Body sensations, also known in the medical world as the acronym BS, they are a strange and unusual thing… actually they are feelings that resonate in the body during a moment of being fully aware and mindful of your thoughts, body and whole being – all at once.

At promptly 4:00 am this morning, I awoke to a body sensation. It was not a bad one, just one that I have only experienced once before in my life. In that moment when the clock read before o’dark thirty and the body sensation was present, suddenly I was a kid again and it was a hot sticky July day.

I was transported to another time, when I was a teenager… literally; I was 16 and the summer was too hot to do anything. My great Aunt Jo was not long for this earth, her shell was slowly expiring and her spirit was waning little by little. I was not working, well not for a any company; I was helping out family. Been there, done that more times then I would like to count.

Mom would drop me off in the late am and pick me up on the way home. I would help give Aunt Jo her meds and make her breakfast. She would primarily stay in her room, watching soaps until she would slowly fall back into her mount of pillows and sleep the day away. I would check on her from time to time and help out around the house. On one peculiarly hot day, the kind of day that is beyond sticky; no matter what you do… you just stick to everything and nothing is cool to the touch, not even ice.

Aunt Jo was finally asleep.
finally.
the day was dragging slowly.
the heat was exhausting.
she was getting a nap.
she was asleep, right?
I deserved a break.
what was 20 minutes?

Let me back up for just a moment, I loved my great Aunt Jo. She was a good woman, she was also a hard woman. She just like my grandmother were from another time, another place… a time when life was much harder and they were both born into the wrong time.

so again I ask you, what was 20 minutes?

With all the fans going full blast and the windows open, I surrendered and lay on the couch in Aunt Sandi’s house, the one on Kiwi circle. You remember right? That house it was the one with the bathroom slab leak, a garage door that got stuck and a backyard that flooded when it rained too fast.

It also had one very important thing or should I say spirit… it had SNOW.

Snow was this great, amazing all-white lab. She had this softness that beamed from her eyes and a tail that would pound again the wall when she was excited. She was the very definition of a “good girl.”

On that very sticky, hot and long day in July, I surrendered and lay on the couch. It did not take long and I was gone… drifted off into a hot and melting limbo. I did not think much of the position I was in, I was on my left side with my head on my arm with the palm of my hand open and stretched out.

My sleep lasted less then 30 minutes, I awoke to a sensation… a rather wet one to be exact. I awoke to Snow’s wet muzzle and very long pink tongue licking my fingers. Slipping between them and wrapping around them with great speed.

“Ah, Snow” I muttered, “just five more minutes. Come on, give me a break would you.” Her muzzle, no make that her tongue would not stop. Slowly I open my right eye, then my left looking at her with a slight heat stroke crazed look. She looked so happy to see me, her eyes shining and not to mention that tail beating the living daylights out of the side table. Thump, Thump, Thump… better get up I thought before she breaks the lamp.

Those were the very words that I awoke to this morning at 4 am, “Ah Snow” I caught myself saying them aloud. I was even more surprised to discover myself waking to the body sensation of a wet muzzle with a very long and imagery pink tongue licking my fingers in my left open palm where my head rested on my arm… just as I did 17 years ago. Without fighting the moment, I let the sensation sink in. I actually got up, slightly dazed from my interrupted sleep to place my hand in the street lamp light coming from my window. I guess I was almost expecting my hand to be wet… it was so real. It felt so real. I knew it could not have been my dogs, Mandi was in her house and Raven was with mom; not to mention my dogs are part Chihuahua – they are vertically challenged.

I do not know if 8 weeks ago I would have paid any heed to that or any body sensation. Thanks to my MBSR classes, I now know better. Because of my personal spirituality, I truly believe dreams are a way of the mind communicating with you. A bridge between the conscience mind and sub-conscience mind, a way of sending signals from you to you.

Telegram or make that a email for one.

There are times when you need to remember a moment, a lesson or perhaps a memory. There maybe an enlightenment that you need in that dream, that you would not gotten anyway else. So what could I have stood to remembered from when I was 16…

After all I was a teenager, so I knew everything… right?

I did know that I wanted….to be a graphic artist, to learn how to drive, have that really cute boyfriend and well, here is a thought… to spend time with my family. The last one is very important and dearly significant as my family had just healed from the deal breaker rift that had been created when my grandmother had died 3 years earlier. A rift that I was not sure my family would survive and yet… I feel my toes are slowly, achingly hanging and clinging at the same time to that very edge, yet again.

How did I end up here, of all places… again?

What were we talking about again? Oh dreams, messages and lessons… can’t forget lessons… life is full of them. What could have I stood to remember from when I was 16… perhaps the message is not what was when I was 16 but rather… what Snow has gently reminded me of with lots of kisses, wet ones at that.

And she did.
she reminded me that…
you have to be patient with life,
with loved ones,
with one’s own self,
things that are good are old,
things that are old are good,
it is best to live in the moment,
let go and let it be.

let

go

and

let

it

be.

Thank you for once again Snow, for waking me with wet kisses, for bringing me home, for helping me remember… above all else, that it is okay to let go and let it be. For those of you who did not have the chance to know Snow, she left us later that year… I am sorry to say that I do not recall who left first… her or Aunt Jo. Here is my favorite photo of a white lab, it is what Snow would have looked like.