~thankful thursday~ light cone

Posted on December 3, 2024 by marybethrew

~30 days of gratitude~ day 22

11/22/24

I was full of gratitude moments yesterday, but was not on social media to share, so please accept my belated day 22 gratitude. I accompanied fifty-three high school students (band and friends) and two teachers to Portland for a very full day (from an 8:30 departure Friday all the way until the kids said “we’re at school on a Saturday” when we got off the bus at 1:30 am.) I have written about band kids before and my love for them. Yesterday, being with them as they visited the music department of PSU, I loved the tiny insights into their psyches revealed by the questions they asked and observations they made aloud. As we took a self-guided tour of campus, I loved how they looked up and took pictures of tall buildings. I loved watching them arrive on the rec field and expode into activity: run, skip, hacky-sack, jump for the goal posts, race, climb, kick a water bottle, manifest a soccer ball out of the bushes, flop on the ground and be with each other. As we ate pizza at an arcade, I loved filling the water pitcher eleven times and hydrating them as they refueled, cheered each other on at silly games, discovered infinite ways to play with a rubber chicken, sang a friend happy birthday, and in the case of Quinn and his friend, performed a good chunk of the Hamilton score a cappella and in harmony. I loved helping a student who wasn’t feeling well feel better, and I loved sitting in the very last row of the Arlene Schnitzer’s upper balcony and seeing them absorb Mariachi Sol de Mexico perform a phenomenal show. I loved the way some of our students glowed to have their first language predominate the show, the way they knew the call and response parts of the songs, when to clap to the beat, the way they got up and spun each other at the back of the hall like it was their own quinceañera. I loved the way some of our students cheered and laughed, remarked how they understood none of the words, absorbed that moment of empathy for the students who feel that way most of the time instead of only on a field trip. I loved how all of our students instantly lit their phones up when the band called for the crowd to do so. I loved watching them sway back and forth, combining their individual tiny lights and reaching for the sky.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 23

11/23/24

After one friend (and gratitude reader) I saw today remarked that it might be a good nacho night, my bestie sent me this photo. Even though it’s hot dogs and mac-n-cheese tonight, I’m grateful for easy dinner and friends who celebrate mediocrity in the kitchen.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 24

11/24/24

I am grateful for a weekend with Quinn during which he designed a fleet of fantasy ships he can use as D and D shipboard adventures. He knew I might have a small clue about ships, having lived on and sailed them for a couple of years long ago, so he asked me a zillion questions. Types of ships, names of masts, how many decks, how many crow’s nests (he was disappointed in the answer), what is a stun’sl, below decks configurations, how many crew, what was that word again? (The word was bulkhead.) I taught him beam and draft, fore main and mizzen, topgallant and royal, that the lazarette would be an ideal location for a character to stow away, and we even discussed skysails. We talked about the shapes of hulls, the lines to control sails, and how the rig is meant to flex. He decided “difficult terrain” would be an appropriate penalty for pretty much any character without high dexterity, anywhere on board a ship, and I agreed. It brought back a lot of memories, but mostly just made me grateful for every minute I get to spend with him.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 25

11/25/24

I am grateful for a dinner of bbq brisket and ribs made by the same guy who catered our wedding. I am grateful for my fabulous mother-in-law who picked up the food for us and kept us company while we feasted.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 26

11/26/24

I am grateful for my birthday boy brother B, and my unbirthday boy brother T. I always do this on B’s birthday and I’m not going to start bucking tradition in the ninth year. Instead I’ll find the photos that make me smile the widest from our visit this past June: T at my nephew’s baseball game keeping the sun off his delicate skin with a dainty pink umbrella; B and Dad standing in the potato field they’d just planted. My reasons are still the same: they are great brothers, great dads, great uncles, great men, great at doing specific things like punk power chords or defragmenting your hard drive. I am grateful for their sporadic text messages, whether they feature roman numerals or not. I heard there was quite a bumper crop of potatoes this year.

~30 days of gratitude~ days 27 and 28

11/27 and 11/28/24

Two quick gratitudes for two very good, full days. I choose kitties and pie.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 29

Observed 12/1/24

I’ve been both busy and full of sinus pressure for a couple of days, so I’m getting to penultimate gratitude a few days behind schedule. Luckily, I’m still not taking this class for a grade. Indulge my semi-lucid gratitude musing for today.

Sometimes Quinn talks to me about physics.

“Picture a flash of light above your head moving out in all directions. The second that flash begins, it is impossible for you to ever get outside of that light, because to do so you’d have to travel faster than light.”

“Mmm.”

