tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27260407350022667572024-02-19T00:22:57.619-08:00Ride of the ValkyriesA cross-country road-trip in 2011 with four kids in a mini-van got me started writing, but it was the later trip through Hell, and finding our way out that has kept me filling this space with a search for meaning and growth on this journey that we did not plan to take. Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-12814479348514241472019-08-09T14:38:00.002-07:002019-08-09T14:38:39.096-07:00The Personal IS Political, or "Another Face of the Argument Against Guns" (*trigger warning-- discussion of suicide*)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">When Australia bought back the privately-held guns in their country, and the general population no longer had access to guns, the total suicide rate dropped by 74%. </span> Let that sink in a moment. <br />
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<a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback?fbclid=IwAR3oQdSvluE7tsYX8MOgajaZsgzQ2viJN4_RcAaTfnSou6OOB9I-b-WRDf4" target="_blank">If you want to read the whole article on Australia's gun ban, click here</a>. <br />
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It's been a little more than 7 years since mental illness, assisted by rage, despair, a couple of drinks, and easy access to guns, violently ended the life of a 46 year old father of four. When he stormed into the bedroom that July night in 2012, unlocked the gun safe and put that 20-round magazine on his high-powered semi-automatic rifle, it's pretty clear that Andre's original plan was not <i>just</i> self-destruction. I will never know for sure what, besides having to step past me, stopped Andre from carrying out his original plan. But something did, and he changed his mind and his aim, and only one round left the barrel of that rifle, and it ended Andre's life by his own hand. <br />
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<b>Andre was an NRA member, a gun-safety advocate, and arguably, until that rage-filled, disconnected-from-rational-thought moment, a VERY responsible gun owner. His guns were locked in a safe. The ammo was stored separately. No one had access to that locked safe except Andre, who kept the only key to himself. </b><br />
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Let that sink in. <u>Andre was a responsible gun owner,</u> maybe even the "good guy with a gun" who would have taken down the "bad guy with a gun", in the tale that the gun lobby likes to spin. It is unlikely that any of the proposed "red flag" laws or background checks would have stopped him from going by the sporting goods store the afternoon before his death and buying a box of bullets to put into that 20-round magazine. He didn't have a criminal record. He had not ever been psychiatrically hospitalized. There were no restraining orders against him. And so, he had a safe full of guns, including the semi-automatic rifle and the 20-round magazine. He also had a longstanding mental health problem, undiagnosed, untreated, but growing more and more obvious to anyone who spent any extended time with him in his later years. Ironically, he would never have consented to getting treatment, for fear that somehow his "label" would cause him trouble, like maybe prevent him from buying more guns. No "gun safety" policies would have saved him and prevented him from initially planning to kill his whole family.<br />
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What would life have looked like, if that night that Andre hit his breaking point, he had not had access to a semi-automatic rifle and dreams of going out in a blaze of glory? Who knows. Would he have sought help? Would he have taken his life by some other means? Perhaps. But possibly not. Read this excerpt from the article I cited, about how and why Australia's over all suicide rate (not just suicide by gun) dropped after they got rid of guns. <br />
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"<span style="background-color: white; color: #4c4e4d; font-family: Balto, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; text-decoration-line: inherit;">Buying back 3,500 guns correlated with a 74 percent drop in firearm suicides. Non-gun suicides didn't increase to make up the decline.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #4c4e4d; font-family: Balto, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; text-decoration-line: inherit;">There is good reason why gun restrictions would prevent suicides. As</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #4c4e4d; font-family: Balto, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; text-decoration-line: inherit;"> </span><a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/5/29/5757576/limiting-access-to-guns-reduces-suicides-really" style="border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f7177; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit !important; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; vertical-align: inherit;">Matthews </a><span style="background-color: white; color: #4c4e4d; font-family: Balto, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; text-decoration-line: inherit;">explains in great depth, suicide is often an impulsive choice, one often not repeated after a first attempt. Guns are specifically designed for killing, which makes suicide attempts with guns likelier to succeed than (for example) attempts with razors or pills. Limiting access to guns makes each attempt more likely to fail, thus making it more likely that people will survive and not attempt to harm themselves again." from : </span><a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback?fbclid=IwAR3oQdSvluE7tsYX8MOgajaZsgzQ2viJN4_RcAaTfnSou6OOB9I-b-WRDf4">https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback?fbclid=IwAR3oQdSvluE7tsYX8MOgajaZsgzQ2viJN4_RcAaTfnSou6OOB9I-b-WRDf4</a><br />
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Is a 74% reduction in the number of people who take their own lives (by all kinds of means, not just guns) worth an experiment in political boldness?<br />
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It's time. Let's push our political leaders HARD to get guns out of the hands of the general population in this country. I'm sharing here part of a Facebook post by Carol Coe Pugh, whose husband, Brian was shot and killed, along with 3 co-workers, at his workplace several years ago. She's using the occasion of this most recent rash of mass shootings to put a human face on gun violence and urge people to get involved with stopping this madness. Her words and her links are below: "<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Just as good things create ripples in everyone who knows the person, so do bad things. Today I want to take advantage of the ripples. Many of you have asked "What can I do? This must stop!" I don't have any easy solutions, but here is the link where you can let your elected officials know exactly how you feel about their continued reluctance to address the issues of gun control, lack of mental health services, a national registry to purchase guns, whatever you feel strongly about. Call them, email them, write a letter and mail it. Use Resistbot to quickly and easily send your thoughts to our legislators. They need to know that we as a country are no longer willing to tolerate their inaction.</span><br />
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Join a group and donate money to an organization that supports reasonable gun legislation. Things like universal background checks,limits on ammunition sales, and bans on automatic assault weapons will really make a difference. I’ve linked 3 reputable organizations below. Educate yourself so that you have a position and ideas on how to make changes.</div>
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<a data-ft="{"tn":"-U"}" data-lynx-mode="asynclazy" data-lynx-uri="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sandyhookpromise.org%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR1HeDE3xDwhTMc0HUzq4N6vocJELZl7rmdHht4F5wM5onWMA80nsyQ2YMY&h=AT0jXwmt75snujzPtKnvLOAm7n36x22Ht6tZBv041hDalLMVUzzQyrkCfHE_jRvzVsapG9pLjcFQGDo4ZbBMU_cnHaE8R23iojtFPHmic1yMdU-JIdBfk3j5EA49URgYQnIpBUTQkBSZwaVywTc2RxzXfP49uA" href="https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/?fbclid=IwAR1HeDE3xDwhTMc0HUzq4N6vocJELZl7rmdHht4F5wM5onWMA80nsyQ2YMY" rel="noopener nofollow" style="color: #385898; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/</a><br /><a data-ft="{"tn":"-U"}" data-lynx-mode="asynclazy" href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Feverytown.org%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR2R6urFZ7Kl06e2s0TJkk09gDo_TAqTZGyr36ZxNTCGuOLaYMCtINr-LRg&h=AT0wFD-exdr6btXDGR16F5IfHlrOj8zeXbFayzWzblyjZcB-vndCVrhMCFqnemxtCM6StXszokWBUGHrPzPZw_onL-edzOii_M8WXAKR6JdgO2N1cD_RXO2lU07mkjo4s_TeqET3KKCgiakc7Iyy1qQB9Dwslw" rel="noopener nofollow" style="color: #385898; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">https://everytown.org/</a><br /><a data-ft="{"tn":"-U"}" data-lynx-mode="asynclazy" href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmomsdemandaction.org%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR1NluqCMI8G_XDrkVstq7XWjUuwAx_l_6zX1egBICwYmYmd_P0sZ-WNmOQ&h=AT1i8kjxDRTmqq1jMNNVksEp2f-AqKOyT90ODc1WA_MKDtYiPj2fPDpjcHEw8S53ES2zsRWuwOMJrID8Itj-YJeUIJRtIW74wj3-wsHSL3S9B7qZxMhIVCAnVdGCyZBdaR7nwUoIP8X5uIYEinyr6RSrLS-Aag" rel="noopener nofollow" style="color: #385898; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">https://momsdemandaction.org/</a></div>
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And then teach your children that using a gun never solves a problem. Thank you.</div>
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And then teach your children that using a gun never solves a problem. Thank you. Amen. <br />
<br />Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-49630518460555164972015-08-06T12:41:00.001-07:002015-08-06T12:41:51.581-07:00Always on the sunny side: Linda Creamer Kidd 1/8/1954(?) - 8/5/2015As we passed the jewelry kiosk in the mall that day, we just had to stop to look at the earrings. Linda was a fiend for accessories, the sillier and sparklier, the better.<br />
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I picked up an oval-shaped, flat pair of earrings that looked just like tiny door-knockers and quipped,<br />
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<i>"Here, Linda, don't you need a new pair of knockers?</i>" <br />
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<i>"Well, of course",</i> she chortled, <i>"seeing as how God didn't give me much of a pair in the first place !"</i> <br />
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She bought the earrings amid gales of laughter and a slightly confused look from the kiosk clerk. <br />
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Shortly afterward, she greeted one of our friends with<i> "So, how do you like my knockers?" </i><br />
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Our conservative, polite, soft-spoken Southern Baptist gentleman friend gave her a puzzled and slightly panicked look that defies description. <br />
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Linda and I howled. <br />
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Linda was like that -- always ready for some harmless mischief. She was not a drinker, so I can't blame any of our rowdiness on alcohol or any other mind-altering substance. Nevertheless we DID get rowdy. In fact, we had a habit of going places and getting silly enough to draw dirty looks from shopkeepers. My memory might be a little fuzzy on this, but it's<i> possible </i>that we<i> might have</i> gotten thrown out of Neiman-Marcus Last Call in Austin, and at least one fussy little handicraft boutique in Bellbuckle, Tennessee, for laughing too hard at the merchandise. And that was AFTER she bought (at a deep discount) the pillow that we dubbed, "Pee-Pee Kitty" because of the combination of decoration and desecration that it had already suffered before she bought it. A couple weeks ago, in one of our last conversations, Linda admitted that Pee-Pee Kitty still graces her livingroom decor. I neglected to ask about the knockers, darn it. <br />
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I met Linda more than 20 years ago at a graduate student fellowship event at University Baptist Church in Austin, Texas. I was a 22-year-old, newly-transplanted New Englander, a stranger in a very strange land. I knew no one, but I'd stumbled into attending the church, and found my way to the grad student fellowship. Linda was 30-ish, and not a graduate student, but that did not seem to matter. She'd found friends and the group was home to her. Linda had the ability to make friends everywhere, and she had the most amazing knack for making sure that every friend she met, met every other friend she met. She was an expert at adopting "strays" and turning them into family. As I've been reading her Facebook page in the past couple weeks, I've noticed a number of people who referred to her as "Auntie Linda", as well as the names and photos of a number of people whom Linda frequently mentioned in conversation, as if I'd know them. After all, in Linda's world, all her friends were connected to all her other friends, right? <br />
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And in Linda's world, all those who lacked family were invited to participate in the holiday gatherings of her own family. When Linda adopted me, I actually gained an entire family. Her mother, father, siblings, and assorted pets (many of them also strays who somehow found themselves adopted) became my home base in this strange country of Texas, so far from where I'd grown up. "Daddy Bill" even taught me how to make biscuits from scratch, a recipe known as "Angel Biscuits" that are still my own kids' favorite. On the day, several years later, when I packed up my U-haul to leave Austin for my first real job, Daddy Bill's "TWABBs"(The World's Absolute Best Brownies" ) were in a brown paper bag in the front seat -- a little loving sustenance for the long drive to Nashville. <br />
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Also in my car on that long, hot drive from Austin to Nashville was Linda herself. You see, as soon as I announced that I'd landed a job and was moving out of state, Linda cleared her calendar, and announced that she would use her precious accrued vacation time to drive with me to Nashville and spend a week helping me get moved-in and set up. For anybody else, that trip would have been mostly work, but Linda was determined to find the fun. She took pictures of us at truck stops, where we stopped to pour water over our heads to beat the sweltering August heat in Memphis, after my air-conditioner quit. She hooted as she pointed out a truck for the South East Express fruit-shipping company, a truck painted with "SEX -- Eat More Bananas", and when we found that truck in the next gas-station stop, she had me pose for a photo in front of it. She navigated, and sang along to the radio, and scheduled stops for refilling the ever-present mug of ice and Diet Pepsi, and kept up a steady stream of funny stories about everybody she'd ever met. And she arranged our necessary overnight stop to be at the home of a cousin in Texarkana, saving me the cost of motel room overnight. <br />
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Another remarkable thing about Linda was her ability to manage a crisis when she needed to, and to turn it into a hilarious story for re-telling at parties years afterwards. Shortly after we arrived in Nashville and began unpacking my stuff, I suffered a bloody accident involving a frameless mirror that somehow dissolved into shards into the side of my hand. I looked at the blood, started to feel dizzy and sat down on the lid of the toilet in my tiny bathroom, calling out for Linda that we might need to find the local Emergency room. Linda called 911 for directions to the ER and was told that the operator could not give directions; she could only dispatch medical help or not. Within minutes, there were 2 large, muscle-bound firemen squeezing themselves into my bathroom which was no larger than the back seat of an average car, trying to figure out what damage I'd done to my hand and whether or not they'd need to perform life-saving maneuvers. It turned out to be a nasty cut to the side of my hand, needing stitches, but not life-threatening. Linda's friendly chatting-up of the firemen led to them offering to LEAD us to the emergency room, rather than transport me in the ambulance, saving me at least $500 in medical costs. There was a six-hour wait in the emergency room, due to the busy holiday weekend, and I ended up having my stitches done while sitting on a gurney in a corridor, with a policeman holding my uninjured hand as the doctor stitched my injured hand and I whimpered at the pain. <br />
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Linda's re-telling of the story starts with "Do you remember when you ended up with two hunky firemen all to yourself in the bathroom, and then got to hold hands with a cute cop? " <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Armed with maps and yellow pages (in those pre-internet days when information came from paper), Linda helped me find all the vital stuff in Nashville. </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A few hours later... </td></tr>
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A couple years later, Linda used her vacation time to fly to Nashville with another of our mutual friends to spend an entire week before my wedding, finishing the last-minute shopping and preparations, and finding ways to get into memorable silliness during a week that could have been nerve-wracking. It is because of Linda's gift for recording and memorializing fun times, that I have photos of us horsing around at Uncle Budel's Biblical Mini-Golf, and mugging for photos in silly hats in the hand-craft stores in Bellbuckle and War Trace, Tennessee. Linda had a gift for finding the special moment, and making sure that people felt included. She made sure that she introduced herself to and spent time with my fiance, my family members, my bridesmaids from out of state, my friends and work colleagues. All these people were strangers to her at the beginning of that week, but not for long. Linda recorded the week of fun in photos. This was in the days before digital cameras-- each click of the shutter cost you something. From that, she crafted an album that captures that week leading up to the big day itself, along with shots of the wedding reception from her own fun-filled perspective. I am eternally grateful that others occasionally grabbed the camera and made Linda pose in some of the shots as well. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5nxaXntPZKma39Wgp_FkugvaU3WyB24bhQ1vwmqSAD2gq49bp0pBc0F_ikeUw3CT4_OyQRyZaLftLJ0s85EBYUaRgs-Gv0BlQQ8JTJFcYs0FWGI6OfgF2St0Xo5YDl-6xIYr31DrKOQbq/s1600/IMG_2437.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5nxaXntPZKma39Wgp_FkugvaU3WyB24bhQ1vwmqSAD2gq49bp0pBc0F_ikeUw3CT4_OyQRyZaLftLJ0s85EBYUaRgs-Gv0BlQQ8JTJFcYs0FWGI6OfgF2St0Xo5YDl-6xIYr31DrKOQbq/s200/IMG_2437.JPG" width="195" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Linda spotted the odd moments with a smile</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSoBohpbqvwCHerNbu40gNW791HzhzyejO83J2F1r1-kvWialbwM3H2Ko8dEne2GrI9UQSMJy3ioUgjjS5sIh7UWN4tIsnpGmwzK9gzo6wF2OC-nU-o4aiv9JDwBLq3fuNHYOXs2Y6mFp7/s1600/IMG_2439.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSoBohpbqvwCHerNbu40gNW791HzhzyejO83J2F1r1-kvWialbwM3H2Ko8dEne2GrI9UQSMJy3ioUgjjS5sIh7UWN4tIsnpGmwzK9gzo6wF2OC-nU-o4aiv9JDwBLq3fuNHYOXs2Y6mFp7/s200/IMG_2439.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">More oddness that day, with a smile. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAQ0qR8d-GVfCeTYcpTjcF_6P4nFYgfloIqIR6-GvZMH4ZA-w9YiWGoSZtON6PQFxiLCW3QUlLEe3F3F0S7sUZj29-7Wxho4etXeBjqDHBlcj6CUkbxgrqhbKYQ7LH4A2JcpnCoNW86AdL/s1600/IMG_2443.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAQ0qR8d-GVfCeTYcpTjcF_6P4nFYgfloIqIR6-GvZMH4ZA-w9YiWGoSZtON6PQFxiLCW3QUlLEe3F3F0S7sUZj29-7Wxho4etXeBjqDHBlcj6CUkbxgrqhbKYQ7LH4A2JcpnCoNW86AdL/s320/IMG_2443.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Who else would capture normally dignified New Englanders getting down with their bad selfs? :-) </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz_PSSIPcAggOHwe3tlkoZLw-oE9OZjh57U_gaVIwoAiiUO2i2xLuYkclWzylkTUSTXHwCHvA1LX-ez1Hpld96PTH0NmDflpnf61uPJpjsKGeTKNMeN9hb1Z3mf1f4pM7xH_BPPUOpxMV3/s1600/IMG_2444.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz_PSSIPcAggOHwe3tlkoZLw-oE9OZjh57U_gaVIwoAiiUO2i2xLuYkclWzylkTUSTXHwCHvA1LX-ez1Hpld96PTH0NmDflpnf61uPJpjsKGeTKNMeN9hb1Z3mf1f4pM7xH_BPPUOpxMV3/s320/IMG_2444.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My students and colleagues not exactly posing for the camera</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8d68oWueK0UdHhbRfL8SVFVIgte2nVagcuVFqE3K31LoRoH8vI2KKGhK-R_3mUsgXjuIEC3dUY7dVBvqfVT97SbUQ9aHgGWhe4i_k7-lrahdmQ5h6W6_H_-JpiKKg5dS2hdC7sh7sZ2Uc/s1600/IMG_2445.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8d68oWueK0UdHhbRfL8SVFVIgte2nVagcuVFqE3K31LoRoH8vI2KKGhK-R_3mUsgXjuIEC3dUY7dVBvqfVT97SbUQ9aHgGWhe4i_k7-lrahdmQ5h6W6_H_-JpiKKg5dS2hdC7sh7sZ2Uc/s320/IMG_2445.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9LKp1gfmAmI-5rRLVQ_pmcO-eR9wp_wptmI6dM-WVmMJTKqGvkJbbX9OcR8WAlO66zPoETdXugltT9y25dKZ6wm7CxkPfJF7nNI_cftyVasFZNs7p7iuIkjJ5jq1_4GIq33OVr97Yhb4l/s1600/FullSizeRender%25286%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9LKp1gfmAmI-5rRLVQ_pmcO-eR9wp_wptmI6dM-WVmMJTKqGvkJbbX9OcR8WAlO66zPoETdXugltT9y25dKZ6wm7CxkPfJF7nNI_cftyVasFZNs7p7iuIkjJ5jq1_4GIq33OVr97Yhb4l/s400/FullSizeRender%25286%2529.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Only in Nashville: playing mini-golf amid wooden cut-outs of Biblical figures</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0M1ZXyx9VvlL_5B9Tr2q5oxnCWIucJRJkWeU3zhkI0glAcIwH72Kjh5XtRsjo4ixgtrlJI6JSc42WadgcJ0IvNnjy8c1UaZYkfP7uZEoBz-4uRB59TW801Y0AaOv7Dp-p0mJyDRaVVfeu/s1600/FullSizeRender%25285%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0M1ZXyx9VvlL_5B9Tr2q5oxnCWIucJRJkWeU3zhkI0glAcIwH72Kjh5XtRsjo4ixgtrlJI6JSc42WadgcJ0IvNnjy8c1UaZYkfP7uZEoBz-4uRB59TW801Y0AaOv7Dp-p0mJyDRaVVfeu/s320/FullSizeRender%25285%2529.jpg" width="206" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Linda either created the silliness or just captured it. </td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU2batyUimBiavmM2IFTYpAMvzF6tUu-c5JvEJYsnBrBE-p7S4EaGQfNF34qHOqQnt7jjNLy3v8fpPBV6sWLux4A46n9QI5oPw5T_c3pIBIIrLu11wp3mbklwm3kFfGFMLsy4deeLfKC33/s1600/FullSizeRender%25287%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU2batyUimBiavmM2IFTYpAMvzF6tUu-c5JvEJYsnBrBE-p7S4EaGQfNF34qHOqQnt7jjNLy3v8fpPBV6sWLux4A46n9QI5oPw5T_c3pIBIIrLu11wp3mbklwm3kFfGFMLsy4deeLfKC33/s320/FullSizeRender%25287%2529.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihjSL_5yNFaGnJRP-kuCnmTxX0tykyVEOCou8O_qK1H3MuDPqRo5i6J5O7WSu4znsX2vfVqEVIzXik85Jvq5styTlk3oj900r7fqb0DmHlZZQnLkdizKQpHd_bS9t8OMy1WGeO8dU6Y-Pz/s1600/FullSizeRender%25288%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihjSL_5yNFaGnJRP-kuCnmTxX0tykyVEOCou8O_qK1H3MuDPqRo5i6J5O7WSu4znsX2vfVqEVIzXik85Jvq5styTlk3oj900r7fqb0DmHlZZQnLkdizKQpHd_bS9t8OMy1WGeO8dU6Y-Pz/s320/FullSizeRender%25288%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Note that there are only 2 beers on that table, and neither are Linda's. Her brand of fun didn't need any accelerants :-) </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikTopFWP0Mx6FzUXnqHZzzoUstom1RXpMdCrR6PlLpwFhaQYtcFVZEANaRKPvP3HgALcIBr0B7S8XIeygkYPpXw0PsDLNnwlhiJq0N17Bth7rWd-wrzHDCmJRAG6wyUhfhFUCxl8ah48Kq/s1600/IMG_1930.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikTopFWP0Mx6FzUXnqHZzzoUstom1RXpMdCrR6PlLpwFhaQYtcFVZEANaRKPvP3HgALcIBr0B7S8XIeygkYPpXw0PsDLNnwlhiJq0N17Bth7rWd-wrzHDCmJRAG6wyUhfhFUCxl8ah48Kq/s320/IMG_1930.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These two shared a bond of an eye for beauty. Little flower-girl Nikki left this earth far too young a couple of years ago, but at least she's there to offer Linda a flower on her first day in Heaven. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioENkbPZLWjGFrj-5NzLMVMFuY4U-FXm5-1hDibXModVkfOBtIGSrKapr9uMQTsM0ZXFDcqSBn-YJoRKsX-RbsT1GzSRZRQs5yt-D-3a9vu1u7wg_GguaqYyrnAVJmRVS404Ox-1VbjsJ6/s1600/IMG_1929.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioENkbPZLWjGFrj-5NzLMVMFuY4U-FXm5-1hDibXModVkfOBtIGSrKapr9uMQTsM0ZXFDcqSBn-YJoRKsX-RbsT1GzSRZRQs5yt-D-3a9vu1u7wg_GguaqYyrnAVJmRVS404Ox-1VbjsJ6/s320/IMG_1929.JPG" width="223" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Linda made her own bridesmaid's dress for the wedding, but saved the fun of hemming it until she had help. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg1846xJ_9OMS1ZMUV2dGnp1NEJu8GZaYhDUAoXp3Jun3bMuh0IHLq0xFwJvPw342UibMdHJ1_1lvH1c8ivR0OtkvqHPUuxkvkptrlrOMpM27uZ9Iw2B7lElMa-vnLSM0EyYhNlXakprwK/s1600/IMG_2434.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg1846xJ_9OMS1ZMUV2dGnp1NEJu8GZaYhDUAoXp3Jun3bMuh0IHLq0xFwJvPw342UibMdHJ1_1lvH1c8ivR0OtkvqHPUuxkvkptrlrOMpM27uZ9Iw2B7lElMa-vnLSM0EyYhNlXakprwK/s320/IMG_2434.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These two who had never met before the wedding, serenaded me on the way to church with "Goin' to the Chapel..." </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWxS3_Jqx9c7_EfBY1RllbEaUYwgyTeOHzIrOgS6DAnKStsRt_x9QQR47vvh-r9BV4cB5ARRPyq67XP_qBEYkqorJOcawAyfb-smrKQAnizt2KaaW-nEtVBeRDJVINhBLkDrPCpb9wxrHY/s1600/IMG_2426.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWxS3_Jqx9c7_EfBY1RllbEaUYwgyTeOHzIrOgS6DAnKStsRt_x9QQR47vvh-r9BV4cB5ARRPyq67XP_qBEYkqorJOcawAyfb-smrKQAnizt2KaaW-nEtVBeRDJVINhBLkDrPCpb9wxrHY/s320/IMG_2426.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This hole was "The Fruit of the Spirit"... love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, goodness and self-control... Well, we got most of them, right? </td></tr>
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Losing Linda yesterday made me glad that we'd had a few conversations lately in which I got to tell her how important she is to me, and how much I loved her. No one had any idea, even after her cancer diagnosis in May, that she'd be gone so soon, but in true Linda style, she'd wasted no time in making sure that her friends and family knew how much she loved them, too. <br />
