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.

summer bounty

A big bowl of tomatoes—so many that I can save a small bowl for the next two days (there are more ripening behind those I picked today) and throw the rest into a big pot to make a simple sauce that I will freeze for the winter.  I have refrained from cooking inside during our heat wave—hot food never tastes good to me when it is hot—preferring to grill a bit of protein on my small electric grill (A nod of thanks to Cindy for gifting the grill to me when I left Madison.) and making huge salad with bought greens and herbs from the garden.  Everything from the garden has more flavor and vegetables melt into one another so much more companionably than their supermarket cousins.

I let the tomatoes cook down for hours and what is left is the sweet essence of summer.  I expect the pleasure long after I’ve pulled up the plants and cleaned the garden for winter.

We are quiet today with nothing planned.  Some drawing, a load of wash, some editing for me and reading. Julia plays her music—Ukulele chords are just beginning to make an impression and she has a new cello piece.  Then, Julia picks up her basketball and bounces it around the house until she becomes bored.  She wants to go to the small park around the corner.  She wants to go alone, but capitulates to my entreaty to go with her and sit far away.  I am.

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joni

“The wind is in from Africa, last night I couldn’t sleep . . . my fingernails are filthy, I got beach tar on my feet . . .”

Once, the reedy soprano slid up and down her registers as quickly as her fingers slid around on the neck of her guitar.

She had long, straight hair, as fine as mine but very much blonder. It was flung over one shoulder with a deft flip of her head. Slight with a sweet, high voice concealing genius and gravitas.  (Although now I wonder why genius does not routinely speak in a breathy soprano.)  Hippy clothes or terribly cool apparel—cooler as she got older. Never quite settling down but moving in the company of splendid and beautiful musicians. Never quite molded by the commercial music scene but brilliant enough to wedge her way in, to command attention. Singing about quitting the crazy music scene and then going on to write and sing more and again.

Joni Mitchell sang at the Newport Folk Festival Sunday night as a surprise special guest of Brandi Carlile. It was a carefully orchestrated appearance, her first public performance since a stroke and brain aneurysm in 2015. A friend posted an early morning YouTube video on her Facebook feed. I clicked on the link and then got lost down a rabbit hole of videos catching Joni performing song after song—the highlights of her old masterpieces and the kind of standards that I loved to sing—and playing her guitar.  Her voice—low and chesty, a voice that had come back from near death, an old voice so rich with meaning and inference and innuendo that it was like some rich, decadent dessert.

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eve

I woke up with such a heaviness on my heart.  This is never a good holiday to think beyond my smallest world—No, I honestly thought that I had passed that stage.  That this year I was free to take on the biggest world on this the eve of David’s Death Day, but the missing of him, the sorrow of the loss of him lingers, it scents the air like roses in a garden, it is in the fabric of the comfortable capris that I pull on to grab a cup of coffee before Julia gets out of bed. 

The radio’s first story is about another Black man in Ohio, fleeing the police, who was shot 60 times. The eight officers involved in the shooting were put on administrative leave which signals at least some question of appropriate behavior.

Tears escape my eyes.

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newport 2

The bridge to and from Newport

Tonight is our last evening here, our last vacation evening for the summer.  Five days in Newport is a short vacation but somewhat adequate.  I feel separated enough from the regular round to miss it and want to get back into it.  

All of that is good.

I missed the latest SCt decision.  Checking in on Facebook, I see it is about prayer in schools and that is a soap box I have climbed onto too many times.  Not tonight; however, I do look forward to all the Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, wild UU and pagan prayers that will be heard all over the USA in classrooms and on the 50 yard line next year.

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newport, ri

A floor detail at the Breakers.

Third day here, first time sitting down to write.  We done a lot of walking and have seen a few of the big mansions.  This morning, Julia wanted to go to a beach, I made a wrong turn and we are at a shell and sand bay beach where she can play with sand a bit.  It is warm today.  I think it is heading towards hot but it rained most of the day yesterday and the humidity today is very low.

Comparing the vacations that my Facebook connections show—I have a cousin in the Grand Tetons snapping trees and rocky sunsets, a friend whose is traveling in Spain with her family. I note that some of her Madrid photos remind me strongly of Paris, a young friend posting pictures of her wedding and another friend posting her daughter’s wedding pictures.  There is such a surfeit of wedding pictures these days.  I still marvel at how we are burst at the seems with places and activities.

