I walked Lulu this morning down a ribbon of white sand road under a tunnel of Live Oaks hung with Spanish moss. We are in farm country, fields of watermelons on one side, cows on the other. I hear the Bobwhites in the fields and the mockingbird in the trees.  The pouring rains of the last three days have gone and blue skies and cool breezes have appeared in their place, a rarity for Florida this time of year.  It's wonderful.  I feel at peace here.

I find myself almost forgetting who I was with David.  He only came with me to Florida one time, so most of my experience of myself here is as someone other than a part of us.  I do find myself thinking at night that there is something I need to do and then I realize it's call home.  And it's sad not needing to do that.   I loved being married, being a part of a partnership, and I miss it. 

The wedding yesterday was sweet.  A crazy, chaotic, cacophony of Hope.  I keep thinking about how we humans live from hope, even if we don't think we do.  We have weddings and babies, we plant trees and gardens, we teach and learn and plan for the future.  All signs of hope.  We can't do without it, no matter how much we might like to believe we can.  I was full of mixed emotions yesterday.  happy for the young couple, remembering with both joy and sadness David's and my getting married, not sure where I fit in. I am not a single woman but I had no partner to dance with.  I am too young to be a widow, not ready and yet having no choice.  All I could think to tell these young people was to say I love you, every day...three times a day...even when you don't want to.  Tell him, tell her.  Often.  And hope and dream, you can't do anything else anyway so you might as well go with it.  Enjoy the hell out of it.  Every minute of it. 

A cacophony of hope....I like that phrase.  It is everywhere around and within us, it defines us.  It's everywhere we look, so loud that it becomes the background noise of life and we don't even realize anymore that it is there.