Category: Journaling My Days

I journaled for years on paper and I expect to be doing it in some form until my last days. In short summary, I teach mindfulness to parents of kids with challenges; I garden as often and as much as I can in Wisconsin and I am working through the threads of grief six years after my husband’s death. I am very grateful for finding and chasing the joy in this unexpected life.

almost spring

“March went out like a lion
Awakin’ up the water in the bay . . . “
~Carousel, Rodgers and Hammerstein, “June is Busting Out All Over”

Funny, I remember this line and sing it in my head as “March came in like a lion” every year this time of year.  So, according to my lyrics, March came in as described.  We have had warm hatless days and the snow is disappearing—we are not in Wisconsin anymore! When there is sunshine, the sky is a shade deeper than pale blue and we are searching for the first signs of spring breaking through the earth. I have to go on neighborhood walks to find those signs of spring instead of my own garden. Still missing my own little plot.  I need to ask my landlords if I can use their side garden for vegetables and a few annuals again.  I have another month or so to ask.

Signs of spring — tulips and eggs and pasanky dye

The lay of the land, so to speak, has been more interesting in the last few weeks than in many months, although there have been bumps.

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snow, travel & home

A jumble of thoughts, events and musings today.

Snow day for Julia. During the last big snow, there has been only one serious snow before this one, Newton decided not to call a snow day but to merely go all remote for classes that day.  I think that most students were zooming in from home anyway, so it was only the high needs students (of which Julia is one) and some very young students who would have their school day changed.  However!  However, there was an uproar from all corners of town! How could NPS steal precious snow day activities from children already deprived of so much of their normal? The children should have been building snow people and sledding down hills, not stuck in front of computers all day.  I don’t know what the internal (or external) politics were, but the next day a traditional and completely unnecessary snow day was declared.

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the best laid schemes . . .

I had plans today.  And we all know what happens to plans.  And sometimes it is more than hard to figure out just which clause of the Serenity Prayer should be in play right now. Or as Cheshire says, “2020 laughs at your plans.”

I predicted that we would not get to an outcome for the presidential election last night or this morning; however, I find that a definitive landslide for the Democrats was a wish lodged deep in my heart.  

I fell asleep listening to election returns in bed on my laptop just before midnight and woke up a few hours later in time to hear the NPR host talking about trump’s victory speech.  I groaned, closed the laptop, turned over and went back to sleep.  I had at least two unnerving dreams during which friends who I haven’t seen in a very long time appeared.  I hugged them hard.

Gosh, I needed that.

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resilience

Last Sunday, I was asked to talk about resilience at church. This is what I said. 

I’d like to start with . . .  Jane Hirshfield’s poem, 

Optimism.

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs — all this resinous, unretractable earth.

I wanted to be a pillow, but if there is any lesson in the last 6 months, it is cultivating the tenacity of trees. 

Talking resilience in medias res, I had no idea where to begin and what to tell. 

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marigolds and zinnias

Last week’s centerpiece–flowers and herbs from the garden.

It has been an okay time—this week or two.  Julia has settled into school.  A few hard days now and again, a few challenges with the iPad and social media.  Those challenges have been ongoing for more than a year and, even though I am so tired of them, I admit that they have calmed from gale force wind storms to the occasional drizzle.  School is mostly left to school.  I continue to be grateful that she is a high needs learner who is in the school building 5 days a week and that most of the school work is done either during the 90 minute class periods or support resource/support time.  At home, she continues to draw every day, she practices her cello, we do almost weekly baking that is now packed up in individual bags and sent to school.  Thank you’s to teachers and staff—right now, it feels like the only way to teach Julia gratitude.  Julia does chores or what I call Family Work—still needing reminders but usually only once or twice on any given day.  She is getting better about marking the allowance chart when she does qualifying activities and work.  All these things—bringing baked stuff into school, family work, daily cello and drawing—are what she can learn during this time.  She has academic classes in school but I don’t expect much from them.  Not that teachers and staff are not working their butts off—they are— but I don’t know how much biology or art history are going to go into Julia brain this year.  I do not see her as “available” for learning.

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my cadillac

Throughout my young life, my father drove Buicks.  The first one I remember, just vaguely, was black with red seats.  It was huge, wide and tall, to my small self and I remember having the back seat all to myself.  My brother was in the front seat—held by my mother or in a tiny “car seat” with its own steering wheel.  Amazing that all my siblings who sat in that tiny seat grew to adulthood. I could sit or lie or play with toys in the big back seat. Unfortunately, I have always been one to get very motion sick.  A short ride to church or school, got me dizzy.  A 20 minute ride to grandma’s house ruined half a day, and the ride to the Jersey shore would slay me.  My father stopped on the shoulder of the road, I got out and threw up everything in my stomach.  Even when I didn’t eat or took the dreaded dramamine, which I may have been allergic to, I was wretched.  

