she_seems_familiar_somehow lostgirl do you know her? yes her, you know, the one walking surefooted and swiftly down the beach in her bare feet. she's wearing a tankini, sporting a nike sun visor and wearing coach sunglasses, exerting herself just to relax. as her slim, physically fit stature gracefully moves without effort, she breathes easily as she says 'hello' to a brand new day. it is just minutes past sunrise, and already she is silently contemplating what the next chapter of her book will contain. you might guess from her obvious concentration that she has daily conversations with herself, and you'd be right. she got the idea years ago, and for sure, she remembers where, but she would never divulge her source. the tiny lines around her eyes and lips might drop a slight hint of her age, but what you won't guess is that she is ten (or more?) years older than you think. you might not know she often thinks back upon her long and prosperous career, and what she remembers most is not the financial compensation of dollars traded for hours and service, as much as the miracles she has witnessed, especially those she made with her own hands. she hides it well, but will never be able to disguise to what extent she misses her children, now grown and off in their own new worlds, happily building the lives she helped them to form. she invites her beloved grandchildren for extended visits, she entertains them by educating them culturally, she tells them stories, imagined and real, and teaches them to write and how to paint. you might not know she loves to cook, and that she has a plan to write a cookbook someday. you also might not know that she loves snow and harsh winter weather much more than eighty degrees and sunshine. it might surprise you that she still skis every chance she gets each winter, continuously attempting to hone her skills while skillfully flying down the white packed, challenging black diamonds like a teenager, hidden and anonymous behind a mask and goggles.  you probably know that she reads like a student starved for information, but you may not know that she still gets book recommendations from a game she played many years back. she immerses herself into the various characters and learns more and more from one title to the next as she comes and goes from her world to theirs.  she hides her emotions stealthily and never shows fear, though she feels it acutely and daily. but she tames it by filtering it all into words. when she sits down at the end of each day to tap across the keys on her i-mac keyboard, she sometimes forms ecru letters into words and stories on an oddly hued red screen, while other times she adds paragraphs and if she's lucky, chapters to her unfinished manuscript. she once wondered often about 'what might have been,' but she now builds these thoughts into her own characters and invites them to play out the unfinished ideas. she prefers a glass or two of patz and hall chardonnay to accompany her when she writes about everything and anything, even sometimes nothing. she was reminded to write years ago, and actually she hasn't stopped since. you might recognize that people who don't write may think her behavior is somewhat odd, but she doesn't seem to mind what others think. her world is restricted, insular by her free choice, and her few close friends are treasured right along with her family and her husband, all deeply and completely loved without condition. she is well aware of certain events throughout her lifetime that have forever changed her but that have helped to shape her future. she is also wholly aware that her future is built on the events and choices accompanying each new moment. you would agree with her as she laughingly considers that her life up until now could have been made into a full length movie or perhaps a thousand page novel. but what you may not know is that she rejoices knowing that this cannot be done just yet. the end you see, still remains uncertain and undefined as time continues to unfold her story....             100801 what's it to you? who go blather from