I have a new WIP idea dancing around the edges of my mind, playing hide-and-seek with the girls in the basement. I created the following wordle from the first paragraph this morning and I love it!
43 things update (garden worth photographing)
Removed a couple of ugly shrubs and a dear little red Japanese looking tree that just didn’t fit in with my plan. Planted two low growing red rose bushes, a higher shrub white rose and two yellow with pink climbing roses along with some low growing purple annuals and some… hm, forgot the name. The purple sage I planted last year against the house is also coming back in. Got the rest of the old leaves cleaned out… cut back and tamed some of the berries… baby steps.
China Diary… on NPR
Last night as I drove home from work I listened to NPR’s “All Things Considered” as I do almost every night. I joined the broadcast already in the midst of a story from Dujiangyan, a city in China devastated by the recent earthquake.
Melissa Block’s voice came through my radio speakers, quiet, subdued and often shaking with emotion. Two people, a couple, a young man in his early thirties and a young woman in her mid-twenties were frantically seeking help to locate their two year old son and his grandparents who were in their apartment when the earthquake hit on Monday morning. It had been two days and no one had yet searched the building rubble.
The loss of this family and so many others was brought home so clearly, far more clearly than any other story I have seen or heard. The simplicity, the sparseness, the pauses, the quaver in Melissa Block’s voice accompanied by the sounds of the heavy machinery and the frantic, raw voices of the grieving family are crushing, stabbing, aching. So many losses these days, in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the ongoing violence in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon; the unbelievable losses in Burma’s cyclone. I don’t know anymore how to process these great, grievous losses to these individuals, families, nations and all of us who share this world.
I ache for all of us and I fear the impact and effect of despair. I am a great believer in strength through adversity. I am one of the people who find they are at their best, accomplish more and greater things when challenged, when my back is against the wall. But sometimes the ache is such that you can do no more than curl in on yourself, cling to your loved ones if you are lucky enough to still have them. And pray.
iTunes meme
Gakked from http://fashionista-35.livejournal.com/
Instructions: Open up your iTunes and fill out this survey, no matter how embarrassing the responses might be.
Okay, but I just had a total hard drive loss, so the answers to these questions would have been substantially different four weeks ago.
How many songs total: 928
How many hours or days of music: 2.9
Most recently played: “The DaVinci Code”, but that’s an audiobook so I don’t think it really counts. “Easy Silence” by the Dixie Chicks
Most played: “Saving Grace” by Everlast
Most recently added: “Not Alone” Patty Griffin
Sort by song title
First Song: “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Possitive” Johnny Mercer
Last Song: “9 Crimes” Damien Rice
Sort by time
Shortest Song: “Is Everybody Here” Walela
Longest Song: “Part 6: Attack of the Evil Twin Robot” Suzanne Brockmann – but again, it’s an audiobook, so really it would be “Sleep Don’t Weep” Damien Rice
Sort by album
First album: “Adorate Deum – Gregorian Chants”
Last album: “9″ Damien Rice
First song that comes up on Shuffle: “Broken Arrow” Rod Stewart
Search the following and state how many songs come up:
Death – 1 – “Death of Falstaff”
Life – 37
Love – 80
Hate – 4
You – 167
Sex – 2
Chelsea Morning
When I was in high school in the mid-eighties I had a fabulously diverse group of friends who, to this day, remain as enchanted almost magical characters in the story of my life. When I get lost or deeply blue or begin feeling that I have somehow missed the point those people – my people – come back to me and remind me that I too was a magical faerie princess once who lived in an enchanted kingdom and was charming and intelligent and artistic and made people happy.
About a year ago I came home from a Saturday wandering with a record player. One of those quaint reproductions in a wooden housing with vintage-look knobs and switches and speakers. Since then I stop at garage sales and antique malls and thrift stores snatching up all of the records from my youth that I sold at my own garage sale years and years ago. While I haven’t found Prince’s Purple Rain or Madonna’s Borderline yet I have found lots of older records.
Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass (which I LOVE)
Harry Belafonte
Dan Fogelberg
Simon and Garfunkel
Helen Reddy
The Music Man
My Fair Lady
Grease
Annie
ABBA
And yesterday I found Neil Diamond’s Love at the Greek and Stones both of which are albums played in my childhood home nearly every weekend.
Lucas, one of those magical friends from high school fell in love with another of our group (a phenomenon which happened with startling frequency. We were quite in-bred our group). That year, and for many years after, Secily became known as Chelsea. As in ~
“I woke up it was a Chelsea morning
And the first thing that I knew
There was milk and toast and honey
And a bowl of oranges too
And the light poured in like butterscotch
And stuck to all my senses”
I know it isn’t cool to like Neil Diamond these days, and definitely not at my age – my parents maybe, but a forty year old should not be a Neil Diamond fan. But what fantastic poets that generation created.
“Won’t you stay
We’ll put on the day
And wear it ’til the night comes”
And how wonderful that an ultra-cool surfer dude in 1985 was inspired by and sang a Neil Diamond song to the girl who made him feel like a morning with “milk and toast and honey and a bowl of oranges, too…”
Isn’t it amazing how a song can bring back and entire period in your life including scents and tastes and emotions?
Watching the snow from my front porch… and feeling a little lonely
This has been an odd week for me, kind of a time-out-of-time, or almost suspended animation. You know those special effects in movies when the whole world freezes and the hero or heroine moves through the frozen tableau? It feels like that a little bit. On Monday I begin a new job; one I have been very excited about, but the month long notice and full court press (including heavy, heavy guilt trips) from my current employer to convince me to stay has taken some of the shine off of the expectation and high hopes. In fact, I am feeling rather melancholy this week.
The two “big kids” (I can’t believe they still let me get away with calling them that. B, the oldest is 19 and C is a senior in high school and will be 18 in less than a month.) are in Kentucky with friends on a farm – how fun that must be? The girls are staying in the Carriage House and B is staying the main house with the other adults. So, it’s just the “little one” S (15, I know, I know, not so little. In fact she is taller than I am…), me and Leah Maya the dog. For a house that is usually bursting with teenagers it has been too quite for me to be comfortable. Tonight S has some friends over and Guitar Hero is rattling the windows and all is right with the world.
We went to the grocery store and bought junk food and then signed up at Blockbuster for the first time in years and years. Sam and I sat on the couch feeding Leah Fritos and watching the Nanny Diaries which I had read and Sam had listened to. It was good. Then Leah and I took a walk – cold, but dry and so, so beautiful. Look at the great colors of fallen leaves and green moss layered with snow! 
We hadn’t been back in the house for more than five minutes when the snow started coming down. I stood on my porch and watched it snow and felt… okay. But I am still suspended in time and not sure how to break out of this bubble.
I know that I am lonely. It’s the holidays and I have no sweet man to share it with. And I am leaving some really great friends when I leave my job. And my grandmother passed away only a couple of months ago. And my kids are growing up… ah me. I am clearly feeling sorry for myself. How unattractive and destructive!
So, I will share these pictures here, pour a glass of red wine and watch last night’s Private Practice. Oh! And it’s time for wishes and dreams and goals and … a list of guilty pleasures! And Jennifer Crusie’s List of Indulgences! Lots to think about and lists to make… I am feeling better already! Where is that new moleskine…?
Missing people
I absolutely adore Barbara Samuel’s writings in all their forms. I read her blog religiously. Today http://awriterafoot.typepad.com/a_writer_afoot/2007/12/contemplation-w.htmlThis time of year is filled with visits and letters and cards, emails and phone calls. But there are always those people we miss at this time of year; that we aren’t in touch with for one reason or another.
Death – my grandmother passed away just a couple of months ago. She had been ill with a blood cancer for five years, so there really wasn’t any surprise to her passing but it hurts. Mary Jean Ledbetter Schlottman is one of the people I am missing in this contemplative time. She taught me to believe in my creativity and my gifts. She showed me how to live my faith and helped me to constantly try to be the best me I can be.
