Category Archives: Family

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Advent Day #17 – Companions

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A truly wonderful aspect of Life: that we never walk alone.  Counting the days and the ways that we are given good things in abundance.

Who Could Ask For Anything More?

Companions.  The gift of friendship, togetherness, to know we’re not alone.

Steve brought me breakfast in bed this morning.  I am having one of my cyclical let-downs, when I have wearied myself in contending with life and death and love and loss.  We were discussing E.M. Forster’s novel “A Room With A View” when this came on.  Hormones, of course, have everything to do with it as well.  Lucy Honeychurch gets “peevish” when she plays Beethoven, and I get “peevish” reading Mr. Emerson’s speech on life and “muddles”.  Steve gets Slavic and moody listening to Mahler, or perhaps he listens to Mahler when he feels moody and Slavic.  We are beginning to know each other’s moods better and better.  And I really believe we are lucky, blessed, in a state of grace in that we accept those moods and are not threatened by the most peculiar of them.  That’s why he’s my best friend.

I’ve never had a lot of friends, and all of my best friends have been male.  Maybe that’s because I grew up with 3 older sisters.  I am a little suspicious of females.  I have a feeling it’s because I compare myself to them far too much.  A sly competitiveness creeps in and makes me uneasy.  I pull away.  With guys, I don’t compare.   I can be ‘other’ and so can he.  It seems simpler.  It’s a mindset that should apply to females as well except for my own perverse insistence that it can’t.   Growing up, I played with a boy who was a year younger than I and lived two doors down.  We were best friends for 9 years.  We played in the woods across the street.  We played house and wedding, and he was always the bride.  He had older step-sisters who kept being married off, and I think he found that really enchanting.

 

Brother & sister and best of friends

Friends to suffer with your moods, enjoy the stuff of life, travel with you through adventures of all kinds.  Old friends, new friends.  Situational companions.  Steve likes to imagine how he’d be if he were stuck in an elevator with a few people for hours.  He would definitely skip the small talk about the predicament and enjoy a captive opportunity to get to know them really well.  He’s kind of intense like that.  Scares some people.  Yesterday, I saw a news video about a policeman who crawled under a bus to hold the hand of a 24 year old woman who was run over and pinned.  The photo of them together on the asphalt and his interview afterward just filled my heart.  I know what it’s like to be so afraid and just to cling to another person for the reminder that we are never alone in our fears.   We suffer together.  We are interconnected.  And if anything is God, it is there as well.  Presence.  Abiding.  Being with each other.  It is the ultimate ‘yes’ of living.  Which brings me back to Forster  and Mr. Emerson.  “In his ordinary voice, so that she scarcely realized he was quoting poetry, he said:

“‘From far, from eve and morning/ And yon twelve-winded sky/ The stuff of life to knit me/ Blew hither: here am I’

“George and I both know this, but why does it distress him?  We know that we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them; that all life is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness.  But why should this make us unhappy?  Let us rather love one another and work and rejoice.  I don’t believe in this world sorrow.”  Miss Honeychurch assented.  “Then make my boy think like us.  Make him realize that by the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes — a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes.”

Ah, Yes.  To love one another and work and rejoice.  Companioned.  Who could ask for anything more?

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Advent Day #4 – Soil

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Reblogging from two years ago is not as synchronous as I thought it might be.  Two years ago, the fourth of December was a Sunday, and my post was very Sunday-related and had little to do with the Advent gift of the day, which I designated Soil.  So, I went looking for another post from that year.  Luckily, I found one.  My parade of gifts from the Universe has featured Sun, Air, Water and now Soil.  The four elements of our natural world, if you will.  Here’s the post:

As Time Goes By

My daughter is a certified massage therapist.  This makes visiting her an extra special occasion. Not only do I get the pleasure of her company and hospitality, I get a 2 hour massage as well.  As I lay there thinking about my body, my cells, and the amazing things going on just under my skin, it occurred to me that the whole process that I call my biological life began exactly half a century ago.  Yup, I figure I was conceived Thanksgiving weekend, as my parents celebrated with joy their gratitude for life.   Not that they ever divulged so private a story to me, mind you.

I marvel at how life is sustained over time.  I mentioned this to my kids as I was sipping my post-therapy water.  My youngest piped up, “Yeah, well, half a century is nothing when you think about how mountains grow and change.”  Touche.  I have to get better at taking a longer view, getting a bigger perspective.  I look at my kids bustling around in the kitchen preparing food together, all grown up, and a second later, they are playing a patty-cake game from their childhood.

We are all still so young on this earth; we are such a blink.  What kind of impact will we have on the bigger picture?  What will be the most lasting legacy of this family whom I love so intensely?  The trees that we’ve planted?  The children we beget?  The words we pen? The votes we cast?  The ashes we give back to the soil?  I can’t say for sure.  It could be the love that we circulate, although it would be impossible to document.  I am just grateful to have been a part of it, a crinoid in the limestone, among thousands of others.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Let There Be Light!

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“…Propelled into the furthest arc, forsaken by the sun…” (from a poem I wrote, published in Living Church magazine)  What do we do in the Northern Hemisphere when we feel bereft of light and warmth?  We make HOLIDAY!  An excuse to gather together and eat and light candles, replenishing the light and warmth we feel we are lacking.  Yesterday was American Thanksgiving, so I hosted a dinner for Steve and his mother and aunt and sister and brother-in-law.  We love our home and spend far too little time in it lately.  We have been neglecting our home business (Scholar & Poet Books) for some reliable capital gains in the form of outside employment and losing touch with our domesticity.  Thanksgiving was a good time to settle in to cleaning and cooking and re-stacking books and music.  Puttering around the house while listening to good music is a nesting paradise. 