“That’s your light cone. It gets bigger as time progresses, and a greater area of the world is illuminated in that light. You also have a past light cone that defines all the area where anything can travel at up to the speed of light to reach where you are right now and give you information about the past, so anything you can have ever experienced is also defined by where you are right now.”

“Whoaaa.”

I told Quinn I thought this was a great metaphor. He thought that was silly but I’m sticking with my metaphor assertion. Because I have so often found light to be a part of the conversation about gratitude, I think they are intertwined. I can picture the act of choosing to pay attention to gratitude as a type of light, and maybe this gratitude light, too, moves outward, maybe it defines a cone of experience around me, maybe it informs and enfolds within itself everything about my past, everything about my future. Maybe all of it comes back to this moment I am in right now.

And even if I am a glow slug in the midnight zone of the high-pressure, chilled-to-the-bone, fully dark ocean, I can make my own light, a flash that moves outward, a pulse that grows and expands and defines an area around me.

I learned a few more things about the glowing nudibranchs. The research carried out on this species was based on none other than the research vessel Western Flyer. Iykyk. But on the nudibranchs themselves: They are a marvel of evolution: they represent the third independent evolution of bioluminescence in nudibranchs, and they swim and evade predators, unlike their nearest known relatives who typically crawl on the sea floor. They are so evolved that they have created their own family, like a lot of us are known to do when we don’t fit easily into the classification schemes of others. They are growing on me, these dark-dwelling light-makers with their soft, transparent hearts.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 30

Observed 12/2/24

I am grateful for paid sick leave and a day of Tea, Tay, and Turkey Broth (shoutout to bestie for the playlist and we are grateful for music in case we haven’t said so this year).

I am grateful for several days in a row of sunshine! I am grateful for all the forms of light that have shined on this November. A non-exhaustive list might include:

Friday night lights

clarity

light cone

sunrise

stage lights

cousin Rita

head lamp

sunlight on water

sunlight on kitten fur

glow slugs

cell phone lights in the hands of teenagers, swaying

you, and you, and you.

I am sincerely grateful for all of you and your comments and hearts and grocery store acknowledgements. Thank you for beaming your lights my way, too. If you are among those for whom the light has seemed dimmer than usual this November, I am sending you as many beams of bioluminescence as I am able.

When Rich was driving me home from the funeral I mentioned earlier this month, one of the darkest days of this November, we noticed someone’s not-put-away-yet Halloween decoration, a skeleton perched as though it was driving an antique tractor alongside the highway. It was too dark to get a good photo, but the image has stuck with me anyway. No matter how lovely and wonderful a life we might be privileged to enjoy (and I am so lucky, comfortable, and privileged), it does feel as though the whole machine we are rolling forward on is an antique and that there is a reckless skeleton behind the wheel. No ocean of gratitude, no arena of swaying teenagers with their phones lit up, can change that. Loss and death and grief, we do not get to escape them.

I have thought about it a lot, and without veering into the toxic positivity lane, I have decided to keep myself hitched to the gratitude wagon. I will strive for mediocrity and honesty in this practice, always.

Thanks everyone, for climbing in the wagon with me again after all these years.

~thankful thursday~ magnitude

Posted on December 1, 2023 by marybethrew

~30 days of gratitude~ day 23

11/23/23

I am grateful to have Quinn home, where he can up his apple-peeling game.

~30 days of gratitude~ days 24 and 25

11/24 and 25/23

Giving myself two days of gratitude credit, because I was away from my laptop for a full twenty-four hours (and I know it’s unusual, but I don’t use Facebook on my phone). I am grateful for the uniquely special relationships you can come across in blended families. There is something so refreshing about a four-year-old saying, “Nana, can you ask Quinn if he will play Candyland with me?” In earshot of the sixteen-year-old, who says, “Sure!” without reservation, and then they go play. Something extra tender about the way the sixteen-year-old knows how to play up what a tricky hiding spot the four-year-old has hidden in this time, during hide-and-seek. It reminds me of when the sixteen-year-old was just barely five and cheering on the college track athlete, yelling along with her teammates to “push it, girl!” and how she was totally game to color with him in his dinosaur coloring book in the stands after her race. Now he is showing her daughter how to dig up dinosaur bones in a phone app, and trots along by her side in the park as she pedals her princess bike with training wheels.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 26

11/26/23

I am grateful for these brothers of mine, this year and every year. I’d be grateful just for their excellent brotherness, but they are also superb in the department of uncleness. I hear B’s laugh and T’s sense of humor in my kid, and it was sure nice of them to share.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 27

11/27/23

It was just four days into my first year ever of writing gratitude posts when I first declared my gratitude for “sleeping kitties purring near the crackling fire.” One of the things that has hit home for me during this eighth grateful year is that gratitude does not stop or even slow down time. My kitties were so much younger then, and this year, their age suddenly showed. Three years ago, I included this Brené Brown quote in my gratitude post, and it still resonates.