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today’s round

the penultimate peony

Morning.  Almost two hours after Julia leaves and I am getting down to the writing that I wanted to do since I opened my eyes.  This morning the round of tasks, not overwhelming by any means, has induced anxiety, enough to notice.  And I wonder if my anxiety can be compared to the way that Julia feels whenever she is asked to do more than two things when she is intent on something else.  It appears that she cannot hold all of that—two asks and her desires—in her head and get to what she wants to do.

Alarm goes off at 7:15 and Julia does come into my bedroom to wake me up shortly afterwards.  A great start to the day. I have a burning desire to start writing, immediately—something which definitely does not happen every morning.  I can’t do that but I consider that there will be only a short hold on the writing.

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solstice

A new season.  The longest day of the year.

Solstice songs

Julia and I ate breakfast on our back porch—something she loves to do that I usually drag my feet about.  Too cold, too hot, too buggy and it is morning and we need to get on with our day.  But today, we woke up on time—Julia responding to the google wake up on the small speaker, something we have been working on this entire school year, something she sabotaged last week, something we had a talk about at Community Connections (a serious conversation at her program can make more of an impression than a similar talk at home), her program, and something that she encouraged me to reset (although I’ve only reset one of the three speakers she disabled—damn  my holding on by my fingertips device knowledge.) lat night.

So, she woke up, did what she needed to do (although she still needs some kind of list to make sure she remembers everything.  And any kind of reminder is anathema to her) and there was time to eat on the back porch.  

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baby shower

Finally today, I have caught my breath.  From the long holiday weekend and the catch up week that followed.  I still have an overdue phone call to my advocate at Healthcare For All and another call to MassHealth.  I’m saving that which I know will be frustrating until Monday.

It was a good weekend.

Justin’s mother and I threw a baby shower for our children and their impending baby boy.  It was a bigger shower than it would have been had there been had there been the planned-for wedding. We invited more people and people from further away than we might have.  Still, there were those from too far away who were missing.  

Still, it was a good party.

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speaking

This is a piece from the Guggenheim that I had not posted before. Writing about masks reminded me how much I liked it.

I prepared to read a story adapted from a blog post a few months ago.  It was for a very small storytelling symposium called Newton Speaks-voices of our city.  It was moderately attended,  there in the middle of the day on a Tuesday but nevertheless, I prepared.  Everyday for a week, I read the story out loud—such is the practice of an old stutterer preparing to speak in public.  I did the same when I’ve spoken in church over the past two years.  Those readings were mostly done via zoom, although I did read two poems on Christmas Eve in the church building.  Those readings of my own work and the work of some poets went well.  I felt I could be expressive and I was not overly concerned about my speech which was not perfect, but not bad.  This time, I was interested to see what I could do, how I might feel about the reading, how I judge my expression to be and my speech.  Everyone was still in masks. Recently, going without masks into a few places has got me thinking about more of the implications of mask wearing.  Apart from health concerns, masks hide, masks protect, masks make it hard at times to communicate which sometimes reduces the number of words spoken, ideas exchanged.  Masks hide reactions and expression.  And walking around the world masked can feel very safe and comfortable.  I hadn’t understood that before this pandemic.

What a still-crazy time this is!

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tulips and small steps`

Dramatic Julia at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens Japanese Garden

I meant to write yesterday.  What happened?

10:00 a.am.  I get a email from Julia’s inclusion facilitator that Julia is upset that she left her wallet at home.  I am more or less ready to do some errands, so I jump in the car and bring the wallet over to the program.  I want Julia to have as good a day as she can. She has had some very good days this week . . . talk about that later.  

First.

I read a blog post (and I can’t find it now to link it) about a mom who has a child with autism who had reached middle or high school and was more independent than he had been a few years prior.  The mother felt some room open up, some possibility of freedom for herself, and asked a trusted therapist if she thought that the mom could enter the regular work force again.  She had cobbled together part-time work through the years but missed a full-time job and building a career.  The therapist, who knew her kiddo, told the mom that if she “needed” to work, she should, but that kids with the best outcomes have full-time moms.  

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