February 22nd, 2016.

Blue jeans.  Amazing how the idea of a day working in jeans rather than usual business attire can energize a fifty-year old woman.  Somehow the ease of casual attire frees up the morning mirror time so that I am not multi-tasking make-up rituals while driving because I spent too much time hunting for pantyhose.  You would think then that on such a day I would have embraced the older two-lane highway drive to work rather than the freeway.  But no. I chalk it up to the freedom of ‘jean day’ – the freeway.  Perhaps it was the idea of twenty minutes of pretend time for myself in which I could blast music while driving a bit faster than I usually would on the two lane.  (Please understand, faster to me means I break the sixty-five mile per hour “sound barrier”…. Imagination. Can’t beat it…I also call it ‘burning the carbon’.  An outdated notion that highway speeds somehow clear out the pistons and any other part on a combustible engine..) Ah, yes, all due to ‘blue jeans’.  Suddenly I am a mechanic extraordinaire…

There I was, in nirvana, blue jeans and blue Jeep, when I saw her.  She was perhaps eleven years old, a girl I will never know and probably will never see again, but I will remember her face forever as she looked at me as they passed.  I almost waved until I saw her eyes.  She had the beautiful smile of equally beautiful dreams – distant and timeless.  

As they passed I recognized the expression, one which I myself had had as I had gazed out windows, sometimes seeing myself in the reflection of window panes, sometimes that of the rear view side mirrors.  I would look at passing trains, loaded semi-trucks and logging trucks or..one particular little farm tucked among scrub oak trees and overgrown hay fields.  In my imagination of that unremarkable tiny ranch I tended to animals and machinery, working my homestead.  I imagined the feeling of wholeness.  What would a woman look like who lived such a life?  What would I look like?  What would I be?

All within seconds.  A dream within seconds which I never spoke about, never really interrupting my day or causing me any distress.  A ripple.  A ripple of a dream.

That dream was over ten years ago….Seconds of time that are framed in my imagination forever.  Follow your dreams.

The Blue Horses. Gifted to me by the artist.