My grandpa Bud (Ernest Melvin English) has been gone for several years now, but sometimes I can hear his voice as I come down the stairs in the morning, or smell the tobacco in his rough wool shirt as he hugs me. He was the best story teller and lived such a colorful life. I learned from him that a hard life gives you character and an easy life has no richness. His colorful, completely not politically correct sayings pop into my mind regularly. He lived. And I miss him. No digital pictures of him. I will scan some for future reference.
My first nephew, too, Patrick DeFreitas would be 18 now had he lived past 6 months. Who would he have been?
I miss Jerry Dominguez and I worry about him every day. He is in Iraq doing things most of us would refuse to do and helping to keep our young marines safe. The last time I talked to him he sounded lonely and homesick and tired of being someplace so scary. He would like to be home with his lady and his small son and his amazing, beautiful daughter LeAndra.
I miss old friends …. Roshell, Matt, Allison, Geoff, Jenny, Secily, Kiti and Alice, Jen, Rick and Tim. So much time and distance. I am even, in this slightly melancholy mood, missing some of the kids who have made this house a home for a few days, or months or years. Some of them have been out of my daily life so long I don’t have digital pictures of them either. Lots of scanning in my future! So here is a small homage to people whom I love and miss tonight.
Young love…
This was the summer of love at our house. The house teemed with teenagers from fourteen to nineteen and although only three of them were actually mine biologically speaking all of these kids are mine and I love them dearly. I have worked hard over the years to ensure that our house is where everyone gathers. The door opens and closes all day and, nearly, all night. I never know how many people will be here when I wake in the morning and have learned to cook for an always uncertain number of mouths at breakfast and dinner.
Watching these young people falling in and out of love has brought back all of the urgent, desperate joy and pain – and lust – of young love. The people who roll their eyes and refer to “puppy love” in disparaging tones make me nuts. They’re too young; okay, maybe. They don’t even know what love is; oh, please. Love at this age isn’t “real love”; are you kidding? Think back for a moment on the defining moments in your life. How many of them happened between the years of say, 
twelve and twenty-five? I am not talking about the big promotion and the wedding or the birth of a child. I am talking about the emotional, visceral defining moments.
The moment you realized it really wasn’t worth it to sacrifice your virginity for the curiosity, or the desperate fear of being alone and unloved.
The moment you learned how little popularity or coolness had to do with how you feel about another person.
The moment you learned what the word betrayal really meant, or that hormones are potent, mind altering drugs or that you are desirable (or not) just as you are.
The emotions wrapped up in young love are so immediate and all consuming. Everything – every thought, word, song, slight, gift and mood are desperately important and meaningful. Being in love as a teen is like walking around naked, with no skin and a see-through head. These young people are so transparent and so vulnerable and they care so much. Is this real love I am witnessing, yes ma’am, there is nothing more real. Will it last a lifetime? In a way it will, yes. I have watched the couples build and fall apart for the last six months and I know with all the certainty in my being that when these kids are forty they will hear a song, or catch a scent, or see a movie, or the curve of a cheek on a stranger and they will be here again, in this house, with the love of their young life. Their experiences now and the lessons they are learning with these loves will serve them for the rest of their lives. Scary, exhilarating thought, isn’t it?
My young loves have been woven into every stage in my life. During my marriage I would flash on a moment with a love from my youth. Man I learned a lot from those boys. From Matt I learned that obsession does not equal love. Not obsession in the creepy way, but Matt was so cool and so charming and well, hot. I wanted him. And I wanted to belong to him. Maybe that more than anything else. I wanted to belong to him. That was a bit destructive. But now, more than twenty years later he is still someone I really like a lot. I love his writing and his creativity and the amazing father he has become. That passionate, intense young man has become a richly textured man I am proud to call a friend. From David I learned that no matter how much you like someone and enjoy their company and intellectually recognize their beauty and how “right” it would be if the passion isn’t there you can’t manufacture it. No sparkle, no zazz. But goodness, on paper WOW, what a perfect young man. And from the other David I learned how it feels to be ashamed of yourself and how hurtful it is to use someone just to fill the emptiness. Being alone isn’t so bad.