And It Was Good.  Good Will yielded some great finds in table decorations.  The turkey turned out moist and delicious.  Everyone brought side dishes to contribute.  We even had a family political argument!  (What holiday is complete without one?)  I really enjoyed serving Steve & his family out of the love and joy I feel in my heart…not out of obligation or duty.  The best part was just remembering why we are working so hard…so that we can get back to living out the life that we want to embody: slower-paced, inner-directed, aware & appreciative.  

So…..light.  Candles on the table, ready to dispel the darkness when the sun sets.  Sunlight streaming through the south window, illuminating the sideboard, laden with olives and nuts and good, stinky cheese.  And sherry & gin.  The darkness will not overwhelm us!

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Weekly Photo Challenge: The Hue of You

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I have always identified with autumn colors.  My eyes are brown and green, flecked with gold.  My hair is a sort of light brown with golden strands that catch the sunlight.  I was a true blonde until my late teens when I began to shun the California sun for indoor time with my studies.  My sister nicknamed me “Golden Girl”.  I have never colored my hair and have only one gray one (which I pluck when it gets more than an inch long!).  I love to stroll the green spaces where I live, and I get a little uneasy in a plane when all I see below are dusty expanses.  Green is my go-to color.  My mother never liked green and made pronouncements about why it was “bad” for a kitchen, for clothing, for just about everything except plants.  I grew up revering my parents’ opinions, and learning to develop my own style is something I’ve come into rather late, I think.  Sorry, Mom.  I WILL wear green and decorate my indoor space with it liberally!  This picture reflects a wonderful tapestry of fall colors, with a blue sky for background and a towering church which seems like it is being overtaken by vegetation.  This is also me: my monumental Christianity is slowly being eclipsed and colored by a more prominent display of natural life.  This is the hue of me:

Holy Hill

Holy Hill

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The Honeymoon

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After the wedding, when the guests have returned by car and airplane to their separate homes, and your brain comes off of the social high of meeting, greeting and paying attention to details, there is a quiet, warm place of relaxation.  This may be called the honeymoon for the newly married couple, and it may be a kind of honeymoon for the mother of the bride, too!  I am thinking of all the things I most appreciated about the week, all the kindnesses and beauty, all the timeless moments when events folded on top of each other to create a curved sense of space and time.   Here are a few that I am holding dear right now:

— I learned that my sister Sarah and my brother David, the artists in the family, have been secretly working away at projects and have gifted my daughter with some amazing artifacts that I’m sure will become family heirlooms for generations.  My brother painted an acrylic fantasy featuring the spirit animals of Susan (pirate squirrel) and Andy (Ninja otter) and framed it, hoping only to add a mobile vestibule in which to hang it wherever they might take up residence.  I saw this painting only in a photo on his handheld phone, but it was colorful and impressive even so.  He has designed fantasy art for a card game (Magic) in the past, so his skills are quite professional.  My sister pieced together a crib sized quilt (*oh, happy thought!*) from Celtic knot squares that she’s been working on for 20 years, with a border that she began when she was a member of SCA (the Society of Creative Anachronism).  She was delighted to finally have an occasion to finish it and give it to the appropriately appreciative person.  Here’s a photo:

the quilt–My mother, Anne Louise, who walked into the park where the wedding took place with the help of her trusty, collapsible cane, now has a new nickname.  She went from Granne Louise to “Grandalf”, a wizard of wisdom and wit and nurturing.  The photographer wanted to adopt her as her own grandmother because she reminded her of her heroine, Eleanor Roosevelt, and she posted a great photo of my mom on her blog, showing off her fly moves to the disco groove on the dance floor.  When I told my mother about the photographer’s comment, she replied, “Eleanor couldn’t dance!” (My mom, one-upping Eleanor Roosevelt!!!)  She gave a reading as part of the ceremony, quoting the Bible, John Ford, William Shakespeare, the Book of Common Prayer, my father and her self, all cleverly woven into rhyme and verse.  It made me weep in rehearsal.  Here’s a photo of me & “Grandalf” processing down the aisle after the ceremony:

grandalf— My dance with my daughter was very special, and I have yet to see a photographic image of it.  We chose to dance to “What A Wonderful World” sung by Louis Armstrong.  The first time I heard that song was when Susan sang it with the Barrington Children’s Choir on tour in Europe after her 8th grade year in school.  I went along as a chaperone.  That trip, all the associations that I have with that song, and with her father singing it, too, and also David Attenborough’s video, make it a perfect choice.  “I hear babies cry/ I watch them grow/ They’ll learn much more/ Than I’ll ever know/ And I think to myself….what a wonderful world!”

I will probably bask in the glow of this honeymoon for a while to come, and post bits and pieces about it as they come to mind.  How can I keep from singing?  From sharing?  From being so happy that love and family and hope and future are still a part of this world and of lives being shaped in this century?

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Masterpiece

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Creating a masterpiece…out of your life.  Making decisions, making meaning, making changes, making love, making sense, making it count, making the most of it.  I dedicate this post to my daughter, Susan, who made a big addition to her masterpiece on Sunday.  Congratulations!  I’m proud of you, dear!

masterpiece

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Wedding Sampler

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Just to show you a glimpse into why I haven’t been posting this weekend…with promises to update anon.  Also a link to the professional photographer’s sneak peek blog (what a wonderful couple…so funny and so talented!).

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Wordless Wednesday: My Father

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July 10th.  The anniversary of my father’s birth.  A man I was close to for 48 years, but whom I was just getting to know when he became wordless.  He wrote his memoirs just before developing Alzheimer’s disease. (see this post for a more complete story)

What I wouldn’t give for a few more words…..

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