“Gratitude is vulnerability. I’ve had the honor of sitting across from people who have survived tremendous things. No matter what the trauma was, they said: ‘when those around me are grateful for what they have, I know they understand the magnitude of what I’ve lost.’ So often we’re afraid to be grateful for what we have because we think it’s insensitive to those who have lost. However I think gratitude, in some ways, is healing for people.”

It was earlier that day that my father-in-law had died. There have been a fair few November nights over these years when I have felt daunted by my commitment to keep on showing up to reflect on what I’m grateful for. Two years ago, November arrived just as we returned from Oklahoma following my mother-in-law’s death. This November I spoke at a gathering of Don’s friends and family because Don died earlier this year. In these times it’s not that hard to access gratitude, it’s more that it’s hard to rein it in, to narrow it down, to not feel compelled to attempt to reckon with every single thing about a person’s whole life for which I feel gratitude. Those nights when nachos, while a great dinner option, cannot be the subject of the post because there is too too too much else.

As I sit here deciding what I’m grateful for tonight, I keep glancing over at Lisa kitty where she is lying stretched out on the cushion in front of the wood stove, and I stare for a minute to see if the fur on her belly is still lifting with another breath. She has let me give her four baths now. On the last one, she barely complained, but lay in front of me, letting me wring warm washcloths across her back. If you know Lisa like we do, you know she curses like a sailor, dropping f-bombs every other meow, so this submissiveness was telling. Last night she climbed on my lap and let me pet her for a good hour or more, though she has been extra solitary lately, crawling into a box or a drawer for long stretches of hours. But after work tonight she greeted Rich with meows to hurry up and light the fucking fire, then curled up in front of it. It feels meaningful that she is here with us this evening, front and center by the warm crackling fire, in our midst, for a wee bit longer.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 28

11/28/23

Lisa held on until this morning, but before I went to work, she took her last breath. Rest well, sweet kitty, I will miss you.

I am grateful that work asked so very little of me today, other than to absorb research talks about Pacific cod, one of my fish loves, so basically I watched tv about Alaska and flashed back to my summer wilderness time in Kodiak. Some nice escapism. Usually my job asks much more in a day; on Monday I tagged fish—performed thirty-one minor surgeries—before lunch. Today, light duty, but lots of brain engagement, which was what I needed.

And my friend of the uncanny impromptu casserole timing nailed it again, so that after I got home an hour late after driving home the long way to avoid the accident bogging down traffic, dinner was already made. (I’m looking at you, camp boss.) So grateful.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 29

11/29/23

I am grateful for this month of sunrises. Every November marks a new beginning for me, ever since I started doing this crazy thing. Sunrise seems a fitting symbol, and the ones I’ve witnessed this month, including this morning, have been exquisite.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 30

11/30/23

It has been a month. I sprinkled some seeds on our Lisa kitty’s grave this afternoon, to get a nice soaking now that our rain is setting in, so some wildflowers can start rooting in before spring. Three years ago, I said this about seeds: “If I had a theme this year it might be the seeds of gratitude planted in the gratitude garden, and how they are an investment in my future nourishment. Whenever I notice and appreciate the snuggly kitty on my lap, the warmth emanating from the wood stove, or my hardworking husband coming home from work, it’s another seed in the seed bank. These dormant spirals of potential, storing an idea for next year, waiting it out through the harsh conditions of winter. So many adaptations to fly, float, cling, catapult, shake, or shatter, to make sure they deliver on the promise of future abundance.”

It hasn’t been all eulogies and graves this November. It has also been Candyland and apple peels, sunrises and sunsets, yard kittens and mini writing retreats, nachos and casseroles, twinkle lights and wood stove fires, warm towels and heirloom apples, poems and bay road drives, garlic bread and ocean soundscapes. I’ve been warmed, fed, cheered on, cheered up. A chorus of voices of complementary gratitude has sung out from all of you who climbed on the gratitude bus with me for yet another year. I’m so grateful to begin winter once again from this gratitude grounding.

~thankful thursday~ butterfly effect

Posted on November 29, 2019 by marybethrew

11/21/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 21

When the frost covering my windshield called for me to dig up my ice scraper this morning, Quinn said, “Ooh! Can I help?” And I felt so grateful sitting in the driver’s seat, sipping my coffee, while he did his detail-oriented scraping.