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Linda was one of those important "structural" friends for me -- I was a late-bloomer to life, and she taught me so much about navigating those young adult years, building networks of friends, reaching out to people on the edges, making sure that fun times were recorded. In my second chapter of life, finding myself again as a single adult, but this time with kids to raise, Linda's lessons of looking on the bright side even in dark moments, recording the fun, and being intentional about networking people together are priceless gifts that I try to use every day. <br />
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See you 'round the 18th hole of the Biblical Mini-Golf on the other side, Linda. Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-77422730412965742952015-04-02T01:00:00.001-07:002015-04-02T01:00:59.843-07:00Practicing JoyIt's Wednesday of Holy Week, and I've been feeling like there's something seriously missing this week -- actually all of this Lenten season. For my non-churchy readers, the 40 days before Easter are known as "Lent". It's a time of preparing, of spiritual practices, of getting ready to mark the final week in the life of Jesus, the occasion of his death, and the celebration of the resurrection. It's a time of reflection for many Christians. Some people give something up (chocolate, TV, Facebook...) and other take something up (waking up early to pray, paying for the coffee of the person behind you in line at Starbucks, working at a soup kitchen, writing in a prayer journal, etc. ... I even have a friend who decided to trudge through the 108 inches of snow this winter to feed the birds in his yard, as part of his Lenten practice this year.. sort of St. Francis of Assisi, Boston-style).<br />
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And my Lenten practice, for more than the last 15 years, has been literally "practice", choir practice that is. For me, the Lenten season has always involved spending at least one night a week in my seat in the soprano section of the choir, with the words and notes of a major work of sacred music working itself into my every pore. By the time Holy Week rolls around, the texts of the Latin mass (set by Mozart, Haydn, or Beethoven), the English texts of John Rutter's Requiem, or Brahm's German Requiem, Handel's "Messiah", or Haydn's "Creation", to name a few, have become part of my breathing, my falling asleep, my waking up. I live in the music and the text, sometimes using my drive time (I'm a minivan-driving mom in the Bay Area I have a LOT of drive-time), to listen to the work that I'm studying; working those elements even deeper into my soul. <br />
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Here's a sample of what I end up meditating on:<br />
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"Out of the deep, have I cried unto you, O God. Lord, hear my prayer. O let thine ear consider well, the voice of my complaint" <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP_ZHGJvHbk" target="_blank">(to listen to this as it's set by John Rutter, click here.) </a><br />
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"You now are sorrowful. Weep not. I shall again behold you and then your hearts shall be joyful, and my joy shall no one take from you. " <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_7YzjqZ-OM" target="_blank">(This is my wonderful community of choir folk in 2010, singing the Brahms setting of this text) </a><br />
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"Sanctus, sanctus, santus. Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tuam... (Holy, holy, holy. Heaven and earth are full of thy glory.) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY7MCDSQC0s" target="_blank">(Here's how Beethoven set this text in his Mass in C major)</a><br />
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"I heard a voice from Heaven, saying unto me, 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they rest from their labors... " <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr_uGIvLcNU" target="_blank">(Here's a totally fearless, fabulous soprano, with my beloved choir folks, singing a setting of this text by John Rutter, from his Requiem)</a> <br />
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But it's not just the music and the words that go deep, refreshing and often challenging me in my spiritual walk, but it's the experience of spending that time, drinking-in that music in the presence of about 75-100 of my closest friends -- my fellow choir members. There is a presence of the Holy Spirit that shows up in the community that is a church choir, particularly the one that I have called "home" for the past 16 years.<br />
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We've been led, for longer than I've been there, by a man who has turned a choir director's job into a Minister of Music vocation. He's been our teacher, our coach, our pastoral leader, our Court Jester, and the father-figure for the lovingly imperfect, sometimes dysfunctional family that is a choir. <br />
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Throughout its existence, our choir has aimed for musical excellence, not for its own sake, but for the sake of what that excellence points to -- an endlessly creative and creating God, a loving and redeeming being who touches hearts and minds and souls through many different routes. One route, for some of us, is music. The music has drawn people who might not otherwise darken the door of a church, to start spending time there, either as audience members to our concerts, or as participants in our music-making. And it's not just singers who are drawn in. There are a number of professional instrumentalists who showed up for what they thought would be "just another church gig" and ended up having their spirits fed and watered by their experience with us. I particularly love the story of one such musician who pulled the choir director aside after a concert and handed back his union-scale paycheck, saying that we wanted to donate his time to our concerts from here on out, because he'd experienced something that he could not quite name, something powerful, that made him want to keep coming back. He has donated his time to our concerts ever since. <br />
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But what makes our choir special is not just the music, or even the musical excellence: it's the love and fellowship that we've experienced in our time together. We held a post-wedding reception for a choir couple who sneaked off and married eachother after 20 years of being best friends. We've sung wearing silly hats, tacky sweaters, and jewelry that blinks. We've sung the Rice Krispies jingle and the Star Spangled Banner. We've gathered to make a personalized chemo quilt when a choir member had cancer. We have held baby showers, bridal showers, and a dinner to share remembrances of a member who died suddenly and unexpectedly. We've celebrated birthdays and sung at memorial services. We've walked together to raise money for AIDS treatment in Africa, and we've sung a concert to benefit the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Two days after the attacks of September 11, 2001, we ended our rehearsal standing in a circle, singing <a href="https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play?p=my+shepherd+will+supply+my+need&vid=57bca1d47cfb0a54afb39fb6d97610d2&l=4%3A35&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DVN.607989957423989079%26pid%3D15.1&rurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DGchISQIuVlg&tit=National+Cathedral+-+My+Shepard+Will+Supply+My+Need&c=1&sigr=11beinfdl&sigt=11jvlqgp6&sigi=11r757176&back=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.yahoo.com%2Fyhs%2Fsearch%3Fp%3Dmy%2Bshepherd%2Bwill%2Bsupply%2Bmy%2Bneed%26ei%3DUTF-8%26hsimp%3Dyhs-001%26hspart%3Dmozilla&sigb=13bni386t&ct=p&age=1157765086&fr2=p%3As%2Cv%3Av&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=mozilla&tt=b" target="_blank">this lovely piece by Mack Wilberg</a> as our benediction, unsure of what our nation would be facing in the days that lay ahead, but counting on the presence and provision of God in whatever would come next.<br />
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And during each Advent and Lent, both seasons of preparation, in the church calendar, we've engaged in the Practice of Practice, which for me, has been the practice of Joy. There's an excitement to that final pre-concert Saturday, the rehearsal with orchestra, that for me has always been the highlight of the season. In that rehearsal, we put it all together. We singers surf the glorious waves of orchestral sound and experience that coming-together of precision and passion that turns into the practice of joy. The words become real in a new way, the presence of the Spirit is palpable... and three hours later, we're exhausted but energized. The following night, we share it with a congregation of church folk and non-church folk who walk away changed in some way, if we've done our jobs right. <br />
<br />
But this Lent, there was no preparation for a concert. It is quite possible that my choir as it exists now, will not exist in the future. Things change. I could say more about this, but maybe in these last few days of Lent, I'll practice the discipline of not saying too much. <br />
<br />
I have heard people say that "Life is not a dress rehearsal", but I LOVE the dress rehearsals. It's where the performers get to practice joy, in preparation for sharing that joy with others. Tonight was a regular rehearsal for the choir's Easter morning music, and just before the choir rehearsed, I shot a couple seconds of our director, working with the brass... They're rehearsing, "Joyful, joyful, we adore thee". Practicing joy, if ever I heard it. <br />
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A few weeks after Andre's death, I sang a duet in church with my buddy Laurel (the fearless, fabulous soprano in the video I shared earlier in this entry).... The lyrics feel as true now as they did then: <br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>My life goes on in endless song<br />
Above earth's lamentations, <br />
I hear the real, though far-off hymn<br />
That hails a new creation.<br />
<br />
Through all the tumult and the strife<br />
I hear it's music ringing, <br />
It sounds an echo in my soul.<br />
How can I keep from singing?<br />
<br />
While though the tempest loudly roars, <br />
I hear the truth, it liveth.<br />
And though the darkness 'round me close, <br />
Songs in the night it giveth.<br />
<br />
No storm can shake my inmost calm, <br />
While to that rock I'm clinging.<br />
Since Christ is lord of heaven and earth<br />
How can I keep from singing?<br />
<br />
When tyrants tremble in their fear<br />
And hear their death knell ringing, <br />
When friends rejoice both far and near<br />
How can I keep from singing?</i></span></span></span><br /><br />
How, indeed? Sing on, friends. <br />
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Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-79082067003395251352014-12-28T21:26:00.002-08:002014-12-28T21:27:47.907-08:00Did you get my Christmas letter? <span style="font-size: large;"><i>" For, lo, the days are hastening on, by prophet bards foretold, when with the ever-circling years, comes round the age of gold...": </i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"Come on, donkey, you can come in. Hi, King, you have a big vase.." </i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"...three types of muscle cells are smooth, Connecticut, and apple cereal..." </i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"...reunification of upper and lower Egypt by feral mayonnaise..." </i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Back in the day, back in my "before" time, I did a Christmas letter every year. I really enjoyed the process of crafting a series of word-pictures of life around here: a reflection on some obscure verse of a Christmas carol, some funny things the kids said, a line or two about my latest misadventures and a determinedly cheerful report about Andre's activities. There was a year when my description of the kids' latest homeschooling recitation included the term "feral mayonnaise" (um... Pharoah Menes, anyone?) --homeschooled kids say the darndest things, don't they? And there was always a photo --often just the kids, but sometimes all six of us, in the Andre days.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">And then everything changed in July, 2012, and I gave myself permission to pretty much skip anything Christmasy that felt like too much: hence, no letter, only the decorations that the kids wanted put up, including a real tree for the first time in many years, only the things that could be accomplished in short spurts of energy as I found it. It was a decidedly odd Christmas, full of strange, poignant moments, but also some moments of genuine light. I was still, in some ways, mostly numb, mostly still in shock. But there weren't many demands placed on me that year. We had tons of support -- one dear couple played Secret Santa to my kids and granted them wonderful wishes, our adopted clan of friends made sure we had someplace to be for Christmas day dinner. We got through Christmas and bounced into the New Year with help from more of our adopted family, and I congratulated myself that we'd done it. We'd survived our first Christmas post-loss and it would all get easier from here. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Christmas of 2013 had its moments of "this is just too much" as well as moments of genuine joy. I'd been in school for more than 6 months, the kids appeared to be doing ok, as far as I could tell. (It turns out I was missing a few clues, and things weren't quite so rosy.) I managed at one point in December to get all the kids into a photograph, print out those photo cards at Costco, and begin writing a Christmas letter... but I never got it done. I promised myself, "next year, for sure".</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And here we are at Christmas 2014, three Christmases after Andre's death, and I still haven't found the energy to come up with a Christmas letter. It feels a little like the first two Christmases were perhaps a bit anesthetized by the lingering shock, and then this year, I got hit with the "blah', as in "shock and blah" (apologies to those Bush-era survivors who know what phrase I'm butchering). I made a sincere effort this year -- I bought a tree on the weekend after Thanksgiving, the same weekend on which I made a visit to a dying friend, to be part of what was her very last party here on earth (I'm sure she's now hosting some sparkling gatherings in Heaven, though.) And once I got the tree home that first Sunday in Advent, I asked the now-6-feet-tall teenager to hang the outdoor Christmas lights on the front of the house. The tree eventually made it inside the house a few days later, and decorations happened, in bits and pieces over the next few days: ornaments, manger scenes, Santa Claus figures, a wreath on the door. I made up a couple batches of my mom's Hermit recipe, and some Spritz cookies... and none of it felt in the slightest bit meaningful or real, but I did it and hoped that I would eventually warm to the season that I've always loved. As in the past, there were moments of joy and light --mostly in the music that I sing with my beloved choir folks, but also in re-introducing my youngest child to "Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree"--my childhood favorite book. But still no "magic" for me... just a quiet acknowledgment that there is good to be found, and sometimes it's just "good", but not wonderful. Maybe my super-enthusiastic self is growing up a bit. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Somehow, we got to Christmas Day, and it was truly much, much lovelier than I could have hoped for, with a few simple gifts, kids who woke up in much better moods than the ones they'd shown the night before, and capped off by an evening Christmas dinner with the gathering of friends who have adopted us as family for the past few years. My kids and I are truly blessed. I have nothing to complain about. We celebrated Christmas surrounded by good people who have become our family. We made it through another Christmas with some help and the tincture of time. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And then yesterday, December 27th, well before the unofficial "end" of the Christmas season--New Year's Day, I was suddenly just DONE with the tree, the clutter, and the feeling that I should be doing more to make it festive around here. So, after checking-in with two of the four kids and getting their permission, I gave up waiting for the magical feelings to arrive. I took the tree down and began putting away the holiday clutter, including the various shapes and sizes of nativity scenes that I have collected over the years. I just longed to be able to re-arrange the furniture, to clean up the pine needles, to put away the kitschy stuff and think about how I'd like to enter 2015. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Just before I cleaned up my favorite manger scene, it looked roughly like this: </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> As I picked up the kings and the shepherds and began wrapping them in their tissue-paper padding, I began to think about the words of a poem by <a href="http://standingonthesideoflove.org/tag/dr-howard-thurman/" target="_blank">Howard Thurman</a>, that I sang with my choir folks this season: </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>When the song of the angels is stilled,<br />
When the star in the sky is gone,<br />
When the kings and princes are home,<br />
When the shepherds are back with their flock,<br />
The work of Christmas begins:<br />
<br />
To find the lost,<br />
To heal the broken,<br />
To feed the hungry,<br />
To release the prisoner,<br />
To rebuild the nations,<br />
To bring peace among brothers,<br />
To make music in the heart</i></span>. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">-The Work of Christmas, by Howard Thurman</span></b> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So, as my shepherds and kings, sheep, camels, Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus and all the others go back into their tissue-filled home boxes for another 11 months, maybe it's time for me to quit wishing I'd feel the magic of Christmas, and to start thinking about the ways I could be doing The Work of Christmas. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">All packed up and ready to go in the plastic tote for another year. Let the work of Christmas begin ! </td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I've always been way better with an assignment that is practical and concrete, anyway. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Merry Christmas, dear ones who read this. And all my best wishes for a 2015 that is filled with love, with life and with the ability to appreciate what is all around us in each shining moment we have. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And please forgive me that, once again, there's no Christmas letter from me in your mailboxes. Maybe next year. </span> Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-65293805622536018462014-12-02T13:18:00.000-08:002014-12-02T13:18:33.970-08:00Roses DO come back after pruning (or "3 Weddings and No Funerals yet")I was out in the garden late one afternoon recently, taking a break from my usual flurry of "drive the minivan, drive the minivan, drive the minivan... study... go to class...drive the minivan"... because I needed to prune the roses yet again. I gave those bushes a really serious cut-down in late August, when everything looked shriveled, and then another cut-down in early October, and yet, their optimistic beauty keeps coming back. They bloom, they shrivel, they get cut back. And then, while I'm busy going about the rest of life... they come back. <br />
<h3>
It got me thinking about some really drought-resistant, late-blooming people in my life lately. </h3>
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It was an interesting summer in terms of the social scene. I've been to THREE weddings, and I've got in-hand an invitation to a bridal shower for a bride who will tie the knot in December.<br />
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Most of the people in my friend-set had their kids in their late 20's and into their 30's, and so our kids are not yet at the getting married stage. And you wouldn't expect there to be many weddings of people my age. But still, there is it is -- three weddings this summer.<br />
<br />
The folks in my age group have all been married for decades...<br />
<br />
Except for the ones who aren't.<br />
<br />
At that includes several people who had thought they'd never be married, for various reasons,<br />
<br />
one who had no idea she'd find love in her 70's,<br />
<br />
and two more who'd thought they'd never marry again. <br />
<br />
With each wedding announcement, there's been laughter and broad smiles, and a different kind of delight from the the kind that accompanies those breathless 20-somethings, with their blissful ignorance of what lies ahead. The feeling I've had as I've gotten the wedding invitations this summer has been a mixture of joy and admiration: joy that at last, these relationships have come to the place of celebrating their love publicly, and an admiration for the way these remarkable people have lived life to this point. <br />
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One of these couples consists of two 50-ish women who, in their 20's probably never dreamed that they'd one day stand in the living room of a lovely wine-country house and make their vows to each other, in the company of family and friends.<br />
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Another couple consisted of a man and a woman who'd each been in two previous marriages, and had endured painful, life-altering divorces, and had spent a number of years together quietly "testing" to see if what they had would last. It has.<br />
<br />
The story of She and He is even more surprising. She is a brilliant scientist and educator. She's got a Ph.D. and blonde, blue-eyed, California-girl good looks. When her biological clock was ticking really loudly, and Mr.Right just hadn't appeared yet, she decided to pursue her dream of being a parent, even though it meant single parenthood. Some people around her warned her that adopting kids meant that she was cutting down on her chances to find that special man. But she felt God prompting her to make a home for two terrific boys who needed a Mom. She and those boys found each other, bonded, and marched ahead through life as a family of three who faced the challenges of special health needs, life in a single parent home, and thrived. And then one day, She reconnected via Facebook with He, a quick-witted, kind, handy guy she'd known decades before as a marching-band friend in college... throw in lots of late-night online chatting, several very inconveniently situated dates involving road trips between Northern and Southern California, a Valentine's Day proposal on the Golden Gate Bridge and... <br />
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Fast forward to August of 2014:<br />
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Yup. They are now Mr. and Mrs. Hyphenated Last Names, with two boys to raise and the rest of their lives to revel in how God's timing is not constrained by conventional wisdom.<br />
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So, these days as I watch Winter move closer, the daylight getting shorter, the rain (halleluja!!) finally start, and the last of my 1964 cohort reach the half-century club with me, I am holding onto the idea that the prunings of the past couple years will lead to some blossoming in my own life. I just have to let go of the idea that I have any control over that timing. <br />
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And in the meantime, it's time to fire-up the Mom-taxi, right after I chuck a load of laundry in the machine, turn the soup down to "simmer", and finish a couple of response papers for class... <br />
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<br />Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-68182985825293694812014-08-17T23:43:00.001-07:002014-08-18T00:11:24.646-07:00Do you want to build a sandcastle? The other question that I've often answered the wrong way is, <i>"Are you coming in with us, Mom?"</i><br />
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My usual answer is, <i>"No thanks. Not today. You guys go ahead, though. I'll be right here."</i><br />
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And you can see why, right? I've got the chair (slightly in the shade, as my Irish-pale skin just doesn't do full sun very well), plus the picnic cooler, the extra sunscreen, the towels, the big blanket for all the drippy, sand-caked, shell-sorting, seaweed-fighting post-swim creatures to sprawl on, once it's lunchtime: the perfect place to hold down the fort.<br />
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And then there's my thighs, and other things that jiggle... and what my hair will look like once it's wet, and the part about getting all sandy all over after swimming...<br />
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Yup. I have all the right reasons for opting out, right? I mean, I even brought a book. And there's always my phone to check, and knitting and... well, you get the idea.<br />
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But the other day, listening to someone talk about their childhood, I heard this, as tears ran down the person's face,<br />
<br />
<i>"I never built a sandcastle with my mom. And she never came in swimming with us. She pretty much missed my whole childhood." </i><br />
<br />
Yes, it's a leap from "no sandcastles" and "no swimming" to "she missed my whole childhood", but to that person, at that moment, that's how it FELT. Someone's mom just couldn't or wouldn't allow herself to get all covered in mud and sand, to march that imperfect figure right down to the water's edge and plunge in, turning her 'do into a wet mop. <br />
