~thankful thursday~ all true

Posted on November 28, 2023 by marybethrew

~30 days of gratitude~ day 16

11/16/23

I am grateful for the sun melting into the ocean on my way home from work, and the red crescent moon dipping into the ocean on our way home from date night.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 17

11/17/23

I am grateful for writing, as a discipline and hobby and obsession. One of the things I like about writing personal narrative is that there are constant opportunities to reanalyze, rethink, reassess what I always thought was true. There is a story I tell myself, and then there is a story beneath that story that I have yet to discover, and when I do finally get at that deeper story, it is always more rewarding. Usually the surface story is something I’ve memorized about my life that feels true enough, and has served me well enough, but the story underneath is truer, and will serve me better. The story underneath is always the one with more layers, more complexity, more nuance, and less duality. There is moral certainty in the top story that I have to give up, though, in order to embrace the truer story.

My son required a neonatal intensive care unit when he was born, and that is where my attention has been during the war between Israel and Hamas: the NICU in Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. There is no story I can embrace where 39 babies in critical condition must be used as a shield by either side in a war. There is no justification for infants who require breathing assistance to not be receiving it, for their bundled bodies to be lined up in a row on a bed when they are prone to infections and should be in isolation, when they need warming beds, but the fuel to provide the electricity they require cannot reach their hospital because their “side” might pour it into a tank instead.

I read that 90% of the children in pediatric hospitals in Gaza are experiencing traumatic stress, and 82% of them say they fear imminent death.

I read that parents are writing their children’s names on their bodies—when children’s bodies arrive in the morgue, coroners find the marker writing on their legs and torsos. In some cases this is the only way to identify the bodies.

Women continue to give birth during this conflict, infants are being tended in a neonatal unit where the life support equipment helping children to make it through their first weeks of life has stopped beeping their heart rates, stopped inflating their lungs, stopped warming their tiny bodies. The medicines commonly needed in a NICU like surfactant and caffeine citrate have run out. Because I can remember how it felt to press my face against my son’s sedated body in a NICU cubicle, to wind my arms under and around his tubes and wires to be as close as I could to him, I can recall the comforting sound of beeping, the warmth of the incubator radiating from his body. The story I’ve carried was that I just wanted him out of there, that the NICU was a place of trauma that was keeping us from beginning our mother-son life together. I know that story served me in a way, but I know a truer story now, one in which I feel gratitude for that place and the bridge it provided to help my son make it to the start of that life. I imagine the terror and heartbreak of that comforting beeping going silent, the incubators going cold.

If we give up our moral certainty, can we find an answer that is not anti-Palestinian, nor antisemitic, nor anti-Islam? I do not know what it is, but I believe it precludes the slow sacrifice of babies requiring neonatal intensive care. The solution will not be born from the surface story that has seemed true enough and has served its purpose, but from a truer one that is harder to tell.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 18

11/18/23

I am grateful for a day saturated with writing, reading others’ writing, reading my writing aloud, and hearing others read their writing. And a little lap time with yard kittens.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 19

11/19/23

I am grateful that Rich is at least as invested as me in my gratitude posts, and I cannot go to bed without him reminding me that I haven’t written one yet. Good morning, love, I am grateful for you.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 20

11/20/23

I am feeling grateful for my mom and dad today, and realized I didn’t take any super awesome pictures of them together this summer, so I will remedy that on my next visit. I did take pictures of them separately back in June, Mom and Quinn, heads together as she showed him how to make soap, Dad on the tractor, and there is a snapshot of the two of them blurry and laughing at the dance party following my MFA graduation. I am grateful for the comments on my previous post, appreciating the love between Rich and I, and wondering if we know how lucky we are. I know it is rare, and I do know we are lucky, and I also am lucky to have witnessed another rare pair, all my growing up years.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 21

11/21/23

I am grateful to have finished work with time before sunset at 4:43, for a walk to the water’s edge, and ten minutes of listening to the ocean.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 22