Riding on a school bus full of seventh graders headed East on Highway 20 this morning, I felt grateful (I realize that sounds far-fetched, but it’s true). Quinn and his friend played chopsticks, coconuts, and I Spy, requiring nothing more than their hands and voices to be entertained indefinitely. The tree-filtered sunlight projected the smiley faces drawn on the frosty bus windows across the gray seat backs, and they danced and smiled and stretched larger as we drove along.

A Newport grad gave us a campus tour, and then we watched the women’s basketball team be amazing. Quinn’s sound sensory overload in the basketball arena quickly dissipated when I distracted him with my Sudoku app. Watching his awesome teachers handle everything so capably, I felt very grateful. I feel especially grateful for teachers like the one who shared with Quinn her own story of growing up in two households, and how jazzed she was when she got to her college dorm and had all of her things in one place at long last. He is with others more and more, and with me less and less, so it makes me feel good that others care enough to relate to him on such a meaningful level. The boy, all the kids, the teachers, the grad, the team, all made me feel optimistic about the future.

After my day of chaperoning, I was grateful to check a very big item off the to-do list, and Quinn now has a passport application pending. A swim lesson and a karate class later (grateful for these instructors as well), and now we have eaten our nachos and are toasting with kitties by the wood stove. We have eaten nachos an undisclosed number of other times this week already, and I am grateful that my dudes never complain about having them no matter how November it gets around here.

11/22/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 22

One of the best things that ever happened to me happened during the cold, frosty, dark part of the year. I was a single mama having just debuted a schedule including two father-son overnights per week. One of those nights of the week featured a yoga class to which I signed up, and there was a handsome man in the yoga class, and we went on our first date on the shortest day of that year, seven years and eleven months ago.

Now his name pops up in my phone as “Rich husband person” with a picture of us being wind-whipped on Agate beach in our wedding attire, the day after we got married, two years and four months ago, and laughing our faces off.

This morning as we wished each other a happy dorkaversary (as we do on the 22^nd of any month) he teased that I had probably already run my background check on him by this point in the year, but as you may have noticed, I write things down. According to my documentation, my trusted background checker had not yet reported back on his worthiness as a crush. Soon, she would give me two thumbs up, and our yoga teacher (who would end up officiating our wedding) would pair us up as partners and start assigning us some partner poses that made it somewhat difficult to focus on the breath.

Recently we went on a date to the play Tiny Beautiful Things, an amazing performance we both thoroughly enjoyed, though I basically sobbed my way through it. The play (and the book it is based on) peer into the shadows, much the way I have spent this November, but ultimately the story shines such a warm light out to the world. As we settled into our seats before the show, the woman next to me joked, “I only brought enough tissues for myself.” I reassured her that I had brought some for me, then turned to Rich. “Honey, I hope you brought something.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a blue shop towel! Of course. Industrial strength.

I’m grateful for his steady, stable presence. So big and strong, yet very flexible – as evidenced by the way he is wrapped right around the pinkies of three granddaughters. We’re a great team, through thick and thin, and even internet swooning.

11/23/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 23

Because religious dogma and personified male deities are subjects I have grappled with in my life, I have taken a long time to embrace the application of the action verb to pray to my personal noun, but when I look at the way I relate to the spirit and energy in the universe, I find that there are a few one-word messages I say to it that are prayers.

Each day as Quinn leans towards me, letting me kiss the top of his head before he lugs his giant red backpack off to middle school, I inhale his cinnamon scalp, then exhale a prayer for his safety as I pull away from the curb. Please.

When I kiss my husband as he goes off to build metal fuel tanks out of fire aboard floating grease tubs: Please.

Each time I think of Mom awaiting the results of her most recent round of medical tests: Please.

I utter many prayers of Please. Prayers of Thanks? I think I spend November intentionally focusing on these, because the scale is usually tipped well over to the Please side of the balance the rest of the year.

My intriguing son. Thank you. My loving husband. Thank you. Mom, Dad, kitties, wood stove fires, library books, coffee, veggies, nachos. Thank you. The way my fairy dog is snuggled under the blanket on my lap, her soul string knotted securely to my heart. Thank you.

It doesn’t seem to matter that my prayers of Thanks are repetitive. Threading gratitude onto a string like popcorn and cranberries, I tend to alternate Rich, Quinn, Rich, Quinn, with some other nuts and berries and cinnamon sticks mixed in at intervals, This still results in a long, festive strand of gratitude garland with which to decorate my dark December interior. November is spent running my fingers over each of these nuggets, like rosary beads, breathing each one in, breathing out like a prayer. Thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

11/24/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 24

Today I am grateful for sleeping in, sunshine, and a breakfast date.

For dog snuggles, for making our home cleaner together, and for a nice chat with Mom.