<br />
And I totally get it. How many times since I entered motherhood have I sat by the side of the pool, or in the beach chair, never once getting in the water? I mean, it's cold, and it's gritty, and it gets everywhere, and everybody can see me... and what if I got all ugly, and then we had to go somewhere on the way home, like the grocery store?<br />
<br />
When my kids were tiny, I somehow managed to get wet and sandy even on days when we *weren't* at the beach... But then the kids all got potty trained, and learned to walk steadily, and talk, and swim, and dig holes in the sand, and they seemed really ok with just my supervision from a short distance away. And it was so nice to just sit there and watch, or knit, or gab on the phone. It's nice. It's relaxing, like a vacation. <br />
<br />
But I almost missed someone's whole childhood. Maybe. So, today, on the 8th birthday of my youngest child, I arrived at the beach with my kids; me wearing my comfy swimsuit (yes, I have a comfy swimsuit... they exist--that's a whole 'nother blog post) slathered with sunscreen, equipped with a rash-guard shirt that would keep my chest, arms, and shoulders from getting all lobster-y. And I got in that chilly water, dodged the bits of seaweed, laughed at the kids' homemade floating toy: a t-shirt wrapped around a beachball and dubbed, "Bob" (middle school humor), and I acted like a watery goofball until I got cold enough to need a dry-land break.<br />
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<br />
<br />
What a great day. What was I afraid of? I got all ugly and sticky and sandy, and there was no place to shower, blow-dry and re-coif... but who cares? On the way home, in total disregard of my unsuitable appearance, we even stopped off to visit some elder friends of ours who live not far from the beach. These wonderful, wise folks are facing a pile of serious challenges right now. The one tiny thing we could do for them was to walk their dog, as neither of them currently has the energy to do it. My perspective got yet another dose of "get real, please". When I am that age, and facing the kinds of things they're facing, I hope I won't also be <i>regretting</i> that I missed some of life's delights, like playing in my kids' world, for fear of getting messy and looking ugly.<br />
<br />
Oh, and today, after my first swim of the day, and then lunch, and before my last swim of the day, my youngest kiddo and I did some great sand-digging, and built "Castle R" entirely of Silly Sand.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuKBNM172HcsSi_IsOXf_4zKpZKilW380ZpGBpQEXmGh0RPTVSzFUPfdfYkyDpsi-bZEY-73mAS6p3VhbOce8IfPu1fuMGcvXcU8RdR4NJUXDWeSNSb5kPyXarcNQJMVL8bvAZZI9gP5gt/s1600/castle+R.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuKBNM172HcsSi_IsOXf_4zKpZKilW380ZpGBpQEXmGh0RPTVSzFUPfdfYkyDpsi-bZEY-73mAS6p3VhbOce8IfPu1fuMGcvXcU8RdR4NJUXDWeSNSb5kPyXarcNQJMVL8bvAZZI9gP5gt/s1600/castle+R.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">( I wonder if Silly Sand Construction Techniques could be worked into
the Common Core for the elementary school years... This kid had never
heard of it before. ) </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
We model for our kids what happy adults look like. It's clearly time I got more interested in being that kind of "model", rather than beating myself over the head that I'll never be the *other* kind of model, the one that involves airbrushed, suntanned, lipo-suctioned perfection in public places. My kids don't give a flip about my fat rolls and squirrel's nest hair, but they sure get enthusiastic about my getting down in the sand and the surf, getting messy, and sharing in their fun. <br />
<br />
Should there maybe be a chapter in "What to Expect... " entitled, "Get Dirty, Get Wet; Wash, Rinse, Repeat <i>UNTIL THE CHILD LEAVES HOME</i>" ? <br />
<br />
Life's messy... Last one in the water's a rotten egg. Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-87630711289797765832014-07-29T01:53:00.001-07:002014-07-29T01:53:26.682-07:00A journey of 32 years, and 12 days<i>It's been a number of months since I last posted anything here, and I'm doing some looking back as well as some looking around at the present. </i><br />
**************************************<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU2CqjZA0gm24U1hLTJI9V8Yqv4R0HDiM8iRqp3WltvpQhAXuhiXbd3VBdPU-tJiA-iup6-eZ88ED5b3DAMFRnosNVj5lcfYvGh9W6AtTu3H2wiI6w_xfINLM9tofS497ogiOvUt1a0WUD/s1600/photo+3(1).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU2CqjZA0gm24U1hLTJI9V8Yqv4R0HDiM8iRqp3WltvpQhAXuhiXbd3VBdPU-tJiA-iup6-eZ88ED5b3DAMFRnosNVj5lcfYvGh9W6AtTu3H2wiI6w_xfINLM9tofS497ogiOvUt1a0WUD/s1600/photo+3(1).JPG" height="320" width="302" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">London, July 2014 - getting ready to time-travel</td></tr>
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<br />
The grey mid-day light of the Gare du Nord wasn't anything unusual. Sunday, July 13, 2014 was a bit of a grey day when we left St.Pancras / King's Cross earlier that day, and there had been summer drizzle as we'd crossed the French countryside after emerging from the Chunnel. I was a little sleepy from our very early departure, and a bit queasy from motion sickness and coffee on a nearly-empty tummy. And in the midst of the thoroughly routine and explicable, I was puzzled by my sudden rainstorm of tears as I stepped off the TGV Eurostar and began dragging my new rolling luggage down the platform to begin an adventure in Paris. <br />
<br />
I was back. How was this possible? <br />
<br />
And I was overwhelmed. Why did this feel so hugely significant? <br />
<br />
Thirty-two years before, my 18-year-old self had entered the Gare du Nord with my ticket and luggage, and stepped onto the TGV (Train Grande Vitesse--the first French high-speed train at the time); at the beginning of a life-changing first trip to France right after high school graduation.<br />
<br />
All these years, and all these life-changes later, I was back, on the 2-year-anniversary of a day that had changed my life forever. <br />
<br />
I guess it makes sense that the eclipsing light and dark in my heart at that moment would overheat my emotional circuitry and result in a tearful overflow.<br />
<br />
How was it possible that it had only been two years ago that my life looked like an unsalvageable mess; facing the prospect of what I thought would be years of empty loneliness and abandoned dreams? How was it possible that I was here in Paris, travelling for free as a working chaperone, in the company of 19 terrific teenagers, two new adult friends, and a man who makes me laugh and learn every time I'm with him? <br />
<br />
As it turned out, it was not my first moment of gratitude that went beyond words and into joyful tears, and it would not be my last on this 12-day trip. <br />
<br />
...<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1uuziYKGHbQ0o2Lpy9jIrJcdHGRxbCddtr1EX8f_ombAKRVv-BphPldn-OKkz58VfMwb5NfhQL2yDCf0s1iU-eLvf1Z9NnZz97wbKXTNyuDGb9QQkz8YMSG6IBAW7IMbzJRBV12gL1OWy/s1600/1982+deux+baguettes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1uuziYKGHbQ0o2Lpy9jIrJcdHGRxbCddtr1EX8f_ombAKRVv-BphPldn-OKkz58VfMwb5NfhQL2yDCf0s1iU-eLvf1Z9NnZz97wbKXTNyuDGb9QQkz8YMSG6IBAW7IMbzJRBV12gL1OWy/s1600/1982+deux+baguettes.jpg" height="252" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">July, 1982 - happily bringing back les baguettes</td></tr>
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In <i><b>mid-July of 1982</b></i>, I was an optimistic high school graduate who had studied French since junior high school and had fallen in love with all things French, spending a summer with a warm and gracious French family on a farm property outside Lyon. I was eagerly soaking up all they had to teach me about life in this lovely country: the language, the food, the people-first pace of life that was full of long, leisurely visits with family and neighbors, sitting at tables under the courtyard trees, sharing jokes, stories, and amazing food, and imagining what life held for me in my truly bright future. <br />
<br />
In<i><b> mid-July of 1992</b></i>, I was a 28 year old single woman, working as an ESL teacher in Nashville, TN, and wondering what had become of my original plan to travel the world while teaching, wondering if I'd ever find my soulmate, wondering if I'd already asked too much of life, hoping that the best was yet to come, while worrying that perhaps I'd already missed it. <br />
<br />
In <i><b>mid-July of 2002</b></i>, I was a sleep-deprived, homeschooling, California housewife, in late pregnancy with my third child, having witnessed my husband survive his first suicide gesture, and wondering what kind of family this yet unborn child would be grow-up in, as his father struggled with his inner demons while trying to survive the Silicon Valley ethos of throwaway humanity and 22-hour workdays. I had no more dreams or plans for the future, other than getting through the next day, keeping all my babies safe and healthy, and maybe catching 40 winks from time to time. <br />
<br />
Somewhere in<b><i> early July of 2012</i></b>, I came to a moment when I could finally accept the truth: I could no longer let my four children live under the reign of terror of an increasingly paranoid and abusive man who was my husband and their father. And on the night of July 13, I made a stupidly risky last-chance move and broke the news of my decision to Andre: that he needed to get help, immediately, or I would have to take the children and leave. Several hours of arguing and thirty minutes of silence led to the awful moment when what was left of Andre Hedrick left us, with a .22-caliber semi-automatic rifle in his hand, a rifle that held, that night, 20 rounds in the clip that he'd loaded, secretly, in the garage earlier that afternoon. My mis-assessment of the risk I took by telling him of my decision almost cost us all our lives. Some guardian angels somewhere were working the late shift, I guess. <br />
<br />
<b><i>Thirty years. Plus two. </i></b> <br />
<br />
And in those past two years, I have seen my four children emerge from trauma and loss and start rebuilding their lives, complete with successes and failures, false starts and unexpected opportunities. I am in my second year of a two-year graduate program in counseling psychology, a field that has interested me since my high school days. I'm working as a trainee two days a week in a community counseling center and looking forward to a second field placement as a school counselor in the Fall. Since last November, I've been spending time with a fascinating, hilarious, multi-talented, man with an insatiable curiosity, a big heart and a great big, hearty laugh. <br />
<br />
And it's because of that life-enhancing friendship with that wonderful man, that I found myself on the train platform in the Gare du Nord, keeping that 32-year-old promise to myself, to return to this lovely city and REALLY see it and experience it. <br />
<br />
If time allows in the next couple weeks, I might even get back to writing a bit of a travelogue, coming full circle to the place where this blog began a few years ago: a chronicle of travel and what I learn along the way. I certainly have the photos to share. <br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLOavWDJK55c6nwCraw3taIizDWLMH2WVxelPk7H5JSG7cIJhCULvAqbCN1R1xA5pefar7C8L3aQ4pMFUPGqOxQADl5vc-rPLraHj8JwvqUC1zqaH-wiLFatcY-fhEm7HaeGF5irzbgn43/s1600/photo+1(1).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLOavWDJK55c6nwCraw3taIizDWLMH2WVxelPk7H5JSG7cIJhCULvAqbCN1R1xA5pefar7C8L3aQ4pMFUPGqOxQADl5vc-rPLraHj8JwvqUC1zqaH-wiLFatcY-fhEm7HaeGF5irzbgn43/s1600/photo+1(1).JPG" height="288" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">July, 1982 - on my one-day whirlwind tour of Paris, I promised myself I would return.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNawsEz7w4epDSDh-LL7RKqppwMg9VK2z8BrV5Csz-ppEUjGkw8mUu6x20uz_i4si_i7N7HIqZ6xsxHEOSnBNbxuweTEoYzQ_NMrmgkNZzJw_5JjspiSPJxEQOhWs4ya3sP-9-mAaav6xx/s1600/photo+2(1).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNawsEz7w4epDSDh-LL7RKqppwMg9VK2z8BrV5Csz-ppEUjGkw8mUu6x20uz_i4si_i7N7HIqZ6xsxHEOSnBNbxuweTEoYzQ_NMrmgkNZzJw_5JjspiSPJxEQOhWs4ya3sP-9-mAaav6xx/s1600/photo+2(1).JPG" height="320" width="274" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">July 14, 2014 - I promise myself that the next time I'm photographed in Paris, I will take off my glasses, check my hair and use good posture (!)</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<br />Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-64519280289481563772014-01-05T00:25:00.001-08:002014-01-05T23:27:33.472-08:00Chiaroscuro<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaRlv6A1byQLEeiHYj8Jdne-ePaOscz18QHFD60iIBzAR7xZZ5CFoYD-YiY5woZo3Keg9KPjCiWAg1BDbhEQtxLp_ucstBcwtqpQJCwFTA_82TiDPb4GqYVjJQTIFP2cvSlYKc7BbGvtPI/s1600/leonardo_da_vinci_gall_4-590x442.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaRlv6A1byQLEeiHYj8Jdne-ePaOscz18QHFD60iIBzAR7xZZ5CFoYD-YiY5woZo3Keg9KPjCiWAg1BDbhEQtxLp_ucstBcwtqpQJCwFTA_82TiDPb4GqYVjJQTIFP2cvSlYKc7BbGvtPI/s1600/leonardo_da_vinci_gall_4-590x442.jpg" height="239" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Isaiah 45:7a - I create the light and make the darkness </span><br />
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(I'm beginning to think that I should warn new friends that there's a risk in teaching me something or sharing something profound: it might show up in my blog. So, you know who you are-- keep being brilliant in my presence, ok? )<br />
<br />
"Chiaroscuro - <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">Contrasting effects of light and shade in a work of art. </span><a class="xref" href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/concise/Leonardo%20da%20Vinci" style="background-color: white; color: #1122cc; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: small-caps; line-height: 20px; text-decoration: none;">Leonardo da Vinci</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"> brought the technique to its full potential, but it is usually associated with such 17th-century artists as </span><a class="xref" href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/concise/Caravaggio" style="background-color: white; color: #1122cc; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: small-caps; line-height: 20px; text-decoration: none;">Caravaggio</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"> and </span><a class="xref" href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/concise/Rembrandt%20(Harmenszoon)%20van%20Rijn" style="background-color: white; color: #1122cc; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant: small-caps; line-height: 20px; text-decoration: none;">Rembrandt</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">, who used it to outstanding effect." </span><br />
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<br />
I've been thinking about the chiaroscuro nature of my days lately. As Christmas approached and the lights went up in the neighborhoods, in the shopping malls, in my friends' photos on social media, they looked more beautiful this year than I can remember them being for several years. It's not that the lights actually were brighter, but it seems that light, when contrasted with the darkness I've lived in recent years, is somehow more beautiful and more significant. Just as Caravaggio's smiling young lady in blue, or DaVinci's angel would be less striking without the darkness in the paintings, it seems that the darkness that accumulates as I age only serves to make the bright moments in life that much more beautiful. <br />
<br />
These days, I'm watching my two older kids grow through those teeth-clenching teenage years, and sometimes the shadows feel suffocating. But then I catch a glimpse of that fusion of the sweet children that they once were and the admirable adults that they're growing into. In that moment, that vision is all the more beautiful because of the deep shading of these seasons full of ill-tempered, refrigerator-emptying, sibling-bashing, kitchen-trashing aliens in my home. <br />
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My trip through the middle-aged adult dating scene this past year has had its burnt siena shadings of frustration and hurt feelings, but where I stand now, a year later--still single, still wondering how life will turn out--feels bright with possibility. I've met some wonderful men, added some of them to my life as friends, and I've begun to wake from my Rip Van Winkle social life to discover a whole world of people, music, activities, restaurants and movies that I'd somehow missed in my years as Andre's wife. My life is rich now because I'm aware of how emotionally impoverished it was before. I'm beginning to see that the shadow of loneliness is not one I have to run from. I can simply keep moving in the direction of living life as fully as I can, and enjoying the light of companionship when it appears. When it does, I'm finding that it's that much more soul-feeding because I know how precious it is.<br />
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The quote from Isaiah is a gift from a new friend in my life, a friend who has seen more than his share of darkness in recent years. This scripture seemed to be telling him that both the light and the darkness are part of God's plan. Carrying that reminder in his heart, he has begun to see more and more light. His sharing of that fragment of scripture with me was another way of multiplying that light and I'm grateful<br />
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Tonight, over a friendly home-cooked meal, I was catching up with a creative/inventor friend of mine, who showed me<a href="http://votsh.com/2013/12/22/votsh-starling/" target="_blank"> a piece of electronic art he's been designing/ playing with. He calls it a "Starling"</a>, and it contains some beautifully color-changing lights and one dark spot. It turns out that the dark spot is simply where the battery is, but in discussing his creation, it seemed to me that the dark spot in his twinkling creation is perhaps another use of chiaroscuro: what is bright and lovely is made more so by the presence of some shadow.<br />
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As we move through this season just past the Winter Solstice, the days are getting brighter and longer; the darkest day of the year is past, and from here, the light grows until we reach the Autumnal Equinox, when the darkness will begin to move in again. Somehow, acknowledging the presence of both the light and the dark, the seasons of shading and the highlighting, makes the light that I see in this new year ahead seem brighter and more beautiful. In 2014, I wish you light, and the ability to see that the shadows don't steal the light--they enhance it. <br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." John 1:4-6</span>Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-43267668318771277862013-10-10T14:54:00.000-07:002013-10-10T15:00:17.044-07:00Those things you frameWe've all got 'em, right? Those framed things... the Prayer of Saint Francis, the Desiderata, "Kiss the Cook", "Live Well, Laugh Often...", that hang in the kitchen, the living room...or in the garage: "Parking for 49er's Fans Only", the basement: "Man Cave Rules:..." or elsewhere: "Flush!" <br />
<br />
I've got one, given to me by someone I barely knew, just before we moved away--how's that for "no particular sentimental connection"--and every time I think I'll put it in the charity donation pile, I read it again. <br />
It says:<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Palatino, serif; font-size: 23px; line-height: 40px;"><span style="color: purple;">Look To This Day</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: purple;">Look to this day:<br />For it is life, the very life of life.<br />In its brief course<br />Lie all the verities and realities of your existence.<br />The bliss of growth,<br />The glory of action,<br />The splendour of achievement<br />Are but experiences of time.<br /><br />For yesterday is but a dream<br />And tomorrow is only a vision;<br />And today well-lived, makes<br />Yesterday a dream of happiness<br />And every tomorrow a vision of hope.<br />Look well therefore to this day;<br />Such is the salutation to the ever-new dawn!</span></div>
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And then I take it out of the donation pile, and put it somewhere, intending to hang it up again.<span style="color: #3c3a35;"> </span></div>
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Lately, I've been getting a little self-congratulatory. I've been comparing NOW to where I was a year ago. <br />
Last year at this time, I was barely stumbling along in the fog of grief and trauma, plastering an optimistic face over my panicked sense that what I was living was "the new normal" and a fear that what I saw was all there would ever be. I did NOT want to "Look well to this day". The chaos was just too daunting. And the future seemed impossibly foggy. I was hardly able to keep track of appointments, numbers, phone calls to return...what day of the week it was, whether my youngest child had eaten dinner. My teenager was lost and floundering in school and in life, my 1998 minivan was coughing and dying and coming up with new ways to strand me every week. I was sleeping about 4 hours a night between nightmares. And so, in my determined flight into distraction from the situation, I was taking on editing jobs, writing in a blog, looking at applying to grad school, and thinking about soon entering the world of dating. (The diagnostic term for this condition is "Nucking Futs !!" --be sure to include both exclamation points. It will be in the next edition of the DSM, for sure. ) </div>
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And a year later, I'm here. I've gotten myself a smart phone that keeps track of appointments, numbers, phone calls to return, and what day of the week it is. I'm still working on a program to keep tabs on the nutritional intake of the youngest kiddo, but Siri's "call home" between night classes, works pretty well. Usually said kiddo can tell me if he ate what I prepared for dinner, or made himself a peanut-butter tortilla roll-up (we DO live in California... yes, he prefers tortillas to bread) . My replacement mini-van means that I'm no longer on a first-name basis with the operator at AAA. Grad school is a delightful reality that keeps me in a state of nerdly bliss on those carefully-guarded study days. And when I'm sleep-deprived these days, it's not because of nightmares, at least. I'm less prone to distracting myself, but I am still a die-hard over-loader of the calendar. It's just that I'm doing it more successfully now that I can remember what day it is. <br />
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And it's tempting to think that I've entered that part of the poem that says, "<span style="color: purple;">the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendor of achievement"</span>, and that I'm going to stay there for a while. <br />
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But then I get hit with the next wave-- a teenager who has managed to find his way back to "lost and floundering", some feedback from a colleague at school that keeps me humble... and I'm reading the next line, <span style="color: purple;">"are but experiences of time."</span> Nothing's permanent: not the horror, not the high-fives. I'm on the journey, and I'm here today. And <span style="color: purple;">"in its brief course, lie all the verities and realities of (my) existence</span>". <br />
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I have another sign that reminds me that my power to control things is limited. It hangs in the kitchen where it seems like so many family conversations occur: <br />
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I wonder if, every once in a while, my friends and should have a kitschy philosophical wall-art trade-off. Who knows what treasures of ancient and modern thought are hand-lettered and decorated with a ribbon, gathering dust in someone's hallway closet? </div>
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Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-52774927377467123192013-09-14T00:35:00.000-07:002013-09-14T00:37:03.933-07:00Any Port in a Storm"Were you out there praying?," my grandmother asked me, as we sat at the galley table in the 33-foot cabin cruiser, now docked safely in the marina.<br />
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"Nope. Singing," I admitted, making that little head-duck gesture that I still sometimes do when embarrassed. I'd been caught doing what I usually did when I could no longer do anything else to make myself feel better: I was singing through the songbook in my head of every show-tune I knew. In this case, "out there" was the open-air aft-deck of my family's boat, during a slashing mid-summer rainstorm on Long Island Sound. I'd spent a couple of hours riding out the storm, with its choppy waves that made me painfully seasick, out in the open, wearing a life-vest over my tee-shirt and shorts, with an improvised safety line tethering me to the base of the ladder that led to the fly-bridge. My parents were concerned that I might wash overboard if a rogue swell hit us. In a family of avid sailors, for whom weekends and summer vacations meant boat-trips, I was the only one who was regularly prone to seasickness. Being inside a closed cabin, even on a calm day, would likely have meant spending the trip in the head, or heading outside to lean over the rail and upchuck. <br />
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So, on that day of high winds and growing waves, with the sudden rainsquall that overtook us, I chose to be wet, cold, and in the open air, rather than take my chances in the closed cabin with my brothers, my grandmother, and her two adventure-loving sisters, my great-aunts. My parents were on the fly-bridge, piloting us back to port: Dad checking his chart notes, and monitoring various navigational gadgets, and Mom handling the helm on the precise compass heading and speed instructions he gave her. And to keep me from crying over how nauseated I was, and to keep the deep breaths coming, the ones that help keep me from hurling, I had been sitting on the lower deck, breathing the fresh air, soaked to the skin, with my hair hanging around my face in dripping limp strands; singing. <br />
