on time.

Getting up early in morning puts God on your mind.There's a quiet you don't get when you lazily drag yourself out of bed--

at

10

am

people

are moving, cars honking, voices blaring, TV's talking...it's the sound of loose conversation. everyone and anyone's words all at once.But at 5am it's quiet in my house.It's cold and crispy outside. No foot prints. Just cold.The lights on my Christmas tree provide a warmth until the sun rises and wakes up the rest of the world. But I am already up. a step ahead. With God on my mind.

have you

have you ever laughed and cried real hard at the same time? had all of your emotions fighting for a space on your face? last night I felt overwhelmed. Trying to prepare for this important job interview today & Thinkin about decisions made in one realm of my life versus decisions made in another. knowing that everything is everything and that soon all of them would come to affect one another. I must be strategic. I wished for my granny. I wished to lay my head in her lap. I cried. I took from a drawer a cassette tape, one of my prized possessions retrieved from the dust of the firey aftermath 6 years ago. It was a tape she made me on my 13th birthday. I lay on the floor in my quiet apartment alone. The tape blared with voices of our childhood. Voices of our home. Where there was always someones company to enjoy and be annoyed by. there was a kind of innocence and security, cause who would have figured we'd turn out like this. Good and bad. I cried some more. We were just having a birthday party, and we just all happened to live in one house, and we just all happened to be poor, and we just all happened to be happy underneath it all. I laughed. and it just all happens so fast and to be so close and yet so far away. She connected us all. sometimes we whisper about her, we say "mecca mecca, 10-4", "kunfiada", "fastentu", "deus ba ku bo"-God go with you. "remember when we was little and grandma Dona` used to......." I wish I could have known her as a woman. I miss her. When she died a little piece of all of us went with her. When our house collapsed in the heat a little piece of my childhood went with it. A dichotomy the tape brings back to me everytime I hear it. but now I'm a grown up girl in a grown up world. Living and making my own decisions. I am okay. moments like that are bittersweet. brought peace and chaos simultaneously. I laughed and cried real hard at the same time. you know what they say...."joyyyyyyyy and pain, sunshiiiiiiiiine and rain!" lol *exhale*