Today I am grateful for weekly date nights, for blackberries pulled out of the freezer and turned into syrup for date night cocktails, and of course for my handsome date. The photos are from other dates, we did not go to the golden gate bridge this evening, just to the Noodle Café, for which I am also grateful. But I do get to go to some very cool places with him when I am riding in the passenger seat, even when it’s not vacation.
11/12/21
~30 days of gratitude~ day 12
I was having another one of those “grateful for husband/kitties/popcorn, again?” moments, wondering whether it was worth repeating all the same things over again that I am always grateful for. Then I looked back at my memories, as I’ve got a good pile of previous year gratitude posts to fall back on if I am already going to be repeating myself. I saw that one year ago today, my dad was spending the night in the hospital after a scary heart rate drop. A year later, he has a pacemaker and has re-emerged from retirement yet again and is back driving bus, but now with the proper number of beats per minute. My post from two years ago concerned butterflies and migrations and extra trips I had flown in 2019 to visit my parents, including the very last one I took there in October that year while my mom was having radiation. I am so grateful to be able to say that she is cancer-free and he is marching steadily to his new beat and in four more days they will both be boosted. My gratitude for my parents’ health is of course both amplified and shadowed by my husband’s loss of two parents in one year. But I’ve noticed that at least for me, this gratitude season always seems to involve looking into shadows, trusting that stories about shadows are so often secretly stories about light.
11/13/21
~30 days of gratitude~ day 13
Grateful for a blue-sky farmer’s market day, a long evening nap on the couch by the wood stove, and bagels, the college roommate of nachos. (I took no good photos of my rainbow display today, so this one is from a few weeks ago; now there are more root veggies and fewer eggplants, but still colorful and abundant.)
11/14/21
~30 days of gratitude~ day 14
While not vacationing in Oklahoma, I was grateful repeatedly for strangers who helped us take care of things. There was C, who reassured us that we were moving Nancy into assisted living at the exact right moment and not a moment too soon, and then texted me after her first night to let us know Nancy had enjoyed hot cocoa after dinner! There was E, who sat patiently with us in the bank, untying confusing paperwork knots and offering real sympathy, sharing her own story of loss even though we were randoms revolving through her office. There was J who sat with us in the funeral home, explaining the steps to this Advanced Adulting task over again when I got lost. She radiated sweetness, kindness.
And finally, I will be grateful forever for D, the nurse on 3 West at St. Francis hospital who could tell, without being able to talk to her, that Nancy needed her room a little bit warmer to be comfortable. D, who received word of decisions made in accordance with Nancy’s wishes to remove feeding tube, then a day later to remove oxygen cannula, and whose hands carried out those important jobs. D, who applied chapstick, and told us about Nancy puckering, appreciating the attention to her dry lips despite having maxed out the morphine drip. Into the isolation room she would hustle when the morphine drip beeped its “downstream occlusion” alarm, proclaiming, “it’s the song of my people!” And would joke along with us about how Nancy was just trying to get us to change the subject. D showed us her trick of being able to write both backwards and forwards with both her left and right hand. Instead of logging into the isolation room computers, she would write backwards on the glass doors, to be able to input her notes when she exited a room. D has been on the COVID ward since the pandemic began, so she has had time to perfect this skill. Concurrently with Nancy, she had two pregnant patients and was worried for them. She also had a belligerent patient who kept ripping off his cannula, who then signed himself out AMA. It’s no joke in there. When a patient from the psych ward was also COVID positive and on suicide watch, she would play tic-tac-toe with them using the dry erase markers, sitting on the other side of the window. She thought Nancy was “just a doll,” and shared about her work at the facility her Grandma had lived in. She understood dementia but it didn’t seem to get her down. She would ask her Grandma and her other residents, when they told her each incongruous story, “how old are you?” And when they said 39, or 56, it often made the story make marginally more sense. After two different days of D having a feeling “this might be her day,” based on Nancy’s vitals, she finally told us, “I’ll see y’all on Saturday,” the day before Nancy died. We did not see D on Saturday, but I’m so grateful for the days she took care of Nancy and of us.
(originally posted two years ago)
11/15/21
~30 days of gratitude~ day 15
Still grateful about this.
Happy Monday, friends.
11/16/21
~30 days of gratitude~ day 16
I am grateful for books! There are some gems in this rainbow of recent reads.
I am grateful that when I walked out of the house this morning without my purse and the door locked behind me that I had also forgotten to lock the back door the last time I went through it. Double forgetfulness, like double negative, is a positive.
I decided to hide a spare key inside Quinn’s play kitchen tea kettle, and then decided I’d make a blog post about it, so I can look it up when I forget where it is hidden. (In omitting the location of the tea kettle so internet villains will not be able to break into our house, I run the risk that I may still not find the hidden key at a future forgetful date.)
I’ve had his tea kettle on the back burner of my mind as a dear object I have been wanting to trace back in time in writing. Though right now it is sometimes better to keep a lid on the memories, there are days, like today, when it feels as comforting as a mug of tea to steep myself in treasured moments from the past.
Quinn’s tea kettle was far and away his favorite play kitchen item, a present for his birthday when he turned two. I would tidy up his kitchen at night and when he would wake up in the morning he would go straight to it, pouring bunny snacks, raisins, and popcorn between the colander, the pot, and the tea kettle. He would finish his evening making dishes such as “people pasta,” simmering all of his wooden people figurines in the tea kettle.
He was in love with having, “berry berry my own tea kettle,” so I sang, “I’m a little teapot” to him, of course. Then, of course, he made me sing it a million times, with the hand motions. Then he modified it to sing to himself, “I’m a little tea kettle.”
It moved with us from that green house where he turned two to our orange house, where he was growing so mature he would request a teabag and make his own tea kettle full of tea to pour himself.
It moved again to the dragon house, and after we cleaned out the playhouse there, his play kitchen was installed, tea kettle and all. By five, he was interested in dinosaurs, chess, and ewoks, and may not have played as much with his kitchen set, but the tea kettle still got played with the most.
When we moved here to dragon house 2.0 and Quinn turned ten, I painted an old computer desk into an outdoor play kitchen for all the children we knew would be attending our upcoming wedding. Quinn approved of using his kitchen stuff, tea kettle included, to furnish the Rainbow Restaurant.
Memories of that week will always make my heart bubble over with joy.
The day started with a little forgetfulness, but ended up with a heart full to the brim and spilling over with gratitude for the memories.