I continue to learn from loves – my ex-husband has taught me so much about what it means to be a family and a friend and what responsibility really is and how hard it is sometimes to not still be – at forty – the spoiled child you were at seventeen. From that man I never should have loved I learned what sacrifice and duty feel like.
Young love is powerful and awe inspiring and frightening and searingly painful and heartbreakingly beautiful.
And real.
Nana’s Hands
Written August 10, 2007 after visiting my mother in her garden.
Nana’s Hands
She looks down at her hands amongst the dahlias and the hostas
Strong
And sure in the earth
Wise
In their choices ~
Pinching where guidance is needed,
Coaxing and guiding where direction is needed
Graceful and elegant in their strength and simplicity
“I never expect” she says suddenly
“To look down and see Nana’s hands”
This I Believe…. (one)
This I believe…
I believe in the value of extended families. My family has more than its share of characters and strong personalities. We have colorful, struggling family members and blue suited conservative family members. We have republicans and democrats who sit down to Thanksgiving dinner together and who name each other in their wills and as potential guardians of their precious children. We have drug addicts and artists, attorneys and CPA’s, scientists and general contractors. Some of our family members live in homes worth half a million dollars. Others live in trailer parks.
When we are gathered in the living room of one or another of us all are equally loved and valued. Those who are struggling or who are lost find hope and wisdom and opportunities that wouldn’t normally be afforded them. Those who are proud or arrogant the other 364 days of the year sit on the floor, holding a drink in their hand discussing vacation bible school memories and the merits of porcupine meatballs or tater-tot casserole.
In a family class and wealth are irrelevant. A cousin earning barely more than minimum wage at a portrait studio breaks bread with a cousin working in the pharmaceutical industry earning well into six figures. Our struggles as parents are collective. Our experiences in growing in, or losing, our faith are universal. Our growth in self-knowledge is not dependant on wealth or education. Our willingness and participation in caring for our aging parents and grandparents – and in our very lucky family, great-grandparents is decidedly not linked to income or social status.
The next generations are free of their parents’ social standing and succeed and fail on their own merits, just as we have. The youthful faces, streaked with tears who were the pall-bearers of at my grandmother’s funeral were a mixed bag of amazing young men. Fathers at 15 and active artists and future business men who spoke with my grandmother, their great grandmother, of faith, and loss and the future before she died. These young men, my extended family, are people I am proud to know and that I am proud to be related to. Young people who stop their busy lives to spend a day grieving with their family for a woman four generations removed are blessings to us all.
In an extended family the burdens are shared across many and the blessings are also shared in staggeringly generous ways. In an extended family the idea of what’s mine is ours is inherent. When a family member passes, or when a new child is born the family comes together to bring those who are far away into the fold. In an extended family neither time nor distance are important. It doesn’t matter if you live next door or a thousand miles away. It doesn’t matter if you spoke this morning or six months ago. In an extended family you belong, always and everywhere. In an extended family you are loved, you love; you are accepted and you accept; you provide wisdom, or you gather it in; you carry a burden or you share one.
I believe that extended families are the great gift we all share. The beautiful, aged faces and hands of our grandparents, great grandparents, aunts and uncles guide and sustain us and the generations who follow. In my family we have experienced the miracle of five generations sharing a holiday and we have experienced the devastating, earth shaking grief when one of our family are lost. We lean on each other, we count on each other both for strength when we need it and for laughter, meals, company and the every day, common requirements of this life; participating in each other’s children’s fund raising activities, filling the audiences at school plays, writing letters of reference , filling the mailboxes at holiday time and providing that common security that not only do we belong, and are we loved, but that we always have many, many people standing behind us, believing in us and cheering us on no matter where life takes us.
