Tag: family

blocks, creativity, and journeys

I am still fumbling with my latest draft of the memoir. It is close to complete but still does not completely hang together. It needs two or three more pieces written to make the story complete as I have imagined it, but those missing pieces are not going to hold the whole thing together.  I don’t seem to have the will to write them. I am not giving up, but the process is stuck right now.

Come to think of it, I am fumbling with way too much right now. I am painting poppies. I finally have an idea for a large watercolor—finally figuring out a way to use the big and lovely paper that Ed gifted me with. Should I have put that paper away as soon as I got it—saving it for a time when I feel . . . . what?. . . competent? . . worthy? . . . at least not wasteful?  It was not his intention to intimidate me with good watercolor paper, but nonetheless, it has. I have shunned the idea of taking some formal lessons, opting for coping online videos and relying on my own ideas. Perhaps it is time to change my plan, but this is not to decide today.

I am having a challenge to read what I want to read and write much of anything. I want the balm of spring!

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traveling companions, pt.1

Breakfast in Hanoi 2023

We are booked to return to Hanoi for more than a month in late spring. Airline tickets are bought. A deposit has been paid on the apartment we stayed in back in 2023. The official purpose of the trip is to attend the high school graduation of Giau, the son of the young woman Ed has guided since she was a teenager. It is sweet to be invited back for this moment, to witness a milestone in a family whose lives have been woven into Ed’s life over time and now into Julia’s and mine.

This time, planning feels different. With a place to stay arranged and a beloved pho shop just a stone’s throw away, I can already envision some of the more intriguing details.

One of the things I would like to arrange is a companion or guide for Julia while we are in Hanoi. I briefly flirted with this idea on our last trip, but became overwhelmed by the logistics and let it go. This time, I am sending out feelers and following up on any small clue that might lead somewhere. The hope is modest and specific: that Julia might spend a morning, an afternoon, or even a day exploring the city without me. Maybe a museum, a park, or a place to do art or crafts. Not every day. Just sometimes.

Independence is complicated to teach, and travel has always been one of the most meaningful ways Julia develops those skills. Since she is now 25, I would love for her to have opportunities to move through the world with a little more autonomy, even while far from home.

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just a bit of musing

Emerging from a week of a cold. Kinda, sorta awful, but nowhere near as bad as last January with RSV.  I’ve coughed and had swollen—or what feels like swollen—sinuses. A quick nurse video visit with advice, no cure last week right after my birthday weekend. Not wanting to get any sicker than I was, not wanting to feel worse than yesterday’s death, I made a morning and evening list of mostly non-negotiable tasks which I have been following.

And yes, very slowly, or so it seems, getting better. 

Still coughing and exhausted.  I have exactly a week before the HILR spring semester and I am aiming for full, or almost full, recovery by then.  

The gym and physical activity are suffering right now, but I am taking the fact that I am missing physical activity as a good sign of recovery. No way was I thinking about exercise last week.  

The cold—the weather cold— feels very oppressive.  Gentle walking feeling impossible and that will last longer than a week.

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my word of the year

Yesterday, all I wrote was the date and then something or someone called me away. I have been busy since the year’s beginning. I don’t want to list all the important tasks that came my way, but, but, but…

Yesterday was my birthday and, as a friend described it, my personal New Year.  I owe myself some recognition, some noting, and some planning for the new year.  That planning has, in some years in the past, been a list of resolutions. There was at least one companion who disapproved of the making of resolutions which seemed to them to be limiting in scope and bound to fail. (I’ve probably written about this somewhere but not going to check now.) I have found resolutions to be maps, suggestions, reminders, and the making of them to be a good time of reflection and quiet resolve.

At least one of the resolutions, learning to live with dualities, was on my resolution list for years, seemed to grow my soul into understanding and acceptance. I had no idea of how to do that growing but my insistence that it remain on the resolution list reminded me of its importance until one day, I had that a-ha moment of recognizing how and what I was doing.

My goodness, I fear that makes little sense, but I don’t want to stop and add examples.

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always through, no matter what

A boy bringing in the new year.

“Get your shoes on. It’s time.”

Four days after Christmas, a few more days after Solstice, and one less than a few days after Chanukah. There is still New Year’s to look forward to or dread, but we are still in that breathing time amidst all these holidays. These are always days that I don’t expect to do or accomplish much. Not that these days are just for rest but for playing with paints or starting a 1000-piece puzzle or clearing that little pile of things with no place they belong on the kitchen counter or piling a whole bunch of papers from all over the house onto the in-box on my desk to be sorted at some unspecified future time. Nothing is resolved, but small movements towards big steps are being taken.

Yes, it has been like that these last few days.

Julia went to her day center last Friday. Ed and I went to the gym and then spent the afternoon on our laptops, reading, writing, and planning a weekend in NYC to see a friend’s play and to celebrate Julia’s 25th birthday. It will be cold—we remind each other a few times, thinking about where we will stay and how we’ll feel about public transport in the middle of January. And walking.