My godfather, Dan Weber, passed away on February 3rd. He was an amazing man, and leaves behind a prosperous legacy. His five children and many grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and more distant relatives like me, all celebrate his life this weekend. His wife Judy, my godmother, is surrounded by family and I send my heart to her as well.
Aunt Judy described him as her rock, and I know all of us are picturing a few specific rocks when we hear that metaphor used to symbolize his strength of character, his stable assuredness. Our summer family vacations all revolved around Upper Saranac Lake in the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York, where Weber point is a landmark we all know well. This slab of bedrock angling up out of the lake at the tippy end of Pork Bay where our family properties and cabins were concentrated, was encrusted with lichens, visited by loons and beavers, forested with paper birches and conifers, and in August, sprinkled with fresh wild blueberries. Another rock a short hike from Aunt Margie and Uncle George’s cabin Benchmark on Fish Creek is known simply as “Big Rock”, another pilgrimage destination for all cousins looking for adventure. Though his point comes to mind first, his presence was more reminiscent of the Big Rock variety of rocks – proud and solid and upright, casting a towering reflection across the surface of the lake. From up high on Big Rock, the view was expansive; likewise Uncle Dan’s sights were always set on greatness, always focused on the big picture. His obituary captures this magnitude in describing his stature in the wider world, but Aunt Judy’s words best capture his foundational bearing in the family.
A tiny species of wildflower, a bleeding heart, grew on Big Rock. I noticed it one summer when I was in high school and made an effort to check for its blooms each year thereafter upon visiting Big Rock. Up on the side of this massive bedrock heaved and carved into being by the gargantuan processes of plate tectonics and glacier retreat, this impossibly small blossom could be easily missed, and reflecting back, I imagine it was missed by most. Its delicate root system could easily have been wiped clean off the face of the rock by ice and snow, but it persisted. Its life there depended upon the elements, the fanciful flights of birds depositing its seeds from somewhere else, a root tendril grasping a crack in the rock. Not built to withstand the type of geologic processes that formed and weathered a boulder, and yet born to stand up to the test of time by living and dying in ephemeral cycles, able to receive a small component of its nutrition from the minerals in the rock itself, but mostly relying on the reliability of rain, the certainty of sunlight, and an ability to go dormant and disappear in winter, for meeting its needs.
(borrowed this lovely photo of the probable flower species, Dicentra eximia)
Whenever I saw Uncle Dan, he called me his Pretty Girl. “How’s my Pretty Girl?” he’d ask, and I’d blush and tell him I was fine, give him a hug. I was an unnoticeable flower in the presence of a towering boulder. His attention, his affectionate “Pretty Girl,” was like sun and water on the tiny flower. He managed to make each of us in the bouquet of children feel like we mattered.
His philosophy was that anyone could achieve success if they put their mind to it. A wildflower could become discouraged and find her self-worth diminished by such a philosophy, looking up at all the tall trees growing off a large boulder, while she struggled to take root in a negligible amount of soil in a tiny crack on a rock. The flower could wonder whether this philosophy was just for other entities who already started off large, those with muscle to throw around, whether maybe success wasn’t intended for pretty girls at all. Yet it is easy to feel warm towards his optimism about the American dream and anyone’s potential to achieve it, even while I acknowledge my own belief that the amount of opportunity available to a flower or a pebble or a beetle is not the same as that available to a giant rock, to achieve boulder greatness. His belief was in the inherent goodness of all, the essential sameness in all of us, with which I can and do resonate, and while privilege plays a role in actual outcomes and successes, there is always reason to dream big and believe in ourselves. My own view embraces different versions of success than just the boulder variety, and I have come to feel it is good and right for me to belong among the wildflowers in a world that tends to value rocks.
We are all busy digging through photos of him, patriarch of the Weber clan. I can tell you that none of my photos of him, mostly from when I was first let loose with a camera in high school, are of his business successes or his wealth or status in society. What they show is the way I remember him, the things I loved about him: up at the lake, up a ladder with a hammer in his hand, or waist-deep in water, if he was building a dock instead of a cabin; with a baby on his lap having a bottle, or with a kid on his lap getting bounced or told a story; sitting around a table telling a story to a wider audience, over coffee and danish.
Then there are the memories not pictured. I remember him stoking the fire in the conical red wood stove, while Aunt Judy worked the red handle to pump fresh water for one of the kids to stir kool-aid into, the screen door slamming behind whoever had just returned from the outhouse, the sliding door out front simultaneously shuttling in the rest of the kids, out of breath from running up the pine-needle covered trail and the flight of stairs up from a morning of fishing for sunnies and perch off the dock, one or two of us with a smaller toddling cousin on our hip. I remember kids lined up along the ladder to the loft of the A-frame, before the A-frame transformed into a spacious chalet to hold the ever-expanding Weber family with running water and flush toilets. I remember his blazing grin and the sparkle in his eyes, his methodical way of telling a story, his voice soothing (the same way I feel about my Dad’s) but in a Long Island accent. I remember being his Pretty Girl.
love is takeout gyros and movie rentals, a scenic drive home on the bay road so we can relax at home.
love is lighting sparklers by ourselves in the yard on the 4th, then heading to bed before the fireworks even think about starting.
love is asking me for a shopping list on Friday so he can do the solo costco marathon on saturday while i am at farmer’s market.
love is wandering around the yard pulling morning glory together (noxious weed here, pretty other places) in various corners of the yard after work, and just chatting.
love is easing each other’s pain. rich had a sore foot so i was making him a foot bath with epsom salt daily. then the chiropractor told him to have me put cider vinegar in with the epsom salt. guess whose wife has approximately 6 gallons of homemade apple cider vinegar? rich’s wife.
love is laughing at how “we’re growing old together” and the hilarious and unanticipated realization that i could not bear to watch him soak only one foot. love is putting his other, uninjured, foot in the bath just so i would stop shuddering. love is discovering new quirks about ourselves through our journey together down the path of the rest of our lives.
love is waking me up every morning, and when i wake up still very tired, sweetly asking me if i should be taking my iron supplement. love is patiently and cheerfully waking me up multiple times each day.
“yay, whee! isn’t it great? it’s morning time!”
“it’s still night time! it’s dark outside!” i grumble.
“isn’t it exciting? it’s a brand new day!”
“zzzzzzzzzzzz.”
“jump out of bed! wheee!”
“i don’t have any jumping beans.”
he tries to give me some of his surplus jumping beans…
i’m immune…
one day i told him i was only 4% awake, so he would ask periodically throughout the morning for me to quantify my awakeness level.
“are you up to 100% yet?”