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"You're a girl after my own haht, singing in the stawhm", my grandmother beamed, in her broad north-suburban Boston accent. Nani was our "fun grandmother", the eternal Pollyanna, the grandma who wore sneakers, shorts and a swimsuit whenever possible, Nani who could throw together a thermos of coffee and a picnic on a moment's notice and head to the beach or the pool, or the zoo, or the mountains in a flash. She'd been widowed in her late 50's, travelled the world with her sisters, took up photography and began winning prizes in her late 60's. She also had crippling, painful rheumatoid arthritis that attacked nearly every joint in her body, in the age before NSAIDs and steroid treatments came along. It was her swimming (sometimes in the icy ocean off the coast of Maine in the summer), her insistence on walking, her picture-taking, her zest for life, and her stubborn Pollyanna optimism that kept the pain at bay. She simply refused to give in to self-pity, or if she did, she took great pains that no one ever found out about it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">There's that "game for anything" smile of Nani's. (maybe a shot of that stuff helped the arthritis too.) </td></tr>
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There are days when I wish I had Nani's die-hard ability to put up a brave front. Days like today. <br />
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Today was Friday the 13th, another narrow gate, (If you haven't been reading the blog very long, see my previous posts on <a href="http://rideofthevalkyries.blogspot.com/2013/02/raise-seat-aim-for-central-point-just.html" target="_blank">wobbling through narrow gates</a> to know what I'm talking about.), one that caught me by surprise. I had forgotten to pick some kind of mental "pebble" to draw my attention to the other side of the gate. I also made the mistake of taking on some interpersonal stuff that I should have left for another day, and that made it even worse. Today I've been doing more than wobbling. I've been crashing painfully. It's been a day of tears and a lost, unproductive state in which I found myself in my exercise clothes all day, but somehow never made it outside to do my run. I spent hours sitting at my computer, but the final paper for the quarter hasn't been written. The bills I was supposed to dig up for a bit of accounting somehow never got found. The dishes piled up. The laundry never got started. The dog kept wandering over and putting her tiny front paws on the lap of the zombie in the chair. She even tried that ultra-cute head-tilt while looking at my face for some sign I was still alive. <br />
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But this afternoon, I realized that if I went out to do errands with uncombed hair, no make-up, wearing my sloppy tee-shirt and running pants, I'd feel even worse with every imagined pitying glance I'd be attracting. Or maybe even worse, I'd be invisible: so frumpy as to be beyond noticing. <br />
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So, I shuffled into some decent clothes, tried to make my hair look less like a red-blonde pot-scrubber and more like a coiffure, and even got into the usual quantity of spackle, mascara, and lipstick to complete the look. <br />
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And without thinking about it, from somewhere in my head, the show-tune soundtrack got cued, (thank you, Nani) and I found myself singing:<br />
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"...who cares what they're wearing on Main Street or Saville Row (or Walnut Creek) It's what you wear from ear-to-ear and not from head-to-toe that matters..." (Need a little corny pick me up? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmmsyg21Du4" target="_blank">Click here for the video clip from the musical, Annie</a>.) <br />
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I think I may need to see what Broadway collections I can find on iTunes, maybe make myself a CD of stuff to keep my breathing deep and the tears and sick-feeling at bay for a little while longer. It worked in a different season of storms. It might be worth a try again. <br />
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If you pull up beside me at a red light and I'm belting out those show tunes, just look the other way and pretend you don't know me. I'll be better soon. Meanwhile, I'll try to remember to stay tethered to the bottom of the ladder 'til the storm passes. <br />
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******* "Have courage, my soul, and let us journey on. Though the night is dark and I am far from home, thanks be to God, the morning light appears. The storm is passing over, Hallelujah!" ***********<br />
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Another song in my inner soundtrack is this one. Definitely NOT Broadway, but a favorite of my choir buddies, and one that my choir family sang for me at Andre's memorial: The Storm is Passing Over.<br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3jgPsGQSdQ">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3jgPsGQSdQ</a> This performance is by the Detroit Mass Choir and they sing it with a lean, muscular punch,( and a cool Hammond organ part) that few choirs can match. Enjoy !</h4>
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<br />Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-7241930840248049602013-08-24T22:58:00.000-07:002013-08-24T23:04:48.150-07:00The song is wrongAny musical theater fans here? Anybody remember "Carousel", and the song, "You'll never walk alone"? (Yup, I'm dating myself... well, actually that's kinda where I'm going with this one, but more on that later.) <br />
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The coach this morning started us with some "ankeling", he called it, a kind of almost-running walk, with a lot of heel-to-toe movement, and then some backwards walking, some sideways skipping, some weird looking high-stepping movements straight out of "Springtime for Hitler", and then he and the half-dozen regulars with The Run Team took off running. And I do mean "took off", as in a flight of well-synchronized eagles. <br />
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But I'm not an eagle, or even a seagull, ... I'm more of a penguin, actually. (If you're not familiar with the concept of a running "penguin", click<a href="http://thepenguinchronicles.com/2013/08/23/flashback-friday-the-original-penguin-chronicle/" target="_blank"> here</a> to read John Bingham's blogpost about runners who are penguins.) The flock of folks for whom an "easy jog" is a 6-minute mile were out ahead of me and gone in what felt like seconds. So much for running with a group, which was my plan when I clicked "join this group" on Meet-Up. I had been assured that there were going to be "runners of all abilities" on this run. I guess the otherly-abled people decided to sleep in this morning.<br />
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I ran alone,<br />
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mostly. <br />
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...except for when the 70-something-year-old coach of The Run Team turned around from the 3-mile-point and ran BACK to me, asked if I had any injuries, and then, after giving me a few pointers about working on my speed by doing short intervals, turned around and ran ahead to catch-up with his group.<br />
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I ran the rest of my 4 miles alone. The full run was an 8-mile out-and-back, and I'd been told there would be some other folks who would turn around early. Again, I guess they slept in this morning. <br />
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Except for when the six-milers on their way back to the start point passed me in a cloud of dust, I ran alone.<br />
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And lately, I'm finally facing that that's my state; alone. Yes, I have 4 kids, and some great, caring, selfless friends, friends who would drop everything and be with me in a crisis, friends who mentor my teens, friends who let me hide-out at their house; making jam and drinking wine, friends who move themselves and their entire family into<i> my</i> house to look after my kids so I can go away for a week... And then there's another undeservedly large cloud of friends on Facebook who post encouraging words, who like my photos, who read these blogposts almost before I have them posted, so I'm not<i> truly</i> alone. <br />
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But, in some new way, I'm coming to grips with the fact that I'm a widow. I'm alone. (The Chorus of DUH has not been heard from in a couple of months, so it's time to let them warm up... go ahead, give us a melodious , "DUHHHHHH!!!")<br />
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After I congratulated myself this morning on 4 miles at a faster pace than I've done in many months, I got into my car, drove to a parking lot a few miles between the run venue and home, and had a full-throated, self-pitying, damn-it's-good-no-one-here-knows-me, no-holds-barred, cry-it-out session like I haven't had in quite a while. And it felt different this time.<br />
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As odd as it might seem, I have not truly allowed myself to come to terms with this layer of "alone" yet, ever since the police told me to "call someone" as they shoved past me, into my house and up the stairs on the night Andre died. From that point on, I've leaned on friends, leaned on my therapist, my pastor, my neighbors... and eventually I found a... gosh, "boyfriend" sounds so silly... a man-companion to lean on, to hide from my growing horror at the thought of a life alone.<br />
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And he was a terrific distraction. There is nothing like a smart, funny, handsome guy to completely un-hinge me from reality. So while most widows would still have been wearing somber clothing and staying at home every night, I was distracted by balancing the rest of my life to include dating. And then that relationship went bad, and it ended after a couple of months. And a day later, (really, no kidding) another incredibly attractive man walked into my life, and we had a terrific 3-month relationship. And then it ended. And the day after it was "over" with Man-Companion #2, Man-Companion #1 briefly re-appeared on my Distraction Board and I was able to keep running from my sadness at the loss of MC#2, my residual grief over Andre, and my completely unprocessed sadness at the ending of the first relationship with MC#1. But now MC#1 is gone again and I'm left facing the fact that I really am alone, and it hurts like hell.<br />
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(Are you feeling like you need a scorecard to keep this straight?) <br />
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But I'm studying to be a therapist. I'm supposed to KNOW better. "Physician, heal thyself", I guess... It's only dawning on me now that I'm not done with the park-the-car-somewhere-and-bawl-your-eyes-out stuff yet. And it looks like I'm not the only one who is just turning the corner into a fresh field of grief. My youngest child, who has been pretty much coasting along, doing well, is suddenly, daily, having tearful episodes of "I miss Daddy. I want a Daddy." <br />
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Oh, crap. (Don't worry. That's a technical term. I'm a trained professional... well, a professional in training..)<br />
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I can't do anything about either of those conditions, especially not now.<br />
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So, when he's sad, we talk about it, and I tell him that it's really Ok to feel sad, that he won't always feel this sad, and that he can tell me any time he's sad. Sometimes we cry together, and then we brainstorm ways to feel better. Sometimes a hug will do it. Other times, it's tickle-session, or a ride-along on some errands that I need to do. Tonight, his solution seemed to be a bubble bath with ALL the floating toys: ducks, cars, fish, airplanes, trucks. It can get a little crowded in that tub sometimes, but I guess that's better than being alone.<br />
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Not long ago, on a night when the plan to go out with one of the MC's was suddenly cancelled for "unfinished business", (yeah, that<i> is</i> as bad as it sounds), I did something I haven't done in a while. I took myself out. Yup, I dated myself, as it were. I grabbed my notebook and a pen, found a table in a place that played good music, ordered a beer and some chili fries, and spent some time with myself, working on some writing for myself alone. By the end of the evening, I'd heard some terrific music, gotten some clarity, felt a little stronger, banished most of my self-pity, wrote a note that needed to be written, and went to bed and slept well that night.<br />
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So, maybe the song is right, in a way, "...walk on, walk on with hope in your heart, and you'll never walk alone." (Here's the cheesiest, most clearly-learned-phonetically-by-people-unfamiliar-with-the-idiom performance of the song that I can find: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5Obrj3IjBY" target="_blank">The Three Tenors (I loved them) sing "You'll Never Walk Alone )</a><br />
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Ok, nope. It's drivel. I'm walking, and running, alone. At least for a while. And I'm pretty darned sad.<br />
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Now, let's see...where did I put those floating toys...? <br />
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<br />Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-53207193530891247992013-08-18T23:59:00.000-07:002013-08-19T00:10:49.097-07:00The Birthday Season"Ack! The poop deck is collapsing!<br />
"Fondant! Quick! Roll some up and stick it under there. We'll frost it blue and call it a wave"<br />
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Or...<br />
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" I can't get the woolly mammoth to fall over when it gets a direct hit, without making it so floppy that it won't stand up in a breeze. Can you take a look at it?"<br />
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Or...<br />
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"So, do you think we should have the kids rob the tomb in the pyramid before or after the toilet-paper mummy race?"<br />
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Those were just a few of the conversations that took place during the preparation for kids' birthday parties in our house, in the good years, during times when Andre was stable and I was the uber-mom.<br />
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It's the Birthday Season again here, and I'm sort of surprised by the brick wall of "I can't do this" that I'm facing. I've been thinking about the stark contrast between "then" and "now". <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5mA00DxrQkzlJMhhv0RCRrDf1ira9TnH7HMp488DzIPjsPZm98auMl51aSOmUTdaq3Jvv-v8XbgX_4VIRcAYJP_JYDo4Y517mrYxz1zkcoolEOTeRsetyhEatIck10-z2dR9Grgsy_715/s1600/saber+tooth+tiger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5mA00DxrQkzlJMhhv0RCRrDf1ira9TnH7HMp488DzIPjsPZm98auMl51aSOmUTdaq3Jvv-v8XbgX_4VIRcAYJP_JYDo4Y517mrYxz1zkcoolEOTeRsetyhEatIck10-z2dR9Grgsy_715/s1600/saber+tooth+tiger.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a>Back in the days when I not only cooked nearly everything from scratch, homeschooled my kids, and kept my house reasonably picked-up, I figured out that all we had to do for a great kids' party was pick a theme that appealed to them: Pirates, Cave-people, Ancient Egypt (Ok, give us a break, we were homeschoolers--Egypt-o-mania comes with the territory), Space, Tigers, Swamp Creatures... and then follow the formula of projectiles, finger food, and some large props made from cardboard, and of course, THE CAKE. Not just any old store-bought cake, but homemade cake sculptures: a space shuttle, a head of a saber-toothed tiger, a pirate ship (yes, we did manage to shore-up the collapsing poop deck with a rolled-up piece of fondant), a tiger, an arctic scene with fondant penguins and polar bears cavorting around an icy pool made of blue jello, the pyramids at Giza (complete with palm trees), Lightning McQueen from the movie, Cars... <br />
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For entertainment, the kids shot rubber-band rockets at a huge cardboard moon, climbed up in the tree-house to hurl water balloons at a British Man-o-War cruising in the grass of the backyard below, threw bean-bag "meat" to feed the hungry (paper-mache) alligator, slingshot bean-bag "rocks" at the cardboard woolly mammoth. ( See how theme-adaptable the formula is? ) They took turns unwrapping gift-studded aluminum foil asteroids, used sticks and leaves to paint the inside of a cardboard "cave", mummified their dads in toilet paper, and walked on two-by-fours through the "gator-infested-swamp" wearing huge rubber Wellingtons that engulfed their little legs and made them wobbly. And they made memories.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcVhEfMgah9PHwXUnQ2zWDQQfwcwC1m4_BZuSd1OP67ssMCgOEK-pNjVT6auG8SvIs6kBg-vyhDKkXi941u1ZRhpysT3dwEFH4eiUPvDJPzMUWE6VyIUd1y3BCXteK7n2iFE3WSus32Wy6/s1600/car+cake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcVhEfMgah9PHwXUnQ2zWDQQfwcwC1m4_BZuSd1OP67ssMCgOEK-pNjVT6auG8SvIs6kBg-vyhDKkXi941u1ZRhpysT3dwEFH4eiUPvDJPzMUWE6VyIUd1y3BCXteK7n2iFE3WSus32Wy6/s1600/car+cake.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lightning McQueen from "Cars", Andre's last cake sculpture</td></tr>
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In those days, I'd sit down with my notebook, the one where I kept all the sketches for holiday table designs, the recipe lists, the guest lists, the cake ideas... and I'd work out the theme, the games, the guest list, the ideas for homemade goodie bags, the menu, and after the first few of these, I figured out how to best tap into Andre's gift for engineering the props for the games and sculpting the cake. We'd stay up past midnight on the night before the party, working on those amazing cakes, and it was a genuine relief each time to hand off the final perfectionist details in buttercream and Betty Crocker to Andre somewhere around 1 a.m. and go to bed knowing that there would be another birthday masterpiece in the freezer by morning. <br />
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On the day of the party, I'd be busy setting up the "experience"--the bowling-for-tigers game, the posing-for-pictures-as-a-penguin area, the giant cardboard moon for rubber-band-rocket shooting. The feed-the-alligator bean-bag toss. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjziXw3xlK1xVvF_N1YaTMONFHKRuxDVWRkn7jM0la9jcnwomaOvlA2VoAGKnBpmvwe_pkloAyY6A-qhT-DwTBEPNma-rBP_qug0oS6syGIF2NOjPg_GU4LPYH5_X75hZgyc5wQYK35R1Jb/s1600/Rayna+as+a+penguin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjziXw3xlK1xVvF_N1YaTMONFHKRuxDVWRkn7jM0la9jcnwomaOvlA2VoAGKnBpmvwe_pkloAyY6A-qhT-DwTBEPNma-rBP_qug0oS6syGIF2NOjPg_GU4LPYH5_X75hZgyc5wQYK35R1Jb/s1600/Rayna+as+a+penguin.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
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The guests, their parents and siblings would arrive (no "drop-off and pick-up" parties for me), and I would spend the next few hours in a blur of motion. I am so grateful that there were adults with cameras at these gatherings, or there would be no photos at all. <br />
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In those days, those parties didn't feel like work. I felt like That Mom, the one who could pull of these amazing parties and make it look easy...before there were just too many plates spinning in our day-to-day lives and my energy began to flag.<br />
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Somewhere in the middle of every party, Andre could be found doing something he did extremely well. When I need an image that helps soften my painful memories, it's an image like this that I turn to.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFDq_-5MEBuwuyQp1p5QEWUKBK1a9R2ryDS_37lWVj_zz6iEshXvYRwmeLIzl3-ctip-U2iAQu4SOjupX0DaSm1H3MS2NpDbpClcio-VucJx432dUIbdQNIkt1B-mjXHjuucBXRNG-ihqN/s1600/Andre+and+Mark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFDq_-5MEBuwuyQp1p5QEWUKBK1a9R2ryDS_37lWVj_zz6iEshXvYRwmeLIzl3-ctip-U2iAQu4SOjupX0DaSm1H3MS2NpDbpClcio-VucJx432dUIbdQNIkt1B-mjXHjuucBXRNG-ihqN/s1600/Andre+and+Mark.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Andre and Mark, 2004</td></tr>
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I've written a lot about Andre's darkness, and for most of the first year since his death, that's felt like the thing I needed most to do: to bring to the daylight the side of our life together that we colluded in hiding. But our lives were not all darkness. All of the Hedrick babies knew a Daddy with an almost untiring ability to cuddle sleepy children, a Daddy who could fix<i> nearly</i> anything that was broken, a Daddy who took great pleasure in the grand gesture of unveiling the special birthday creations that he spent so much careful time perfecting.<br />
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In fact, over the years of growing instability in our house, as my own energy to keep up the facade faded, and the parties got less and less ambitious, the tradition of the cake sculpture was the last to go, because it was something that I could hand-off to Andre. I would make the sheet cake that would be frozen and sculpted into shapes, and the buttercream icing that would hold it all together, and my cake-engineer would take it from there. One year, I couldn't even muster the energy to make the frosting, so I gave Andre the vague instructions to mix "some butter, some milk and some powdered sugar, until you get something the consistency of spackle". His ratio of butter to sugar was inordinately high, and the coating on the outside of the Death Star, for Mark's 2009 birthday, was a bit shinier and greasier than usual. But the piping of the black icing designs was precise, and thrilled the birthday boy. <br />
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Toward the middle of that party, too, there was another sleepy child who needed to be held (and needed his face wiped, too). I'm so glad that photos like this exist. In years to come, I hope that the kids will remember these moments were real, too. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkvkuZDKrydZExXxYUf3bO69QuPF39OzS9iTN8MWRcloXVXDGXdEmkJ-FLpISQBq6EP3K__uf_emwVDzvB0WPq2xL1e5FVUznq3KBt4RNk14UDepsPV0X8SK9qA1RhlGGSzqycqDnxA_FT/s1600/rhys+and+daddy+2009.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkvkuZDKrydZExXxYUf3bO69QuPF39OzS9iTN8MWRcloXVXDGXdEmkJ-FLpISQBq6EP3K__uf_emwVDzvB0WPq2xL1e5FVUznq3KBt4RNk14UDepsPV0X8SK9qA1RhlGGSzqycqDnxA_FT/s1600/rhys+and+daddy+2009.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys and Daddy, 2009</td></tr>
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Last year, one of the great gifts that came from the thoughtful, selfless circle of my care-givers was the handling of The Birthday Season for me. Three of my four kids have birthdays that fall in August, September and October, and there was no way that I could have managed any kind of a celebration then. I wasn't even managing to get dinner on the table in those days. In fact, the Birthday Season felt as challenging as the upcoming Holiday Season that year. </div>
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And this year, it's time for me to handle the Birthday Season, which kicked off yesterday. Try as I might, I just couldn't gather the courage to plan a party full of little kids, but I did manage to make a cake and bring it with us to another family's party on Friday night, where we sang and shared what Rhys dubbed, "The Zebra Butt Cake" The plan was for a chocolate cake, iced in white buttercream, with Zebra stripes of chocolate ganache. I was rushing, and tried to put warm ganache onto buttercream and the result was a sliding, muddy-looking mess. Given that I had used a bundt pan (say that like a 7 year old, until it comes out "butt pan"), my 2013 creation became the Zebra Butt Cake. It is, sadly, a far cry from the cakes of other years. </div>
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But I was told that it was delicious, and it was homemade, from scratch (not even a box cake), and somehow, my kiddo felt celebrated. (Going to the movies and getting to choose a restaurant for dinner out, followed by a bike ride together through the neighborhood also helped, perhaps.) </div>
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And that, I think, is the best I can do this year. With one birthday celebration behind me, two more ahead of me, plus the shadow of what would have been Andre's 47th birthday in September, I continue to hang onto the notion of "good enough", and hope somehow that it is, truly, "good enough". </div>
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Belly up to a lovely slice of Zebra Butt anyone? </div>