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the work

The work of Christmas.

Some of choir is singing for both services and if Julia didn’t have to sit through both services, plus the early call for rehearsal, I’d sing both. There is a song in the second service—Sing we now of Christmas—that is evocative of the dark night and the quiet before celebration. I was happy to do it at choir practice.

A new choir song that we are learning for Christmas Eve.  There are two services that night.  7 and 10, or 10:30. This is the only time of year when we are in the church at night.  The stained glass windows are dark from the inside, no color except from the outside. I don’t notice the stained glass windows that often, but when they are dark. I see them clearly. 

The Work of Christmas is a song, according to our director, that Everyone is singing. The message of the song is that the work of Christmas begins after the tinsel is off the tree and the shepherds are back tending their sheep. It does seem like the perfect Christmas song in this year of tumult and chaos.  A time when we have so much work to do when these holidays are finished.

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morning after

Veterans’ Day: The end of World War I, called the Great War before the next war. This national holiday sees the fewest people off from work—that is the way that we count holidays, right?  I have an oral surgeon appointment this morning, Ed has a doctor’s appointment, Julia’s day center is open, I don’t have my HILR class, Julia has no rowing, and parking is free in Boston today. If there was ever a time to observe and ponder the end of a “great war,” it is today. My very deep hope is that we are not headed straight into another war that the Washington fascists are putting into place. 

Generally, I don’t agree with the most progressive of conservatives, but I would never agree to silence them forever, to ensure that a Republican politician never wins again. I thought that was part of the rules we play by. And yet, that is what this administration is saying—they are going to fix it so no Democrat can ever win again. This is not inference or subtext or even something overheard at a secret meeting. They say it loud and clear for every one of their minions to hear. And they are knee-deep in a dozen conflicts that they are making up as they go along—Orwell had nothing on these guys, these white guys and their lifted and painted white ladies.

Today was a quiet morning.  Perhaps that is why I can give over a few brain cells to a political rant. It is the calm after the storm.

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vermont 1

Shelburne, Vermont. Definitely morning frost. And thank goodness it also turned chili at home before we left. The extra sweatshirt thrown into the bags at the last minute will be used!

Ed and I are ensconced in a sweet and small B&B owned by an architect turned painter and her husband, who is very nice, but I haven’t drilled him on his work life. Yet.

Julia is at Zeno Mountain Farm for a five-day, four-night weekend. She went to their fall weekend last year and was invited back for this year.  (She has not yet been invited for summer camp, which is my goal for her. Once invited, she can come up every year for the rest of her life.  Everyone does, and thus, the wait is long for a spot.) She helped me pack her stuff and then re-pack when we found out how cold it was really going to be. The ride up was pleasant and uneventful until we got to the country road part that goes up and down a mountain for almost 30 miles, okay, a small mountain. Julia began getting angry, anxious, and extremely unpleasant.  At one point, she lobbed a sweater at Ed, who was driving. She spent a good deal of time swearing at the mountain, the road, and us. By the time we arrived at the Farm, I had to spend time with her trying to figure out what she wanted to do. (Not at all sure what we would do if she wanted to not go to Zeno altogether.)

I was unsure if we could leave her.

And then she went through the big farmhouse doors, and someone said hello to her. And in almost an instant, or at least a few minutes, she was all smiles. Hugging two people she knew, ready to hand off her meds to the nurse and go to her assigned room on the third floor. When she came downstairs, she was ready to have us leave. She gave us happy hugs and went off to a giant bay window with couches in front of it to watch the sunset. 

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news of the week

Julia came home from The Price Center on Thursday with two pieces of news.  First, that she had gone to the YMCA with peers. She got on the van and spent the morning on the stationary bike, if she is to be believed. I am not sure she spent the whole morning there, but when she goes to the gym with me, mostly on weekends, she can do 40 minutes on the stationary bike. The big part of that news is that she was willing to leave the building!  She has gone on a few community visits, like the zoo, to help with watering plants, but that was of high interest to Julia—she loves zoos, loves watering. I know there is a lot more going out into the community that she can take part in.

Fingers crossed that this is a beginning. 

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no. 15

Fifteen years is a long time. I can tick off who has grown, where and how we’ve lived, who has come into my life and who has left, what I have learned and some of what I have forgotten, what new toys I have acquired and what I have let go of. It feels like a lifetime of change and it feels like a moment.

Fifteen years ago today, around lunchtime, David died. I still miss him. I can almost imagine sitting down and having a conversation with him. I have so much news and so many questions. At the same time, however, I cannot imagine it at all. He is too far in time and space and changes away.

Time seems to have wiped away, wiped clean, the most painful missings, the heart-wrenching grieving, leaving in its wake a sweetness, a place from which strength could be built. I know the pilings on which this life I now live rests.

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