Today my oldest turns the same age I am! He was born 36 years ago, shortly before midnight and he came into the world fast and vocal at the same time and has been fast and vocal ever since. How can this be? I ask myself- this phenomenon that a child and parent are the same age? The secret is: I have not aged. I still think of myself as 36. Enough about me. Happy Birthday son. Although my age and maturity might be questionable; your age and success is unquestioned. You are a man, a real man, a man’s man, and a woman’s man. You protect and provide and pursue and acknowledge in every way your wife, your children; and even extend your care and attention beyond your immediate family to your siblings, parents and grandparents. Who could ask for more? But, there is more. You are musical, passionately musical. You have not forgotten your dreams. You perform. You skate. You build. You engage in business. You are devoted to your family. I often say that I love to watch children grow. Thanks for being such a pleasure to watch for the past 36 years. Have a great birthday!
Category Archives: Family
Alone without a camera
I traveled without a camera. I had no companion along to snap pictures. No excess baggage. Instead, I bought lots of postcards-particularly in San Francisco. In Seattle, my gracious cousins accommodated me with housing, sightseeing plans…and a camera. Here are some shots ot the most beautiful day one could desire.
House#1 in route to there and back again
This is a sanctified house – not because the owners are Christian (they would cough and gag and chafe at such a suggestion inadvertently linking them to the conservative religious right); but because they are spiritual, deeply in touch with their dreams and desires and goals. This house is sanctified because every inch, every nook and cranny, every photo and artifact exudes who they are. Ultimately, consummately, they are fulfilling the purpose for which they came to be and it is glorious to witness. And, they love each other…deeply, as largely as they are capable of and they are persons of great depth, thought capacity, artistry, and innovation. This house is authentic, as are the people in it, and the books that line the shelves and spill into architectural heaps on coffee tables and nightstands. So, I will spend my time here being authentic, and taking long walks in this wondrous, brick and red geraniums, old money and rich tradition neighborhood. Oh, and playing the grand piano.
House Sitting
Ooooo, breathe deep. Stop and sigh, take a tour and view the portraits on the walls, the photos on the shelves. Feel the cozy belonging way one feels while kneading toes into warm sand or thick carpet. This is a house full of memory. Far from ghostly or sinister, these are young memories. Grand children birthed, coming home from the hospital, growing, learning, holding a spoon, taking first steps, climbing on tables and into bathroom sinks and exploring toilets, playing with kitchen utensils, baking cookies, taking a nap.
There is a good spirit here, good karma, good vibrations, depending on your choice of vernacular. The good vibes are emanating from my heart, my soul singing as I feel the spirit of generosity and bounty, and sense that my children have done well and have used their resources wisely. Their strong work ethic and a commitment to the values of family and friendship have resulted in a well appointed , harmonious home. This is beyond merely efficient, this is quality of life.
Quality of Life: slate tile floor, measured, cut, placed and finished by my son, cupboards stocked with necessities , each needed item close at hand in its proper place. Furniture chosen for form and function, uniquely suited to the space, floor plan, family personality and structure.
There are also deeper, darker, and richer memories that flood my mind and spirit as I pause before yellowed photographs. Not the dark of somber or unrelenting, depressing clouds; but dark like chocolate or dusky wine. These memories too, I quaff with bliss for they are vintage now, fully aged in life’s experience, in gratitude and tranquility. The bitterness of failed or difficult relationships dissolves in the ferment, and in its place, like sweet soul cream, is the thankfulness for lessons learned, peace and tranquility, and thanksgiving for what life provides for the current day.