“12.”
another morning something was “so exciting” about this “new day” that he asked, “doesn’t it just take your awake level straight to 100???”
it did not. but he really pegs my love meter up there at the top.
love is sitting side by side in the rain to watch a great concert together. love is letting me nap in the passenger seat on the ride there and back.
i have been doing things like leaving the burner on the stove turned on when we go to bed and realizing it a short time later… one day i realized i had been driving around without my driver’s license all week because i had it in my raincoat when we went to the concert the weekend before… work has been stressful and i overheard someone saying, “yeah, mb knows how to do that… but don’t ask her right now, she has a lot on her plate.” and really, these things are the least of my actual worries, the tip of the iceberg.
love is being a solid stable guy who holds me when i ugly cry and tells me it will be okay and that he loves me and that he knows it is just overwhelm from how awesome and handsome he is.
~strolling down photo memory lane, this dreamy photo by henry wanted to jump in this post today~
my love and i are celebrating two years of marriage, and 7 years and 7 months of togetherness today!
at this life stage, i like to go to the grocery store fewer than once per week, but i went two consecutive days in a row last week. rich asked me to buy him some ricolas, and at the same time we realized we were getting low on t.p. (low for people in middle age, so with about 3 rolls to go; closer to out than we want to be at this aforementioned life stage.) since that night would be the opening night of rich’s play, i also bought a bouquet of flowers. cough drops, t.p., and flowers really felt like a shopping list snapshot representation of love, seven years in.
on my way home from quinn’s band concert that night i hired the person tending the performing arts center lobby as my flower delivery elf. i was banking on knowing the person performing this job, and sure enough, he was a guest at our wedding.
between gratitude and herbs and twinkly rainbow tree lights and camp boss love meals, i’m hanging tough through my least favorite season, but every way i can boost self care, i do. the next morning, i picked some cards from my animal medicine card deck, as i’ve found it to be a reliable way to reconnect my spirit. the card i picked for rich was crow the “sentinel” but i hadn’t seen his play yet, so i didn’t even realize how fitting it would be.
other reading and reflecting has to do with a certain man i met at yoga class 7 years ago…
actual words i typed before asking him on our first date:
omg my tummy is so butterflies right now i can barely type. lol. one hour till i leave to go do laundry.
third date:
he doesn’t seem afraid at all to tell me sweet things. so far he seems so willing to say basically yes yes yes i like you, yes more being together, yes more phone calls, yes. there is no holding back or thinking something is not ok to say or feel or do…
i loved finding that “yes yes yes” before i ever went to country fair with him and stood under yes yes yes banners and added yes yes yes songs to our mix tapes… fun to find evidence that it was always there. it was never a maybe or a let’s see for either of us. we weren’t messing around.
on friday morning, rich was reading aloud about a high surf advisory on the beaches. crow is a watcher and protector.
me: “so i’m hearing take my camera to work today so i can go to the beach and take pictures of big waves?”
“um, no.”
“go to the beach with my camera, right?”
“do not go to the beach. well, you can take pictures, but you have to stay up high, not go down on the beach.”
“on the jetty?”
“no! do not go on the jetty.”
it has been fun remembering together. “seven years ago this friday morning i was blowing up lauren’s phone with how we gave each other backrubs in yoga and how you ran away out of class and i couldn’t ask you out. but i knew we’d both go do laundry on monday.” he was laughing and calling me a stalker, which i owned. he said, “i didn’t run away,” but i disagreed, “you basically jumped into your socks and shoes and sprinted out the door.”
he went out the door to work friday morning at a leisurely pace, but i hadn’t made him any tea and i had been trying to keep his throat happy for the play. he said it was okay if i would just make him some that night before the show, and he stuffed some ricolas in his pocket. after he left, i tucked a quart jar of tea in a fuzzy wool cozy, and dropped it off in his truck. i had to check two locations but once i located his truck at the port, i snuck tea into it with a note, “making sure my stalking skills are still intact.”
the set for rick bartow: in spirit was magical, with alder branches lining the “walls” and animal sculptures nestled among the branches. the floor was covered in sawdust and wood chips, the perfect workspace of a loved and respected local artist. at the start of the play rich was alone on stage, sweeping wood chips, and immediately there was no fourth wall, he spoke directly to the audience. his opening lines spoke of “when i returned” referring to rick’s time in vietnam. he was drafted, came back “a walking wound,” and wore bells on his arms and legs to be able to hear his parts moving.
rich set a grounded and warm tone over the whole room (no surprise here, that is the effect he has on me all the time). he stopped sweeping and picked up a discarded piece of pipe, some twine and a twig off the floor, and turned the pieces into a crow.
three other characters came “out of the stacks” at the library and they interacted with bartow. in a distinctly non-wronging way, rich’s character corrected a lot of the misconceptions about being native american. emily dickinson could relate, and took the opportunity to dispel various myths about herself. next, he interacted with a.e. housman, and was able to break through his defenses (his initial tone was “who the heck is this indian?”) to offer metaphor that brought the agitated poet some peace. rick had done sweat lodges with recovering alcoholics in real life, and would take no credit for any healing taking place, referring back to spirit working through him. the characters discussed the lack of a word for religion in native languages because it’s not something separate from life. his character discussed with brecht how he had a strong attachment to this place, our coastal town. finally the authors were on their way to return to the stacks but rick paid some final tributes:
“but what about the women in your life?”
“those women are Everything.”
“and what about the children in your life?”
“the children are Everything.”
(knowing that rick’s son, who years ago used to skateboard with rich’s son, was sitting in the audience while he said this, was pretty deep. rich’s one condition upon being asked to take on the role was that rick’s son approved.) i also liked having it heard by my own child-who-is-everything right beside me, who proudly observed before the show that, “my step-dad is basically the star of the show.”
on sunday after the final matinee, i helped strike the set. but first i got to witness rich getting greeted by so many people who knew rick and had stories to share, or just loved the play and wanted to shake his hand. he was so gracious and deferred to his fellow cast and director. i told him he is like the quarterback who gives all the credit to his teammates. he got pulled away from three women after they thanked him but one of them recognized me from the farm stand so i kept chatting with them and they were a hoot. they all knew rick from the library or school, one was his second cousin once removed. they were naming actual theaters in portland where they were envisioning the play touring. i said, “as long as i can finagle a way to go along, i think they should definitely take it on the road!” they were tickled that the veggie lady was married to the star of the show.
rich’s process with plays is a bit like mine with writing. he reads my final drafts but most of the time i am doing my own internal process and all he hears is the sound of keys clicking on the laptop. when he does a play, i likewise see the end result, but he learns his lines and does his process internally. it was like a release that evening, finally just getting to revel in the experience and discuss our thoughts on it, hear about what resonated for him in his role, how the experience was for him.