11/22/23

Can you find my husband in this photo? I can, because even though I can’t read the name on his coveralls, his sideburns are unmistakable. I am grateful for him (again, I know, ew, but the 22^nd is our day). He does fascinating things at work like suspend a very heavy engine on very short straps and move it from point A to point B inside a fishing boat with zero room to maneuver. Sometimes he welds and fabricates, sometimes he operates a crane, and other times he solves impossible problems like the one in this image. Which I’d like to thank his coworker for taking, because sometimes when he tells me about his day, the stuff is barely believable. For the first few years we were together and someone asked me his occupation I said he allegedly welds, because I hadn’t actually seen him do it. I mean, making things out of metal and fire? But then I did see him do it one time. And it was all true.

with a voice as big as the sea

Posted on December 24, 2022 by marybethrew

This year’s song lyric that has been rolling around my December brain is “with a voice as big as the sea.” Maybe not such a surprise that I choose the oceanic line, but I think it’s in keeping with the theme from November of celebrating bigger. I’m celebrating having Quinn home for a full week for the first time since March 2020. I guess you could say I identify with any Mary who bears a precious son, has to live without him, but knows in her heart she will be reunited with him one day. I’m also celebrating eleven years of loving Rich. I took my camera to document the rose-gold ocean sunset on the shortest day, because I’m also celebrating the return of the light. Amazing how the change can be so incremental – just three seconds more light the next day – but somehow light accumulates and there will be summer once again, with a little patience. Happy holidays to all our loved ones.

~thankful thursday~ peanut butter

Posted on December 1, 2022 by marybethrew

~30 days of gratitude~ day 25

11/25/22

Grateful. It’s been too many pandemic holidays without him. So grateful to fill him up with food and love.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 26

11/26/22

Today I am grateful for my brothers, one of whom has a birthday today. I have said this before, because it’s year six of this gratitude project and every November 26^th I’m going to think about them. And always I’ll feel grateful for the humans they are, their presence in this world, the slices of bread to sandwich me, which I guess makes me the peanut butter. I am grateful to have unearthed this photo of them, uninhibited, nontoxic to the core.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 27

11/27/22

I’m grateful for: listening to Rich offer to teach Quinn to drive; and an all-day game of Cat-opoly with the two of them.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 28

11/28/22

I am almost out of days of gratitude and books have not yet had their day. Tonight, while Rich took in a Steelers game and popped us some popcorn in Bob’s honor, I listened to the exquisite audio of this book that I have on my library app even though I bought the actual book and have it in my lap. And as soon as I get done listening and my library hold ends I will open this up and start again at the beginning and underline all the things that made me speak aloud while I listened. There are some books that dunk you right away and sweep you along in a current and you just hold on for the ride. Lidia Yuknavitch is one of those authors. I’m such a fan, and also, I get to sell heirloom tomatoes to her family at the farmer’s market once in a while, so that’s also fun.

And while I’m feeling thankful for books, my gratitude for librarians continues to be ardent, as I’ve leaned heavily on the interlibrary loan privileges that come with my student status at SNHU. The benevolent book fairies have been busy whizzing articles at me across cyberspace whenever I hop down another research rabbit hole.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 29

11/29/22

Holy cow, it’s penultimate gratitude day. I scanned back through the month to review:

We made it through another winter, we will make it through this one. Get us some therapy if we need to.

Sunshine, nachos, a pallet pirate ship full of feral kittens.

Job, house, MFA.

Cows who have names, four gallons of honey.

Cloud whales, crock pot.

Husband hugs.

Sunrise, sunset.

Men’s gummi vitamins.

Ma and Pa.

Soft walls, warm fires.

Peanut butter.

I am grateful for the way these gratitudes, post-it-note and placard-sized, and every size in between, collect into a quirky little bundle each year and make a kind of sense together, put off a sort of warmth, a little light, they almost hum. It’s a nice way to stand on the threshold of December, with this little bundle in my pocket.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 30

11/30/22

For the first twenty-nine gratitudes this year, I was thinking this was year six. Then I looked back at the previous years to remind myself what they were all about, and it turns out, this year of gratitude posts is year seven. How powerfully magical.

