew up in and there were several people I knew who it was nice seeing again. I go back to that church now and then when visiting home, so it was not the first time I'd been back for years or anything.

It's a lot bigger than the church I go to at home, and much more traditional. All the old-line Catholic stuff, no inclusive language, etc. But I'm pretty flexible about that stuff. I just take in what is good and filter out what is not.

But the thing I wanted to write about is that I had another of my "serendipity" moments in which I feel blessed by some little thing that happens. (I have written about this on my Spirituality page.)

This was, of course, just a couple days after I'd gone home to be with Grandma (who continues to get better by the way), but at that moment she was still pretty bad off and when the priest asked for whom we should pray I spoke up and told about her being in the hospital and asked for prayers. I managed not to get too choked up to speak, but the tears flowed like a faucet.

And then immediately afterwards this nice thing happened. In the pew in front of me there was a couple I didn't know and they had a little 18-month-old Korean girl whom they had apparently adopted. I watched them and felt good knowing that there was always the option of adopting for me if things don't work out otherwise.

And this little girl was very beautiful and she started staring at me with a calm expression on her face. Her mom was holding her on her shoulder and so the little girl's face was looking backwards. Right at me. Would not stop looking at me. I smiled back and flirted with her, but she didn't really respond - just kept serenely staring back at me.

We were singing one of those beautiful Catholic hymns that I love but whose words I do not believe, and I heard a woman with a perfect voice singing right behind me, as if she were singing just to me. And at the same time these little black eyes staring into me from the other direction, never looking away, hardly blinking. I sang along with the unknown other person, as if she and I were the only ones singing, and I harmonized with her.

Then suddenly I felt a rush of emotion flow through me, as if there were an electric current going from that baby's eyes, through me, to the voice behind and then back again in a wave in which the voice and the eyes somehow belonged to the same entity. It was a Serendipity Moment, in which everything that happened did so "by chance" and yet perhaps not entirely so. It was an Athena Moment as well. What impulse moved each of us to sit where we did? Might The Spirit have brought us together with a nudge here and a whisper there? I have been in situations a few times when the fact of me being there right at that moment became important to someone else. And looking back, I knew I almost didn't end up in that spot at that time had not this happened or that happened.

And yes, there was a real person behind me. I glanced back at her as the song ended and we sort of nodded to each other, but then after the service she was gone so I didn't get a chance to talk to her.

* * * * *

April 8

Okay, everyone who is tired of hearing me talk about infertility, religion, death and hospitals raise your hands. I thought so. Well, now I will reward you for your patience by talking about SEX.

After having been separated all week, Mona and I have been having sex like rabbits all weekend. Actually, more like dolphins. Rabbits may breed quickly, but apparently dolphins boink each other multiple times per day -- and do so for pleasure, not just instinct-driven procreation. Also, there is lots of lesbian sex going on amongst lady dolphins -- who are equipped with human-like clitorises. I read about this in a magazine article, but would love to see the topic covered in one of those nature videos quietly narrated by Richard Attenborough. ("The two females are now assuming what marine zoologists call the 'tribbing' position. . .")

But when I got home Friday, we only had about an hour to have sex like dolphins before our closest friends arrived for our usual weekly dinner. Everyone knew I had been away so Andrea and Dana had brought pizza.

I was really happy to be with my friends, but I was distracted by also feeling extremely turned on. Part of it was just the fact that Mona and I hadn't had enough time together yet, but also I was starting to feel a rush of mania, probably triggered by being home again, if only for the weekend. And because I was manic, even though I am routinely naked with these particular girls, I was awash with renewed awareness of just how sexy it feels to be naked in a group of clothed people. I've done that a bazillion times, yet when I am manic that simple experience feels as electrifyingly erotic as ever.

And then there was Mona. As some of you have witnessed, she gets rather frisky after a few drinks. That's not usually a problem because I can manage her . . . when I want to. But I suddenly realized that at this particular moment, I did not want to manage her. And therefore I knew without question that if I were to give Mona the slightest hint that my defenses were down, then . . . something would almost certainly happen . . . right there in front of company.

And I wanted it to.

And it did.

