Believe It...Or Don't

     The old crone has been around since the beginning. She keeps coming back because she believes in herself more than she believes in Him. He's just good company when he isn't in one of his darker moods. The ale is what ails HIM. She leaves it alone. Just two sips of alcohol and she can get as dark as a double midnight rainbow, truly colorful shades of indigo that sparkle like starlit silver arches bridging the gaps in moments of millenniums.
     This is the last fall of the house of his/tory, HER story is worth considering.. She doesn't care if anyone ever reads it but she knows how to make them want to. She has a way with words. She has a very sultry voice whether she's speaking aloud or crossing your mind like a naked, redhaired nymph. She's the reason Maine is WICKED good, Daddy's girl because four females was the last straw for her Mama. Mama didn't even want to name another female because then, you couldn't swap it in the nursery with a Mom who had too many sons.
     She believes that the only Hell is the one that you believe in and she believes in NOW. She also believes in ghosts, sasquatch, magic, and aliens. Unidentified flying objects are what crazy people throw at each other when they're pissed off.
     She knows things because she dares to believe in possibilities and manifestations. Maybe she knows how the story ends and maybe she'll dream up another possibility.
     Its Fall and the leaves have just started to turn in the little area of woods behind her home. She lives in a tiny community of many moons where she can hear the waterfalls when the rain has been as heavy as it was last week. October really came in witchy, woman!
     You'd think she'd hate bonfires but she loves to dance around them. She wanted a cast iron cauldron suspended over her hearth stone in the center of her cabin. Not all of her dreams came true but most of her nightmares did.
     She just read that Jackie O. suffered as badly as she herself did back in the fifties and sixties even though they were a generation apart and at totally opposite ends of the social ladder of New England.
     She sighs deeply, peacefully. Just now, she isn't feeling any discomfort that she can't alleviate without committing suicide. That takes practice since she has a very keen albeit annoying memory. That doesn't mean she's never wrong; nobody's always right whether they're balanced or unbalanced.
She cares too much but she's learning to let it BE. It HAS to BE. That's the story. Can she PROVE it? Be very careful what you're asking for. She owes none any proof but her higher power has had just about enough of your lack of faith in anything.
     She doesn't always get what she wants but she'll always have all that she needs. Abandon her and the loss will truly be yours. She is mother by natural instinct. She never raised any who couldn't be held accountable for themselves because that is what her mother and father taught her in her first decade. Survival in Hell? How about  Maine winters along the lower Kennebec, crossing tidal ice breaks. There's safety in numbers and girls were generally more responsible back in the fifties. It was the last five decades of the last millennium. It is all about the changes and surviving them.
   Emotions are the oceans everyone crosses alone. They may laugh or cry in gathered crowds but they feel alone without someone to believe in for the love. They teach their young that emotions must be controlled or others will consider you to be crazy. All wild creatures instinctively avoid people because survival depends upon it.
     She has survived six and a half decades among her memories in an age where Alzheimer's plagues accurate personal histories. She has a unique form of PTSD that allows her to descend into personal Hell or ascend unto passionate heaven depending upon her audience. She always has one even when she's home, alone. Time is simply a mind game. She may be a month shy of sixty-five or seventeen in '68 and an unwed mother. Oh, the shame of that when you're from the class of  '69 and he has to draw you a picture!
     She prefers romantic fantasies of roguish kilts and celtic roots or nearly naked bucks and bear skin rugs. Who needs reality when you create beautiful dreams because you lived through the worst nightmares. They don't scare you anymore. Even the worst that can happen has already happened more than once and you lived because Mama said you would.
     She really hated Mama most of her life. Karma brought peace and understanding. Mama is still the more beautiful but she will always be Daddy's girl and that's something Mama always envied. She wonders if they'll get to be sisters in another incarnation. She owes her mother that. She'd love to be her sister.
     It surprises her to consider coming back for another lifetime. She'd always insisted that she was done after this life. Hell, she'd written a stack of diaries in hard copy. They sat on a dusty shelf beneath her television where the ladies were discussing vaginas and virginity. Times really have changed, haven't they, girl?