I think you know what we ate for dinner tonight, official meal of the gratitude challenge. And to kick off December, we decided to put up our tree, and I am excited for morning writing time with not only my sun lamp but also twinkle rainbow lights. I am grateful for each and every small light this time of year. The sunset that sometimes coincides with the end of my work day, the weekend sun glancing off kitten fur. And the metaphorical kind, blinking like fireflies from all you lovely light bringing friends. Two hundred and ten gratitude posts later, I remain ever grateful for you all coming along for the ride.

~thankful thursday~ soft walls

Posted on November 19, 2022 by marybethrew

Thursday… ish?

~30 days of gratitude~ day 11

11/11/22

I am grateful to be feeding a bottomless boy and playing endless rounds of Tiny Epic Quest this evening. As Quinn has slowly reintegrated into life at the dragon house, I stood in Fred Meyer one recent day contemplating the gummi vitamins. The ones in the cupboard from when he was in seventh grade and the pandemic began that led him to shelter in place at his dad’s for over two years were kids’ multivitamins, now hardened with neglect and past their expiration date. On the grocery store shelf, I looked back and forth between kids’ and men’s. Kids’. Men’s. I put the men’s gummi multivitamins in my shopping cart. Grateful for vitamins, and the boy-man sleeping under my roof tonight.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 12

11/12/22

I am grateful for sunshine again. The dwindling of the busy market season allows me to work a little on Saturday to earn my produce, then go home and nap. Then walk in the woods with the kittens (I guess feral kittens love to be taken for walks) taking backlit photos of vine maple leaves to wake up from my nap again. A newt saunters by with a wave. A stand of tiny mushrooms sprouting from a pinecone catches a sunbeam. I go back inside and I am grateful to get to watch Quinn, also sunlit, eat systematically around the flaky pastry crust edge of the Danish I brought home for him, then the gooey cream cheese center, then lick his fingers.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 13

11/13/22

I am grateful for a phone call with Mom today. Another big 2022 gratitude is that I finally got to visit Mom and Dad in January and June, and I’m looking forward to another visit in January. And then June (when I graduate) and then having them come out and visit us in Oregon again. I am so grateful for my parents and for their love.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 14

11/14/22

I’m grateful that even when a day in the middle of November is a blur between the hours of still dark and dark again, sometimes it’s a very pretty blur.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 15

11/15/22

As I spend each November being grateful, I tend to take a closer look at gratitude.

Every October, I know that by mid-November some gratitude momentum will build. But every November 1^st is daunting. There is something about October that whittles me down. Only because I know the benefits do I intentionally sit down each November 1st and begin again.

Sometimes I judge my gratitude posts because they are tainted with ungrateful sentiments (say, about a difficult coparent or a bad hiring process) and think, my gratitude isn’t pure. And then I think, if I strain out any negative feeling, I’m not being very real.

I can both have a terrible day and express gratitude. It’s not that gratitude wins, or that it erases death or taxes or my archnemesis coparent. It doesn’t resolve my inlaws’ complicated estate-trust-thingie and it doesn’t end war or defeat the patriarchy.

What gratitude does do, is it lights a little warming fire in my soul while the shitstorm howls and sleets and ices over the part of the world I can’t control, just outside. I have soft walls and the wind can knock me over sometimes, but I prop my shelter up and keep rebuilding my little fire. Imperfections, scars, holes are all illuminated. But so are textures, colors. I notice the way the sunset makes the tent walls glow orange, noticing that the night is long, but the sun does rise again each morning. I keep turning toward it, and it keeps being there to greet me. Grateful for gratitude, year six.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 16

11/16/22

I am grateful for salted caramel rum gelato.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 17

11/17/22

I am grateful to be married to such a hardworking person who works overtime hours for large chunks of the year. I am also grateful that he leaves work promptly at 4:30 for date night, because priorities. Also, the sunrise over the bay when I arrived at work this morning was easy to be grateful for.

