Tag Archives: honeymoon

100 monthaversary ~ going-to-the-sun

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“We need wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do. We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it. We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers. To be surrounded by a singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do ours, and none of which could possibly care less about our economic status or our running day calendar.”

~Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonder “Knowing Our Place”

I’ve been re-reading Small Wonder in the bathtub alongside Bobbie Lippman’s book Good Grief, and salting the bathwater with my tears. On the day Bobbie shared in her newspaper column that her husband had died, she said it would have been their 523rd monthaversary the next day. Reading this quote about our need for wild places that move at the pace of glaciers reminded me of our honeymoon trip to just such a place, by just such a name.

After those readings, I calculated our monthaversaries and realized we were coming right up on our 99th! And now, today, is the 100th monthaversary of our love. I know many marriages are being tested on exactly how resilient they are to sickness and health, better and worse, richer and poorer, during these difficult times, and I feel extremely grateful to be able to say that after one hundred months, our love only seems to grow stronger and more resilient. Surrounded by our little bit of wilderness, we immerse ourselves in it together and enjoy observing the slow transitions from egg to fledgling, bud to flower to fruit to seed, the angle of the sunbeams migrating around the compass bearings and between different trees, nature always moving along with its own agenda, unaware of our daily human struggles. Our routine afternoon walks together are a highlight of each day, grounding us back into nature and each other.

I thought I’d post some photos from our first day or so in Glacier National Park on our honeymoon road trip, in honor of our 100 months, and since all of us are staying at home right now, this is one way I can still take us to one of the wild places we know our souls need. Take a virtual drive along Going-to-the-Sun Road beside mountains, wildflowers, and rainbow-rock lakes.

 

Rich, the journey I’ve been on with you these last 100 months has been every bit as exhilarating and as much an exercise in deeply trusting as our first drive up Going-to-the-Sun Road, and the name of the road really says it all: we’re heading towards the light, together, always. I love you!

~thankful thursday~ navigating transitions

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11/9/17

~30 days of gratitude~ day 9

i may have already mentioned a certain man i am thankful for, but recently i’ve been specifically feeling gratitude for his navigational skills. there is just about nothing i’d rather be doing than riding in the passenger seat while he drives me anywhere. it was why we chose to go on a road trip for our honeymoon this summer. we are very happy driving places together! this still blows me away, because there was a time in my life when not only was i expected to do the navigating, i was put down for how badly i did the job. i still claim that i am better with directions at sea than on land, but i don’t think i’d be so bad at land navigation if i hadn’t been emotionally abused so much in that area. now, on the exceedingly rare occasions that rich does ask a navigational question of me, guess what? it’s okay with him if i make a mistake or simply have no idea what the answer to the question is. it’s just simply not a source of stress in our lives.

most of the time, however, nothing is required of me in this department, because rich just seems to always know which way to turn. we drove a different way to portland last weekend, back roads the whole way, until at one point he told me, “ok hang on, we’re going on a new adventure!” and put on his turn signal. it’s amazing how he never has to back track or ask for directions, and equally amazing how he turns off on so many unmarked country roads that seem like they probably don’t go anywhere, at least to my eye. we made it to portland with time to spare for coffee and a burger before the show.

in the state of oregon, his directional abilities have a lot to do with having driven his kids back and forth across the state for years on their way to track meets, basketball games, and other sporting events. he rarely even consults an atlas anymore, when we are traveling inside the state. when we drove across state lines to montana for our honeymoon, he could be found sneaking a peak at various maps. i think it is recreational reading for him to study how the roads all weave together across the terrain. all of this is lovely for me, since it means i get to ride in my favorite seat and photo-document the journey.

 

11/10/17

~30 days of gratitude~ day 10

today i am grateful for date night, rainbows, and inspirational women!

