I had my interview today down in Longview about a possible internship, and the head honcho was very nice and clued me in about the particulars about my program's requirements. He was very willing to "problem solve", perhaps since their clinic is solution-based therapy, he was more prone to find a way to solve stuff, but anyhow...He said that there are a few obstacles to my interning at the facility. Primarily, one of the clinical supervisors recently had to leave her post due to health reasons, which means there is only one supervisor, and she may have a heavy work-load and wouldn't be able to take me on. He did recommend I contact some other agencies in the community.

It was amazing that he took the time with me, letting me know a lot of stuff that I wasn't entirely aware of. If I could intern there (chances don't seem very likely) I'd have to do an 18 month internship, which would mean I'd graduate in June 2007, but hey, at least I would have my internship!

Then...my sister stopped by to deliver some stuff, and then we went to the local tea shop and she introduced me to Cream Earl Grey tea. I'm not that crazy about Earl Grey because the bergamont can be potent, but this stuff was silky. I will have to buy some! Over two pots of tea we discussed "the family" and it was a very good experience.

We shared a lot of our take on the family system, and our roles in the family, etc. It was a conversation that I would have been able to carry on for hours, but there are other obligations and I'm sure we'll journey along that pathway again.

What we noticed was very peculiar in that my mom, unknowingly, served as a catalyst to reunite me to my "other half" of the family. My mom has played this role at various times in my life. It is like she is guided by some unseen force, because she'll do things totally off the wall, but the cascade that she sets in motion has profound results and outcomes. I don't know if I am expressing this well, because I'm just wrapping my mind around it. It's like she is the key domino in an elaborate set-up and what she sets in motion (which appears to be unintention) has this amazing effect.

I'm reminded of what Edgar Cayce describes as souls planning out their incarnation before entering into the life they select, and I get this weird sensation that at some point, before we were ourselves now, we had gotten together and agreed that we'd do these things, only we aren't aware of this agreement until it happens, and then I think we knew this all along.

Despite the quarks of my mother, within her is an amazing soul that has proven in many ways she is a soulmate that has allowed me to "meet my self" over and over and over. In my head I can strip away her "issues" and see her for who she is as a spiritual being, and I can do the same with my sister, and my dad. It's a beautiful image to hold of them.

As I get to re-know my dad, I can feel this energy between us that he is a kindred spirit, very much like a friendship I might read about in the Anne of Green Gables books. It is a feeling that doesn't need to be spoken because it is a Knowing.

I shared with my sister a pivotal experience I had two springs ago in which I made a journey out to the town where my father grew up and the house he was raised in. He was raised in the coastal communities of Aberdeen and Hoquiam (the very same area that Kurt Cobain resided). The house he grew up in is just a sparrow's flight away from the cemetery his parents and grandparents are buried.

The house is owned by a family, so I couldn't slip inside to spark early childhood memories, but the yard was very much the same, and I gazed with fondness at the hillside that I remember rolling down, over and over, one summer day, my older brother and I having the time of our lives. I remember there being a toy kaleidoscope in this sitting room and playing with it for hours, and how there was a Dutch door that I found so captivating because you could leave the bottom open and have the top closed. These memories are from when I was three or four.

Not wanting to seem like I was a stalker, I quickly took my pictures of the house and then went to the cemetery to see my Grandma Carlson's grave. She had her 100th birthday this past July. I wanted to remember her and put flowers on her grave, but I was in the hospital. It's the thought that counts.

When I visited her grave I asked her to help me connect with and understand my dad. He was a mystery to me. The veil of mystery is lifting, and what I'm finding warms my heart. The experience was altering for me in that I was finally able to break through the shroud of illusion my mother had created about my dad: my eyes were open and ready to see. At that moment I could feel the gears of the workings of the Universe turning setting things in motion. Wherever she is, I think Grandma helped all of this come about, along with the unpredictable and seemingly random actions of my mother.