~thankful thursday~ celebrating bigger

Posted on November 11, 2022 by marybethrew

~30 days of gratitude~ day 4

11/4/22

I have felt grateful quite a bit in 2022. One thing that happened to me this year is I got hired to a permanent position doing what I’ve been doing for decades, contract to contract, grant to grant, lab to lab, with some lapses. Biologists do this all the time, but it’s a horrific system, and should be phased out, and I’m not shy about holding this opinion. It would be difficult to overstate the amount of relief brought on by this development, after all these years. Even the tiny auto loan I took out ten years ago to buy my 2002 Dodge Neon required payments that stretched, at that time, beyond the end of my one-year job contract. And a one-year contract is a good one, often the best there is. And sometimes they get renewed, like that one did, that year, so I paid off the Neon after all.

Side note: I’m grateful for my little Neon, with its little second engine that could, that I still drive to my job, which is now a permanent job I can keep until I’m done with all the car payments I may ever want to make.

I like fish, and I’m grateful to get to work with them, and I like the people who work on the fish with me. I’m grateful to be needed and valued enough for my skills that a whole job, with benefits, was bestowed on me.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 5

11/5/22

I’m so grateful for all the congrats on the job, wow, thanks everyone! To follow on gratitude for my job, another big thing happened in 2022 that I am also super grateful for. Rich and I closed on our house that we’ve been hoping to buy since we moved into it six years ago. A strong sense of providence and a heaping scoop of divine glitter sparkles pervaded the timing of the job-house combination. See my previous post about payments that extend past the end of contract durations if you want to understand why. Two mortgage payments in, and a lot more to go, these two big adulting milestones feel like they just had to go hand in hand.

I have not made Facebook posts or told many people about these huge life events in real time (July for the job, September for the house) and I know now that I was falling into the silence-will-protect-me trap. I have feared that knowledge of my successes would lead my coparent to strike out, but either these new developments made it to him despite having kept my celebrations small, or here’s an idea, maybe it’s not me or anything I have control over that makes him play dirty.

So I am celebrating now. I am so grateful to have a home with a wood stove that my husband has been keeping warm through the last few weeks as the weather got chilly. I am grateful for the well-insulated walls and the sturdy roof and the quirky backsplash and the big front window. I am grateful for our good well and our septic tank and our driveway covered in a blanket of needles. I am grateful for comfy spots to snuggle our kitties and my borrowed fairy dog. I am grateful for the acre and a quarter sloping gently to the slough-bayou, with giant beautiful redwood, port orford and western red cedar, hemlock, and spruce trees lining the trail we have walked into being and Rich has maintained with his power tools for our daily walks. I am grateful for a couple of redwood trees in particular, the wedding trees we stood in front of when we said our vows five years ago, and so grateful we don’t have to move away from them.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 6

11/6/22

I’m grateful for a day full of real and satisfying work of filling our pantry. I have been attending the fill-your-pantry market since its early days, back when Rew was still my last name, before I even met Rich. When they can’t find my pre-order filed under “H” I know to ask them to look under “R”. When I was a kid eating meat and potatoes on the farm, Dad would exasperate me by telling me the name of the cow I was eating. I usually made a big scene and stomped away from the table, but I have come around to appreciate that close knowledge of where our food came from. I did not ask the nice farm family today the names of the cow, chickens, and pig we will be eating this winter, but I am sure they knew. They also radiated gratitude for our purchase, for supporting their farm, and said it was fine to haul our chickens, sausage, and roasts out to our car in their cooler and bring it back in when we were done.

I am also grateful for a new four-gallon bucket of honey because there is something so wealthy about all that gold.

I forgot my camera, but luckily I always have an abundance of local food photos up my sleeve.

P.S. Happy nacho day!