Now, if SOME of you are expecting me to actually describe right here exactly what happened next, well, you are mistaken. I will simply not do that . . . because heck, I already described it five minutes ago on my Sex page (which for some reason gets more hits than my pages on spirituality or mental illness). I do try not to repeat myself, so those of you who simply MUST know the explicit details of what happened that evening, well, I suppose you'll just have to go read that entry, won't you?

Okay, the rest of you, let's talk about theology. Now the Apostle Paul wrote in the first letter to the Corinthians . . . he wrote that . . . um . . . is anyone there? Now where did they all go?

* * * * *

I am back at my mom's house and spent most of Monday & Tuesday visiting Grandma and running errands for her. When I wrote about her last week, she was in really bad shape, both physically and mentally, but now she is doing great and is back at her little house.

My grandma is a little thing -- barely over five feet tall and doesn't weigh more than a bird. She even looks like a bird and had the metabolism of a bird -- always moving -- flitting around-- and chirping away the whole time. They can't keep her in that hospital bed, and she won't use the wheelchair. She has to wear the oxygen tube under her nose so she wheels the oxygen tank around the hospital corridors, chatting it up with the more lethargic patients on the floor.

By the way, if you have ever wondered why I am such a chatterbox, well, it's genetic. Skipped a generation tho. Mom is more quiet and steady and sensible than either her mother or her daughter. Well, at least this daughter. I guess my older sisters are a lot more like my mother than they are like Grandma. I'm the only one who got her genes and we are trouble when we get together.

When I was in college and at whatever stage of my drawn-out nervous breakdown, Grandma took me to New York City and we had a great time.

But we had no plan for what we were doing . We just walked everywhere and took the subway lots of places -- often in neighborhoods where two white chicks shouldn't go alone (tho we had no problem at all) -- and we didn't see a single Broadway show and we didn't go to the Empire State Building or to the Statue of Liberty, but somehow we sure had fun. With No Plan.

Grandma has gone her whole life without a Plan, but she has lived life well -- and that is what you are supposed to do with your life. Nobody knows why we are here. Nobody knows if there is a God. (Some people think they know, but they don't). But there is one thing we can all know for certain, which is that we are here now and it is a Gift to walk the face of this planet. We are blessed to have our scant time here, breathing this fine air and seeing with these amazing eyes the beauty that so surrounds us that we cannot help but tread upon it.

* * * * *

April 17

Man, the weather has been great the past couple days -- suddenly in the high 80s after a really cool spring so far. And it is driving me NUTS cause I am not home cavorting naked in my garden where I belong!

No, I belong here too. We got Grandma moved back to her little house and she is very happy to be there. She is still using the oxygen 12 hours per day, mostly while she sleeps. I stayed at her house one night, sleeping on the couch, but it wasn't really necessary.

Anyways, I'm glad I did this and I'm coming back to check on her regularly, but Thursday I'm going home to my sweetie and I'm gonna stay put for a while!

Sure hope this great weather holds. This is my kinda weather and being here so much really makes me appreciate all the open, private space I have back home. When I was a kid I occasionally sneaked outside naked in our back yard to soak up some sun or let the rain fall on me. In winter, there was just a little portion of yard that was private, but once the leaves were full most of the yard blocked from view.

Of course, Mom and Anna have been accustomed to my naturist habits since the summer before my senior year in high school when they came home early one day and caught me cavorting naked in the rain out in the back yard. My little secret was out of the bag, but it was a completely anticlimactic reveal that did not in the least surprise them. Ever since then I have felt free to go naked whenever Mona and I are visiting.

Usually Mona is with me so this time was a little different, partly because I was sleeping in my old room. But also a really sweet and sexy thing happened which I have acquired permission to write about here, though it does not reflect well on me.

It was late at night and I was taking a bath, but when I was done I realized I had forgotten to get a towel out of the linen closet. So I tiptoed into the hallway dripping wet and took a few quick steps to the linen closet, which is right next to Mom and Anna's room. As I reached for the closet doorknob, I heard it -- a sighing moan. I knew instantly it was my mother's voice, and I realized one second later that it was a sexual moan. I froze and then heard it again -- another faint moan, and then another, now slightly louder. Bathwater continued to trickle down my body to the carpet, but I didn't dare open the linen closet door for fear that its old hinges would squeak. I instructed myself to just slip quietly away to respect their privacy, but my feet did not move.