 

11/11 and 11/12 and 11/13/17

~30 days of gratitude~ days 11, 12, and 13

i am grateful for forgiveness. i sometimes lose track of days and plans and agendas and schedules whenever the week transitions from life with quinn to life without quinn. i forgive myself for not getting an A in gratitude, and skipping a few days while i regrouped (and worked, and played, and went on a date, and cooked and cleaned.) i forgive myself for putting off writing a holiday to-do list, and i forgive myself for that list being insanely long once i finally wrote it, in spite of wanting to keep the holidays simple, and i forgive myself for not checking any items off the list yet.

i’m thankful for the way ani difranco (who i got to see on friday night, so lucky, so grateful!) has managed to write lyrics that describe my life for several decades running. she had her daughter a month before i had my son (and he was almost a month overdue), and while we were both pregnant she wrote, “you’re gonna love this world if it’s the last thing i do, the whole extravagant joke topped in bittersweet chocolate goo, for someone who ain’t even here yet, look how much the world loves you…”

it feels like an extravagant joke topped in bittersweet chocolate goo to drop off my son only to turn around and get taken on a date. i miss him but i think i appreciate both him and the time alone with my man all the more for the times in between. and then i am overjoyed to pick him up a week later.

transitions are a way of life for my kiddo, who spends equal halves of his life in two separate households. he has grown so much in his ability to transition gracefully, and now he does a better job than anyone. and that’s not to mention developmental transitions that are going on all the time. into fifth grade, into percussion lessons, into packing his own school lunches, into attending theatre workshops, into defying his mama and staying awake to read his book under the covers by head lamp. more bittersweet chocolate goo!

i am thankful for how forgiveness of past hurts frees me from the poison of resentment. i am also thankful for the perspective to know the difference between forgiveness and acceptance of unacceptable behavior. forgiveness is a present i give myself, not a welcome mat for abuse.

i thank my lucky stars that my husband and i don’t venture into areas requiring forgiveness.

like the little creatures in the ocean that bioluminesce, i am trying to generate my own light during this dark time. many organisms are triggered to glow when they encounter disturbance, and transition times are a continuous source of predictable disturbance for me, like waves, like tides. i have always felt like that dynamic position in the universe where air, land and sea coalesce on the edge of the ocean is the most magical, and of course that transition between rain and sun that brings us rainbows is another personal favorite. i am thankful for the magic around the edges of things.

11/14 and 11/15/17

~30 days of gratitude~ days 14 and 15

i am thankful for rainbows in unexpected places and other surprises.

p.s. last night i was thankful for nachos again!

~tuesday tunes~ almost heaven

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while summer swiftly swished away, one of the ways the emotional waves of wedding were felt by me, was music. i decided it would be fun to share music a bit more frequently in general, and thought i’d give music a day of the week in which to organize itself here in the cyber canning jars. monday was taken… so tuesday tunes it is! to kick it off, i thought i’d share 3 versions of a song that captures the arc of emotion of my summer. like the ocean waves i describe to quinn in my best yoga teacher voice during the dolphin story at bedtime, these sound waves were protective; i tell him to picture himself held by the waves, as they are big enough to hold it all, so we can release and fall asleep and let go of it all. the emotions of weddings are just so big, and so in like manner, the best way i can think of to start to share that enormous emotional journey is to share some of the music which helped me release some of the big feels.

i did not have major plans for video at our wedding, though because we live in such a modern age, we received several great unanticipated videos from friends and my now step-daughter. in the aftermath of it all, though, i discovered that i myself had taken only one single phone video during the entire time my family and rich’s family came together to celebrate our marriage. this is the one, and it does a great job of summing up the brim-fullness of this time. just to orient you, from my vantage point i begin in the corner sitting by the door, where i am perched on the lap of my then fiance. we didn’t yet have our entire families in attendance, but we had a pretty good representation, and my best woman, too! dad had already picked up his/my guitar, regaled us with roger miller songs and best woman’s request for the very unfortunate man (ever appropriate for weddings, this was also sung on my big brother’s wedding day!) dad then sang the one i would have requested, had he not gone ahead and played it without me needing to ask.