that night i read him the cards i had picked out. about how crow strengthens his voice and uses it to bring light forth from the darkness… flies over with regularity, a reminder that we are not alone on our search to discover the light within. with his strong, loud call he encourages using one’s voice as a tool for knowing and sharing Truth.
in the card i attached to his flowers, i had quoted emily dickinson: “forever is composed of nows.” i think it’s a good description of how we are doing forever together, being fully present in the now moments with each other, remembering the nows of yesterday and savoring the nows of today, not just ending up at the destination together one day, but being here enjoying every little moment together going down the road.
another memory:
it has all just felt so “yes” the whole time and in addition to all the yes it’s also lack of dissenting voices. i asked him if he minded if i fell in love with him and he said he didn’t mind. then he said, “you know that falling in love thing has been on the tip of my tongue.” i said, “yeah, you were going to ask me out too, but you waited for me to say it first” and he laughed.
i strive to elicit that same laugh today.
he already got me a christmas present. when my butt nearly caught on fire one morning a few weeks ago due to my heating pad spontaneously combusting, he helped remind me what to do in my panic (unplug it, sweetie) and quickly carried the smoking object outside the house. when he returned, he made sure i was okay before he even cracked any jokes about my smokin’ hot butt. and a new heating pad was on my chair by the time i got home from work that day.
i may still be a novice at creating my own light, but i will never in a million years be able to make my own heat. luckily he has that covered. but you know, he brings a lot of light in addition to heat to this equation. it has always made so much sense to me that we celebrate our beginnings on the day of the year that the light starts returning.
love you now and forever, rich. happy seven years!
on the two year engage-aversary of my husband asking me to marry him, i thought a stroll down wedding memory lane, accompanied by a tune, would be just the thing.
johnny cash was the second musical artist rich told me he liked on our first date. the first was rusted root, and every other one since then has been met with enthusiastic agreement on my part, but… johnny cash. if there was one moment when i “knew” about rich, it would be hard for me to pin down, but by the time he was telling me about his love for johnny, if i hadn’t already “known,” it would have been a moment of that kind. knowing all the words to so many johnny cash songs was a matter of course for my brothers and i, as his cassette tapes lived in the aerostar minivan we rode around in as kids, as well as the green farm truck’s tape deck. a boy named sue, a burning ring of fire, water 4 feet high and rising, and a 49-50-51-52-53-54-55-56-57-58-59 automobile were integral parts of the soundtrack of my upbringing.
the song in my life appears on cash’s american 4 album, and rich and i had sung along to that, and to desperado together within the first month of our relationship. i think he took to heart the line from desperado, “you better let somebody love you before it’s too late.” he did let me love him, we kept falling in love, and from here on out, we know we are only going to love each other more…
as we were deciding on songs for the wedding, we easily chose our recessional song, and once we found rainbow love, it was a natural for the processional of our parents. the last song chosen took us a while, for my dad and i to walk in on, and maybe it was because it seemed like the most important one. we listened back to the stack of cd mixes i have made for rich over the years, roughly two per year (i often make one for our anniversary and another for when he goes to country fair). we finally got back to the very first one, mixed in june 2012, where among such favorites as neil young’s silver and gold, tom petty’s wildflowers, and the highwaymen singing true love travels on a gravel road, there was johnny cash’s solid baritone voice singing a beatles song. we knew as soon as we heard it again that it was the best way to sum up exactly what was going on here. the two of us, with our advanced age, full lives, children, and pasts; but also with a lot of work we’ve done enabling us to greet each other’s age, quirks, families, and histories with kindness. we are only going to appreciate and love each other more and more, the more of our lives we get to share.
photo credit to wedding boss, yes she really did it all! (the rest of the photos below are by my photographer-in-chief! who is also a good friend and with whom i stand shoulder to shoulder on saturdays selling veggies.)
this is when the song came on… dad helped me steady those emotions by coaching me on walking nice and slowly.
i am pretty sure this is when i was laughing because i realized i didn’t know the exact procedure for how i would unhitch from dad down at the trees, and i was picturing my dad, seasoned farmer that he is, making a wide turn and backing me in like a wagon.
“though i know i’ll never lose affection
for people and things that went before
i know i’ll often stop and think about them
in my life i love you more”
pancakes peeking in the distant corner of this photo are the type of thing i only got to see later from the wedding photos (and that also goes for where my own son was sitting in the crowd). i was looking in a very singular direction while i was taking this walk!
johnny and june have been mentioned a time or two on this blog, and an added layer of meaning in choosing this song for us was looking to our role models in the relationship category (not limited to famous people, but including our own parents and certain friends and family as well). this was a big theme we intended to celebrate on our wedding day. looking around us that day, thinking of those who’ve gone, and those who remain, appreciating the love they have given to us and have modeled for us, was a natural part of turning and looking at each other and saying, “there is no one compares with you.”
in a few short weeks, rich and i will be married, and the timing of my great aunt margie passing away just recently on june 14th feels like it coincides in some way. aunt margie is the matriarch of a great big family; her 2 daughters and 8 grandchildren gave their grammy many great grandchildren (if i use my fingers and toes, i estimate 18), and as of last count, 8 great great grandchildren in her 95 year lifetime.
but beyond that, aunt margie was a second mother to my own mom (pictured above), when my own grandparents were preoccupied with poppy’s health. my mom spent many summers traveling around to national parks with aunt margie and uncle george, attending what all the family fondly refers to as the “george buirkle school of combat camping” and passing on so much wonderful outdoors and camping knowledge to my brothers and me. one of the reasons rich and i have chosen glacier national park for our honeymoon is because my mom always said it was her favorite park that she visited with aunt margie and uncle george. though they always came back to the adirondacks, and hence that is where the whole extended family has always spent some portion of the summer.
among the horde of cousins in this large family, there is a consensus, whether spoken or unspoken, that what you want in life is a marriage like the one between aunt margie and uncle george (or if you’re their direct descendents, grammy and pop). we generation x-ers all attended their 50th wedding anniversary as kids and teens, and i know i am not the only kid in the family who was deeply influenced by the impressive duration of their relationship, the observable affection, and the palpable mutual adoration between the two of them. their connection was what you wanted to strive for in life. not everyone finds it, but they certainly did, and they provided such a wonderful example for us, of how we are meant to treat our significant others in this lifetime. their love for each other overflowed blessings onto each one of us.