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Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-29931577595236354122013-08-01T00:30:00.002-07:002013-08-01T10:12:17.965-07:00Older model with lots of quirky charm; needs work, but fabulous inside<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9tSxGHKqh-6LOjreQoEYNfghtASyzCJfF6tLVwTwCpl47G4s9hnkup29Wd6bzqhRJ_5cxqH9_2pALmHsxV1GWvalMPuaod7HU6gDL3zx_EIiwhuaGWRtOBNuiE3H35Fvwp_ght8qN4FbP/s1600/Image07302013092230.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9tSxGHKqh-6LOjreQoEYNfghtASyzCJfF6tLVwTwCpl47G4s9hnkup29Wd6bzqhRJ_5cxqH9_2pALmHsxV1GWvalMPuaod7HU6gDL3zx_EIiwhuaGWRtOBNuiE3H35Fvwp_ght8qN4FbP/s1600/Image07302013092230.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a>On my morning walk yesterday, in a neighborhood I sometimes visit, I chuckled when I noticed the scaled-down, concrete fantasy mountain-scape in the front yard. And then I saw another house where the garage door had been walled-in and something that looked like chapel-windows had been put into the wall that used to be the garage door... and then there was the ranch house with the windowed cupola, and the one with the 2-story yucca plant in the front yard, and the one with the Greek columns and elaborate stucco work over what was surely once just plain siding, and I got to thinking about remodeling and how many times I've tried to make-over myself to be somehow more "marketable."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxxwN1SckTvVzRX_kdig6Dcd8Idd4HyCOXMmX0TsX7vacZ-dNTKkO6LMvRxIYlPFFLYkKXFsokBhBXz8G1G2PeJr_C3qGwjVxmmbu682UMCAqrfGHYZnYd4p7I6YchVEqJa-6Plkf_0J3o/s1600/Image07302013093103.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxxwN1SckTvVzRX_kdig6Dcd8Idd4HyCOXMmX0TsX7vacZ-dNTKkO6LMvRxIYlPFFLYkKXFsokBhBXz8G1G2PeJr_C3qGwjVxmmbu682UMCAqrfGHYZnYd4p7I6YchVEqJa-6Plkf_0J3o/s1600/Image07302013093103.jpg" height="200" width="150" /></a>This neighborhood of what was once uniform little 2 and 3 bedroom ranches is not exactly fashionable. No marble foyers, no coffered-ceiling great rooms, no homeowner's association with 20 different "approved color schemes" for your exterior paint, or sending you letters about the dead grass near the mailbox or warning you that the Christmas lights MUST be taken down by February 1st. Nope. In this neighborhood, what you start with is pretty plain, but <i>you can do whatever you want with what you've got</i>. And whether or not you've succeeded depends on whether you're looking at making it "home" or making it marketable. But like it or not, these formerly bland little boxes have a certain funky soul to them, and I have a feeling that their inhabitants call them "home". <br />
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Roger was 6 foot 4 inches tall; taller in his cowboy boots, which he wore often, had an impressive wavy mane of shoulder-length brown hair, and was often mistaken for a country music star (which, in Nashville, TN, was considered a good thing), particularly when he wore his cowboy hat in public (which he did often). Next to him, back in 1993, my 5'10", generously curvy self felt positively petite, or at least right-sized for the first time in my life. We went to honky-tonks, I learned to eat fried squirrel (yeah, it's kinda gross) off his Mama's plastic plates, hung out with his cousins, went for drives down dusty country roads in his huge pick-up truck, and drank beer. He had a high school diploma, worked on a printing press for a magazine printer and came over after 2nd shift with grease on his overalls, wearing a ballcap and smelling like ink. His vocabulary was limited, his curiosity about life even more so. He was 35 years old, and he lived with his Mama in a 3-room house, with a dog chained out front.<br />
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He was completely wrong for me, but I was about to turn 29, and we'd dated for almost 2 years while I frantically tried to remodel myself so I'd escape the dreaded disease of being single at 30. He got smart one night, and dumped me just two months before my birthday that year. Since then, I've often thought of thanking him. I was the one with the Master's degree, but he, apparently, had much more sense than I did and he saved me from completely transforming myself into Tammy Wynette.<br />
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A couple months after my first failed remodeling job, I somehow fell into the next one. I met Andre exactly 20 years ago tonight, at a country/western dance club on the north side of Nashville. He wasn't particularly tall, but he was handsome, in a rascally, brown-eyed way. He had a near-genius IQ and was working on his Ph.D at Vanderbilt, while holding down a full-time job as a technical astronomer. He had a great sense of humor. He was kind. He could fix anything. He was a great kisser, and a pretty good dancer. He had a hard time remembering anything I told him. He was a Rush Limbaugh fan. He had a habit of working for 24 to 48 hours straight, thinking of nothing but his latest grand plan until exhaustion overcame him and he could become inert for the next 24 hours. He could be jealous and controlling and saw a conspiracy in every news item. He kept a rack of loaded rifles on the living room wall of his apartment. He lived on junk food and guzzled Coca-Cola. His startle reflex almost broke my nose, the first time I kissed him good morning while he was still asleep.<br />
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And when, after two weeks of dating, he proposed, I thought, "I'm 29; I'm not going to get a better offer. I'd better jump at this one, and then just work on making this work." And thus began an 18-year soul-remodeling project that began with hope and the best of intentions, and welcomed 4 kids into the world, but eventually crumbled into abuse, despair and a single gunshot that ended it all for a man who just couldn't defeat his inner demons, no matter what I tried to shore up, re-decorate, re-frame, or remodel in our lives.<br />
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I've always liked to do art, mostly with fabric (quilts, sometimes clothes), or yarn (I knit and have tried crochet a few times). Sometimes I paint. I've been known to mess around with clay, and a few other crafting materials. I'm not particularly skilled. I can't draw, cut or sew a completely straight line without a straight edge. I modify nearly every pattern I make. I twist stitches and lose count of when I've perled and when I've knit. I make a lot of mistakes. I rip a lot of stuff out. (But sometimes I don't catch my mistake until the piece is finished and the result can be rather interesting. )<br />
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But the the thing that, if I do say so myself, makes my work beautiful in the end is that in the process of creating or re-creating, or modifying...I let the material speak to me. <br />
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As I work, I think about the person for whom I'm creating (my best work is always FOR someone), I sense the material in my hands, its essence, its <i>"ruach</i>" (I learned that word from an amazing pastor friend of mine who understands Biblical Hebrew). It tells me what it needs to be, and how that will fit with the person who will receive it. And that "essence", that "<i>ruach</i>" is what gives a piece of art its soul. <i>Ruach</i> is both "soul" and "breath" in Hebrew. It's what makes something itself and it's the breath of life that animates a being. In the beginning of Genesis, God adds<i> ruach</i> into the lump of clay, and behold! it's Adam, the human. In the 23rd Psalm, the one that many people, even non-religious people know, the one that begins, <i>"The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want..."</i> , there is a line a few verses later that says, <i>"<b>He restores my soul,</b>"</i> and "soul" here, in Hebrew, is<i> ruach</i>. So, when I'm in that zone where creating is going exceptionally well, it's because the soul of the material is speaking to me, and maybe just had a conversation with my sense of the soul of the person for whom I'm crafting. And maybe a bit of my soul gets all mixed in there with it, too... and something soulful, but definitely not standardized or marketable, is created and given away. <br />
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I've been realizing lately that I'm in another self-remodeling phase. For the first time in a long time, my life is mine to re-make. I feel like I'm starting with a bland little ranch house that's seen better days. It's been tempting to look at my soul's chipped paint, outdated fixtures and sagging floors and wish that I could somehow be a shiny, pristine, carefully-staged tract home with granite countertops, a two-story grand foyer, and track lighting (and grown kids). But that would be ignoring the ruach, wouldn't it? No work of art can come from that.<br />
Instead, the best I can do is freshen up the paint, (the department store make-up ladies love me) shore-up what I can (run, walk, bike,eat right), and try to turned "dated" into "classic". And most importantly, I have to find ways to make sure that the ruach is being listened to and allowed to shine through. <br />
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Another word for remodeling, particularly of an older home is "restoration". <br />
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"He leads me beside the still waters. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He <i><b>restores my soul</b></i>..." <br />
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Hmm... I guess I'm looking at a restoration job here; something soulful, rather than marketable, a good home for the right buyer someday, I hope.Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-33264903092124558752013-07-19T00:16:00.001-07:002013-07-19T00:16:26.575-07:00Sticks and stones, and words<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Digging my toes into the warm sand beside a crystal-clear alpine lake (Tenaya Lake, at 8,000 feet near Tioga Pass in Yosemite National Park) last Saturday, July 13, I watched something really curious. Fifteen-year-old Calvin and fifteen-year-old Joe, buddies since their days of sippy cups, overalls, and afternoon naps, made up a new game on the beach. It involved throwing stuff at each other, mostly small rocks and the occasional short stick. Calvin crouched in the water, scooping up handfuls of pebbles and pelted them at Joe, while Joe stood at the water's edge scooping up projectiles to hurl at Calvin. They howled and laughed like only teen-aged boys can, swooping and cracking from manly baritone to little-boy screech as they moved farther and farther apart, laughing louder as they called out "you got me!", before moving back into close range, and beginning again with increasing the distance. There was no trace of hostility in this game. It was as if the sting of the pebbles on their chests, arms, legs, and sometimes even heads couldn't possibly hurt at all. Sticks and stones, apparently, did NOT break their bones; in fact, they seemed to be drawing the boys into a testosterone-fueled, hilarity-laced ritual of bonding via chucking stuff at each other.<br />
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<i>"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" </i><br />
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It's odd how this one-year anniversary of Andre's death is teaching me about resilience, despite the sticks and stones that life has hurled in the past year.<br />
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Last Thursday, we buried Andre's ashes in an unadorned plot (we will eventually have a stone marker there) in the shade of a tree in a small, private cemetery on a farm road in the Central Valley. Our pastor, a wonderfully earthy, maternal, un-pretentious vessel of the Holy Spirit, arrived there a few minutes before we got there, and made sure that we were able to see and touch the real thing: the damp, crumbly dirt and the hole itself, stripping away the astro-turf and plastic-flowers that the cemetery manager had prepared. We didn't need to be shielded by fakery from the reality of what we were doing: committing what was left of Andre to a hole in the ground. When the time came, I was able to kneel on the dirt, getting mud on my jeans, and put the remains of my husband of 18 years into a hole in the ground, along with a few of the roses from our yard that Andre loved, roses that he said he grew for me. My daughter and her best-buddy, Megan put letters into the hole, letters they had written to Andre as part of their grief-processing. We all had an opportunity to shovel some dirt into the hole, and as we were doing this, my younger son, Mark decided that he needed to participate and say what was in his heart. <br />
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<i>"Fuck you, you son of a bitch! I outlived you!"</i>, he half-shouted, half-sobbed, tears slipping out and sneaking down his cheeks, before he retreated to his plastic chair in the half-circle under the trees. <br />
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There were a couple of gasps, but mostly there was permission to let go of the anger that mixed with grief at this last good-bye. <br />
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So there were rocks, and mud, and thorny flowers, and secret words on paper, and public swear-words, and nobody got hurt...sticks and stones<i> and </i>words that cannot hurt me. <br />
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And after the burial, we found a place on highway 120 that served handmade burgers and fries, and ice cream shakes in 51 flavors, on the way to our reserved campsite near Yosemite. Over the next couple of days we hiked and camped, and played in water wherever we could find it, and we stood in awe at the majestic rocks and towering trees in Yosemite National Park : more sticks and stone that didn't hurt us, but helped us heal instead. <br />
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Late on Saturday night, on the actual one-year anniversary, to the day and hour, I was feeling haunted, even as exhaustion had graciously worn my children down to sleep, and I texted a compassionate friend who had agreed to stay awake for me, in case I needed a voice and an ear on the other end of a phone line to get me through the haunted hour. We talked until 1 a.m., well past the worst of the haunting for me: words that not only<i> didn't hurt;</i> they healed. <br />
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Since then, I've had a couple of days of thinking about the possible hazardous sticks and stones of my kids' growing independence, of letting my older children stretch their growing wings: I put Calvin on a plane by himself, with instructions for connecting to a bus and then a ferry boat, on a first solo trip to see his uncle in Washington. I stood back and watched Patti try her hand at playing electric bass in her youth group praise band, her first-ever attempt at the instrument in public--no coaching on my part, no "vetting" of her music, just a ride to rehearsal and a report of "she totally kicked butt, even on the stuff she was sight-reading" from the leader of the band afterwards. <br />
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And I had a day this week that was full of words that, at the time, felt like more hurt than I could bear, but I'm still standing. In the space of one day, I had a heart-twisting phone conversation with someone very dear to me, a conversation that ended with what might be good-bye for good, and then later that day I got word that a neighbor had decided that the loud words (Ok, yes, we are a family of yellers, and we sometimes forget that the windows are open) coming from my house were a good reason to call the authorities to report <i>suspected child abuse (??!!) </i> (Is it just me, or is the irony here almost choking? A year AFTER my abusive husband's death, some neighbor decides to call the police about <i>yelling</i>? ) Painful, honest words, passive-aggressive untrue accusations, and I'm still standing. <br />
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So, to summarize the past week: sticks and stones flung: no damage.<br />
Words of several pointed shapes flung: no damage that can't be healed with the tincture of time. <br />
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It might be time to revise that bit of childhood doggerel.<br />
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<i>Sticks and stones might break my bones, but only if they're big enough and thrown with malice, AND words MIGHT hurt me, but I'll recover with time. </i><br />
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Nah... it's just not as catchy, is it?<br />
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<br />Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-21803276324838847822013-07-03T09:07:00.000-07:002013-07-03T09:12:38.964-07:00The only way out is throughA few months back, I wrote about a tactic I'd learned from a bicycling friend, for riding my bike through a narrow place. If you haven't read that post, you might want to check out that entry, about <a href="http://rideofthevalkyries.blogspot.com/2013/02/raise-seat-aim-for-central-point-just.html" target="_blank">finding a spot to focus on, just on the other side of the obstacle.</a> (if you click the highlighted text, you'll go to that entry). In short, I discovered that if I can find a pebble, a stick, a crack, even a dark spot on the pavement, just on the other side of the narrow gateway, I can ride my bike through without wobbling. <br />
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This month, which somehow started in the last week of June, with my eldest son's birthday, has been one continuous "narrow gateway", and I've been wobbling all over the place. There are painful memories of one of Andre's most serious loss-of-control/out-of-touch-with-reality moments that happened at the end of that birthday celebration last year, a moment that terrified us all, and a moment that, in retrospect, should have been the one that caused me to pack up the kids and whatever we could grab and leave the house. But we didn't. Who knows how differently, possibly worse, things would have ended if we had. Andre was not one to lose graciously, and he would have seen it as my "winning" if I had taken the kids and tried to leave then. <br />
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So,that night, as I had done so many times before, I simply talked him down, tucked the kids away in bed or in their rooms, and prayed for the strength to keep loving my husband out of his "moods", as I thought of them. <br />
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This year, we marked my son's birthday with three celebrations that were totally different from last year. On the weekend before his birthday he hosted some friends for several hours of harmless paintball-shooting mayhem, followed by pizza and cake. And then on his actual birthday, we were watching the Oakland A's beat the Cinncinnati Reds, and Calvin got to keep a ball thrown into the stands by Yoenis Cespedes, this year's star outfielder. The next morning, we packed up our gear and headed to Bodega Bay for some camping. <br />
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But no matter how much I have tried to wrap this time in fun, the constant "sneaker waves" of memories (I've explained those, too, in a previous post. <a href="http://rideofthevalkyries.blogspot.com/2013/01/rip-van-winkle-and-sneaker-waves.html" target="_blank"> Click here to read it. </a>) are making us all a little crazy: short-tempered one minute, depressed the next, soaking in the delights of summer: birthday parties, sunshine, baseball, beaches, outdoor time, and then suddenly we're lost, swamped in last year, and echoes of other years' bad times with Andre's illness. Multiply those waves by 5 people, and you get a picture of the emotional chaos around here this month.<br />
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This week, as the 4th approaches, the sneaker waves keep washing me back to last year's final getaway with Andre. Last year, on the 3rd of July, we hopped aboard a plane for Maui, courtesy of my generous employer, for a few days of adults-only R&R (and a couple of business meetings for me). That time, despite the gorgeous romantic setting of the west side of Maui: palm trees, beaches, rainbows, posh accommodations... was full of "I am suffocating and I don't know how much longer I can keep this up" moments. Looking back from the vantage point of the past year, that week becomes part of the final downward slide to Andre's death, and what could have been fond memories of Andre's last full week of life in a beautiful place are stained by that knowledge<br />
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Last night, I got brave and allowed myself to sit through the fireworks at the end of "The Singing Flag" , a patriotic musical revue that is performed locally every year on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th of July. Single shots are the worst, as they have the power to drag me back instantly to the moment of Andre's death. I've had some awful moments with small firecrackers and even doors slamming over the past year. But last night, after I breathed through the first couple of single firecracker shots, I was actually ok. <br />
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It probably helped that I was with my kids, with my youngest child sitting on my lap and critiquing the height, color, and pattern-spread of each shell as it exploded. And we were with our dear friends,Gina and Peter, the ones who arrived first on my doorstep the night of Andre's suicide. That awful night, Gina was the one who stepped right into thinking and managing for me--a job that would go on for months, but started in those first awful hours: making a plan to get the kids out, figuring out where we would go, what we would do that night, washing the blood off my feet and hands, and helping me through having my mugshot taken by the police, and insisting that a female police officer be permitted to go back into my bedroom (as I was not), to retrieve clean clothes for me to wear when I left the house. <br />
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Gina is fighting her own battle now. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in April, has had surgery, and is now bravely and calmly strategizing her way through chemotherapy, with radiation to follow. When I'm tempted to think that my life is complicated, I don't have to look very far to be reminded that it's not all that bad. Maybe that's a pebble on the path for me--some perspective. <br />
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Our upcoming trip to Yosemite (my pastor has called it "granite therapy") on the day we will put Andre's ashes into a grave is another pebble to steer for, on the way through this narrow gateway. Funny... to think of those massive slabs of granite as "pebbles"... <br />
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But I'm finding that I might need a much larger stash of pebbles on the pavement to get me through each hour of the next week or so. I guess I'd better start filling my to-do list with "pebbles", in case I need to toss some in front of me, to aim at them as I navigate this narrow gate that seems to go on forever. <br />
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Ok, maybe that's a bit too big a pebble... :-)<br />
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<br />Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-43240727680781329092013-06-14T23:21:00.000-07:002013-06-24T00:26:26.477-07:00Location, location, locationRecently, I was working on finding some real estate, but not the usual kind. It's just the latest turn in the journey toward the New Normal ( sometimes I worry that I'll end up in the old "Normal", and I think that's in Oklahoma... How confusing would that be? ... sorry, blonde font on...). <br />
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It's June 14th, and we're just under a month away from the 1-year-anniversary of Andre's death, and the kids and I are still digging out around here. Here are a few updates since the previous blog posting:<br />
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The "toy car" (a 1981 Porsche 928 that needed constant tinkering) has been sold and moved out of the garage, along with the majority of the spare parts that Andre had stockpiled. Some techy kid in Oregon now gets to figure out "what's that new noise?" and I have space in the garage for my minivan. <br />
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I'm deep into my master's degree program studies (and loving it, even though I'm struggling to keep up with the paper-writing load. But it's writing about psychology, so, really, how hard can that be for an enthusiastic armchair shrink and would-be journalist anyway? ).<br />
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The kids have finished school for the summer.<br />
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There's a delightful, thoughtful, funny,smart, music-loving man who seems to like hanging out with me these days and we see each other just about every weekend, and talk on the phone nearly every day.<br />
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On the day after tomorrow, I'll do my big run in the San Francisco Half Marathon (if you haven't yet donated to the American Brain Tumor Association, the organization whose work I'm supporting with my attempt at a run, here's the link: <a href="http://hope.abta.org/site/TR/TeamBreakthrough/TeamBreakSF?px=2163952&pg=personal&fr_id=2570">http://hope.abta.org/site/TR/TeamBreakthrough/TeamBreakSF?px=2163952&pg=personal&fr_id=2570</a>)<br />
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In early May, I had the unexpected... well, I won't call it "pleasure"... of emergency gallbladder removal, and a six week NO-training recovery period, which made<b><i> all </i></b>of the above a little bit more complicated than I might have liked, but thanks to the generous efforts of friends and neighbors, my kids survived my sudden hospitalization unscathed and I'm on the mend now. I'm seriously anxious about being the very last straggler across the finish line in Sunday's race, but surely that is pretty much a first-world problem. <br />
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And so, with all that running in the background, my latest project is getting my head and heart around the upcoming 1-year mark, figuring out how the kids and I will get ourselves through that tough anniversary, and working on what to do with Andre's cremated remains. In the immediate aftermath of his death, I knew I'd be dealing with this question, but at the time, it felt like too much to handle, and that is, I guess, the advantage of cremation: there's no rush on dealing with the remains. So, the large, heavy (seriously, who knew it would be that heavy?) wooden box, the size of a shoebox, with a brass plate engraved with the name, Andre Hedrick has been sitting inside a suitcase inside the back of my closet since last August, when the funeral home turned over his ashes to me.<br />
