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I'm lucky
I'm lucky
I can walk under ladders
Yes I'm so lucky
That I'm as lucky as me...

~excerpted from I'm Lucky by joan armatrading

in high school i took several summer trips with my youth group to the appalachian mountains where we did construction work, insulating and weatherizing needy homes. one summer in west virginia we were hanging board and batten siding. we'd nail up two boards and then a narrow strip of wood on the seam. the house my group was working on was built on the side of a steep hill and i remember rigging up some elaborate scaffolding to then place our ladders on. looking back, i can't believe the chaperones let us do that, but maybe our cavalier teenage bravado rubbed off on them somehow. i spent the entire week up a precariously balanced ladder with a hammer in my hand.

in college, my friends and i found a ladder on a sidewalk behind some rarely used buildings. we propped it up on a single story building adjacent to the auditorium and climbed up on the flat-roofed building. from that building the auditorium roof's lower edge was level to the one we were on and only a 'few' feet away. with a short running start, we were able to clear the opening and land on the roof of the clay shingled auditorium. climbing to the center peak of that building then afforded a birds-eye view of the campus and starry sky.

one night we went in search of our ladder and didn't find it there. we opted to use the ladder-like venting on the side of the building instead. our improvised ladder still took us up.

when my house was just my house for the first time, after a long-term relationship ended, painting all the walls and buying new furniture became my number one priority. i hired painters to come in and paint the bulk of the walls because the main living spaces were over two stories high.

there were ladders everywhere. huge ladders. ladders that were free-standing like an A frame, but then had a single projecting ladder up from the center. extension ladders on every available wall. ladders propped up over the staircase. i had to walk under two ladders to get from the front door to the kitchen and under another one to get to my bedroom. those ladders painted the way to my independence.

over the past three days, i've had the word ladder said to me at least three separate times and have run across imagery and actual ladders at least as many times over. makes me wonder...

ladders are tools.
ladders are transportation.
ladders are support.
ladders are promotion.

but really i see the ladder as a sign of hope. of certainty in something higher...
i see the ladder as a path up.
and up is where i'm going.

d: rungs upon rungs to take me up.
b: i am lucky, so lucky!
g: simple metaphors and simple messages.