aunt margie treated everyone like they mattered deeply to her; it’s just who she was. no matter how many score of cousins were running around, she made me feel like i was the complete center of her attention, for as long as i could stand to tell her about myself and my life. i have a vivid memory of sitting in lawn chairs on the dock, little cousins in life jackets swinging around dripping perch on the ends of fishing lines, and aunt margie focused intently on my high school highs and lows while the rest of the chaos orbited around us. i know this is how it was for each and every one of us kids. you were the focus of her undivided attention, and the act of her caring about the insignificant goings on in your child or teenage life left such a profound impact on me, on all of us. i will never forget the feel of her hands holding mine, the kindness of her eyes, the sound of her sweet voice praying over me and sharing wisdom, feeling filled to the brim after she poured her love into me.
celebrating her life should be the province of not only her family, but all the people who know anyone whose life she touched. while you may never have met her, the person you know who was loved by aunt margie is a better and kinder person for having been near her, and you are benefiting from it whether you know it or not.
the substantial number of her descendants notwithstanding, aunt margie had a far wider circle of influence in her community beyond her relatives. she spent many years volunteering as a pregnancy counselor, and i am sure there is no way to count how many young womens’ and childrens’ lives in which she made a tremendous positive difference, again because of her steadfast presence.
when we were wee little children, and aunt margie and uncle george would visit us on the farm, we received the extra special treat of having bedtime stories told by aunt margie. her bedtime stories always involved leprechauns. she had hungarian roots, but never mind that. her irish accent was impeccable and her stories were magical and always involved each of us children in some manner. patrick begorabegora and maureen mcgroodigoodie, no bigger than our thumbs, captivated our imaginations as they rode around behind our ears, and i remember some of those stories to this day. when i went to kindergarten, my mom sewed lace onto the pocket of my jumper so maureen would have a way to watch what was going on at school, by peeking out through the little eyelets. i will always cherish this one story in aunt margie’s handwriting, which i have saved since i was about 6 years old. while i do believe that her integrity rubbed off on all of us, i will also admit that i would unabashedly lie about having a sore throat so i could stay home and see them off the morning after a visit, if it was a school day. i would not willingly miss one minute of time with her.
i will always be able to picture them in the upstairs apartment at camp 815 on pork bay of saranac lake, and then when we got older, at benchmark over on fish creek. i will always remember aunt margie riding up front in uncle george’s boat, with their dog heidi or heidi too. the boat was quite literally labeled “pop’s boat”, and was the site of many of our very first lessons on driving a boat, under his supervision. the george buirkle school of combat camping was still taking recruits when i was a kid, and we were proud to enlist. we learned to canoe on long day trips to follensby clear pond or floodwood pond, with uncle george and aunt margie in the lead of a long train of family members, two or three to a canoe, weaving through the lily pads.
815
back at one cabin or another, we’d sit around a table playing games; 99 or uno or chicken foot, and aunt margie would always want to be dealt in. she taught us many of the games, in fact. she was so good at being there in the present moment. she always seemed to be available to painstakingly fry up any child’s proud catch of a 9-inch sunny or perch, and made the best brownies and chocolate chip cookies in all the land.
one of my cousins said in her remembrance of aunt margie, “she was the best person i’ve ever known.” this is how i feel, and it’s not an overstatement. nor does it feel like i’m insulting any of the other wonderful people in my life, say, for example, my wonderful mom, because i know that mom pretty much feels the same way. we are all profoundly sad, yet all of us have known for all of our lives that she had her affairs in order and was ready to meet her maker, more ready than anyone i’ve ever really known. we are also all drawing comfort from the idea of aunt margie reuniting with her love, uncle george, 22 years and 2 days after his passing. that number will stick with me, because for rich and i, the 22nd is our day.
their song was stardust, sung by hoagy carmichael. however, you can’t talk about songs and aunt margie and uncle george in the same breath without mentioning how great thou art. it was always uncle george’s favorite, and it makes sense, given how they lived every moment of their lives glorying in “awesome wonder [at] the world thy hands have made.” nature was their church, every bit as much as a building with four walls. i don’t know that they ever said this to me, it was simply what i observed, watching them marvel at the simple wonders in the natural world; a hummingbird at the feeder, a beaver dam, a great blue heron, sunset on saranac lake. it is one of the many things i fell in love with in rich, because he and i can sit around and do the same thing. he had me at, “i was up early to cut firewood and got to see a beautiful sunrise…”
“when through the woods and forest glades i wander
and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;
when i look down from lofty mountain grandeur
and hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze
then sings my soul….”
i also think of them on evenings when i pour him a drink, or he pours one for me, because that was a ritual aunt margie and uncle george practiced as well, always serving each other with gladness and receiving from one another in gratitude. i feel they would love rich and welcome him as their great nephew-in-law. i hope i can be the wife of noble character to him that aunt margie was to uncle george.
from proverbs 31:
10 A wife of noble character who can find?
She is worth far more than rubies.
11 Her husband has full confidence in her
and lacks nothing of value.
12 She brings him good, not harm,
all the days of her life.
13 She selects wool and flax
and works with eager hands.
14 She is like the merchant ships,
bringing her food from afar.
15 She gets up while it is still night;
she provides food for her family
and portions for her female servants.
16 She considers a field and buys it;
out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
17 She sets about her work vigorously;
her arms are strong for her tasks.
18 She sees that her trading is profitable,
and her lamp does not go out at night.
19 In her hand she holds the distaff
and grasps the spindle with her fingers.
20 She opens her arms to the poor
and extends her hands to the needy.
21 When it snows, she has no fear for her household;
for all of them are clothed in scarlet.
22 She makes coverings for her bed;
she is clothed in fine linen and purple.
23 Her husband is respected at the city gate,
where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.
24 She makes linen garments and sells them,
and supplies the merchants with sashes.
25 She is clothed with strength and dignity;
she can laugh at the days to come.
26 She speaks with wisdom,
and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
27 She watches over the affairs of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness.
28 Her children arise and call her blessed;
her husband also, and he praises her:
29 “Many women do noble things,
but you surpass them all.”
