Please click on photos to enlarge. This little cutie is worth it, and her table (er chair) manners are impeccable! I caught her during her lunch break at the Mini-Maestros del Arte market at the Lake Chapala Society earlier this week.
Life and Death at the Beach
With babies, every day is an education. This little story was acted out when we went to Tenacatita beach for the day. Down the beach, a tragedy was being enacted as a group worked to resuscitate a drowned man. Seconds after I viewed this touching scene as two mothers deal with the interaction between their babies, we realized what was happening in the background and we went down to see if we could be of aid. The oxygen I’d gone back to the house to get at the last minute before we left for the beach was of no aid to them, however, as though they worked diligently on the man and got his heart beating again, they never were able to get him to breathe on his own. One tragedy, one story of new life. This cycle is never more obvious than on the beach, but never before so graphically as depicted on this day. To see the happier story, you must click on the first photo. All photos will enlarge and be presented as a slideshow, complete with words.
The prompt word today was baby.
Nativity
It was some day, that day when light came into my world.
Reaching out my arms and legs as they came uncurled,
so many lovely colors bursting into sight.
All this brilliant pigment where formerly was night.
All the parts familiar still attached to me—
my ankle and my navel, my elbow and my knee.
But no longer together, curled into one tight ball.
I never knew that I could be so wide and tall.
Stretching out to fill this square I wonder when
I will be forgetting the curved world I’ve been in.
My mother now beside me instead of all around.
At other times she’s simply nowhere to be found.
My father’s arms around me—arms brand new to me.
All the other others coming to see what I may be.
Scratchy things now touch me—dry things and things with fluff.
Everything a new thing until I’ve had enough.
Then I find my power and make some kind of noise.
Soon I’m joined by other infant girls and boys,
and the whole room fills with sounds of our distress.
Very satisfying, I fear I must confess.
The nurses all come running, the fathers and the sisters.
The orderlies and doctors, the misses and the misters.
And when they lift us up, each one in different arms,
all our cries desist as they cater to our charms.
“Some day,” they’ve been saying, and now we are all here—
a fresh new crop of humans arrived for them to rear.
Once more we exercise our lungs and make each father cower.
Fresh to this new world, we have already found our power.
The prompt today was someday.
Isn’t it amazing what we can create? Click to enlarge photos.
For Cee’s “Made by Human Beings” black and white prompt.
When I arrived back in Mexico two nights ago,
as I was leaving the airport in the backseat of a taxi, two events happened.
One was the eruption of Colima Volcano, 50 miles away from my house.
The other was a waterspout that took water from the lake and dumped it on the mountains above my house. That event, added to massive rain on that night and this morning, led to the culverts becoming swift-running streams and the cobblestone streets next to my house being littered by stones brought down the arroyos, which all happen to empty into streets which become part of the drainage system.
After the rain finally ended today and the skies cleared, I decided to venture out to see what condition the world around me was in. I could hear the rushing sound that told me that water was still rushing down from the mountain. 
Although the street that ran to the side of my house was littered with stones, the gardener across the street had gathered up all the stones on the street that ran horizontally across the hill, and put them in small piles, so it was passable. Luckily, no boulders had been brought down this time, for in the past boulders as large as small cars had rolled down, completely tearing up the roads.
At the end of my street, the culvert had turned into a small stream, and as usually happens after a series of big rains, children and their parents were treating the culverts like spas––wading and sometimes immersing their entire bodies.
At every street corner they could be seen cavorting like seals and having a wonderful time, as were this grandmother, daughter and baby boy at the end of my street.
I couldn’t resist going to talk to them. The baby was just objecting to the cold water when I arrived, and the mother had set him up on a rock and was gathering stones for him to hold.
He hoarded them in each hand.
“Does he know how to throw rocks?” I asked, and when the mother shook her head no, I set about teaching him how.
After an initial reluctance to let go of the rocks,
He was a fast learner!
And soon we had trouble keeping him supplied with enough pebbles.
Meanwhile, the little stream rushed on, tumbling some of the small stones down the hill towards the Raquet club 
to round the corner
and rush on down to the village and into the lake.
Those trees out in the lake were once on dry land and the chains of water hyacinths I could make out even at this distance gave testimony to the fact that in addition to the rainfall, extra water was being let out of the spillways of dams further upstream on the Lerma river. I decided it was time to drive down to the lake to take Frida for a walk to investigate further.
To Be Continued
If you are interested in seeing what happens when a tromba (super-saturated cloud or waterspout) empties out over the mountain above me after days of very hard rain, look HERE. You won’t believe this many rocks could come down in a 15 minute period! It took a year to repair the damage.
Today’s prompt is “breakthrough,” and if these aren”t two examples of types of breakthroughs, I don’t know what is! I guess I anticipated the prompt.
Some of these photos you have seen before, but they needed to be in the collage. As usual, click if you want a larger view and to read the caption under two of the photos. Enjoy.
https://ceenphotography.com/2016/08/16/cees-fun-foto-challenge-hands/
(Click on first photo and then arrows to enlarge and view photos.)
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 