Mom and I both feel like November has rushed by. When November begins, at least for the past four Novembers, I feel this daunting sense of “30 whole days?!” when I’m committing to doing this gratitude challenge. Then suddenly, it’s day 24! Blink, it’s December.

I told her I still feel like this gratitude thing is good for me, especially at this time of year. It has become my way of intentionally setting the tone for my hardest season, of dwelling on the good of the present moment. A small change in the initial conditions of my winter might be enough to determine a very different set of outcomes for me, by the time I make it to next spring.

I think someone has already called that the Butterfly Effect…

11/25/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 25

I am grateful for good news and good signs today.

I am grateful for natural beauty that makes me pull over the car and get out to look at it, with my mouth hanging open.

I am grateful for dinners leading up to thanksgiving that I like to think of as “gathering together ghetto”, in which parsnip fries and roasted kalettes are sides to… hot dogs! We’re not trying to create too many leftovers in the early part of this week, after all. Another gathering together ghetto dinner I like is to top Papa Murphy’s faves with fresh organic veggies from the farm! Now you see why I’m not a food blogger.

I am grateful for time to get my turkey and cranberry shopping done today.

I am grateful for karate kid movie nights with my rainbow love.

Popcorn and cranberries, repeat.

11/26/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 26

I am thankful for my brothers, one of whom is celebrating a birthday today. I feel particularly grateful for their positive role model position in my son’s life. They both take him under their wing for various areas of expertise when they get around him (one for chess and computer stuff, the other for drums). But it’s more that they are nice, caring men being themselves in his general vicinity that I really love. Neither one of them is afraid to be who they are, not afraid of hugs or babies or rolling out a pie crust. Both are wonderful fathers and the most excellent uncles.

None of these are very recent photos, but they are all special ones that I was looking through this evening, feeling the sibling gratitude.

11/27/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 27

Speaking of rolling out pie crust… I am thankful for a reliable family pie crust recipe. I am grateful for the threats from Rich to wake up in the middle of the night and start eating the chocolate bourbon pecan one that is cooling on the table. Luckily the threats are empty, because I would sleep right through that. I am also thankful I know what to make for dinner when I’ve been in the kitchen long enough for one evening already. It starts with the same letter as November.

I am very grateful that Quinn comes home tomorrow. There is a special kind of gratitude to be felt watching a boy who is growing at an obscenely fast rate eat plate after plate of food, so tomorrow will be the perfect homecoming during which I can heap abundance upon his growth spurt.

I’m not usually grateful for cold hands, but I certainly tend to have them this time of year, and I’ve heard they are useful in making pie. “Cold hands, warm heart,” the saying goes. Last night as I made grilled cheese (it’s still non-leftover meal week!) I thought of how my mom began a tradition of “putting the love in” the sandwiches when we were kids that my brothers and I do for our sons. I like to think of the food I feed to my guys as a love language, and foods like pie, where each molecule of buttery dough is held in my hands before being filled with sweetness, seem like especially good vehicles for conveying food love.

11/28/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 28

Happy Thanksgiving! It’s been a day full of abundance here at the dragon house. Abundant sleeping in, abundant good food, abundant wood heat, and abundant love.

Today I am feeling very grateful for our parents. Rich got to talk to his Oklahoma Mom and Dad today, and it is nice to hear their updates filtered through him, as well as hear his side of the conversation. He says such nice things about me when he talks to other people, and I really like that about him. I found out that Bob (of the legendary popcorn) has been ninja-reading my gratitude posts. We are very grateful to hear that they are both in good health.

I am also grateful for Rich’s Oregon Mom, to whom I refer as my outlaw-mother, who came and saved me from having to carve the turkey. She is our one local parent of our five parents, and we feel lucky and grateful to get to celebrate holidays with her. I particularly enjoyed watching Quinn sit side by side with her as they laughed hysterically at YouTube videos this evening.

One of the first things that I learned about Rich, even before our first date, was that he has two moms, and that he loves them both very much. I knew he was going to be a good one, from that moment. You want a guy who loves his Mom. And this guy loves both of his!

My Mom and Dad… well, I talk about them a lot already, but I’ll always be very grateful for them. My appreciation for them grows all the time. I don’t know why I was thinking of this today, maybe because Rich and I took a walk through the frosty back yard and walked right by the spot where we gave our wedding toast, but one of the main things Rich and I agreed on wanting to mention during that toast was our parents. For their love, their support, and the wonderful example they have set for us. I’d like to honor them by dedicating this Thanksgiving Day gratitude post to our five wonderful parents!

