I am nearly always sorry afterward. Nearly. My closest friends and my sister know my moods and how my mind works. They understand that there are times when I am not feeling myself and I try, with everything I have, to pick a fight. If someone decides to fight back, knowing that in the grand scheme, it is irrelevant, but crucial to my psyche, then all is good. When I am left to my own design, I deal with the the only way I know how. The way that works best for me. I throw things.
Yep. I throw things that shatter and break. Tonight it was a Bone-China cup. A wonderful sound does Bone-China make when it shatters into a hundred pieces. It seems that, as that glass shatters, so does all the hatefulness and stress that is, at the moment, overtaking my body and mind. When my husband was living, he became adept at dodging flying objects. I hit him once and, after the first pump-knot, he learned that I aimed to hit. We laughed about it, even though, at the moment of impact, it wasn’t funny. Fulfilling and comforting to me, but not funny. Not at the moment. I hurt him, physically, and shocked him otherwise. I was sorry, but not enough to promise to never do it again. I did it again, a few times, but he had learned to gauge my moods and knew when flying objects would be part of his world. He would never fight back with me though. And so, the outbursts to my sister and friends continued, escalating after his death, and now back to normal outburst frequency. It amazes me sometimes that they don’t just tell me to get lost. I am so very blessed.
It is a rare thing for me to get so stressed that I resort to that. If the truth be known, when I stopped at my sisters house last evening, it was to provoke a fight. She knows better than anyone that sometimes, I just need to have it out with somebody and is, usually, a willing sparring partner. She wasn’t home, though, and I couldn’t find enough hatefulness in my heart to take it out on my niece and brother. So I turned to my friends. They must feel so special to get a message a couple of times a year that tell them just how badly they have pissed me off. I know, were I to receive such a message, I would just cry; maybe for days. But they know how my mind works. They understand the need for release and none of them, so far, have held it against me. I have, however, had to offer an apology or two when I forgot my boundaries. I don’t forget my boundaries as much as I ignore them. But I never, ever want to hurt anyone’s feelings intentionally, although, on occasion, I do without meaning to. For that, I really am sorry.
I used to apologize for myself all the time, but in the last few years, I have decided that I am who I am. And who I will be is yet to be determined because I haven’t crossed that bridge yet. My friends know me, my family understands me and I am at peace, for the most part, with myself; what else on earth could anyone ask for?
Proverbs 27: 5-6 ~ Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.
So while the rest of the country was caught up in the celebration of freedom, I found myself caught up in the lives that live under the beauty of that freedom. I spent the Holiday weekend with a bunch of rough, cigarette smoking, tobacco chewing men, tough, driven women, brave 
kids of varying ages and a myriad of horses, mules and dogs. A small group they were, but nonetheless, an interesting bunch of people who held a common interest. On this particular weekend, they brought their campers, horse trailers, wagons, bridles, saddles, grills, tables and vittles and set up camp. In a flat piece of bottom land in Scott County, VA, what was just a bare place became a starting point for the week ahead. Each day, beginning on Independence Day, the riders planned to mount their horses or mules and the wagon masters to hook their equines to their wagons and take off for the day. There was friendship alongside friendly rivalry, but at the root, there was a love of something that bonded like glue. Photographs can only take me so far and without the intimate knowledge of how a group of people thrive together, the story stops at the image.
fortunate enough to have an invitation to this event and was, after a few hours, accepted as part of the gang. My main goal, secondary to photographing the happenings in and around the camp, was staying out of the way. I asked questions when there was something I didn’t know, and kept my eyes open for anything that could be used to document what these people were about. Though there was plenty of coming and going, I was drawn, not inexplicably, to the lined faces of the older men, the laughing smiles of the children and the
character of the animals. Shadows, shades, contrasts and light have always fascinated me and here, with these people, there was no shortage of real life happening right before my eyes. No one posed for photographs or changed their habits in the event that they might find themselves caught on film. They did what they had come to do and paid little mind to the gal with the camera around her neck. After three days trolling the bottom field in the hot sun, I had a “tog tat” around my neck in the outline of my camera strap and a collage of photographs that reminded 
me, as I developed the RAW files in Lightroom, why it is that I so love being a photographer. In each face, line, smile, grimace, frown and laugh, there was evidence of a Creator who is able to take the same features and make them different millions of times over. I am thankful for the opportunity to, for just a little while in a span of time, be a part of something that previously had been foreign to me. These people work hard, live hard and play hard. They have lives outside of the wagon train, but for this stretch of days, they come together to share what they love.
And this time, I was allowed to be a part of it. So to those who made these images possible by doing what they do and being what they are, I am grateful, for without a subject, be it human, animal or nature, a photographer is just a person with a gadget hanging around their neck. I don’t want to sit by as life happens around me and let lessons that I could have learned pass me by. I don’t want to regret not learning what makes people tick, what makes them laugh or cry and what makes them want to work so hard to accomplish something. I don’t want to let the colors in the world blind me to the brilliance of shadow and light. I want to be more than just a gadget rack.
A Photographer's Heart 