Though Anna has been my mother's best pal since kindergarten, those two did not actually become a romantic couple until I was in college. So hearing them having sex was an absolutely new experience for me, and I SO wanted to eavesdrop on more of it. I stood there air-drying in the hallway listening to moan after moan -- feeling guilty but too enchanted by the sound to pull myself away just yet. And then I became obsessed with something else. Was Anna . . . using her hand or her mouth? This definitely sounded like oral sex to me, and my brain involuntarily imagined the scene. I really, really wanted to see that because I am a terrible person with limited impulse control, but I knew I couldn't. Not because it would have been the wrong thing to do, because I was totally willing to do the wrong thing in this instance. No, my urge to commit an act of incestuous voyeurism was being held in check by logistics alone. The hallway light was right outside their door so any move I made to peek in their doorway would be immediately visible to them. Or would it? A person making moans like that would probably have her eyes closed, and Anna's head would be turned away from me if indeed she had her face in my mother's pussy -- omygod, did she?? And oh, I told myself, what a sicko pervert I must be to want to see that. Yet I confess I absolutely would have looked if Fate had given me that chance. But just then my mother's moans suddenly escalated in both intensity and volume and I fled on tiptoes to my room as the sound of my mother's orgasm chased me down the hallway.

The next morning at the breakfast table, we were all a little awkward because even though they didn't know I had been in the hallway, they knew it had been loud enough for me to have potentially heard in my room. The whole situation gave me the giggles and I quickly made my confession. We all laughed so much and for so long that our eggs got cold because for the longest time we could barely catch our breath let alone chew food without spitting it on each other.

* * * * *

April 19

I'm  home!!!!!!!!

And boy do I feel good about it. I got home yesterday mid-afternoon and Mona took off work early so she could give me a proper welcome. First she "welcomed" me in the kitchen and then I led her outside so's she could give me a really really good welcome outside on the grass in this amazingly beautiful weather we've been having all week.

We ended up under the magnolia which was so wonderful cause it has been in peak bloom this week and the petals have slowly begun to drop. Magnolia petals are among the most sensuous things God made when She created our world.

So we were under the magnolia making love in Mona's favorite way, which meant I was on my back looking at the sky with the sun in my face, filtered thru the pink blossoms on the tree. And blossoms were all around me on the grass and falling on my face and on my chest even at that moment. I saw and felt them land on me and each was an individual experience, and all the while I could look down past them to Mona's blue eyes and wild orange-red hair down there between my legs, and all I had to do was look up at the magnolia blossoms raining down on me and surrender myself to the experience.

* * * * *

April 21

After being cooped up in clothing so much lately, I have really enjoyed the freedom I have here at home where I only have to get dressed when I go someplace. I did my grocery shopping yesterday, but today I had no errands and spent all day outside. It was in the high 50s and low 60s and quite sunny. I finally got my not-so-early peas in the ground and moved two rose bushes that weren't getting enough light. In the afternoon I spread compost on my vegetable garden and then turned the whole thing over with a shovel. That was a lot of work, but I enjoy doing that kind of physical labor. That's what bodies are for -- to do stuff with (and carry around our consciousness).

Before Mona came home, I had a nice bath and then put music on in the kitchen and danced as I got dinner started. Mona, Dana and Andrea all got home at close to the same time. Once dinner was in the oven, Mona and I slipped off to our bedroom to do what we normally do in the kitchen this time of day when we do not have houseguests.

So the four of us had dinner and I even drank a little wine because my doctor said you don't have to completely abstain until you actually become pregnant, which I am not. Then we got to the main purpose of the evening -- dance lessons. Andrea and Dana want to at least be able to waltz at their wedding reception and maybe do a simple foxtrot also, so me and Mona are teaching them how. Tonight was our first session, but we agreed we'd just casually do this once a week or so between now and then so they will be well-practiced and confident and can enjoy the moment. And heck, this is a very fun thing to do anyways. We paired off with Mona dancing with Dana and me with Andrea. We were originally going to switch back and forth, but realized this way makes the most sense because Andrea needs to lead, which Mona does with me.

* * * * *

April 26

If you are wondering, yes we did manage to squeeze in a turkey baster session this month. I didn't write about it because the details are getting repetitive to talk about and I had other things on my mind.