~thankful thursday~ oh, brother

Posted on November 18, 2016 by marybethrew

{note to peeps who receive my posts via email: i am trying out a different email service, so please let me know if you don’t receive this message… oh, wait….how about if someone sends me a successfully received shout-out, would you please? and let me know if you notice anything problematic with the service at all. thanks y’all!}

11-11-16 day 11

today i’m feeling gratitude for the community in which i live. rich and i went to café mundo, the site of our very first date almost five years ago, and this time around we knew even more of the people there. (there is something to be said for a small town when trying to date again after a long time, saddled with doubts about one’s ability to judge a man’s character. i had lots and lots of background checkers, and they all gave him two thumbs up. also, people who weren’t even there knew what i ordered for dinner while i was eating it on said date, because, what else is there to text each other about?)

the only graffiti on the walls in the bathroom at mundo were the words, “LOVE” and “don’t compromise yourself to make someone whole.” also, the graffiti was in chalk because that is an invited form of expression there.

the music – still grateful for music – was live and beautiful and so many good songs were played. there were lots of friends from the cast of the play rich just finished performing in attendance, and it was a foregone conclusion that everyone present was on the same page concerning current events. to be clear, everyone doesn’t need to agree all the time for me to be in my happy place, but i know a lot of us are finding it pretty hard to stomach the amount of hatred and name calling and intolerance we are witnessing and experiencing.

i was wearing a safety pin out on the town, starting in a safe space where it wouldn’t be needed anyway, but also knowing it would be appreciated. those who hadn’t heard about safety pin symbolism were happy to know of one more way to show in a concrete way that we don’t plan on letting our community be a haven for bullying or exclusion or bigotry.

it is also on my mind that i feel tremendously grateful for the veterans who have served in our country’s military, and this is something i’ve always had a hard time reconciling because, by saying i value soldiers’ sacrifices, i don’t want to be misunderstood that i am in favor of war or that i think putting young men and women in the line of fire is the only or best way to serve our country or resolve conflicts with other countries. i think on days like this of my poppy, who served in both world war 2 and korea, and my dad who spent time in the air force during the vietnam war. my dad, thankfully, was not in combat, but poppy saw awful things, and i remember hearing him having terrible nightmares, when he lived with us when i was a kid and he was in his eighties. i have a hard time thinking that these men would have supported a presidential candidate who has openly insulted other veterans, and who behaves in abhorrent ways towards women, and who has contempt for immigrants, and those who practice “certain” religions. politics are a conversation i stopped having with my dad ten years ago, and i don’t want to start it back up, because i’m afraid it would break my heart that he might not get the connection between his vote and the message it sends to his daughter, to his grandson, about how men and women should behave, how they should expect to be treated, based on their race, gender, sexual orientation. i’m afraid of knowing my mom might have voted for someone who entertained the notion of repealing the 19th amendment.

my kid, who is growing up here in this vibrant community, gives me hope. the message i am making sure he receives is that if he sees bullying or hate based on another kid’s differences, that he must choose to stand up for the different kid and speak up about it. he said he’d do that anyway, even without a safety pin to remind him.

i couldn’t pass up this reading of flander’s fields by the late l. cohen. another one of life’s little synchronicities. enjoy with tissues on hand.

11-12-16 day 12

today i am thankful for the kitty kneading my lap, the fire in the wood stove, my faulty rew memory that makes it so i don’t necessarily remember using that woodstove gratitude already, or that i’ve already gotten a kiss or a hug (so then i get another one), and little things in life like safety pins.

11-13-16 day 13

i came across this letter from my dad the other night and like all the other recent synchronicities, it made me cry. so i sent it to my bff so at least i wasn’t the only one crying. safety in numbers.

today i am thankful for my dad.

the letter came after an extremely trying time in my coparenting career. dad said, “i know that the trial you just went through was very hard to endure. i want you to know that before, during that time, and always, i will love you with all of my heart. we may not always have been in agreement on everything, but, no matter what, i would do anything for you that i possibly could do. i pray that your life will continue to get better and better from here on out.”

one time, my dad grew a mustache for me with the motivation of alleviating my fear of men with facial hair. see? he would do anything. aside from being an amusing story told all my life, i have come to see, over time, that his message was not that men with facial hair are all safe, but instead, don’t let fear be what drives you. indeed, we know retrospectively that one of the men with facial hair at our church was definitely not safe, and i didn’t learn until i was an adult that he had molested one of the teen girls in church. but i think my dad really took on the challenge of helping me overcome fears and live a more confident life. maybe it was so he and mom could get to sleep at night (i also had a fear of the moths that flew around my night light, which i believed were wasps. i think he must have been really glad when i got over that.)