 

 

was i the only one who danced around the raw sienna living room rug with their mom to the warm crackle of the record player making john denver croon his greatest hits in the 80s? “all my memories gather ’round her” is a perfect way to describe my mother, which is always who i think of when i hear that line, including as we gathered around my dad to listen to this rendition of take me home, country roads. we grew up on a country road surrounded by rolling hills, and my mom did her own growing up in a place devoid of hills known as the bronx, but her heart for the mountains of the adirondacks certainly qualifies her for the description of “mountain mama” as well.

my heart was so full, looking around at our loved ones gathered around, the children immersed so fully in their play in the next room, and listening to this song that has always captured the very essence of longing for home for me.

~~~

we departed for our honeymoon a blissfully blurry several days later. our first stop was a brandi carlile concert at the oregon zoo, and after brandi pulled on our heartstrings with the story and wherever is your heart, she thought she’d break the poignant tension with a sing-along!

this is the song, though not the performance we saw, but from another venue.

unfortunately, i was unable to participate in the sing-along until she got to the bridge, because i was too busy sobbing into my husband’s shoulder. it was difficult even then to croak the words, “radio reminds me of my home far away, driving down the road i get a feeling like i should have been home yesterday… yesterday.” there were two moments for me when the emotional floodgates opened after the wedding: the first involved laughter at the beach the day after the wedding, and that story is still to come, but the second was a good cry at an outdoor concert, surrounded by thousands of people.

~~~

after we returned home and started sweeping away dried petals and resuming normal life, except new and improved because it’s married life, i made up some new mix cds based on songs that had come up during the wedding week and honeymoon week. i found a version of brandi carlile singing country roads with emmylou harris, so of course that went on the mix. riding in the car while i overplayed said mix, quinn absorbed the song and began to sing along. in a few short years his voice will no longer be in the right register to warble along with brandi, so i decided to record it for posterity. one evening after he had it memorized, we sat on his bedroom floor and i strummed on dad’s/my guitar while quinn sang:

maybe one day he’ll sing along with it when it comes on the radio, feeling the things i feel when i sing it, but about this home of ours. “life is old there… older than the trees… younger than the mountains… blowing like a breeze.”

~tuesday tunes~

audio inspiration, musical memories and stories with soundtracks

~rainbow mondays~ return of bridezilla

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peaches were languishing on the kitchen table, because even though i knew i could only handle a small number, zero might have been a more accurate estimate, based on the other many things i needed to tackle this week.

my writing agenda is not so much languishing as sitting and patiently awaiting a mellower season in which to be attended to. “what i did on my summer vacation” is notated in lists and outline format for helping me remember what i want to write about the sublime moments, between now and november.

in spite of my intentions, some other things have come up… mainly a couple of jobs, but also an eclipse, a celebration of life for my friend’s husband, and the fun of removing head lice from my son each time he returns home to me. i also became officially myself (in a court of law) today, but that is a long story for another time. in fact, most of these things, including the photo at the top of the post, are each longer stories for other times. the short version is, we’re thrilled to be married, our honeymoon was amazing, my husband has my back in every situation that has arisen so far in our marriage, and i am now a published author in our local newspaper, albeit for an obituary.

but even though i must be brief tonight, i figured i should clear some cobwebs off this beloved space of mine, because i don’t plan on going into business with that kind of writing. here is my very small post to give the tiniest of tastes of the epic rainbow summer we have had.

the rainbow children of the lake!

red: pre-wedding festivities at the house of wedding boss!

orange: my brother nailed it.

yellow: our honeymoon in three frames; this sign.

green: these mountains

blue: this water.

purple: and ohhhh, the wedding. there isn’t enough time to scratch the surface, but rest assured i will be back with verbose re-tellings of my favorite parts…. just as soon as the chaos is under control.

~rainbow mondays~

a splash of color on monday

a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed