I drove by the house you see on my site opening a month ago. It is the original house of family, if you will. The one my grandmother was born in in; the one she shared with six siblings, her fresh off the boat Welsh mother, barely 19; the one that carried all the tales of her beginning -- actually all of ours -- in Colorado in the 1880s. It was, she said, "the sticks".

When I was younger my mom would drive her out to look at "the old place" as it was known.
I was always with them.
"That's it," said the lady in the front seat, the one with face wrinkled with time, old lady shoes and always a modest floral dress of e-z care.
"At least I think it is," she'd murmur.

How could one be uncertain, I wondered. Wouldn't the image of home be emblazoned on your memory, even if you were now over 80 years old? Even if you'd moved away as a girl going into High School, at the turn of the 1900s?
Since she said the same thing every time we drove out (it wasn't a far drive from the city) we agreed that yes, that was it. It just looked different with time.
And it was now in the hands of someone trying to make a museum of the many little buildings there.

I loved it. It was like seeing the set of all the action of the story I'd been given. There was the door jamb where the rattler crawled over and her mom killed it with a buggy whip. There was the wing where my grandmother would steal away to read other people's newly arrived magazines, as their house and general store was also the Post Office and Livery of the town.
There was the outbuilding just beyond where she ran around to avoid a "talking to" from her father for sassing her mother, tho the details of that story she didn't fill in. What kind of sass? What did a "stern talking to" really mean and why was she so afraid of it? Never had she raised her voice to me, much less a stern talking to, tho she was my only, daily caregiver from birth to leaving for university far away.

So at times of feeling alone, so alone, in this world after the death of her 40 years ago, but now also after the sweet passing of my family
—mother, father, friend along with the entire cast of my memoir on the pups, both cats and all the dogs,
all in the last five years--
I often drive out to just look at the old house.

I sit as we did then, in my car, gazing at the door, seeing sometimes all of those souls of family standing together at the transom, as if a photo applied over the real structure of the stone house.
I sit and look.
To connect with the feeling of love.
Feeling the breezes
of life rushing by.
Of times past or passed, as she would say, but I realize I never knew how she spelled past or passed. While both are accurate, each pings the heart in a different way.

This time, I noticed that the land and little house it is on
  is for sale.
My heart stopped. There is no way I can afford to buy it as the city suburbs lap at the edge of what had been remote prairie
and another suburb is eager to
eat it up.
The windows panes now have wood falling down inside from age and cold.
It is a relic.
And time is rushing ever by.

The images in my head flood of the place of love, the place of life now "past" or "passed". I hope I never forget them and that with my fading pictures and rushing moments I will carry them.
But to where?

Another day is gone.
Another life has been lived. This time my own.
There is only the love we feel
that tells us we have lived.

We are but souls rummaging around
place and time and heart
in the falling light.

I've just released a new edition of
Training Two: Learning the Language of Love
From Two Dogs who
Share a Brain.

Why?

Because some tales are never quite done.
Because as I reflected on the story
after all the leavings from life these past three years that have defined my days and nights,
I found
I had more to say,
more realized,
more understood
about the mysterious connections and communications we share with those we love.
The invisible ones.
The Knowings.
The wifi of Unconditional Love.

The thing about memoir is you live it forward.

Even when you think it's over and done,
you find there is more you now understand
of the past
in this forward time.
Little things that escaped your blurry understanding but. as with good wine, suddenly become more clear,
more savory, more salty,
more of a bouquet that scents of a moment
that will never lose its freshness
as life goes on.

In this case, there were yet more lessons learned as I wrapped up more leavings of life.

They are small.
Readers of the first edition would barely notice.
A past tense here; a foreshadow there;
a bolder statement about Love and the invisible communication it creates between beings
dared to be added.

It is with time that we find the courage to say
what we know,
what we experienced,
and maybe to better see
the gifts that were given
and not feel embarrassed by
it all.
Now.

To celebrate the new edition
I am giving 20 percent of every purchase
to a dog rescue.
I am so in awe of the love and care, long hours, total dedication and pure heart expressed
by the many I now follow on Instagram,
I will start with those rescues.
Send your suggestions!

And so I see a year has passed since I last visited myself, my blog, the writing space of the author E.D. Montaigne.

And quite a year it has been.

Shortly after the last blog of May 2017 (a year!) my dear mum spiraled into her final decline, and my life spiraled into hospice care of her in her beloved cabin. Who knew that her joy of hearing the book read to her would become our final times of connection before she went on a star journey, first in mind back to her childhood — which was a place of fears and joys as it is for each of us — and then with her final passing last summer.

And who had known this would be the path when at Christmas-time before that she murmured to me,
"I think I'll be going soon..."
I let that statement 'set' for a while in the quiet as we watched snowflakes gently fall on her mountainside, and then I slowly circled back around to gently ask if she knew how soon?
She thought for a moment, the former First Lady of Colorado who now sat with her hair bedraggled, her clothes a bit spotted with food, as we washed hands together, and with a toothless, cheeky grin quipped: "Well, not that soon...!".

That's what I love about memoir.
It gives a chance to relive again such irrevocable milliseconds and see, finally, the humor and the love that encapsulates each to make a life.

I've not had much of a voice since she passed last summer. And then, with my father's sudden passing just this Spring, well...
it's been quite a year of wordless heart-heavel,
and I know there isn't such a word but there is now.

I've felt too overwhelmed to meet Sadness at the writing table and have tea and a talk.
But she would not want it this way.
She would want a story
to be told.
To find the meaning and the humor
the love and the laughter
that brought grace to her life as well.
She knew Story is the stuff of magic.

So, we begin again.
with a book launch of the story of Love incarnate,
as taught to me by my pups,
learning the language of love from two masters of unconditional love.

And I begin the gathering of the story of
Return Voyage.
Perhaps that voyage has already begun
for I see that I am suddenly
alone,
that 'home' has left me
and it is for me to
find the meaning of
return.

I've been reflecting on what it is to
take leave
of a place, of a home, of a refuge
of a time in one's life,
of life itself.

Training Two has the story of living
and also of leaving
and I think back a lot to this time last year
when Cimi, the female of my beloved pups-duo,
was still here on Earth
teaching me,
loving me,
keeping fidelity and faith with me
from her blankety-bed always just near me.

I miss her — well I miss them — a lot.
I feel the pups near betimes.
Other times it's too quiet still.
Presence and yet distance
in a dance of time and
laws of life we don't fully understand
while still on this Earth.

How can nearly a year have passed when it all feels
like yesterday?
How can an entire 16 years of our journey together have meandered away
when it all feels
so fresh?
That is the magic of time and of
taking leave.

But as I start my next project, entitled Return Voyage,
 I'm confronting even more
leave taking.
What do you take with you
when you're leaving the only home
you've ever really known and loved,
but also what to leave behind,
as you reach for a new life?

We leave times,
we leave places,
we leave things,
we leave hearts,
we leave who we are,
we leave who we've been,
and we choose carefully
what comes with us,
if we're lucky enough to have time to make
those choices.

My great-grandmother took a tea pot with her
on a ship as she sailed by herself at age 12,
from her home in the hills of Wales to here,
our home of four generations.
That was it.

I wonder what I will take
as I leave it?

What would you choose?

I awakened this morning,
feeling something near.
Was it dream or a flicker of reality?

I then found on my bedside table
a simple index card with this written on it:

"Walk with me as my Beloved Companion.
Carry yourself as if you are
So in Love,
So honoring,
So honored,
So Loved.
You Know Love Is
and in feeling it,
saying it,
radiating it,
Boundaries cease."

It's in my handwriting, but as so often happens
I don't remember writing it.
I know it was from a time last year,
while hospicing my beloved, blanket-bound Cimi-girl
(whose story is part of Training Two),
through a dark night of restlessness
(mine not hers).
Likely I was reaching for something to soothe
each of us.

It is a reminder for me
—especially as today is Good Friday--
that Love, being energy,
can be neither destroyed nor created,
nor killed,
nor die.
It just is.
Waiting like gravity for
a heart's connection to make it visible.

Thank you to whatever magic brought this to my attention again this morning,
via a lost index card
scuttled under other items
on a bedside table.

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
while
Loving someone deeply gives you courage."
Lao Tzu

As some of you know, my dear mom has dementia.
She has lost her memory.
The story of her amazing life and career is
lost to her
but not to those of us who knew her Story,
the good and the bad,
the times she triumphed and
the times she hoped to forget that were
"tough,"
is all she says now.

 I was reading to her the manuscript of Training Two before going to print. She always had a good ear for complication and 'the obtuse,' and reading aloud is the best version of Editor that I know.
If it's clumsy to say, it's clumsy to read.
That comes from my mom, who was a gifted professional communicator 
on radio.

As I read to her the manuscript, she was joyful.
Rapt even. And would immediately ask,
"Oh! What happened next!!"
I'd sit for a moment and smile with her.
She was gleeful in her curiosity,
(which was a relief; there's no hiding
 emotions these days, for either of us).

But then--
As I sat with her, smiling at her delight in the story,
I'd remember that she was with me, part of my life, part of the daily life of my girls and pups and the busy-ness and ups and downs of those years.
Her quips are even in the book...
But to her this is a new story.
Never before experienced.
She wondered how it all turned out...

Is this why we write memoir?
To capture times that grow dim and foggy,
whether in our own experience or in others,
to capture moments that speed over the horizon,
so lost to us now?

This is not my first book. The others arrived in the post box with joy, excitement, and ok, it's done.