dad expected me to work on the farm, and i am grateful to him for instilling a strong work ethic in me. i started shoveling manure with a kid-size plastic orange snow shovel as soon as i was toddling enough to not fall on my face in said manure (at least not very often). once we graduated from eating random items in our environment, we were deemed old enough to run a grease gun around all the fittings on a tractor. dad appreciated and nurtured my interest in the midwifery aspect of raising cows. i was much less squeamish than my brothers, and he’d call me when there were twins or breach calves needing attending. i know my way around a cow uterus, and know just what to do with ivory dish soap and a hay hook to help get a stuck calf out.

i also know how to change a tire and change the oil in my car, thanks to my dad. he didn’t think this type of skill was reserved for males. he showed me how to split wood. he bought me my first chainsaw. sometimes i let rich use it.

i stole several of his flannel shirts when i was 19 and hopped on a schooner. when he and my mom met the ship in greenport, after my first voyage, he and i compared our muscles and farmer tans. his farmer tan will always dominate. people on the crew figured that my farm childhood explained why i took so readily to the rigors of shipboard life.

dad is going to retire from bus driving in a year or so, and when he does, i imagine he’ll have some beef cattle, because his “part time” job (40+ hours per week) already doesn’t prevent him from driving around on his tractor for all the rest of the daylight hours. he will need to farm something in order to keep busy, and i’m not sure apples will be enough. i will schedule my visits during calving season. i hope i have his energy level when i am his age.

dad was such a busy guy throughout my childhood, but he made room for us in his life in such a big way. i can still smell the diesel and dry grass from all the naps i took slung over the tractor toolbox with one of his button down shirts to snuggle up to, and taste the warm well water from the soda bottle with which i would wash down the dust. whenever we ended up curled up on his lap in the evening, he’d stick his finger in our ears to clean them out and clip our fingernails. he always read us the bedtime story. i would fall asleep listening to his voice reading how to eat fried worms, sideways stories from wayside school, or treasure island, and even now when we talk on the phone, i find it a comforting sound. i’m not the only one. my friends, cousins, and many of my brothers’ friends all love to hear my dad sing and play guitar, and have learned his repertoire enough to have favorites they request for him to sing. he always came to a track meet each season of my high school hurdling career, despite the timing of track meets always coinciding with milking hours. some of my favorite memories were silly conversations at the dinner table, or being woken up at 4:30 to be stuffed in the family car and driven up to saranac lake each summer.

i also have memories of storming away from the dinner table when dad and i couldn’t agree. he stated the truth in that letter, and it wasn’t always an easy father-daughter relationship. my mom maintains that i am very much like my dad, and that is why she thinks we clashed so much. we’re much more peaceful now; because you don’t have to agree on much of anything to have unconditional positive regard for each other.

one other thing. i am grateful to my dad for showing me how a man should respect, love and cherish his wife. my parents are a great example of how to truly live your wedding vows of “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health” and i realize how fortunate i am to have had an example like this to help me see the same qualities in rich when i met him. the above letter came just a couple of months after rich and i had begun our relationship. we had a lot of worse/poorer/sickness thrown our way in our first year, and rich was a rock and stood by me just as my dad stands by my mom. dad seemed to sense that about rich’s character already. in the same letter he wrote, “i am so pleased to hear you so happy with your relationship with rich. he sounds like someone who you will be able to trust.” we may not always have been in agreement on everything, but we definitely agree on that!

i love you, dad!

11-14-16 day 14

let’s do thankful for the farm part 2. last night was about dad, who is inextricable from the farm, having been there since he was 4 years old, so it couldn’t help but be a farm post. but i also want to express thankfulness for the farm itself. i’m going to borrow someone else’s words tonight, and take a break from thinking of what to say. this time, i’m quoting my favorite enviro-farming curmudgeon, wendell berry. he’s the best i’ve found at articulating the importance of a sense of place, and how farm life provides such a thing for a soul.

“if you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are.”

“Why do farmers farm, given their economic adversities on top of the many frustrations and difficulties normal to farming? And always the answer is: “Love. They must do it for love.” Farmers farm for the love of farming. They love to watch and nurture the growth of plants. They love to live in the presence of animals. They love to work outdoors. They love the weather, maybe even when it is making them miserable. They love to live where they work and to work where they live. If the scale of their farming is small enough, they like to work in the company of their children and with the help of their children. They love the measure of independence that farm life can still provide. I have an idea that a lot of farmers have gone to a lot of trouble merely to be self-employed to live at least a part of their lives without a boss.”

speaking of love…

“I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love.”

“What I stand for
is what I stand on.”

“Never forget: We are alive within mysteries.”

and finally…

“be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.” google the poem this quote is from, “manifesto: the mad farmer liberation front,” and read the whole wonderful thing. it’s from 1973, yet fitting for the present moment. and then grab your nearest farmer and hug them.