30 Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
31 Honor her for all that her hands have done,
and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.
as i’ve spent several sessions trying to articulate these reflections, i’ve also spontaneously burst into tears a number of times, which is why it has taken me quite a few days to get this written. i have to thank my cousins and their facebook posts for some of those spontaneous cries (and for some of these wonderful photos i have borrowed). my brothers and i have predicted out loud to each other that this would be a hard time in our lives, losing her. i’m wondering now if part of it has to do with losing my nana so young (i was only 4) and aunt margie taking on the role in our lives as the repository for all maternal grandmotherly energy. i know that as a 4 year old, i probably did not manage to work through it all at the time, and i suspect there is ungrieved nana grief that is still making its way up and out, as grief will do when the spigot is opened.
nana and aunt margie around 1942
nana as aunt margie’s maid of honor, 1942
i imagine the loss of both of them as a little bit inextricable, and when i cry, the tears are for our whole grandparent generation, of whom she was the last remaining to us. nana was aunt margie’s maid of honor when aunt margie and uncle george were married, and then nana and poppy got married on the the same day (september 14th) several years later. since my own memories of nana were few, aunt margie acted as a storehouse of memories of her. i always felt i was being given back pieces of her as little gifts throughout the years whenever they’d tell me how much i resemble anne, or tell stories about her.
as aunt margie laughs at the days to come and crosses over, her children, grandchildren, great and great great grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and mere great nieces arise and call her blessed.
for grammy and me, and anyone else who would like to go back and revisit previous birthdays…
last year i was startled to realize that quinn was halfway to 18, and now suddenly he’s halfway to 20. for some reason, time feels like it is accelerating on me.
the time we spend together when i walk him from the car up to the door of the school, never fails to be the time he wants to talk my ear off. i really cherish this precious “get to hear from your kid” time that feels like a secret that a lot of other parents don’t seem know about as they drive their subarus through the “hamster wheel” as i like to call it, and pop their kids directly out of the car onto the doorstep of the school. on one recent walk up, he was telling me all about the next game he is drawing on graph paper which is about angry birds, and explaining all the details to me, but he was still explaining when we got up to the door. i was hugging him, and he just held onto me and kept explaining, so i kept hugging him, and listening, and then he was finally done and let go of the hug and said bye and ran inside.
he has lived a whole year for each one of his fingers, and will have to start counting on toes next year. also, a year for each leg of a crab (they’re decapods!)
10 = 1+2+3+4… from the bathtub, he told me, “there’s actually a fourth person point of view in stories, because sometimes the narrator is telling you about everything mostly through one person’s thoughts.” he explained how in harry potter, he noticed that the narrator isn’t harry, but only reports on the thought process of harry, and observes the actions of other characters from his frame of reference without reporting on the thoughts of other characters. he noticed that this differed from a third person perspective in which the author could see inside all of the character’s thoughts. i proceeded to pull out my notes from reading word painting, specifically the chapter on point of view, and we discussed the subtle nuances between third person omniscient, third person objective, and third person limited omniscient (the magical point of view which he had identified). i had never fully articulated the differences among these points of view, until learning about them approximately a year ago when i read this book intended for writers.
what’s funny is that i had just had a conversation with him about minor frustrations with the level of material he feels he could be learning, which ended in a discussion about using his time in fourth grade to bring his writing level up to speed with his reading and math. more about that in a lifelong learning post, but needless to say, his writing skills are not a big concern.
“now wash your hair, son.”
10 is special. it’s the culmination of the numbers that come before it, and the start of a whole new set of numbers. there is still a little bit of a younger boy in there, the one who still needs to be cajoled into taking a bath, and reaches for my hand as we walk up the sidewalk to school. but there is also an older, mature and capable young man in there, whose brain can wrap around narrative points of view he hasn’t been formally introduced to, who can prioritize his learning goals, and microwave his own tupperwares of rice.
quinn is in an intensive art mode right now, mostly drawing games on graph paper but also some on regular paper and even getting out the markers, not just pencil drawing. he is coloring in and making scenery for games, and designing many intricate details of games. as a result, every time we leave the house for school or karate, he asks, “can i draw in the car?” and a few times recently when i expressed that we were really cutting it close on time, he ran back anyway and grabbed binder/pencil/markers. at one point he told me, “i’m doing a peaceful protest. i’m going to draw on the way to school. i’m like martin luther king jr.” what could i say? “if you are going to be martin luther king, i’m going to be proud. but you also need to bring your backpack for school.” “i’m peaceful protesting again,” now seems to be shorthand for, “i know you’d prefer i didn’t, but i’ve thought about it, and i’m going to anyway.”
10 is the sum of the first 3 prime numbers, 2+3+5. this stage feels like the prime time of parenting. quinn told me the other day, “lisa was being so cute sitting on the white box, and i just had to take a picture of her! so i went and grabbed the camera…. ” i had had no idea, but i adore the fact that i now sometimes get surprise pictures on my camera that i didn’t take.
he’s halfway to 20, the age that, when he was 4, he used to idealize as the magical age at which he’d be able to do all the things he was as yet too little to do.
from 2011: we arrived home to the dark house and snuggled up on the couch in the almost darkness, and i asked if i could talk to him about something. “you know how i told you i’d be going on a boat for a few days?” i explained in more detail how it would be ten days, and all the ins and outs. quinn got very quiet, then he got a little quiver in his voice and sat up straight on my lap (he had been snuggled up against me) and said, “well, can i come on the boat too?” oh god. the agony. the poor kid. i not only feel bad leaving him, but it’s his favorite dream ever to go on a boat and here i’m going and doing the super funnest thing ever (in his mind) without him. so i explained that we’re going too far offshore, where the waves are too bumpy for little people, and we have to do a lot of work with heavy equipment that’s not safe, etc. “well, maybe i could take a nap down in the cabin?” oh my god my throat hurt so badly, listening to his problem solving little self find potential solutions. sigh…. pretty soon he was just saying, “don’t go on a boat, mama!” and we both cried a little bit and i told him i would miss him so much. he asked a lot of questions like why did i have to go on the boat for work, and then finally told me, “when i’m 20, maybe you can go on a boat again and i can go with you because i’ll be 20 and i can catch some salmon and do work on them with you too.”resolved.
mother mother ocean, he’s wanted to sail upon your waters since he was three feet tall. a pirate looks at 10. 10 in roman numerals is x marks the spot!
celebrating having been a mama for a whole decade, i indulged a bit this morning in reading back through the story of his birth, which was a bittersweet time for a multitude of reasons, due to relationship strain and hospital stress all mixed up in the incredible joy of meeting quinn for the first time. i’ll admit it, i was a little teary-eyed while reading these memories. it struck me that birth stories, especially ones that were written, like mine, within days of birth, are impossibly intimate. they distill an unbelievable amount of the human experience into paragraphs, but are almost too graphic to share. i have so far spared the public the play-by-play of cervixes and contractions, dilation and doppler, perineum and pitocin and paramedics, oh my!, but i have extracted a few favorite excerpts of tmi (you have been warned!) to share on the tenth anniversary of the hardest thing i’ve ever done.