But this is about driving cars, not riding in them. Only once and in my adult life have I ever felt sick driving and that was in a big, empty school van.

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quiet

This morning, we’ve spent the morning on our back porch.  Julia is editing pictures for her blog.  She has drawn most days but has not posted since the week before the wedding.  We counted and that was 40 days ago.  She lost interest in posting and I can’t blame her-it was supposed to be a place to put pictures for the short term.  After 100+ days and 100+ pictures, it is no longer short term.

This morning, we took pictures of her pictures and it will take most of the day for her to edit and post.  The blog began with pictures of what she/we did during our quarantine days but Julia got bored, it became a lot tougher to come up with ideas and I could not inspire her to continue down that path.  I also was, for a short time, busy with the wedding. And so, she has been drawing what she wanted to—mostly anime characters that she obsesses about.  Not being an artist or educator, I don’t know what to do next with this mountain of pictures. Perhaps an artist or educator could see some development or where to go or what to ask for next.  I don’t. This has long been my challenge.

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roots, wings, officers & self-pity

237D0ECB-BCFD-4BAE-8FF4-AEAD4D5CFD26The wedding and the week at the lake house were wonderful but not without snags and challenges—challenges that have continued into the new week.

On Friday afternoon at the lake, Julia had a melt down.  It was not about anything in particular and it was not the worst she has had but it hurt me pretty deeply.  We had spent the week with Cheshire’s new in-laws and they were lovely to us, to Julia.  We’ve been with them for holidays and the long weekend over the Fourth of July.  Their interest in Julia and kindness towards her cannot be faulted. Even their children are kind and loving. It was precisely for those reasons that Julia’s behavior hit me so hard.  She was making the situatin difficult and uncomfortable.  All I could see at that point was that I had brought a very difficult family to the table. Quickly my hurt devolved into self-pity. Everyone else was coupled, I was alone.  I could not even deliver Cheshire’s father to the wedding. Okay, that was not my fault. At least, I knew that rationally, but rationality had no place in that dark space.  My aloneness and loneliness, that I fought against all week, reared its ugly head. I saw myself as a taker and my move to Boston as a mistake. If I was far away, Cheshire could, for the most part, engage with her husband’s extended family without the challenges that Julia brings to every event. Of course, when I voiced some of this to Cheshire, she disabused me of the ideas.  Continue reading →

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wedding week, take one

79489dec-b864-4533-a926-ba6c2fc29f3b[Big aside. I finished about half of this post and was editing the photo layout when I lost the entire post. Zap! Pooff!  Every bit of it gone.  And you know, when that happens I am sure that what I wrote before was probably the most brilliant, thought provoking, sweet post I’d ever written. So, in the spirit of reconstruction, I’m doing it all again! How did I start???]

We were 13 adults, including the bride and groom, parents, siblings and partners, and three friends including the officiant and her partner, and 5 kids, nieces and a nephew from 3 months to 9 years. We stayed in the big green victorian house with a relatively recent turret addition.  Cheshire and Justin took the top turret bedroom, Cheshire has always loved turrets! We had the house for a week. Often during our week, someone would take note of something that someone who would have been at a bigger wedding would have enjoyed.  You were missed. Continue reading →

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lake house & antipasto

94e5de63-27ce-4580-b1de-9803a13f5b40Lake house.  Day 3, if you count Saturday when we packed up the car, unpacked, sorted and generally unwound. This morning, Julia and I took our rented double kayak out for an early morning paddle.  We were out for a bit less than an hour.  I was somewhat apprehensive about finding the house on the way back.  Tonight or tomorrow, longer.

Most of the household is hiking this morning, a few went food shopping, Julia is doing zoom school and I have a few minutes on the porch alone to tap on this machine.  The porch faces the lake and if I move the drying beach towels, the view if lovely.  The sound of water is lovely. I type in 25 minute intervals with 10-15 minute breaks to tell Julia to get outside during her breaks and to sign in for her next class.  Her video is not working today.  I have followed all the instructions given by support last week.  Video is intermittent and re-booting and/or getting closer to the router works once or twice but with no regularity.  Julia is getting used to the intermittence. When I return to my typing, I move chairs, trying to stay shaded.  Continue reading →

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