The Dramatic Hollywood Rabbit

                                     Ah, to be a young woman in love, seeing your future in the eyes of your lover.  Love conquers all!  I am glad she didn’t know the things she would have to leave behind, the things that would be lost.  She only saw the adventure on the horizon. Neither of our families had much money, just typical middle class families.   We had enough and a bit more.   My parents gave us some money for the Christian wedding in the US and we added to it so that we had the wedding we wanted.   Hubby’s parents paid for the entire Jain ceremony, in India, three months later. We considered ourselves, very married. A year later, we told my family we were moving to India for a year maybe three.   My husband is an only child and he wanted to make sure his parents were OK.   Did he know that it would be longer than three years? I choose to believe that he lied to himself as well as me .   We arrived in Delhi just before Christmas, I’ve never understood why I agreed t

          It’s difficult being a liberal when you grew up in a conservative area.   I pay my taxes.   There are days I cringe as I put my signature on a check that is actually more than my mother brought home in a year.   Yet even though it hurts I feel I am doing my civic duty in writing that check.   I have family members who have relied on welfare, food stamps, and disability.             When I was younger my mother made $4 more a month than was allowed to receive food stamps.   We were lucky she knew how to stretch a dollar and she had a mother who would loan her some cash, I do mean loan not give, only IF things got very tight.   Which is why  we ate a lot of spaghetti and tuna noodle casserole.   I worked from the age of 13, granted initially it was babysitting, but I have worked in restaurants, a nursing home, hotels, and libraries.    Which is why  I believe in vocational training and that any legal job is worth doing if by doing it you can feed, clothe and house your

           I don’t think I was supposed to see him.    He stood there in the early morning gray haze of dawn.   I woke early and made myself a cup of coffee.   Leaning against my 4 th floor kitchen balcony I looked out as cars whizzed past below me and gazed at a man dressed all in black.   His slender build silhouetted against dirty grey brick of a boundary wall.   The corner he was standing on was missing half of the grey tiles revealing the dirt below.   He just stood there for several moments seemingly motionless.   As I wondered who or what he was waiting for I looked around and saw no one else.   Not in the darkened balconies in the complex behind him or on the streets his corner entertained.   I leaned on the balcony rail with my fore arms as I slowly inhaled the heady scent of my sweet milky brew of java.   His clothes hugged his body like a second skin.   Lithe is the word that came to mind as I watched him not move, slender with a hint of corded strength.   What made me t

Hubby and I were legally married, but we wanted and needed to be married in front of his family.   Personally for me being married was never about the piece of paper, it was standing in front of our loved ones and saying this is it, we are in it for the long haul.   In the US it is more about two people coming together.   In India it is two families joining, which made it imperative that my parents-in-law give us a traditional Jain wedding.   I had only flown once before and that was in the US, this time I needed a passport and was flying halfway across the world.   Life was funny because it was during this trip that I realized the perks of having a US passport.   Hubby was with a well-known consulting company.   I worked as a temp. Before we could go to India I needed to get an Indian visa. Luckily that was fairly straight forward and done by mail.   In addition, we were flying Air France and they were offering a deal where you could break your journey in Paris for three da