(it got bigger. there was still another month to go.)
on induction:
On Wednesday I was finishing up session four of acupuncture when my water broke- I felt a small gush as I sat there all poked with needles in my hands, legs and feet, visualizing flowers opening, water flowing in and out of sea caves, baby’s heads pushing on cervixes and opening them up… woohoo! I thought that would start things off for sure. Kate visited to test that it was really amniotic fluid, and it was. I knew it anyway, it smelled like earthy water, like nothing I’ve smelled before, but reminded me of spring gardening in the rain.
on gathering:
I started finding that I could do 5 or 6 pushes instead of just 4 per contraction, and soon I was able to feel his head- I felt so much hair! This spurred me on- I knew the midwives had been able to see part of his head each time using the flashlight, but now I knew how big a circle I felt, and his hair for some reason made him a real baby and made it real to me that he was coming really soon…. I would sigh with relief to hear his heart beat, take a deep breath, and start the next gathering of my senses~strength~energy~spirit and begin the next push.
on cinnamon:
the midwives were telling me to reach down and hold my baby and talk to my baby and there he was! a slimy little tiny creature with tons of dark hair, all curly from being wet, all curled into a litlte ball of arms and legs and butt and head and umbilical cord. this was the very first time in the entire twenty hours of labor when i wanted to be on the bed. i think i needed help getting my legs on the bed at all. all i could pay attention to was quinn, this little dark haired bundle on my belly. the cord was just long enough for him to lay on my tummy with his head close to my breast. he was so tiny to my eyes, and so amazingly perfect. that was when he really became quinn to me. we had found out he was a boy days before, thanks to a fairly insensitive ultrasound doctor, and had decided almost for sure on his name, but now it was for real. i saw his dark blue eyes, his round cheeks, his tiny pink mouth, his little hands and feet, ears, arms, legs, butt, chin, tummy, chest… his head smelled like cinnamon.
(after it was decided we would head to the hospital by ambulance) i was immediately thankful we were attached, because immediately someone suggested taking him from me. i think my placenta refused to move from that point on, feeling that we could stay together if it would just cling a little longer…
(at the hospital) i don’t remember that moment of them separating us, i think i blocked it out. next thing i remember was looking over to my right to where quinn was lying on his own little stretcher, surrounded by people in scrubs. i was taken up to the labor and delivery ward, since i had not yet delivered my placenta. that was the first order of business. it sounded like the last thing in the world i wanted to do. i couldn’t really handle the thought of even one more contraction. they said they would need to give me pitocin (a shot in the leg) and then they would push on my belly and i would need to push once and then it should come out. (neither shot of pitocin i was given did anything to stimulate contractions. i never had another one.*) unfortunately, although my head was soaring from the meds, i felt the pain quite well when they pushed on me, but somehow i was able to push once and get the placenta out. it happened quickly, at least. sometime in this vicinity was when word came up that quinn was in the nicu and stable and that he weighed 11 pounds and 15 and a quarter ounces.
*ten years hence, i believe i never will have another contraction, including menstrual cramps. i think my uterus retired right then and there.
on wires and tubing:
it made me so sad that he had to have a tube in his throat. they tried to put him on CPAP (oxygen support that uses tubes inserted into the nostrils) but he seemed like he needed more support, so they intubated him and therefore had a tube down his throat and tape all over his face to hold it in place- i was warned it would be hard to look at him that way… It seemed like a thousand years between when they took him away from me and when I finally got wheeled in beside his crib. he was elevated (all the babies in the neonatal intensive care, NICU, are elevated so the nurses can reach them) and I couldn’t stand up, so i only got to stroke his little hand and talk to him from way down low in the wheelchair. i remember feeling sad and a bit defeated, but at the same time overjoyed to finally be touching him again. I just wanted to hold him. He was peaceful but it was a shock to my system to see how many monitors and tubes and things they had running to and from his little body. That first time in the NICU I didn’t notice any of the other babies. i just focused on quinn, and talked to him so he would hear my voice and know i was there with him. i scanned the layout of the place so i would know exactly where to find him- there are “pods” in the NICU, like little alcoves off a big hallway, and i counted which one he was in from the entrance…
People kept saying to me “no news is good news” and I was so frustrated with that. Any time I would ask how Quinn was, that was the answer I would get. I was still feeling so weak and had to rely on others to be able to be near Quinn, and that was the most frustrating, helpless feeling.
…Now that I had been to the NICU a few times, I had noticed the other babies around Quinn. Most of them were premature, and tiny. I could gaze at Quinn for an entire hour thinking how tiny and perfect he was, then all of sudden I’d glance to the right and the itty bitty girl next to him was less than a quarter of his weight- that was surreal.
I did a lot of studying of monitors and instruments that day to learn what the numbers all meant. I learned that the settings of Quinn’s respiratory support were all very low or “ambient” settings, and that meant he was mostly breathing all by himself with just a tiny bit of enrichment to the air he was being exposed to. I learned which finger clamps and which little pads taped to which parts of his body were pulse oxymeters, which was the thermometer, which was his blood pressure cuff, and what tubing went to and from his umbilical IVs (one was in the umbilical artery, for drawing blood for his repeated tests of dissolved oxygen levels, and one was in the vein for giving him fluids, electrolytes, lipids and aminos, as well as his Fentanyl and antibiotics… I had to learn to be around for shift changes (7am and 7pm) when the nurses give each other the run down of the previous shift, so I could hear what they REALLY thought, not just what they said for my benefit.
on blood loss:
i asked if i could have help getting to the bathroom, so she got another nurse and they supported me over to the toilet and i sat down. then when they helped me to stand up again, i blacked out, i remember the nurse saying “look into my eyes! look into my eyes!” and really trying to obey, but i just couldn’t keep mine open. Then I was sitting down again, and they made me smell something to wake me up, and they helped me get back to my bed and lay down again… My blood hematocrit had been measured that morning, a 19 being pretty far below the “normal” level they quoted to me of 33. The doctors came into my room and told me they strongly urged me to have a blood transfusion. I could live without it, however, it would take me many months to regain my blood supply, and my energy levels would also remain low for a long time. In the end, I decided to have the transfusion because it meant I could be stronger more quickly, and be able to be there for Quinn. That night I had to stay in my room all night because the blood transfusion (two units) took 6 hours to complete. I was more than ready to be up and about the next morning to go see Quinn, and I felt SO much better that I stood up and walked down to his floor myself, trailing my IV pole behind me.