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...except that I'm feeling like it's TIME. And soon. So, I made a call to my pastor, and got the name of a local cemetery that has niches for ashes... and got, after an ugly bit of refusing to play "what do you want to spend?", a "bottom-line" price quote of $4,000 !!! I try very hard these days not to be rude to people, but I was so shocked that my usually empathetic, polite-to-others outlook dropped right to the floor along with my jaw and I said, "that's freakin' ridiculous!" The poor salesperson then scrambled around to give me a quote for " a place to scatter the ashes" for roughly half that price. (Um... if I wanted to just scatter them, I could do that for free, lady.)<br />
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She seemed puzzled when I told her that was equally ridiculous.<br />
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I unplugged my cell phone earpiece, pulled out of the parking lot, and began driving my errands, complaining in my head to God, the universe and anyone else who would listen about what a horrible racket the funeral industry is, preying on people in a vulnerable state. But it wasn't until I got myself out of my pity party mode and began to spend some time with my heart in Andre's better spaces, as much as I can access them, that I began to get an inkling of what to do. <br />
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As I rounded a corner and made the turn into the hardware store, the answer came to me. Andre talked often about how much he hated the Bay Area, and longed to move someplace out in the country and telecommute. Seemingly, out of the blue, I remembered a cowboy town, about two hours away, on Highway 120 in the Central Valley, a place where the Hedrick family always stopped on the way home from camp in the Sierra, to shop for Andre's favorite Wrangler jeans (by the numbers, MWZ13, 38x30 ) at Tractor Supply Company. It always felt like Andre's demons didn't reach him there, for that short space of time in a place that felt like a slice of Tennessee dropped into California. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiJHhXIk2L3iSbQ_N5tq4GtMpG0bWeKcliX4qj6f04_8ksCC6PDbQcJapvjI1_IX0B0_dKRsZ7GN8T69cq92MGdfepFe58WEHTQiphZ9soSTadsa0e_wWxVIR4QNP-xr6-yU51HyflV9XB/s1600/1040784-111221120035883-p.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiJHhXIk2L3iSbQ_N5tq4GtMpG0bWeKcliX4qj6f04_8ksCC6PDbQcJapvjI1_IX0B0_dKRsZ7GN8T69cq92MGdfepFe58WEHTQiphZ9soSTadsa0e_wWxVIR4QNP-xr6-yU51HyflV9XB/s1600/1040784-111221120035883-p.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a>With a call to the cemetery in that little cowboy town, I got a quote for a very affordable price, for a burial spot, with a headstone. The dear lady on the phone said, "You just give me 48 hours notice before you come, and I can be sure that you also have some chairs and a shade canopy for your burial, hon." I cain't help it (yes, that's "cain't", in that soft Southern/rural twang that always makes my shoulders drop), I just instinctively like people who call me 'hon'. A second call to my pastor got her enthusiastic response to the idea, along with her willingness to drive all that way and pretty much eat up her whole day, along with some logistical brainstorming on picking the exact date and time for the burial. She even helped me come up with a plan to take the children camping near Yosemite, so as to be "outta Dodge" on the anniversary itself. (Oh, and houseburglars, I just got the alarm re-connected, the video system working again, and the neighbors will be on-alert, so don't try anything stupid.)<br />
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With a change of location: from "where it's convenient" to "where it's right" and from self-pity to a last bit of tender remembering the man that Andre used to be, the marking of this horrible anniversary is feeling manageable. I know it won't be easy. Nothing so far has been easy, really. But somehow, I think we'll get through it with a minimum of horror and maybe some new memories of our first visit to Yosemite to soften the harder memories of mid-July 2012. <br />
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Last year, in the days immediately following Andre's death, a very dear friend made me a "mourning music" CD that contained this piece, among many others that spoke comfort to me. As we come up on the anniversary, the lyrics of this one are speaking to me again: (If you click the lyrics, you'll go to a YouTube video where you can hear the piece.)<br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40oxnhk8Sts" target="_blank">"For He shall give his angels charge over thee, and their hands shall hold and guide thee. They shall uphold thee in all the ways thou goest. They shall protect thee. "</a> <br />
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Tonight, I'm very aware of all those angelic hands that have brought me and the kids this far. And I'm so grateful. <br />
<br />Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-34861297720122756962013-03-26T22:43:00.000-07:002013-03-26T22:43:49.751-07:00Pain-free...what a concept....<b id="internal-source-marker_0.8694826054852456" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On a Saturday a couple of weeks ago, I ran the farthest I have run since last July, and I ran my fastest per-mile time ever. No, don't ask me for the numbers. They are NOT impressive in the world of runners. They are only important to me, as I work up from "I can't do this", to "I think I can, I think I can..." </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I ran pain-free, and that’s the part that got me thinking. But first, you need the backstory.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last Spring, in my "Before" life, I started training for a half-marathon for the first time in my life. I had never been a runner in my life. I was eager and had no idea what I was doing. </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I ran too fast, too often, too long. I paid no attention to form, or working up my mileage slowly, or running only every OTHER day, and within about 6 weeks, I was in such pain that I couldn’t make it through even a mile. It turned out that I had a stress fracture in my heel, achilles tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, and pain in my hips and knees. </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And I couldn’t fix it on my own. It wasn’t enough to simply focus on form, cut back the miles, walk more and run less, stretch, do exercises, use various muscle rubs, wear different shoes, buy expensive inserts... although I did all those things. So, I went to a sports-medicine doctor who x-rayed my painful foot and gave me the news: </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had to give up on running. Period. For six weeks. </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But I just couldn’t let go of my plan to run my first-ever half-marathon, so I discovered cross-training: I hobbled to the pool, wearing a boot-cast, strapped on my waterproof iPod and my float belt and I jogged in the water. I looked ridiculous. I really missed running, but there was no way that I could continue to run, even if I'd been given the all-clear. It just plain hurt too much. </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And one day I decided to hop on my bike (leaving my boot cast at home) and try riding along the miles of trails around here. Even though my bike at the time was the wrong size, too small, I knew within just a couple of miles that I had discovered a brand-new love. I LOVED riding my bike ! ( Very soon after that realization, I bought myself a right-sized bike, and we have been together ever since. )</span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPtsEV41UCg4DyWFTJVPfR0_Q4eHX6W2BcJuKEBn03wzPTtpDVvDSZQvxoCrl4D98lo1RJL5fp-q1-hhm6XopgZE9VabLneK9Wf1QNfBVYxi0X4YSOd254-X5djG2pyKdqsGdeJaUXquVx/s1600/right-sized+bike.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPtsEV41UCg4DyWFTJVPfR0_Q4eHX6W2BcJuKEBn03wzPTtpDVvDSZQvxoCrl4D98lo1RJL5fp-q1-hhm6XopgZE9VabLneK9Wf1QNfBVYxi0X4YSOd254-X5djG2pyKdqsGdeJaUXquVx/s320/right-sized+bike.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></b></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As the race day drew nearer,and my six-week forced rest ended, I hobbled through short, easy walk/runs, and continued to ride my bike and water jog. I really wasn’t healed all the way, though. It still hurt like crazy. On race day, I ran those 13.1 miles and finished with a big smile, but I was in an awful lot of pain. That was July 29th, 2012.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqQE9FWRL_CbdVZlg8SmM5_l8j1yzqanb3O9AdcwGmX-vEPTF8-Fws9soc0nJuWMvm4c4cOgzHfQ5pYIs05iSPtZXNihgQwOxX1F7uqw9aFPaWidc-CEdh0pJEALXed7SumrRLJmARhS93/s1600/mile8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqQE9FWRL_CbdVZlg8SmM5_l8j1yzqanb3O9AdcwGmX-vEPTF8-Fws9soc0nJuWMvm4c4cOgzHfQ5pYIs05iSPtZXNihgQwOxX1F7uqw9aFPaWidc-CEdh0pJEALXed7SumrRLJmARhS93/s320/mile8.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I hadn't run more than a few steps (ok, one 5K with my kiddo in November) until just 2 months ago. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But my recent Saturday run showed me definitively that time away has healed my messed-up feet, ankles, knees and hips, and as long as I take it easy and follow all the rules I’ve now learned about how to do this right, I think I’ll continue to run better and better. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On Saturday’s run, as I revelled in how much better it is to run pain-free, I was struck by the parallel to another area of my life where I’m inexperienced, did things wrong, and now I'm hurting: relationships. </span></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, I KNOW it’s too soon. I know that by whatever "Rules" are out there on this subject, I probably should not have been dating so soon after Andre's death, but again... I'm breaking rules in my search for my new life. It's been a difficult and very lonely 18 years of being Andre's wife and keeper, and I am longing to finally be loved, and be in love. </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> And I know it's too soon. </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I can know that, intellectually, and still not experience that to be true, just like I knew, intellectually, that I needed to be careful about training to run a half-marathon, but it didn’t stop me from doing what I felt somehow compelled to do, and I made some really dumb mistakes that got me hurt. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Feeling like I needed to "sneak" the beginning of my new life, but also feeling a bit defiant of “what everybody will think”, I stuck a toe in the waters of dating, and I met someone pretty special in late November. </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However I was not prepared for how intense things could get, after being so lonely for so long. (Ok, bring out the chorus of "DUH !!!!" ) Starting in January, things started to go badly, get worse from there, and there's just too much pain in that situation for me to keep "running" there. </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And as much as we both wish that we could just “cut back the miles a little” or “run a little slower”... Or, in relationship language, be "just friends”, I can’t do that. There are stress fractures in my soul at the moment, and as long as I keep trying to run in that relationship, I’m just adding deeper pain to my life. </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My pain-free 5.5 miles has helped me realize that only way to someday run pain-free is to stop running completely, in this relationship, to shake hands or hug, and walk away with grace and a smile (even if the tears are flowing). There are a couple of loose ends to wrap up soon, but that's what I know I have to do.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I'm hoping that there’s a bit of life-cross-training of some kind that will put me in touch with that “new love” that I found in riding my bike while race-cross-training.</span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Or maybe I just have to wear my “boot cast” on my heart and get used to the idea of being alone.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b><br />
The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Hebrews, says, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped-for; the conviction of things not yet seen" (Hebrews 11, v. 1)<br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, while I take the time for my stress-fractured heart to heal, I will continue to lace up my sneakers and put in my careful miles of training toward the big race in June <a href="http://hope.abta.org/site/TR/TeamBreakthrough/TeamBreakSF?px=2163952&pg=personal&fr_id=2570" target="_blank">(If you haven't visited my fundraising page for the American Brain Tumor Association and my run in the San Francisco Half Marathon, now would be a good time..click here.</a> ) , and I'll just have to keep trusting in what I do not see yet. </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I'll see you on the running paths and bike trails... I'll be the one who looks like she's running in slow motion, getting passed by the kids on tricycles. </span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">And sometimes, I have to admit, I'm not always the "Little Engine That Could"... the "I think I can, I think I can..." girl. Sometimes, I'm more like this one: </span></span><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>There goes my G- rating for this blog... Some strong language might offend sensitive viewers. Sorry, y'all. </b>Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-4334194108805109362013-03-21T00:20:00.002-07:002013-03-21T00:29:13.439-07:00My Half Out of the Middle, and other crimes<div>
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<b>"So, are you still sleeping on the same side of the bed, or have you moved to the middle?" </b></div>
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Sometimes, it takes a 20+ year old movie to get me thinking about how I'm living my life right now. <br />
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Last Sunday afternoon, right after church, I declared, "I need a nap.", and I went upstairs, shut the door, turned on my laptop and watched, <i>When Harry Met Sally </i> for the first time, all the way through, without interruption. <i>(If you've lived under a rock even longer than I have, and have no idea what this movie is about, click<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Harry_Met_Sally..." target="_blank"> here</a> for a synopsis</i>.) When Harry and Sally are still in their "friends" stage, while they are each still grieving the break-ups of their relationships with their respective partners, Harry asks Sally, </div>
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"<b>So, are you still sleeping on the same side of the bed, or have you moved to the middle?</b>" </div>
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And Sally says that she's moved to the middle. Harry agonizes that he's still sleeping on his original side of the bed, and that he feels weird if even his leg moves across the middle line. </div>
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Until very recently, I was just like Harry, sleeping only on "my" side. In fact, I hadn't even been un-making that side of the bed. Don't ask me why. It was just instinctive. That had been Andre's side of the bed. It never occurred to me to claim it. </div>
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And no, this isn't really a meditation on my bedroom. As usual, it's another instance of something small, something mundane and concrete that gets me thinking about something bigger. Interestingly, in my eagerness to re-decorate and change the master bedroom in the days and weeks right after Andre's death, I <i>knew</i> I had to make changes that would interrupt the constant re-runs of the horror movie in my head or I'd never be able to sleep in the room again, <i>but I was also rather worried</i> that somehow, I was making the room "too" mine, doing too many things according to only my tastes, and feeling like I should be deferring to someone, even though I knew that Andre was gone. </div>
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About a week ago, I had a dream that has stayed with me. Andre was in it, as he sometimes is, and that, in itself, is usually upsetting. This one, though was memorably upsetting because of what he was doing. He was, with the help of the husband of one of my dear friends, filling-up my house with junk; Andre's junk, computer parts and bits of household hardware, boxes of old textbooks, childhood tchotckes, car-parts, the very junk that I have spent<i> months</i> clearing out, throwing out, donating, boxing-up, trying to sell-off! And the other man was helping Andre fill-up my house with this crap by BUYING more of it on the internet and having it shipped to my house. In this dream, I felt powerless to stop them. It was just the way it had always been: it just wasn't my choice about what came in, what was spent, and where the stuff piled up. </div>
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I'm not an expert when it comes to interpreting dreams, but this one felt like it was sending a clear message: It's time to stop letting Andre, or my memories of Andre, or any other person, fill up MY house, my heart, the house of my spirit, with unwanted "stuff". </div>
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Not only am I free to sprawl across any part of my king-sized bed (notice I said "my", not "our") that I want, I am also free to begin choosing what stays and what goes from my life, regardless of what the "rules" used to be. <br />
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Recently, I challenged an old rule that went something like this: <br />
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<i>All house-fixes related to aesthetics are simply TOO impossible and cannot be accomplished without weeks or months of "thinking about it",multiple discussions of why it just can't be done, and then, perhaps a martyrdom operation in which the original single-item task turns into multiple, complicated processes with 100-year-engineering built in, along with several trips to the hardware store, and possibly one to the emergency room, and no further aesthetic input allowed.</i></div>
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In violation of that rule, one afternoon, I looked at my front entryway, and decided that although I'd been told that it was "impossible" to have a small lamp and a small table in the entryway because we HAD to keep a really ugly 1930's vanity there, AND there was simply NO WAY that an extension cord could be tacked along a baseboard to an outlet on another wall... too complicated, too impossible... it was time to have that entry the way I wanted.<br />
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<li> one trip to the thrift shop to donate the ugly mirrored vanity, </li>
<li>one trip to the hardware store for a couple of needed items, </li>
<li>one trip to TJMaxx for a lamp, </li>
<li>a little time spent crawling along the baseboard with some cable tacks and double-sided tape... and voila! rule broken. No trips to the emergency room. No martyrdom, and nothing bolted to the wall with 80-lb capacity molly bolts, centered precisely using four kinds of levels... RULE BROKEN</li>
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And shortly after that, I decided that I was fed up with having nothing but salvage-area computers with antiquated software that couldn't stream Netflix or use Skype or stream Pandora, so I broke this rule:<br />
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<i>Under NO circumstances are new computers to be purchased. New computers are full of suspicious things like versions of Windows that are younger than our oldest child, and possibly have things like webcams and disc-burners built in. This can't be good. Boneyard computers, frankensteined from parts and pieces, and loaded with versions of software that can't be purchased or supported anywhere are the only options. </i></div>
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You see, in order for me to have been able to watch <i>When Harry Met Sally </i>in the quiet of MY room, it required that I have a new laptop, not one constructed from bits and pieces, not running a bootlegged copy of an out-dated operating system... Yup, I actually bought myself a new computer 2 weeks ago, but it took two weeks to realize why I was feeling haunted by doing so. I'd broken a rule. You see how it starts? I break a rule by buying myself a computer, unassisted by an "expert", I watch a movie I never could have sneaked time for in my old life, I hear a question that gets me thinking, and before you know it, the rules are being broken all over the place, and I'm writing about it to an audience of who knows who. Who knows where it will stop. Oh, and I bought the computer with a portion of the proceeds of the sale of one of Andre's guns. (Yet another rule broken.) How's that for a trade? A bit of paranoia and death sold-off to a collector in Tennessee, in exchange for a bit of life and laughter that I purchased for myself.<br />
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The dream (well, waking it up from it, anyway), my realization that I could indeed "take my half out of the middle" of my king-sized bed, my adventures in decorating, and my heedless foray into the trackless jungles of Windows 8 are all wobbly-kneed moments of realizing over and over, and sometimes with tears, that I am freer than I realize.<br />
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And I am definitely wobbly: just like the day after Andre's memorial service when I removed my wedding rings, just like the day I spent with a dear friend, cleaning out Andre's clothes closet and emptying his dresser. I'm free, but I'm unused to being this free, and it's a little scary and a little lonely. There are times when I am holding in one hand the memory of how awful it was to live in the prison that was my marriage, and weighing it against strange comfort of the predictable, if confining and painful security of my previous life. It's in those moments, I feel like that character from another movie, <i>The Shawshank Redemption</i>, the character who simply can't handle freedom after being in prison for so long, and eventually returns. I think there have been some times lately when I've wished for a way to return. <br />
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I won't return, though, not to that life, and I know that eventually I will learn to live here on the outside, and learn to revel in my freedom. <br />
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For now, I'll start with moving ALL the pillow shams, and turning down the WHOLE edge of the covers, and climbing into the middle of my king-sized bed. <br />
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To sleep, perchance to dream... I'm hoping the dreams get better from here.<br />