Saturday Prayers
Dear God, show me truth. Show me your will and direction for my life. God, please grant me the power to carry it out rather than the constant worry and striving to make it happen on my own. For my daughter; grant a deep and abiding knowledge of who you are-and are meant to be- for her. Grant that she be always a fulfilled and loved woman, peaceful and wise at heart whether single or in a relationship. For my son; I ask that you grant him an awareness and revelation of truth: who YOU are, God of the Universe, and who he is to be. Give to my son power and strength and wisdom and boldness in the things of the true and living God. For the one estranged, who, because of his raging and insults has become my enemy, I pray for the higher good to master him. I pray he would have truth and beauty and self-awareness. For my grown and settled children, I pray that you would continue to knit them together in a strong cord of love and ethics. Bring out the best in them. You have given each of them marvelous strengths. Burst on them at every turn in beauty, truth, joy, the energy of life and love. And for my friends, my listening ears; I pray your protection on them, that my “viruses” would not attach to their “systems”, but that they would remain whole, beautiful, joyous, successful, and wise. May it be.
Time Honored Baseball
At the top of the fourth he turned to me and said, “I am really enjoying my father’s day present.” I was too. Its been 30 years or so since the last time I baked in the sun or got damp and chilled in the rain at a JUCO game. In the space of 3 hours, we did both today- despite being well armed with umbrellas.
We found seats directly above home plate and were free to form our own opinions about the accuracy of the umpire and the strengths and weaknesses of the teams. By the top of the fourth the pace of the game was starting to pick up. He had already had 3 little naps in the stadium seat. I found out that he played baseball in high school. I remember when he coached our small town equivalent of little league summer after summer. I have known all my life that he was a starter on the high school basketball team, but I had never heard about high school baseball.
During the slow beginning innings where the pitcher merely threw strikes and there was little action in the field, I tried to beguile him with conversation, tell him about my seventh grade students who argued just this past week that you can catch a fly with an outstretched baseball cap because it is still attached (all this because I asked them not to be playing baseball in literacy class with detached player equipment- as in, water bottle and pea gravel). I took the counter position that the cap extends further from the hand than the distance allowed in the fingers of a glove. He did not take the bait, just nodded and said, “Ummm.” Sometime next week he will probably tender his final position on the subject – after he has consulted the online rulebook.
Admittedly, there was more purpose to my invitation than just an early Father’s Day gift (I told him it would take a load off my mind if he would go to the game with me, because then I wouldn’t have to worry about what to get him for Father’s Day). Always the hard worker, my 75 year old dad has been working non-stop the past couple of weeks and exhausting the middle-aged men hired to help. It was truly time for a holiday. Baseball fit the bill.
After six innings of reflection I have concluded that baseball is a lot like life. You spend months and years in training and a good deal of time nonchalantly standing around waiting; as a spectator getting a trifle bored, but you have to keep your head in the game, tensed, alert, and ready at a moment’s notice to make the all important double play-that makes your day or defines your life.
Happy Mother’s Day to Me!
Happy Mother’s Day to me. I am of all women, most blessed. I like my three grown (nearly grown) children. I like who they are. It is fun to be with them. They are people of character and responsibility or budding responsibility; creative, witty, sensitive, thoughtful, articulate. I am looking forward to spending time with them this Mother’s Day; and with my 3.4 grandchildren.
Did they choose the career path I would have chosen for them? Who can say? I was not foolish enough to decide who they were to become or to micromanage. I did know from the day they were born what they were: they were treasures. That is what they remain to me to this very day – TREASURES.
Flashback to November Reflection
GOODBYE MOUNTAINS, HELLO FRIENDS
I came to the mountains in the first place to be alone. Well, sort of. I like my space. I love being alone during the day to putzy about the house and arrange things and indulge in creativity. I am inherently that quintessential stay at home wife or mother who is nourished by planning great things for her family, anchoring and stabilizing her brood and her man by her presence in the home, and the good things that come from her kitchen, her sewing machine, her garden, her pen and her heart.
Two things conspired against me. 1) All the neighbors also came to the mountains to be alone. There was a huge dearth of friends and an abundance of isolation. 2) One cannot live on mountains alone. One must commute to the city and work full time in order to pay the mortgage on the cabin and provide the components and ingredients for those abundantly nourishing meals.
