ninety-nine girlfriends 2020 Love & Gratitude Party!

Amy baskin’s moving Poems. Thank you Amy for sharing!

FALL DOWN SEVEN TIMES, GET UP EIGHT

It's February, and cobwebs from October's spidersstill festoon the corners of my rooms.I could take a broom and a wet rag to themright now, but that requires more effort.

I could ask someone else to do it, but I haven't yet. Spring's around the corner and most people I knowtake the first buds as signs of hope, while cloudsdiffuse light and leave no room for shadow,

all of us vampiring around. The furnace is groaning its death rattle; it has lost the strength to heat.I started today with a list of ten "must-do's," and I've finished part of one and then napped for an hour

because that single effort took all day.But—allow me to bear witness to the kindness of each obstacle.This morning, running past the neighbors with my earbuds in,stubbing my trick toe on an eighth-inch of raised sidewalk,

I thought to curse the homeowner who hasn't yet repairedthe path, but I got up instead. I stopped, held my footfor a moment, smiled, and thanked the pain with breath.And later this afternoon, while calling roofers to fix an attic leak,

I got on my knees, bowed down to the stained, soaked plaster, and acknowledged my generous teacher, adversity,my most constant mentor, whom I can always count on to find me.I want the ease of sunlight, and elections won handily by my favored candidates.

I want prepared meals, and love to hunt me down and lift me up out from the storm cellar. But sometimes, waking, I know this steady diet of monotony and defeat will nourish me. I place my bare feeton the wooden floor, catch a splinter in the meat of my heel,

and I'm startled by the truth—true as anything I've learned,that each gremlin, each spanner in the works, each sabotage of my best-laid plansis a summoner, a dare, a lover vying for my attention, insisting there is still time to notice that I am bleeding again and standing up, persistent, alive.

I WENT TO COMMON GROUNDS AND WHAT HAPPENED NEXT WILL ASTONISH YOU!

And when the news pinned me down in bed,

I dared myself to write a list: three things I valued.

Faith, hope, and charity. Those were three. My pen kept moving. My hand continued: love and peace.

Then peace, a calm I felt myself there—then love, a furnace, pumped heat from core to fingertips,

urging me to write down names of friends, then things we've done together, spanning four continents,

which made me think of the unmet friends—possibilities awaiting me in future days.

I yawned and stretched and got out of bed and went to soak in a silent pool of potential.

A baby bathed there with her mama. We talked for half an hour without making a sound.

Her eyes and energy met my own. When she smiled, I smiled. When she stopped, I stopped and waited.

I met her, splash for splash. We giggled. Thank you, baby girl, for bringing me out of my head.