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.

unexpected life

Begun on the 5th, finished on the 7th.

Sitting on my back porch, in some stillness. In my sight lines are some less than perfect pots of flowers and herbs that I’ve planted and babied in the blistering heat, a brilliant hydrangea in our back garden that is in full bloom, and the garden behind ours, long neglected yet still punctuated with blooming perennials that are too stubborn to recognize that they are no longer tended.

Yesterday was rather idyllic.  A summertime community picnic in Concord.  Hot dogs, Wilbur’s first, and hamburgers, sweet tea and strawberry shortcake.  And apple pie with vanilla ice cream. Firefighters set up a flat house with flames coming through windows and doors, all on hinges, and gave children the chance to aim a “real” fire hose and shoot water at the flames until the flames were defeated.  The line was too long for Wilbur to wait, for any of us to wait, but he loved watching other kids with the hose.  There was a playground with a sand pit for the pleasure of the littlest ones including Wilbur and his aunty Julia. There was a four piece band of what I thought of as old codgers playing blue grass and old rock standards.  Those codgers may have been younger than I am.  Best of all, we took a train to the picnic!  Wilbur’s current high interest topic is trains of all sorts and sizes, and so we met three stops on the transit line from Concord and took two little train rides to and from the picnic.  It was well worth it as everything about the train, especially moving, was fascinating to the little boy.  

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return

Happy Summer! (lots of this was written over the past 10 days)

Today’s longest day antics: A screening of flying lessons, the film by Sarah Waldron that Julia is in, late lunch with a friend, and horror movies tonight.

Yesterday, June 20, was our really longest day—up at 5 am to begin our ride to Jersey City for the Golden Door Film Festival, a stop at The Cloisters when we realized we were way too early to check into our hotel.  Loved The Cloisters. Hadn’t been there since before Cheshire was born. Finished the ride, found our hotel and some parking —Jersey City has not changed as much as I had imagined in the century since I was there —took naps, went to the opening night party for the festival, saw a bunch of very short and short films and fell into bed somewhere just before midnight.

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because it’s june, june, june, june . . .

I am a gardener.  

I’ve begun at least four memoir pieces with that sentence but honestly, I wondered if I would ever really feel like I was that declaration again.  At the blue Victorian that we moved to from Madison and in which we spent the Covid years, I cultivated a small vegetable patch that was shaded part of the day by the houses around it.  It is never a glorious garden but it gave us something to do that first summer of shut down and there were tomatoes and greens and peppers and a small pumpkin. 

Early on in my tenancy at our present house, I asked the landlord if I could garden.  The foundation planting was sparse and old. There must have been other shrubs and bushes at one time but what was left was four plants spread far apart and planted up close to the house.  

My landlord said I could do what I wanted to do and even volunteered a bit of help—his landscapers trimmed bushes that needed the trimming and even took the grass up when I decided on the shape of the front garden bed.  

I started planning the front bed while I was sick and unable to do much running around.  As I began the planning, I wondered if it made sense to invest in a garden that would take a few years to develop and cultivate in a rental house but I came to the idea that I have made three gardens, each in a house that I owned.  But that after planting and tending and loving those gardens, I sold the houses and left those gardens. And it wasn’t so much the beauty of the gardens that I was/am most attached to, it is the process of making a garden and making a garden in the front of this house that we live in would give me pleasure.  

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more letting go

I could ask how many times? How much more? Again?  Really?

A plastic box, book size, has been sitting on the kitchen floor for a few months.  I could use the excuse of a hard winter of feeling sick as an excuse for just leaving it there but it would be just that — an excuse. It was one of those boxes filled with what needed to be moved 18 months ago, what had some sentimental value, what did not find a home in the new house and what did not really warrant storing for another day. But to give it all away or to throw it all away felt sinful.

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back on the horse & adulting

After what feels likes way too long being homebound and cut off from social activities, I’m venturing to HILR today and my last two classes of the semester.  I would not even do this but I enjoyed the classes so much, the first three anyway, and want to catch up and also say good-bye for the summer.  I also have a rehearsal for a very short play that will be/should be part of next week’s Black Box presentation.  Yes, we are a bunch of old people doing plays for one another.  I’ve miss a solid two weeks of rehearsals and missing today would have consequences.  I know lines and been rehearsing with one other actor on zoom; however, the business of scenes is still lacking.  

And I am not completely better.  I am tired and rather weak. Especially my voice.

But willing to try.

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an old lesson, once again

I have spent a month sick, in one way or another—coughing, first and foremost. A chronic cough that I could not shake. From a flu.  It was not so bad as to not go about my daily round, but bad enough not to be able to do anything without cough drops and my water bottle to keep the eruptions at bay.