So commenced the commuting and the stress: One foot in the mountains, one foot in the metro; with the shoe always on the wrong foot. What I really want is to live in the mountains and be alone during the day, write my thousand pages, feather my comfy home and hearth, attend to my music and spiritual nourishment; and then-when the lights go down or the vacations come—escape to beaches and exotic places, symphonies and shows, with family and friends in tow to enjoy all that cities and countries and culture has to offer.
How is it that things always turn out backwards? Now I am living in the high desert, still working full time, but with a short three mile commute; two life long friends and several family members close at hand; numerous opportunities to cultivate new friendships. Still I crave: Alone time during the day-Social time in the evening and on days off. I can still go to the mountains or beaches for vacations-and I do! I have just returned from 48 hours in Gunnison; walking and hiking at 7,000 feet; writing in a luxurious motel room complete with hot tub; but, where was the social life at the end of the day? The kids were off doing college activities.
Townsend and Cloud, in their most enlightening and healing book, Safe People (Zondervan, 1995), note that isolated people, socially anorexic people may have fantasies of vacation and doing something fun ALL BY THEMSELVES. Guess I am not there yet. I love to share fun and vacation with the right people! Now where are they?
Immersed in Music
Immersed in Music. One thing I dearly love is the ambiance of the music world whether it is sitting in the lobby of the music building at a college, or attending a music seminar at Estes Park. I love walking through a fine arts building and seeing a couple of students practicing for a conducting final; someone writing a sonata in his or her head and making notes on notebook paper; five or six others singing clips of various show tunes or classical pieces; instrumental music floating down the hall from the practice rooms. Today I went on a family outing to the mountains and a hot springs and was pleasantly treated to just such a musical indulgence. Everyone in the nine passenger Suburban, was related to me: 3 children, 3 grandchildren, one DIL. While sitting properly stuffed in the very center of the vehicle, I heard and enjoyed intelligent music and movie commentary and critique from the the couple in the front seat, music trivia and questions from all those over 18 and random bars of music hummed, sung, or belted along with the IPod selections playing on the speakers, by all passengers – not to mention excellent rhythm keeping and input from the 3 youngsters aboard. It was a perfectly lovely day: steeped in music and stewed in the hot springs enjoyed by all while falling snow frosted our hair.
Responsibility
RESPONSIBILITY OR, He that is faithful in small things will be faithful in much
My children are growing up. Yes, my youngest is a senior and will graduate next May. I love watching children grow. I love the rites of passage; the times when a mother can distinctly see the fine character developing in a child as that one moves first into taking responsibility for him (or her) self and later begins to take leadership or servant responsibility for others.
Last Thursday I forgot to replenish my gum pack in my purse. I realized this about a mile from the school. Too late to turn back home and too late to make a quick stop at a convenience store, I was about to drop Philip off for his early morning college class when I bemoaned the oversight audibly. “Oh, I think I have one,” replied Philip, fully aware of my plight and how I hate the thought of breathing dragon breath at my students. “Just one left,” He commented, fishing the stick out of the package and laying it on the dashboard. I thanked him heartily and then, as he was about to throw the empty package into the trash, “Wait a minute, here’s one more. This one’s for me!” he said, smiling and popping it into his pocket.
Friday night I worked BINGO for Sweet Adelines. It was busy; a full house and a late session. At quarter to midnight I started to check in with Philip, but thought better of it as he might be sleeping. Five minutes later my cell phone rang. “Hi Mom, it’s a bit later than usual, where are you?”
I like to see that my kids are concerned for others. I do not want to be smothered any more than they do. I do not want them to have to build their lives around taking care of me or mutual enabling. But Kindness, Concern, Empathy, healthy Responsibility toward others; those are great character traits. The boy of whom his sister in law once said, “You’re way too nice to be a teenager,” is turning out to be a fine young man.