11-15-16 day 15

already halfway through the 30 days of gratitude! i guess i could look at it as the month is half over, or… i could say there is still half of it yet to come!

did i say that i’m thankful for the fires rich builds in the woodstove yet? i can’t remember. so toasty. or how about the kitty snugglers? i don’t know if i threw in the fruit salsa and chicken we ate last night for dinner or the yummy pasta we had tonight for dinner. or the nice hot bath i took last night. or the whiskey i am enjoying with my love right now. coffee. soft blankets. we sat down to biscuits and gravy this morning, and rich turned up the volume knob on the radio to paul mccartney and wings singing “maybe i’m amazed at the way you love me all the time.” and we smiled at each other. (music! did i use music yet?) i got to see a beautiful sky layered with fluffy clouds and muted pastel colors as i drove homeward across the bridge after work. then there is the beautiful moon situation. the sound of rain on our metal roof, and being snug inside our cozy home. at the root of some of my fall funk (i referred to it on day 1, it’s part of why i impulsively jumped in and committed to doing this for a whole month… free therapy!) is that i feel unsettled, not moved in yet, still in the midst of a long two year transition of not being home yet. if i look at the glass as half full though, i’m lucky to have the home, all the homes, i’ve been fortunate enough to inhabit. this one may still be filled with piles of boxes, and we may not have the living room layout solved just yet, but…

“our house is a very very very fine house… with two cats in the yard… life used to be so hard… now everything is easy ‘cause of you.”

11/16/16 day 16

i declare it sibling thankfulness day.

brother b. he was my first friend, my first enemy, and now i’m glad to say we’ve been back to friend status for quite some time. he’s a punk rocker, a true friend who will drop everything to help a friend in need, has the most colossal sneeze and the most infectious laugh, and has been reading howard zinn since before he was cool.

sister c. i’m so happy she became my sister in law last year, after decades of belonging to our family already. i’ve got bowls made by her hands in my cupboard, and i will strive to emulate her interior decorating style, she is a true artist. she is also a super mom and i’m glad my bro has a great partner in the parenting adventure!

brother t. whenever i needed someone to geek out with, and, say, write all the roman numerals, in order, from 1 to 1000, on yellow legal pads, he was always my go-to guy. i say this as though it’s in the past tense, like we didn’t just create a role-play game version of the oregon trail together, oh, a couple of months ago. all-time best writer of funny emails ever, but you have to wait for it. this is also true of the words that come out of his mouth… sporadically.

sister n. i just shared a heartfelt email exchange with my sister in law, whom i’ve known since childhood. we went to kids’ church camp together, isn’t that wild(wood)? we also both lived on the west coast for a period of time. she’s been a kindred since long before she married t. and i sure love the nephews she brought into this world for me.

i’ve seen lots of families of siblings lose touch with each other, or worse, and this almost seems more common, to splinter apart as time and life present obstacles. it’s one of my deepest wishes to never let that happen between my brothers and me.

because, there are a lot of wonderful people who come and go in life, but there are only two people who i lined up stuffed animals with to do the “milking.” there are only two people with whom i plucked kernels of cow corn to fill up our toy gravity wagon to plant corn in the sandbox. there are only two people who had to eat bread and milk with me because dad said we had to try it. there are only two people who know the martyr song as well as i do. and if each one of them needed a kidney simultaneously, i’d give them each one of my own in a heartbeat.

11-17-16 day 17

today i am thankful for books. i just checked “fantastic beasts and where to find them” out of the library (so thankful for librarians!!!) so quinn and i can read it before we go watch the movie. i’m slowly chipping away at “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.” but today, “bat 6” by virginia euwer wolff and “snow falling on cedars” by david guterson, are coming to mind, though i haven’t read either one recently. i need to get to bed, so i’m borrowing quotes again, this time from “snow falling on cedars”:

“The snowfall obliterated the borders between the fields and made Kabuo Miyamoto’s long-cherished seven acres indistinguishable from the land that surrounded them. All human claims to the landscape were superseded, made null and void by the snow. The world was one world, and the notion that a man might kill another over some small patch of it did not make sense.”

~~~

“None of those other things makes a difference. Love is the strongest thing in the world, you know. Nothing can touch it. Nothing comes close. If we love each other we’re safe from it all. Love is the biggest thing there is.”

“snow falling on cherry blossoms” march 2012

mb

magic & bioluminescence

Tag Archives: brothers

~thankful thursday~ light cone

~thankful thursday~ magnitude

~thankful thursday~ butterfly effect

~thankful thursday~ oh, brother