But they were not really kept at bay. I sat through classes and choir practices vainly attempting to hold back my coughing. I was not, however, feeling ill enough to do more than use home remedies and rest a little bit. Just a little bit.

Finally, I was too long coughing and thought something funky was going on with my eyes, I visited the doctor, had an x-ray taken and sent home with the usual rest and fluids instructions. Oh, and medication for conjunctivitis.

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the colander eclipse

We didn’t travel to the path of totality although such an ominous name appears to make travel obligatory. We didn’t see the umbra. What a cool word.  Feels good in the mouth speaking it. We didn’t see Venus or stars as one friend opined last week.

Muta, the cat, didn’t seem to notice at all.

About an hour before the light was altered by the moon on the east coast, I looked at the directions to make a pinhole camera. As friends from the west coast and midwest were posting pictures on Facebook, I saw a picture of the eclipse through someone’s colander. 

I grabbed our colander, my pin hole camera and some canvases and set up our viewing post in the backyard. Neighbors were going into the street to watch with their eclipse glasses. 

When Julia got out of The Ride van, I rushed her into the backyard. The sky was already darkening and shadows all over were deepening. The view in the colander was cooler than in the pinhole camera.

We attempted a selfie with the sun in the background.

Julia noticed that the whole eclipse took too long.  But we also noticed that the shadows were unusually deep and their darkness was rich. The yellow of our daffodils was like dark-yolked eggs and the light had a feeling of somewhere else, somewhere where filmmakers choose to make period movies. 

I admit to being unexcited by the celestial phenomena and never considered traveling anywhere to see it better than I could from my backyard, but its magic and light worked itself on me as we stood in the backyard looking through our colander. In another world, at another time, this would be holy.

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babka and ambition

Another grey, wet and cold day.  Am I ever going to put my winter coat away in the hall closet?  I’ve put it away and taken it out again twice.

This morning supervising Julia at the library during her volunteer time. Observing what she can do and do well, and how much she gets in her own way. She has so much more ability than she uses. Mood and lack of regulation ability dampen potential. Trauma masks the possibility of ambition, and without ambition, goals are hard to come by. It’s the goals that have helped me push through bad days. I’ve lived through many a hard time murmuring “eyes on the prize.” When you can see no prize, where do you ever put your eyes.  

This morning, my friend wrote, “you’re not supposed to ace this.” I sigh. I guess I’ve always wanted to ace all my “this.” Time and age and especially Julia have smoothed out so many of my edges. I accept a good deal more and haven’t thought much about acing for awhile.

Living up to potential is not always what I imagined it to be. These days, acing my this is more about support and patience than it is about getting anywhere, accomplishing anything.

Trauma and distraction crowd out aiming for a prize, staying on task and target. And acceptance and flexibility become the goals.

Should I have realized this years ago? I am not a quick learner.

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siloing

To The blogger of The Great Leap who wrote about her new business—The Autism College Connection—which offers advice to families who hope their children with autism are college bound:

I am a big fan of your blog and applaud your work with your son and your new business. I’m sure many will benefit. I take issue, however, with the way you described day programs. You wrote, “He was too smart for day programs that babysat young adults with higher needs.” My daughter is also smart. She is quirky and has many talents that need cultivation. She has travelled the world with me and wants all those things typical young adults want. She also needs a day program that offers her instruction, community and some fun. The staff at her day program engages with her, fosters relationships and expands the worlds for their clients. To reduce what day programs do to “babysitting” hurt to read. I expected that you understood more about the complex post-pandemic world of young adults with autism and other disabilities. It was both disrespectful to my daughter and others who need day programming, and it further silos the larger community of people with disabilities. I believe we need to stand together, cheer on each other, support the needs of all of our children and young adult, not just those in our own children’s niche. If we don’t support and respect each other, how can we expect the typical world to ever understand, accept and support our children?

To her credit, the author responded to my comment almost immediately apologizing for her clueless sentence.  

And I am proud of myself for commenting. I think that even last year, I would have said nothing, feeling confused about the disrespect and the easy categorizing of people with different levels of disability. Feeling uneasy with the thought, “what if Julia read that?” 

This morning, I feel slightly clearer. Amazing how much we all have to learn.

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transformation

At church in small group ministry, we are talking about transformation this month. And to a person, everyone  in my group had a bit of trouble with this topic. We all wanted that Disney Cinderella transformation, the magic wand that turns a pumpkin into a coach and rags into ball gowns. And we could not think of any or many transformative moments in our lives that was quite like that.

Someone suggested that it is more evolution than magic wand, and this morning, I think that so much is in the eye of the beholder. The heart of the dreamer. What and when is that magic wand moment?  And how?  Therein lies a mystery.

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