Humpty Dumpty

Today I saw a short eighty year old woman carrying her chunky 10 year old grandson's guitar on one shoulder and knapsack on the other, as he ate a chocolate bar and stayed out of the way of oncoming traffic.
I smiled at her.
She smiled back.
If it makes you happy, sister.
Italian grandmas are in much better shape than the American pale, fresh-from-the-beauty-salon-they-all-have-the-same-hairdo grandmas who get agitated when kids speak in restaurants. Maybe because the Italian women still ride their bikes at 90 years of age and prepare lasagna for lunch at 8 am. Whatever it is...it works.

I went to the beach alone this afternoon and found the sun beating on an empty beach. There was serious wind in Grosseto, but I risked and was rewarded. It's incredible how much thinking a person can do in 38 minutes. I took the time to unwind and re-focus.

My friend Shana posted this on her fb page:

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do. 
- Eleanor Roosevelt

I posted that on my Italian Cochlear Implant Forum, don't think they understood the comment in English, but I did.
And I just kind of thought it belonged there.
 
Thought a lot about that comment in my 38 minutes of being alone.
I thought about all of the walls I have had to break down.
But mostly, I thought of the current wall blocking me.
Me.