The Shopping Cart....

Written in 1993:

           Put A Ribbon On My Shopping Cart


Put a ribbon on my shopping cart.  Let it flutter like a may-day banner in the
spring wind.  The homeless shopping cart.  Mine.  Let me push it through the
Santa Monica suburbs so that everyone will know that I didn't know how to
quite grow up.  That I stayed small, like a child, believing the goodness in my
heart would be enough to survive.  I wasn't prepared for the adult reality that
profiteering and not philanthropy is the way to success.  So call me stupid... I
really didn't know.  Inside my shopping cart there is nothing to show--nothing
tangible like stocks and bonds and real-estate holdings.  There are invisible
contents.  Memories.  No net worth on the Dow Jones, but palpable feelings
attached to following my heart through it all.  All the empty space in my shopping
cart, only filled with and overflowing with the love I have for my two children...
who, forgive me, I foolishly taught from the breast, that what really mattered was
 love and acts of kindness.  I may have doomed them to sorrow.  My worldly
ignorance may cost them dearly in a capitalist society.  They will be handing
out love and trust; smiling, laughing, while not knowing there will be nothing
in their cart to show the world their value.  Oh, but Love is stronger than tax-
free income and if I have loved them, truly loved them, they will  look
over at m own hollow cart and feel the weight of our carts now too heavy to
push any further down the street.

Tanina