on pumping:
It was so strange to have grown up on a dairy farm milking cows, with milking machines, and then all of a sudden to be a new mother and hooking myself up to the same contraption…by evening I was running on a pretty large surplus over what was needed (according to their calculations) for feeding Quinn every 3 hours. I was holding myself to my 2 hour pumping schedule, and I think that had a lot to do with my success. My midwife checked in with me and reassured me, “your body knows you made a twelve pound baby.” It was so good to be reminded of such grounding wisdom.
source: wikipedia; couldn’t resist this orders of magnitude illustration, complete with baby
and just like that, his time on earth has increased by an order of magnitude. my heart feels as though it has correspondingly expanded like a universe by its own order of magnitude to accommodate all the love i have for him.
my word for 2017 seems to be ephemeral. it’s a little bit different, as words-of-the-year go, but it keeps popping up in my mind, and going away again, only to pop up again later. most of my thoughts are… ephemeral like that. they ebb and flow. i have a running joke about my memory with my coworker, that i intend to visit lumosity.com and play brain games to improve my memory, but that i keep forgetting.
having an ephemeral memory is arguably a good thing for a writer. rebecca mcclanahan, in her book, word painting, says, “…a bad memory can be an asset to a writer. if you have a mind like a sieve, be grateful. a sieve filters, strains and selects; though much falls through the meshwork, some remains. memory is an act of meaning-making. it collects the disparate pieces of our lives and distills them. for writers, what we forget is as important as what we recall.”
(rich wants you to know he offered to help vacuum the sand out of my table for me! what a guy! always trying to vacuum me off my feet.)
how’s that for a positive spin on memory loss, a trait that is usually considered negative? you know how i like to intentionally look at life, and even myself, through a heart-shaped lens. meaning-making! actively, the memories and thoughts we choose to emphasize and reflect upon are the ones that become infused with meaning, and the act of choosing how we construct life meaning empowers us. i suspect that those active choices influence how we passively sieve through the moments as well, perhaps by training the sieve on what to retain and what to let slip through.
(snow in our town is ephemeral: here for a very short time!)
so far this year i’ve settled on “be the rainbow” as my mantra. and what better word to describe a rainbow than ephemeral? it suggests beauty that cannot be held onto. we cannot cling to it or grasp it, or in the case of a rainbow, even reach it or touch it, but at the same time, we must let it stop us in our tracks, we must absorb all we can of the beauty of the present moment, acknowledging the fleeting gift we are receiving. the same can be said of a desert flower, a childhood, the way a tidepool is arranged on a given tide.
(flat bride would like this mojave desert five-spot; taken in 2002 or so)
it’s not just that the rainbow goes away, it was that it appeared at all in the first place. “nothing gold can stay,” and it makes the gold even more precious. it’s about holding on… it’s about letting go… it’s about showing up to create the sand painting, knowing its impermanence going into it. it’s about cherishing every night time wake-up from your nine year old, knowing each one may be the last. it’s about gasping for joy at the sunrises, sunsets, and rainbows, in spite of the way they mark the inexorable march of time.
(velociraptor, april, 2012)
the wikipedia entry for ephemerality mentions brine shrimp, the meticulous culture of which i spent a season perfecting at my day job. and, and! it mentions the ephemeral organ of gestation, the placenta. dare i admit that i still have one of those lurking in my chest freezer, living in its 6th residence to date. (time to let it go, you think? maybe we’ll plant a tree for his 10th birthday, here at the dragon house… with a little freezer-burned placenta fertilizer.)
this will be a year of celebration, and although those singular rainbow celebration days will so swiftly flutter past on fragile wings, i plan to do all i can to be present for them, as well as pin bits of them to the scrapbook of life, maybe store some bits in film canisters and cassette cases, and preserve my favorite moments in the canning jars of time with my camera and words and store them on the shelves of my blog. all the while celebrating a love that is built to outlast it all.
black: quinn outgrew rich’s son’s karate uniform, and now b pancake fits in it… almost! bringing her to karate was probably the highlight of quinn’s time with the pancakes…
pink: approaching cautiously, we are able to observe the elusive birthday man species in his natural setting (pink-flowered trees, naturally.)
pink: i enjoyed the way the sun shone on the various rosy hues worn by these women on the beach, as well as the universality of women’s behavior, regardless of culture and religion, to flock together, talk incessantly (we’ve got a whole world of problems to solve after all), and take group selfies.
red: woodpecker all fluffed out and preening.
red: the red/purple combo is a favorite of mine. i love the way the neighbor’s red rhodie is intermingling with their lilacs.
orange: more new life springing forth; sister’s chicks glowing in their heat lamp.
yellow: and other yellow birds…
green: tree pose superimposed on a back yard tree. savoring the last weeks we’ll be living at the vacation house, and the favorite spaces and angles of light we’ve grown to love here.
green: these are some of the trees that come with dragon house 2.0…. speaking of angles of light and growing to love a place… oh, it’s getting very exciting. we took our pancakes for a tour while they were visiting… so many memories to be made…
blue: when he was a bun in the oven, some referred to this kid as mini-boo, after my college nickname, boo. there are some who say he is living up to the reputation of being my mini. i think i will end up being his mini before too long, in an epic mother-son role reversal as he surpasses me in size in a few short years. i was just reading back over some seemingly prophetic things he said when he was 3 along those lines:
“quinn yesterday was naked waist-down and splashing in tide pools yet again. (it was super nice and warm, for february). he would get ready to splash through yet another one and first he’d shout “into the heathers of the waters!” and splash in. i have asked him what the heathers of the waters are. last night he said “it’s the heathers of the wind!” oh them, ok. love his made up words/meanings. i think it’s ripples? or something along those lines. i love it.
then he told me “i’m TOO COLD!!!!” so i stripped him and zipped him inside my jacket. he had on only his fleece jacket and was wrapped around me (i hadn’t brought the sling) and he snuggled down. then he looked back up out of my jacket and said, “when i get bigger i will put on a big jacket and when you get little i will put you in it and carry you.” (tucked his head right back in.) i said, “oh wow sweetie, that means a lot to me that you’d do that for me.” and he replied, “yeah, that means a LOT to you!”
after that, while still zipped in my coat: “sing me a quiet song about the indigo girls.” definitely my mini in music preferences.
blue: played with shutter speed one day while raindrops playfully careened off the corrugated porch roof.
blue: i finally got one to stand still enough to be able to see its blue face feathers…
purple: the lilac half of the red/purple combo, right around sunset.
purple: guess who passed his tip test? this purple belt. here’s to perseverance!
(originally posted two years ago)
(from gratitude 2019)