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Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-73523731101165841562013-02-15T21:24:00.000-08:002013-02-15T21:24:11.459-08:00 Raise the seat. Aim for a central point just ahead of you.<span style="font-size: large;">I learned something recently from a guy I know.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Wait... that didn't sound quite right, did it? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Really, this is not a blog entry about </span><span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1024&bih=418&q=toilet+seat&oq=toilet+seat&gs_l=img.1.0.0l10.2998.13998.0.16356.58.23.23.12.21.0.160.2061.17j6.23.0...0.0...1ac.1.3.img.fxetd-DDKZw#imgrc=ga8tCI0o7Y7NAM%3A%3B1ajRPAv3fiBwQM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fcdn.coolest-gadgets.com%252Fwp-content%252Fuploads%252Fseat_open.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.coolest-gadgets.com%252F20070306%252Fantimicrobial-toilet-seat-goes-in-the-dishwasher-too%252F%3B268%3B320">that</a>.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But I <i>did </i>momentarily capture the attention of your inner 5-year -old, didn't I? (Or, for some folks, their inner 18-year-old... ) </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">(<i>Now kindly re-direct your inner kindergartener to something more appropriate, while consoling your inner teenager, that there will be some mention of long legs coming up... oh, and a brief bondage joke. You have been warned. </i>) </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Ahem... back to those life lessons. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm referring, of course, to what I have learned recently about <i>riding my bike. </i>And while I was riding my bike today, I got to thinking about how those lessons could be applied in the rest of my life. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Lesson 1- Raise the seat</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Ok, this one I did NOT learn from a guy, (</span>aren't you relieved?<span style="font-size: large;">) but it </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">is </i><span style="font-size: large;">something I discovered today on my ride. I'm 5'10" and most of my height is in my legs. I was the kid with the high-waters throughout most of my childhood. And now I refer to my summer collection of "cropped pants" when I can't find the extra-long jeans for my 36-inch inseam. After struggling along with a much-too-short bike for a couple of years, I'd given myself the gift of a right-sized bike last Spring, when I needed to cross-train for my first half-marathon. But I had never considered whether the height of the seat was properly adjusted to give me enough power in each pedal stroke. Today, it suddenly occurred to me to raise the seat a couple of inches, and... voila ! More power ! </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm thinking that there's a metaphor I need to consider: when I'm feeling like I'm just not making any headway, I need to consider <i>extending myself</i> a bit more, stretching a little beyond my current comfort zone, if I want to experience my full power. </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Lesson 2: Aim for a central point <i>just ahead of you</i>.</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This lesson was the one that actually got me thinking about how what I learn on my bike applies to my life. <b>And it's the one I learned from a guy. :-) </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I had a conversation, a couple of weeks ago, with a friend who is a competitive cyclist, and a pretty helpful guy when it comes to advice. We were talking about that wobbly feeling that you get when you have to somehow thread yourself and the bike through a narrow place on a ride: gates, a tight overtake-and-pass, or riding in a group. Take a look at the photo above and notice those poles at the end of the crosswalk. All along my ride on the bike trails around here, I have to ride through those gateways. Sure, they don't look all that narrow, until, as a newbie cyclist, I try to ride through one, and I find myself feeling wobbly and having to slow way down, which makes me even more wobbly, which can lead to crashing into one of the poles. They are a kind of <a href="http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/odyssey1/ss/062508POdyssey_6.htm">Island of the Sirens</a> for a casual cyclist like me: the poles have a kind of magnetic pull, and a swerve to either side can bring me to destruction, or at least bruises and embarrassment. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And my friend's advice was to <i>aim for a central point</i>, <i>ahead of you,</i> just beyond the narrow place. I tried it today for the first time, during my 22-mile ride along the Contra Costa Canal Trail</span><span style="font-size: large;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And it worked ! As I approached the gateway, I chose a specific leaf, pebble, or even a dark spot on the pavement, a few feet past the gateway, and I maintained speed and sailed right through, again and again, gate after gate. It didn't work as well when I just told myself to "look past the gate". It seemed like I needed a specific, visible point to aim for.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In my life these days, my own magnetic, crash-inducing, poles-on -the-trail Sirens are guilt, grief, self-doubt, and a kind of paralyzing depression that makes me a lousy mom and a real drag as a friend. Each time I get "ambushed" either by a holiday, or some kind of family milestone, or something that reminds me of the difference between my life now and where I wish it was, I find myself wobbling dangerously close to these monsters. (</span>If you've forgotten the story of <a href="http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/odyssey1/ss/062508POdyssey_6.htm">Odysseus and the Sirens </a>since your junior high school English class, click on the blue text, and you can grab a quick About.com fix.) <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So... what to do? In the story, Odysseus had his crew put wax in their ears and then lash him to the mast while they sailed past the rock where the Sirens were. But you know, if I'm going to have a bunch of sailors tie me up, it had better be for something way, <i>way</i> more fun than simply ignoring me while we sail past some old rock. (</span><i>Of course</i>, I'm kidding... my mom reads this blog...and so do my pastors<span style="font-size: large;">.) </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But I CAN "aim for a central point" ahead of me. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">If an emotional "narrow gate" on the calendar is looming, and I feel myself getting wobbly, and I'm pulled toward a crash, I can stay aware of those "poles", but keep moving toward a specific, visible point, just beyond that gate. I have a feeling that the whole "just think of your future" thing isn't going to work. It's too vague, and frankly, there are too many future scenarios that are not at all cheery, if my mind chooses to go that way. Instead, I need to identify the possible upcoming narrow spots, and then find or plan a specific event, preferably something involving doing for others, extending myself (see Lesson #1), that will occur just past the opening of the narrow place I have to travel through. </span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">March... no problems that I see...April / Easter... I think that one's pretty well covered. A celebration of the victory of life over death, of resurrection, renewal, redemption... I think that one won't involve too much Andre-loaded wobbling. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">May... a bit more challenging. That one is going to require some spotting of specific pebbles on the pavement. I've got a birthday in the month, and then there's what would have been our 19th wedding anniversary, a week later, on the 28th. I've got a bit of time to spot those pebbles, I guess. One possible "pebble" might be my half-marathon run with the <a href="http://hope.abta.org/site/TR/TeamBreakthrough/TeamBreakSF?px=2163952&pg=personal&fr_id=2570">American Brain Tumor Team Breakthrough, on June 16.</a> (</span>If you click on the blue text, it will take you right to my fundraising page. How's that for shameless self-promotion? It's for a good cause, though<span style="font-size: large;">.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">June...maybe I'll still be running off the high of the half marathon for part of the month, but I'll need a pebble to steer for as I approach my eldest son's birthday on the 25th. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">July brings us to the one-year mark, and it might take more than steering toward a pebble to keep me from wobbling. But that's where my amazing friends come in. Somehow, I'll get through it... or maybe somebody will round up a crew of sailors to do that lashing-to-the-mast thing...No, wait...I didn't say that, did I? </span>(No worries, Mom, I really am kidding...<span style="font-size: large;">) </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Hebrews 12:1-2 </span><br />
<span class="text Heb-12-1" id="en-NIV-30214" style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run<sup class="crossreference" style="font-size: 0.65em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-30214A" title="See cross-reference A">A</a>)"></sup> with perseverance <sup class="crossreference" style="font-size: 0.65em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-30214B" title="See cross-reference B">B</a>)"></sup>the race marked out for us,</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> </span><span class="text Heb-12-2" id="en-NIV-30215" style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><sup class="versenum" style="font-size: 0.75em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;">2 </sup>fixing our eyes on Jesus,<sup class="crossreference" style="font-size: 0.65em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-30215C" title="See cross-reference C">C</a>)"></sup> the pioneer<sup class="crossreference" style="font-size: 0.65em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-30215D" title="See cross-reference D">D</a>)"></sup> and perfecter of faith.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm thinking that will make a pretty good-sized pebble, in addition to any of the other ones I might need to line up. </span><br />
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<br />Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-42901133561165250012013-02-14T00:10:00.002-08:002013-02-14T09:43:55.418-08:00Roses and AshesWhen I was an unathletic, chubby, awkward 3rd grader, there was only one boy in my class who DIDN'T call me fat, <i>didn't</i> try to trip me in the hallways, and even laughed <i>with </i>me over things that we <i>both</i> found funny. So, when Valentine's Day that year came around, and we all put our little hand-addressed Valentines in the pink and red paper-covered distribution box in Mrs. Dolcetti's classroom, the only boy who got a Valentine from me was Donnie S. I found out, years later, that the gesture was a bright spot for a lonely little boy who was going through a rough patch himself at the time.<br />
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Years later, when we bumped into each other at a summer resort where I was working, between sophomore and junior years of college, Don (no longer "Donnie") greeted me with "Val!! You were the only person who sent me a Valentine when we were in 3rd grade! I'll never forget that." Many years after that, at our 30th high school class reunion, my 3rd-grade buddy reminded me, yet again, of that Valentine's Day so long ago. Funny how some gestures take on a life of their own.<br />
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Over the years, I've found myself desperately wishing that someone special would, just once, make a little effort, with no hinting from me, and surprise me with a rose, or a poem, or a card... something a little romantic<i>, something that showed a little thought for me.</i><br />
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And as I've gotten to know the men in my life: a couple of boyfriends and then my husband, I've realized that I need to have some compassion for the way guys feel this time of year. I've come to understand that Valentine's Day, in that Hallmark card/Kay Jewelers/1-800-Flowers frame is a pretty intimidating thing for them: high expectations, unfamiliar "stuff", and the looming possibility of screwing it up. <br />
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Of course, it's not the "stuff" that I was wishing for, it was that sense of being thought of, valued, loved.<br />
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During my years with Andre, I learned to just roll with whatever happened or didn't happen that day. <br />
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There were many "oops, I forgot" years, a few last-minute dashes to the store at 10 p.m on the 14th, and one year when I was presented with an Alan Jackson CD....yup. And then there's the story that's still told among the sales staff at a local lingerie boutique. It seems that one February, Andre decided that I needed a few lacy nothings and went into Sarah's Bare Necessities to find them. He told the sales clerk my size and had her pick out a few things to show him on the hangers. He then took the items one by one, and threw them on the floor, nodding approvingly. When the woman demanded to know what he was doing, he reportedly grinned his rascally grin and quipped, "Oh, I just want to know what it's going to look like once I get it home." To his credit, it does reflect some degree of thought and effort. It was one of the better years. Another year, it was clear that his wait-til-the-last-minute strategy made the search for "just the right card" a little challenging. I got a card that year from the Hispanic collection, entirely in Spanish. And it was actually a pretty romantic card. My Spanish is pretty good. Since Andre's command of the language began and ended with the Taco Bell menu , I don't think he chose the card for its message, but for the fact that it had what appeared to be sentences of some kind of text, some pictures of roses, and a decided lack of Tweety Bird or Power Rangers on it. (See above, re: "possibility of screwing up") Again, looking back, I'd give him points for at least trying.<br />
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And today, it's the 13th of the month (Andre died on July 13), and tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and I'm feeling a little fragile. If there ever were a day to make sure that there's kleenex around every corner, it's been today. There won't be any romantic gestures for me tomorrow, or even any failed attempts at one. I could give in to feeling sorry for myself. In fact, there have been moments all day when I have done just that. (Investment tip: Kleenex Corporation is a buy and hold stock for a while.) <br />
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But today is also Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, a season of reflection and repentance that leads up to Easter. This evening, I'm wearing on my forehead a reminder of a gesture of love that was planned before I was even a twinkle in my parent's eyes. Tonight, I participated in a service that reminds us that the love of God begins with a declaration that we are beloved creations, created in the image of our creator, declared, "very good" ... and that with our free will, we have the capability, indeed the propensity to screw up, AND that our screw-ups are forgiven: now, tomorrow, next year, and on and on forever.<br />
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Tonight's service included the writing of short anonymous confessions on little pieces of paper and tucking them into the "stones" of a replica of the Wailing Wall (I love the creative worship team at my church--never the same thing twice) and the imposition of ashes --the burned and ground-up remains of last Palm Sunday's palm branches--on our foreheads, in the shape of a cross, a reminder of the length to which God goes to prove how loved we are. As I struggle with my inevitable guilt--over Andre's death, over feeling relieved that the nightmare of life with him is done, guilt over moving on, guilt over not being the 100% wonderful mom I should be... it's a great relief to be given time to write down the worst of it, fold it up on a little slip of paper, and let go of it, and to do so in the community of people who have supported me every step of this journey, people who translate God's love into gestures of love that are far too real, far too thoughtful to have ever come from a card store or a florist stand.<br />
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In a frame that is way, way bigger than Hallmark, Kay Jewelers, or 1-800-flowers could ever be, I think I've received my love note for this year. It's just not the red/pink/sparkly one I might have been wishing for. But, once I dry my eyes, re-apply the mascara, and get over my self-pitying self, it really is way more than enough. <br />
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Oh, and I actually <i>did </i>get surprised with a rose today. <br />
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Even though I pruned my rose bushes mercilessly in preparation for the winter, months ago, I guess <i>Somebody</i> knew I'd need one rose, right about now. I found this one on the bush this morning, and brought it inside before the cold air at night zaps it. <br />
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Yup, I think I'll get through the day ok. <br />
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<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
<span class="woj">“A new command <b>I</b> give <b>you</b>: <b>Love</b> <b>one</b> <b>another</b>. <b>As</b> <b>I </b></span><b style="font-size: 16px;">have</b><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><b style="font-size: 16px;">love</b><span style="font-size: 16px;">d</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><b style="font-size: 16px;">you</b><span style="font-size: 16px;">, so</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><b style="font-size: 16px;">you</b><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">must</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><b style="font-size: 16px;">love</b><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><b style="font-size: 16px;">one</b><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><b style="font-size: 16px;">another</b><span style="font-size: 16px;">. </span><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+13:33-35&version=NIV" style="color: #b37162; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: initial;">John</a> 13:34</div>
Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-27874786241627696052013-02-07T00:03:00.001-08:002013-02-07T00:10:48.465-08:00The Art of Living with "CRAFT"I've been fretting lately... well, more than fretting...try, "obsessing" and "apologizing ad nauseam" about how my short-term memory is just trashed. If it isn't written down, and even sometimes when it is, I'll forget whatever I just promised to remember. I look at even the simplest form to fill out and my mind goes blank. I survey the piled-high jumble in the room that was once my husband's office and sanctum sanctorum, intending to get started on the cleaning-out, and I freeze, and close the door. <br />
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It's been over 6 months, after all, and I keep thinking I should be farther along than this. <br />
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My experts tell me that my foggy brain is actually normal for this part of the journey, that my mind still just has too much noise in it; noise generated by grief and post-traumatic stress, to be able to keep thoughts organized, to remember that there's a form I'm supposed to fill out for the Kindergarten book sale, and another one to update for the Middle School ministries, and one for the high school Band Boosters, and there's some carrots in the fridge that I'd meant to make into a shredded salad, and a 40lk that I need to start the rollover on, and the dog hasn't been out to pee for HOURS... and did I forget that I put the kettle on to boil to make a french press of coffee?<br />
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And it seems like I've forgotten how to cook. No, really. Most of the time, I simply can't face the prospect of cooking, but lately, when I've tried, the end result is not as good as I've usually been able to produce in the past. And often, lately, it's downright awful. It's as if I can't stay focused on any one task long enough to avoid making mistakes. So, I'm letting my older kids work on their kitchen skills, and nobody's starving. I've stopped asking "what can I bring?" when I'm invited to a party. That used to be an excuse to show-off my cooking creativity. But now I just breezily offer, "how about I bring some drinks?" <br />
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But as seems to be the case so often, in this blessed life of mine, filled with wise, generous, loving, and hilarious people, I've gotten some help from a friend. This friend has given me a very handy label to hang on my condition, a diagnosis. And you know, don't you, that once you have a diagnosis for those annoying symptoms, you can relax and focus on treatment. <br />
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Last Sunday afternoon, I was sitting on Dave and Kelley's cozy couch, savoring a plate of Dave's amazing red beans and Carolina-style pulled pork, watching the 49'ers get whupped by the Ravens, and silently giving thanks that I'd re-connected recently (well, 2 years ago, when we bumped into each other in the lobby of Davies Symphony Hall) with yet another of my college friends who now lives in the Bay Area. Given my current status as a failure in the kitchen, I was especially appreciative of Dave's culinary gifts (and post-college chef-training). Seriously, those beans were a work of art... I remarked that the kids and I hadn't eaten this well in weeks, because I'd forgotten how to cook, and forgotten a bunch of other things... I started in on my obsessive litany of what my unreliable brain couldn't do. <br />
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And Dave stopped me. <br />
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"It's called 'CRAFT', dear, 'Can't Remember A Fucking Thing'. We all have it now. It's part of being old", he said <br />
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And now I have a diagnosis. I have CRAFT. <br />
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And since I can't remember a f*cking thing, it's time to accept the diagnosis and start working on the treatment.<br />
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While I do my healing work with my therapist, and perhaps do some investigation into better-living-through-chemistry, I've got to find a work-around. I'm working on hiring a professional organizer to create some CRAFT-proof paperwork-handling systems, so the bills get paid on time, and the tax-related documents are all findable at tax time... and she'll need to create a household chores rotation for the kids, so I can stop being the screaming meanie mom who assigns three different kids to load the dishwasher, about 3 minutes apart, and then watches the kids shrug and wait to see who's really going to end up scraping away Rhys' un-eaten macaroni and cheese. It might put an end to the endless fights over whose turn it REALLY is to clean the kids' upstairs bathroom, affectionately (or is it "infection-ately" ?) dubbed, The Swamp. <br />
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So, I've been thinking lately about what I might want to do with my trembling wild-bunny mind, once the scramble to keep the paperwork, the wetwork, and the work that requires a rubber gloves, a strong stomach, and a big bottle of Kaboom, is managed. <br />
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And I've decided that for now that I'll keep writing, keep living in "The Now" (if you haven't read Eckardt Tolle's<i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Now-Spiritual-Enlightenment/dp/1577314808/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1360223592&sr=8-1&keywords=the+power+of+now+by+eckhart+tolle"> The Power of Now,</a></i> get it, and devour it, please) and I'll see what sense memories I can store, and see how long I can store them. <br />
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You see, when I'm old and <i>really</i> forgetful, it won't really matter so much that I failed to get the permission slips signed until the very last minute, or that the boys' long-sleeve white shirts for school chapel had to be sponged-off at the last minute, because I forgot to get that load of laundry done before Wednesday morning, or that I cooked the ham too long, or forgot the salt in the biscuit recipe. But I will want to remember:<br />
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*the plane-landing sound that my 6-year-old makes when he swoops in on me, suddenly, for a "hugga"<br />
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*my daughter's homemade cafe au lait, first thing in the morning, and her smile of accomplishment when she hands me a mug of it.<br />
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*the slow-growing spicy hotness of Dave's amazing red beans (like, seriously, Dave, publish the recipe or make a YouTube instructional video or something...), and the feeling of being cared-for that comes from someone else cooking for me and my kids.<br />
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*the French horn imitation of Canadian geese over Newhall Park as the sun rises during my early morning walks.<br />
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*the feel of cashmere and superwash merino yarn as it slides through my fingers when I knit<br />
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*the perfect cartoon-character parentheses formed by the corners of the smile of a certain blue-eyed friend<br />
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*the delightful, contagious, cackling laugh of another friend, a laugh that carries over the conversation of dozens of people.<br />
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*the eccentric street-theatre of my neighbor across the street, meticulously sweeping her sidewalk after dark every night, by the light of her handheld flashlight--and the barely suppressed laughter of a friend who sat with me in my front yard one autumn night, sipping wine and revelling in the strangeness of suburbia.<br />
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*the pride in my 10 year old's face as he shows me how he took the "guts" from a broken toy helicopter and turned it into a mobile weapons system to be mounted on the back of his remote-controlled toy monster truck. <br />
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*the happily repetitive plunk-plunk-plunka-plunk of my 14 year old, teaching himself to play acoustic bass in every spare minute he has.<br />
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I have faith that, eventually, my CRAFT symptoms will calm down, while I train a less-flighty part of my brain to handle the things that must get done. But while Life has handed me this moment when I can't control my CRAFT, I've decided to focus on the Art, the here-this-moment-gone-the-next work of Art that is my life right now, a life that consists of an endless parade of "nows" that I may or may not remember, 5 minutes from now. <br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><b>2Peter 3:8 "<span style="background-color: #fffefd; color: #001320; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: justify;">But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day"</span></b></i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fffefd; color: #001320; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #fffefd; color: #001320; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Hmm...With God, a thousand years=one day, so if I do the math... that means (calculating furiously)...um...that's a lot of "now" s to live and enjoy, and God is with me, and keeping track of me, in every single one. I guess I can relax a little and just live the moments as they pass.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #001320; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">...Now, what did I come into this room for again? (That's called, theologically, "thinking about the hereafter", as in "<i>what in the world did I come in here after</i>?" ) </span></span></div>
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<br />Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-83528239383276686012013-01-30T00:20:00.001-08:002013-01-30T00:20:17.090-08:00Performing a backwards "Ariel" (apologies to Little Mermaid fans)The <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J8rKIS-66E">"Laudate Dominum" </a>movement of Mozart's "Solemn Vespers" is one of the loveliest pieces of music written for a soprano and chorus. Its long, lyrical phrases climb through the warm part of the voice into the light, silvery part of the voice, and then return to earth. It's a piece I fell in love with the first time I heard it. <br />