But the arrival of this particular book is like holding Love in hand or paw, daily. Each morning I pass it (it is of course still sitting on my table) and touch the cover image of the pups. I smile whenever I see it.

I've been wondering why.

And then I realized -- it's a little concrete piece of space in which Love still exists.

For months I put off finishing the book, knowing that when the last line was written, that part of my life might feel "over" or "done." Wrapped up.

I didn't want that. For as rocky and grief-filled and joy-filled and challenge-filled those years of my life proved to be, I realized in writing that I was truly
alive.
I was writing a part of my life journey that was filled with laughter, love, sorrow, loss, more Love, and more realizations and growth.
It was the time of my life.

After another period I was equally sure was 
the time of my life.

And isn't that what we learn in memoir:
Realization
That the time of our lives is now, daily,
moment to moment,
and looking to be held or touched each morning.
remembering and living again
Love?

So it's out! It's arrived! It's a story of Love incarnate and of losses and growth, and futility and humility and joy and Love.
I can share it with others and have given
a few to good friends.
I hope they read past the first few chapters
to realize:
It's a story of the Language of Love
taught by masters in it.

Someone asked me last week how I knew when the story of the pups in Training Two began?
At what point did I realize it would become a story to be told,
or that even would be told?

Good question, I thought.

For a moment I was lost in memory, the 'movie' of each scene of those early days with my beloved pups Cimi and Caspian,
running backwards through my mind.

Before I continue, maybe I should explain:
When I was little, and the old home movie projector came out for an evening of watching the 'home movies of a recent family car trip...',
I would watch the images flutter on the screen, everyone doing their same schtick for the camera.
It was entertaining. Mildly.
But after watching the same movies of family
waving at the screen over and over,
after everyone left the room for other interests,
I would sometimes watch the movies by running them backwards
while rewinding.

I did so because it brought comic relief to what were otherwise
the same old images.
I sometimes wondered if we knew what happened the moment
after we waved...
but that was a magically deep thought and too much for a child
to wade into much farther than a passing wonderment: 
If we knew what happened next,
would our wave or smile or gamming for the camera
have changed?

So when asked this question, my memory went back
through the 'movie' of life with what became my beloved pups,
looking for the 'first moment I knew...' it would become a story.

As a writer, this is fun digging.
As a human, it causes a long, silent reflection that is sometimes worrying
to friends, who wonder if I've been seized or am ill.

After due consideration, I can say that I knew this was a story-movie
upon entering training class with The No-No Lady.
The characters were too rich there to let the images go.
The sparkle in Caspian, of his seeing it as the game it truly was,
too much fun ('tho I didn't feel it be a game, he did).
But the clincher was walking Cimi forward
— well, trying to — actually dragging her forward on her back,
step-pull, step-pull, step-pull
and then swiveling her round to go back
to our place during that first lesson.
The 'image' of this moment,
trying too hard to become a 'M and C of my littermates'
and my utterly helpless ineptitude at that moment, had Memoir
and  "movie"
all over it.

From there the story spun itself into time and space,
from fated moment of discovering them in PetsMart,
to fateful moment of life when they departed 13 and 16 years later.

Did I know what would happen after this first hello,
or even after the first goodbyes?
Of course not.
But that is how Story goes, poking at each of us to wonder at it,
even as we observe it, feel it profoundly,
and live it, all at the same moment.

Life is really a miracle, isn't it?

Was there a moment when you 'knew' with your beloved that this would be a memory or a Story worth keeping?

And all of a sudden it's here! In paper and ebook form, the story's  place in the universe carved out by paper, will, intent, photos,
and sheer stubborn insistence
that it is a story worth sharing.
I'm not quite hoisting statues around a square in a parade, but I feel like it!

I've put an excerpt up
here in theportfolio.
The book is Available Now!!
At Amazon in both
paper and Kindle.

Please do take a peek at the new bit of compassion and love
I have tried to carve
into our worldly realm, the result of a lot of missteps and barely hanging on
to the roller coasters life gives us.

The book is released
and it's a miracle it is,
especially to its author... :-)

More about the winding journey of writing it to come in this space soon.

I like to tell stories.
I always have.
I like to roll around in the dirt of them, smell the earth, hear once again the calls of crows (or are they ravens? It's always the same question), and visit again a time and place and moment when a life changed. It may have changed for me, or for someone I loved, or for someone I just met, but it was a blink of an eye when suddenly everything was new that would be remembered but likely never lived again in just that way.
That moment remembered is where
story begins its journey.

When some of us think of memoir, some of us start crying. Not that story again.

But in telling a story, I learn where things started, how I or they or we all grew, what I felt then and
more importantly,
what I learned on the journey
that was a string of seemingly unrelated moments
that became
that story.

Even when told again.
Especially when told again.

Everything changes.
And a glimpse of
wisdom is discovered in what was
simply a journey of moments strung together.