~30 days of gratitude~ day 7

11/7/22

As I try not to be devastated that the sun is down when I leave work, I am grateful to get a very nifty glimpse of the moon while driving home. The top half was obscured under a periwinkle dusk cloud, which made the moon look like a big whale eye (not the first time I’ve seen whales in the sky). I didn’t capture that image but when I got home I watched it rise up through the trees and then went inside where there was soup in the crock pot.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 8

11/8/22

Today I’m grateful I got to leave work on time before dark, and that it wasn’t raining, or even very windy, and I stopped by the beach. I’m grateful I thought of it this morning, so I had my camera with me. I’m grateful I arrived in time for sunset, and that sunset was quirky and unique. I’m grateful I started my day by turning in my final thirty-page creative writing packet of my third semester of the MFA program I’ve been semi-secretly enrolled in. Twelve thirty-page packets since last June means I’m about to be a thesis student. I’m grateful to be quitting this business of staying small and keeping it all under wraps. Also grateful for my vote and to all who vote for women not to have to stay small.

~30 days of gratitude~ day 9

11/9/22

I’m grateful for an ordinary day of hard work, kitties and woodstove fires, husband hugs, and nachos. (And falling asleep in my chair before posting a gratitude post, apparently!)

~30 days of gratitude~ day 10

11/10/22

Today I’m grateful for sunshine.

juneuary beaches

Posted on February 5, 2022 by marybethrew

…in which I share the photos I keep scrolling back through, from that one week in January (or sometimes February) we can’t count on but always appreciate when we get it.

two walks… the first is a lunchtime walk I took myself on.

This image reminds me of my writing process lately. It’s like trying to braid water.

Pyrosome

The second walk: I got asked on a sunset beach date. I accepted.

~rainbow mondays~ monarchs and miracles

Posted on June 14, 2021 by marybethrew

In Oklahoma, there were taxes, swarming ants, flight delays, ticks, flies, hospital bills, dead mice, paperwork.

But there were also sunset rainbows…

Miracles… like a lost wedding ring found…

Paintbrush flowers…

Butterflies…

Dragons…

Winged beings…

And flowers everywhere I looked.

~rainbow mondays~

a splash of color on monday morning

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

~rainbow mondays~ being ok

Posted on April 12, 2021 by marybethrew

All was not okay in Oklahoma, and Rich and I realized we could not postpone a trip any longer. With one dose of Moderna administered, we arrived on the scene of chaos that ensues when a fiercely independent aging parent, recently widowed, has been living alone with dementia.

In and out of recognition, we were still someone to her. We established a routine that brought her back a few feet from the precipice on which she teetered. Fed, hydrated, rested, and medicated, we tried to appreciate the time we had together, knowing it might be the last time she will know us. Meanwhile, the task of arranging her care once we would so quickly depart again took up the majority of our energy.

Sundowning was a term I heard – defined as, “restlessness, agitation, irritability, or confusion that can begin or worsen as daylight begins to fade – often just when tired caregivers need a break. Sundowning can continue into the night, making it hard for people with Alzheimer’s to fall asleep and stay in bed.” Indeed. Thank you, internet.

My support system kept telling me that I was awesome, that I was handling things amazingly. I decided I wanted to be mediocre instead of amazing. Can I just be okay in OK?

We took turns to stay sane. When it was my turn, we went for lots of walks. Her feet are as sure as her neural pathways are unsure. We looked at birds in the apple tree, in full bloom when we arrived. She said, “oh I bet they’re making a nest.” And “I like looking at the birds.” Inside, she showed me another window you could see them from. I wonder how many hours she has spent just looking out the window, while she has been forgetting to eat, drink water, sleep.

I think the frequent walks helped her sleep. She had not been walking in her yard like this, though she had unknowingly left her house at 2:00 in the morning a few weeks before, our wake-up call.

By day five I was under enough strain that I felt like I was slipping from myself, but there were butterflies and I trusted the butterflies would save me. Painted lady, orange sulphur, a blue (possibly spring azure), and black swallowtails each made appearances while I wandered with my camera.

One walk was very windy. A turtle was on the lawn beside the lilac bush. I took numerous butterfly walks that day. One swallowtail hunkered down in the lawn, bobbing up and down as the wind went sweeping down the plain. Another I followed into the tall amber waves of grain in the back field, and located it two-thirds of the way down a stem, gripping on for dear life as each stem waved and whipped past its gossamer wings. I tried to take notes on how to ride out the turbulence. Official butterfly of the State of Confusion (and Oklahoma).

