ice walking

IMG_3293A friend gifts herself on her birthday with novel experiences like hot air ballooning and power sailing. I am not as ambitious.  In previous years, I wished for perfect days on my birthday — wearing favorite clothes, sleeping late, no housework or homework, good food and culture.  My definition of perfect was pretty broad but these days my definition is still too restrictive to strive for.  And so, time to change.

I’ve started projects on natal days.  Some years I ‘finalize’ resolutions that I just couldn’t get right at the beginning of January.  For many years, I didn’t want to make a big deal about celebrating my birthday but without a partner, if any deal is going to be made, I can’t keep my friends in the dark.  And I am grateful for the rememberings — a few packages, morning coffee with, a phone call or two from, theater in evening and afterwards food so rich my tummy ached, and a big bouquet of Facebook wishes.

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ruts

Blue-Moon-ExpeditionShould it be surprising that as it has warmed up slightly in the last few days—from below zero to almost 20 above—the nano-catastrophes of the last week have found solutions?  Perhaps I am warm brained.

We are settling into the cold.  Flannel duvets on the beds, insulated shades  in colder rooms pulled up only on sunny days over 10 degrees, lined pants and silk long underwear are not merely fashion statements and neither of us runs out of the house without coat, hat and gloves.  Recently, I has a conversation about living in New York City with someone who felt that he would never move to the city because of the high cost of living.  I thought it was about priorities—cultural, education and business opportunities, etc.—but he still couldn’t see it.  Then I said that we choose to live in Wisconsin even though we are predictably miserable due to cold for at least three months, and many years almost six months, every year.  Home, family, job, beautiful and vibrant town, public schools, etc.—a good deal of priorities.

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january

thinking-outside-the-box Excuse the disarray, gentle readers.  A new year brings reorganization of the old and cluttered, rededication to particular journeys and diving into new long term projects.  This year, these ideas are very exciting and before I leave my bed on New Year’s Day, I am appreciating the energy that seems to be at my disposal.  I look forward to 2015 with a gentle enthusiasm which is almost a surprised but which has become familiar and comfortable.  When I make my bed in the morning, I remember when all that I wanted was for the day to end and to return to my bed.  I am still close enough to the years of grieving to viscerally remember being without the energy to begin a single idea.  I am no longer there.  Alleluia! Continue reading →

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notes

Screen Shot 2014-12-17 at 9.04.02 PMDecember weather —gray and wet, damp more than cold —does not inspire festivities.  Neither do the circumstances of our larger community — justice, kindness, compassion seem never-present.  Pondering the absence of fair minded people to think fairly about issues that we’ve all talked about since before I was born has quieted my typing fingers.  I have no unique perspective, I do not move in a large world, the issues that I am passionate about may touch peripherally on the challenges of the day, but I have so little to add.  And yet the racial, ethnic, religious and neuro-diversity of our community is something that I cannot absent myself from.  Do I do wrong to turn from the issues of the day in favor of my passions?

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encores

IMG_2755It looks like Julia’s dancing ballerina dinosaurs will again be offered as part of a Paper Cloud Apparel fund raiser.  This time, they have asked if we have a local cause we would like to have proceeds going to.  I thought of the adaptive skating program that Julia is going to on Sunday afternoons.  Julia and a gaggle of other kids from very little to older teens work with volunteers in small groups and one on one to learn to skate.  The same folks offer an adaptive hockey team for older kids and adults and I know at least one person who is on the team.  Julia struggles a bit but she is willing to go each week and she is getting better little by little.

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bison and twinkle lights

Much too early on Thanksgiving day.  The turkey should go into the oven in a three hours and I should be waking up in two to get it in there.  A co-cook to be sure but turkey responsibility translates into responding to the alarm and pulling on jeans and sweatshirt to begin the big feast.

I kinda’ wish I could go back to sleep but I am not putting in (or out) the effort to do so.  Instead, I browse a bit, watch the end of a very sweet movie (Quartet: Billy Connolly, Pauline Collins, Tom Courtenay and Maggie Smith) that I’ve fallen asleep on for the past two nights, and pull this up to scribble.  And scribbled on until the day began and never got back to this.

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asking

imagesThere is a bison in the bathroom.  Julia wants to start decorating for Christmas.  And I am in deep wonderment about why over a thousand people checked out my blog the other day.

Deep wonderment first.  I usually get between a dozen and fifty folks popping into this space whenever I publish a piece.  I do wonder what makes anyone who is not a friend read and possibly return but I am grateful, a bit intimidated and very happy about it.  Of course, many times I am pretty sure that I know the two people in Australia, the one in Bolivia and the one in Canada who check in.  I get too many US hits to identify readers by the numbers but if wordpress broke the US stats down by states, I’m sure I’d recognize most readers.  At the beginning of the month, I considered disconnecting news of my blogging on Facebook, because I planned to be blogging a lot during November and I am never comfortable pushing my ideas on others.  But I remind myself that making available and pushing are two different things.

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grandpa

Did grandpa love me?  Was grandpa excited when I came home?  Did grandpa scoop me up when I was a little baby? Did I have a dress on when I met grandpa?  He did think I was cute?  My grandpa would never abandon me.  My grandpa is handsome.

During breakfast, I was checking Facebook and Julia spied a picture of her grandfather, David’s father, that one of her cousins posted on Veterans Day.  It unleashed a torrent of questions and ideas that must have been bottled up for sometime.

It was a candid picture of Bob Schanker during his air force days.  A half smile, jaunty tilt of the head and obviously happy.  He was a navigator during the Second World War and, if his stories were to be believed, he lived some of the best years of his life during that time.  He thrived in the company of men from all over the country.  He explored outside of his Jersey roots.  He was no longer under his mother’s thumb.  He saw a little action — I’m not sure how much.  Most of his time was spent state side, first learning and honing his skills, and later teaching those navigators who came in behind him.  Much later, he would become a favorite and beloved high school business teacher and so I do not doubt that his gifts were put to good use in the service.  There are many pictures of the girls and/or women he met during his service time.  He had no special girl at home, at least the way he told it, and so flirted and socialized (and took pictures) as he moved from base to base.

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dreams

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“Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

Came across these Rilke words this morning as I looked for something else.  Rilke always speaks to me, from wedding vows (“. . . a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude . . .”) to growing a spiritual life ( “. . . learn to love the questions . . .“).  I come back to, stumble across, have quoted back to me words that he wrote that always draw me deeper.

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cleaning

Written 13 November 2014 and once again too fell asleep before getting it here.  A pattern emerges.

Didn’t write yesterday because I was  . . . um. . . um . . .cleaning.  I don’t at all mean that I am ever a slave to my house but there are a few weeks in the spring and the fall when the garden takes precedence.  The garden might always take precedence if I lived somewhere where I could garden year round, but Wisconsin demands an obvious respite from the garden in the winter and somewhat of a respite when the bugs of high summer ignore clothing and chemicals to feast on dedicated weed movers.

During those weeks when I am “taking out the garden” and then “putting the garden to bed,” I passionately want to be doing those earth based chores.  There is little that is more satisfying than emptying the compost bins and covering a bed with a few inches of that gold.  Or clearing away what is left over from the late fall and seeing the smallest shoots appearing.

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