A day before we were scheduled to return home, we looked at the assisted living facility her friend had helped us find. No waiting list. Sitting with her in the courtyard gazebo, I tried to help her let go of the worries she can no longer control anyway. Money. Bills. The house. The rock collection. Keeping herself safe. Time to hand all the worries over to us now.

We added another week to our stay.

Eighty-eighth birthday cupcakes. Rich cut up her steak for her before we put her dinner plate on the table. For a lifelong health nut, she really enjoyed the ice cream. She spun her prisms in the kitchen window and we watched the rainbows dance on the ceiling one evening. These little moments of wonder and delight were precious gems in a field of heavy, dark stones.

The next day was beautiful again, so we went for a nice long walk, and looked at some of the rocks sparkling in the sun. I tried to join her reality, use her vocabulary, anything to ease this transition. “Little pieces of God’s creation,” I said of the rocks. “Yes! Exactly,” she said. We talked about the bird songs. The neighbor’s dog. She said, “it’ll be different to live in town…” And it wasn’t even a complaint or a reason against moving. It felt like she was turning this stone over in her mind, moving toward accepting it… “Yes, it will be different for you,” I said, and then we talked about that courtyard where we sat – another little piece of God’s creation.

When she reverted to resistance mode and Rich was on duty, I went back out alone to just sit in the sun with the rocks. They were so pleasingly undemanding.

When a person has dementia it can turn parts of their personality sour, and it can be hard to remember not to take it personally when you’re criticized or snapped at. At lunch one day I tapped out, and took a walk around the whole perimeter of the field with my camera. Breathing in. Breathing out. Meditating on butterflies. Not important. Let it go.

My birthday was not as explosive as its 4-3-21 made it sound. Stale cupcakes were already on hand. Butterflies were a gift. Mom and Dad called me as they were going to bed, and I was just starting my video call with Quinn so I put them on speaker and they all got to talk, Rich sitting nearby, and the sketchy internet wasn’t even a butthead during this best twenty minutes of my birthday. Quinn is reading an owl book I gave him and described the way flammulated owls can throw their voice to make it seem like they’re distant when they’re close, or make it seem like they are flying from the opposite direction.

It had been such a disoriented day for Nancy, as she had attempted to spend the night before at her friend’s place and had not slept. She told us three times in a row, almost without a gap in between, “there was a bird that would sit on the top of the post and when I would open the door it would talk to me. And I’d whistle to it, and it would whistle back.”

On Easter Sunday morning, five scissor-tailed flycatchers, state bird of Oklahoma, displayed their tails proudly in the yard. We went to church and then to a backyard family barbecue. She wanted to take a walk when we got home, and the day was still balmy. We took three laps, and the first two she checked to see if we had any mail. On Easter Sunday. I just let her check, then asked if she wanted to smell the lilacs.

Each time we would walk beneath the sycamore, bare-limbed but for its seed baubles, she mentioned the branches needed to be picked up. Each day Rich would pick up more, and each day the wind would bring more down.

Another walk around the yard, Nancy and I. “I like it here. It comes down to I just don’t want to go.”

Leaving the lab where she had blood drawn, I said we needed to look closer at the pretty trees planted around the parking lot before we got in the car. Oklahoma redbud, the state tree, in bloom everywhere, painting the landscape red violet. State bird, butterfly, and tree, check, check, and check.

We woke up to rain on the day we moved her into her new home. The rain felt appropriate as I googled how one signs a check as Power of Attorney.

The sun came back. The next morning a rabbit was sitting by the shed, cleaning its face with its paws. The bird with the whistling song greeted me from its post when I opened the front door to take out more expired food from the freezer to the trash.

On the airplane, we sat with our hands on each others’ legs, the book Refuge in my lap, as I read about birds and mortality and mothers, flying the friendly skies.