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And it's a piece I've only sung twice in public. The story of the first time I sang it, as an "<i>oh, did you know you're doing the solo this morning</i>?" surprise on a Sunday morning, is one that I regularly dust-off for laughs at dinner parties. It's only funny because it's true, and because nearly every choir singer I know has had a nightmare that goes like that... kinda the singer's equivalent of the "giving-an-important-presentation-at-work-but-you-forgot-to-wear-pants" dream.<br />
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The second time I sang it in public was this past Sunday, for my beloved church congregation, who, I swear, would smile and tell me I was wonderful, even if I got up and sang "Jesus Loves Me" in whole notes, acappella, and flat. This time, although it wasn't that bad, I am in a season where my voice is not exactly full of youthful, crystalline purity. The seasonal coughing-bug, and the crying I've done lately (see my post on <a href="http://rideofthevalkyries.blogspot.com/2013/01/rip-van-winkle-and-sneaker-waves.html">"sneaker waves" </a> ) have conspired, perhaps along with age, I don't know, to make my vocal folds a bit thicker and less responsive than they were even a year ago, and I can get away with far less in terms of mindless singing. It's a different voice right now, and it's all I have. There's not much flash or dazzle to it, no effortless vocal spin. It was a different feeling, singing with my ego stripped down to "this is all I have, and it will have to be enough", and then hearing that people were moved by it, liked it. <br />
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It was one of a number of moments lately, of finding my voice, and discovering that it has changed.<br />
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And it's not just my singing voice that I'm finding, and finding changed. I have written already about "silencing" myself to keep the peace in my marriage to Andre, and about not stating clearly who I am, what I'm capable of, and what my boundaries are. But lately, I'm finding that I have to somehow tune-up that voice as well.<br />
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Recently, I have been working on my "personal statement" , a kind of short autobiography that I need to write as part of my grad school application. Since I like to write, it didn't really feel like work, until I dug into it and realized that I was going to have to advocate for myself, make some clear statements about who I am and what I am capable of. <br />
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And then it felt impossible. <br />
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A recent blow to my self-confidence, unrelated to singing or writing, had penetrated deeper than I had first thought, and my inner critic was completely in-charge. So, I automatically reverted to my least-offensive voice. I softened and equivocated. I filled each paragraph with "perhaps" and "possibly". I understated things. I used tepid, weak verbs : "read" instead of "devoured", and "interested" instead of "fascinated", "most interested" instead of "I loved". <i>And I didn't even realize I had done it.</i> I sent it off to several friends for a read-through, and got the usual, wonderfully encouraging responses, but somebody was "listening" to it instead of just reading it, and he remarked, "this is not your usual voice; it's not the one I hear in your other writing", and he was right. With that bit of feedback, and some specific suggestions from another friend about what, specifically, I was glossing-over and leaving-out, I re-wrote the essay. I found my voice again. I'll be sending it out in a day or so.<br />
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With those two warm-ups, I had one more opportunity in recent days that required me to find my voice, admit how scared I was to use it, and then, feeling the fear, move forward anyway. <br />
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There's a person in my life who really has no right to be in my life. This person is so unhealthy in her relating patterns that she is toxic, both to me and to my children. It's been seven years since she was told to get out of our lives, but in that time, she had gotten used to contacting Andre and bargaining with him, trailing the promise of money, using guilt, playing innocent, whatever tactic appeared to work for a while. Since Andre's death, this person has tried repeatedly to contact me, to contact the children, to find a way to insinuate herself into our lives, again using money and guilt.<br />
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And this week, I finally reached my "enough is enough" point. I dread, dread, dread having ANYONE mad at me, unhappy with me, annoyed with me. I don't even like to have to flag down a waiter to ask for water. It's a weakness of mine. I might look big and assertive and able to take care of myself, but I'm a wimp when it comes to standing up for myself. It doesn't take much to get my Irish up on someone else's behalf (someday, I'll have to share my "I-punched-a-swim-coach" story... talk about misguided righteous indignation...) , but it's not at all the same when I have to face confronting someone on my own behalf. <br />
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But again, I'm learning that I have an incredible support system in place. There are so many wonderful people who, for some reason, love me enough to cheer me on, offer suggestions both serious and outrageous, and hold me accountable to do what has to be done. I drew on those suggestions and support, wrote out my "script", made my phone call, and somehow survived. <br />
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In story of<i> The Little Mermaid</i>, Ariel gave up her voice, in order to be loved. I guess I'm doing a backwards Ariel these days. (Try not to picture me doing a backwards arial--not with a cup of coffee in your hand, at least. Keyboards are expensive :-)<br />
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With the help of people who love me, I'm taking back my voice, and I'm learning to use it in new ways. <br />
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Psalm 96 begins, "Sing to the Lord a new song..." <br />
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Ok. I'll try.<br />
<br />Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-66028238749777520632013-01-20T00:02:00.000-08:002013-01-20T00:02:37.443-08:00Rip Van Winkle and the Sneaker WavesNo, that's not a new pop band on my kids' iPods, although I kinda wish it was...<br />
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As of last Sunday 1/13/13, we passed the six-month marker since Andre's death. We're halfway through this first trip through the calendar, with all the ambush-filled dates of holidays, birthdays, and "firsts" of all kinds. And right among the predictable grief waves connected to these significant dates, there's a "sneaker wave" of grief that hits when I least expect it, when the sun is shining and there's only a slight breeze, just like the actual sneaker waves that the weather folks warn us Northern Californians about: you're playing on the beach, in a tidepool, sitting on a rock, and WHOOSH, one of these waves washes up and knocks everybody over, sometimes sweeping people away and drowning them. The grief that has been washing up lately, unpredicted in many cases, has mixed with the everyday frustrations of life, until it's hard to tell what's grief and what's just the growing pains of life as I continue to move through the calendar.<br />
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In my most recent round of "consolidation" (doesn't that sound nicer than "shovelling-out"?), I re-discovered, in a specially-designed space in the console of my minivan, a forgotten stash of cassette-tapes. (For those of you born after 1980, cassettes were an ancient, pre-MP3, pre-CD format for music...ask your parents.) . It was mostly stuff from my life before I was Andre's wife, before I was the mom to the four Hedrick kids. It was tapes of a Celtic folksinger named Ed Miller, The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPjqP8fVdJ4&playnext=1&list=PL8A4725A116C43767&feature=results_video">Austin Lounge Lizards</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryNmSknQx_I&list=AL94UKMTqg-9CbP6NbrXpT9DypMRp1Hs7G">Tish Hinojosa</a>, and the Paul Simon "Graceland" and "Rhythm of the Saints" albums, along with an obscure skiffle band that played the campus quad at UT Austin back in the late 80's, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXqrsfExqEU">Twang Twang Shock-a-Boom</a> . I think I must have stashed those tapes in the only place in my life that still had a cassette player, once it became clear that my days as a minivan-driving homeschooling mom had begun in earnest. They hadn't been played in the car in a long time, although a few songs found their way, via iTunes, to my iPod running mix last year, in preparation for the half-marathon.<br />
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When I unearthed those music tapes, and started playing them on my rounds of errands, it felt like I had opened a "time-capsule" of who I was before I began altering myself to fit my chosen role. Playing those tapes, (and singing along, drumming on the steering wheel and "seat-dancing", much to the chagrin of a certain teen and pre-teen), I was re-introduced to that person who ALWAYS sang in the car, a person who knew that Saturday mornings were made for morning shopping, and coffee out with a friend. That person was an unabashed liberal, a cat-lover, a Shiner-Bock drinker, a fan of ethnic music of all kinds, an avid Spanish learner, a wearer of cute undies, a connaisseur of the art of harmless flirting, and an expert flash-mob dinner-party hostess. ( I once even turned an ironing board and a red bed-sheet into a Christmas buffet table in my tiny studio apartment, and felt no need to apologize... can you imagine?<br />
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It feels like an odd, RipVanWinkle awakening after 18 years of silencing and shrinking myself into a kind of hyper-vigilant coma. In that state, I was acutely aware of needing to keep things stable, of needing to buffer my husband from the world and the world from my husband, of needing to keep the kids out of my husband's cross-hairs... and to do that, I had to mostly anesthetize the silly, sensual, passionate, spontaneous side of myself for the soul-surgery required, that would make me capable of living within the confines of my role as Andre's keeper, and then later, my kids'safety buffer. I decided that it was pretty hazardous, and mostly futile to stick up for myself. I learned to deaden and silence, to quickly accept blame, apologize, and work on the "fix".<br />
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In my non-expert opinion, the homeschooling mom-gig, even in ideal circumstances, calls for a certain necessary buttoning-down of the self. There just wouldn't be hours in the day, and energy left in the body to lobby on behalf of a few causes, work on those samba knee/hip movements, phone a few friends for a potluck dinner party, try-on something cute from the clearance rack AND have the meatloaf on the table for 6 at 6, and get all the lesson planning done for the next day, while taking the kids through their various assignments at home while the kids are home all day.<br />
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And in my case, the to-do list <i>also</i> included keeping the kids from triggering their Dad's rages, keeping them quiet while Andre' wandered around the house with a conference call phone on his head, cleaning up after his various snack-food-making sessions, and grabbing the remote to turn down the volume on Fox News when he'd left the room. A few parts of me had to be chopped-off, or at least folded-away in order to fit in the box I had chosen to live in when I married Andre. ( Make no mistake: I chose the box, and I did my self-alteration to fit it. I am not a victim. I'm a person who made a series of mistakes, and I'm an unbelievably blessed person to be given now, under outrageously ugly circumstances, a second chance at life, both for me, and for my kids. )<br />
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With Andre's death has come a kind of un-planned-for, un-guided, un-buttoning of my boxed-in state. The kids and I are actively in the process of calling-out non-functional (Ok, we <i>do</i> call it "crazy"..sorry. ) thinking when we spot it in our patterns of interacting. Andre's pictures are gone from the walls, except in the kids' rooms where they have each chosen to keep a picture of their dad. I've rearranged, and continue to re-arrange the furniture and decor. I'm selling-off whatever I can of his money-pit hobbies. And I'm beginning to let my heart out to play a little in the world of adult relationships, pitfalls and all. <br />
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And so, the sneaker waves of grief continue to roll in, and I'm doing my best not to let anybody get swept out and drowned in them. Lately, I'm finding myself clinging to the rocks of my close friends, and trying to remember the other piece of advice we hear on the Northern coast--don't turn your back on the sea. For me that means knowing and accepting that I can't predict when the waves will hit, but trying not to deaden this process of exploration and growth by living in fear of pain. <br />
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"<i>For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of love and of power, and of self-discipline"</i><br />
2 Timothy1:7<br />
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Not even sneaker waves can wash that away.<br />
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Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-13389245381747582492013-01-01T22:02:00.002-08:002013-01-01T22:02:22.168-08:00Breaking trails through this year's snow<div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Maybe it's because I grew up in New England, playing on the neighbors' sledding hills in the winter, but I LOVE the snow. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Given where I live now, it's easy to forget how much I love the snow, until I'm taken by surprise all over again by it. It's a "do-I-laugh-or-cry?", breath-catching moment, like what happens when someone surprises me with a gift. (That part is not very New England, I guess... I'm not nearly stoic enough to live there anymore.) I got that feeling on Sunday morning, driving up Highway 50 toward Echo Summit, when my aging minivan rounded a bend just past Kyburz and we were suddenly in the midst of tall, snow-marshmallowed pines, with the morning sun showering sparkles on the breeze between them. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">This year's snow-play-day was another step in our journey through the calendar for the kids and me, a round of "first"s without Andre. I've been warned that each "first" will be difficult. But this one seemed surprisingly easy, mostly. And we even had enough snowgear for my nearly-six-foot-tall son, who is, at age 14, now as tall as his father was. Over the years, I had bought a stockpile of the good stuff: alpaca socks, insulated, waterproof gloves, polypropylene thermal underwear, a good down-filled coat, LLBean winter boots, for Andre, hoping to keep him comfortable on our adventures. He usually rejected wearing them, for one reason or another, and was usually uncomfortable on our adventures. This year, it was easy to divide up that stockpile between my older kids and me, and keep everybody warm. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"> It sounds awful somehow, to talk about things being "easier" for the kids and me, when we are not even 6 months past Andre's death, but that is the unvarnished truth. It's the telling of that truth that's been problematic lately. I catch myself wondering if it's really ok to be honest and say that I am doing rather well. Is that a betrayal of Andre's memory? Do people think I'm being disrespectful of the dead? In the moments when I'm feeling defensive and judged, I suppose I could go on chugging the "whine" of "people just don't understand", but that seems unproductive at best, and certainly unloving in many different directions. Whether or not people are judging me negatively as I emerge into my new life, is really not my concern, I guess. Most likely, it's just my own defensive sense of wanting to do it all "right", that's sneaking up behind me and bopping me on the head (another chorus of "Little Rabbit Foo-Foo, anyone? ) What's becoming clear to me, at a level deeper than intellectual assent, is that there is no clear template, no plowed trail through the snow, for how this process of simultaneous grief and healing is supposed to proceed.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">On Sunday, after the kids and I got to our sledding hill, put on our warm gear, and took the first couple of runs down the groomed sledding runs, I decided to rent some snowshoes and take off into the woods (leaving the kids on the sledding hill, using the buddy-system that they are quite good at) for a walk through the quiet. </span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTi6ZdGajxJwJhKjC3ivNmPILq8k4hvYdCgiJs0k2J-2yzNaFkUZJyfUGn0Qx2m2w2SSVzhmd2IJQssVZPWMZGlbTfo1N0TU3A92J73387UNeIuYEw3PYptTW-fbJirQU0WnPVLB5xmNqO/s1600/moremarshmallow2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTi6ZdGajxJwJhKjC3ivNmPILq8k4hvYdCgiJs0k2J-2yzNaFkUZJyfUGn0Qx2m2w2SSVzhmd2IJQssVZPWMZGlbTfo1N0TU3A92J73387UNeIuYEw3PYptTW-fbJirQU0WnPVLB5xmNqO/s1600/moremarshmallow2.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">As I walked along, my heart felt incredibly light, not like the heart of a mother of four fatherless kids, not like a middle-aged widow. I felt playfully alive. I texted a friend (yes, I know... leave the technology behind, silly woman!), and chuckled to myself about what a perfect day it was turning out to be.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">I stomped along a little farther into the woods, experimenting with what it was like to follow the paths that other snowshoers had made, and comparing that to what it felt like to break my own trail through the snow, guessing at what might be under my feet in the deep snow: was I walking close to solid ground or floating over the bent forms of smaller, buried trees? Was that a boulder I just stepped over? Would I continue to be able to walk along, with my feet only barely sinking, thanks to my snowshoes, or would I suddenly find myself buried up to my armpits? What might it feel like to lose my balance and topple over? Would I be able to get up? A couple of times, I passed other snowshoeing parties. One man called out to me from the packed trail, "you know, it's easier over here". Maybe it was, I don't know. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Eventually, I found myself in a clearing, with the sounds of Hwy 50 and the muffled sounds of the sled-riders just a murmur. In that peaceful cathedral of tall pines on that Sunday afternoon, I found myself thanking God for all the incredible blessings in my life: for my kids, for the beauty around me, for the quiet, for my health, for the many, many people I love; people who have shown their love for me in so many ways over the past months, for my plans to return to school, for God's provision for every single one of our needs over the past months of uncertainty... I was rejoicing. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">And then... BANG !!</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">It was just a tree-branch popping under the weight of snow, but there is a part of my brain that, given the right trigger, still can't be stopped from kidnapping me right back to that awful moment, that single gunshot, that ended Andre's life in front of me. (By the way, did you know that mascara that says "waterproof" isn't actually waterproof when you're standing in the middle of the woods, alone, sobbing into your mittened hands? I guess that kind of disclaimer doesn't fit on the tube...oh well. ) As the loops of horror-film replay ended, I heard a voice inside me realizing, "He left </span><span style="line-height: 21px;">all this</span><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"> behind in that one awful moment! <i><b>How </b>could he do that?</i>" and I felt buried under an avalanche of pity for my sad, angry, frightened, lost husband, a man so unable to receive the beauty of life, the love of a wife and kids, the devotion of friends, the mercy of God, that he chose to leave it all behind in a single, horrible moment. And then came the guilt: how dare I stand in this beautiful place, thinking about how easy the season had been, compared to what I was told to expect, feeling joyful, warmed by the distant laughter of kids (including his kids) on the sledding hill, his alpaca socks on my feet, wearing a warm scarf given to me by <i>a friend I would never have met </i>while Andre was alive? How dare I? What kind of widow am I? </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Again, thanks to technology, I was able to phone one of my many wonderful, "call anytime" friends for a long-distance intervention, still standing out there in the snow among the pine trees, and I was finally able to pull myself together and trek back to the sled hill, my kids and my life at present. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">What that moment, and the conversation that followed, brought into focus for me is that I am mostly breaking trail through this season of my life and I can never be sure when I will trip over a hidden obstacle, or lose my balance and topple over. True, there are others who have walked similar paths, walking their own way among the hidden obstacles out here in the woods of widowhood. But their path is not my path. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">I am not completely alone, thank God. I can reach out and share my small triumphs, and I can cry out for help when I'm lost. For that, I am unshakeably grateful. But I am finding that I can't really walk well along the paths that other people have travelled, at least not in this part of the journey. I just have to keep walking the path where I am, accepting that I will likely run into sinkholes and boulders where I least expect them. But snowshoes help keep me walking above most of it. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">In the writings of one of the Old Testament's minor prophets, Habakkuk, there is a verse that says:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Charis SIL', charis, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">The </span><span class="small-caps" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Charis SIL', charis, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant: small-caps;">Lord</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Charis SIL', charis, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places. </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Charis SIL', charis, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Habakkuk 3:19</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;"> </span></i></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">I had to look up what "hind's feet" were. They are the feet of a female deer, a hind. The deer was known for being sure-footed, even in the high, unstable places. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"> Snowshoes, hinds' feet...different forms, same result. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Time to get back on the path and keep walking, I guess. It's a new year, you know. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Just in case you need a bit more snow imagery to carry around (especially my reader-friends in South Africa and Australia), here's a poem that truly LIVES in me... again, blame my New England roots. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"><b>Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Whose woods these are I think I know.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">His house is in the village, though;</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">He will not see me stopping here</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">To watch his woods fill up with snow.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">My little horse must think it queer</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">To stop without a farmhouse near</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Between the woods and frozen lake</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">The darkest evening of the year.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">He gives his harness bells a shake</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">To ask if there is some mistake.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">The only other sound's the sweep</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Of easy wind and downy flake.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"><b>The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,</b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"><b>But I have promises to keep,</b></span><br />
<sup class="versenum" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Charis SIL', charis, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.75em; vertical-align: top;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"><b>And miles to go before I sleep,</b></span></sup><br />
<sup class="versenum" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Charis SIL', charis, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.75em; vertical-align: top;"><b>and miles to go before I sleep. </b></sup><br />
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<sup class="versenum" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Charis SIL', charis, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.75em; vertical-align: top;">-Robert Frost </sup><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Charis SIL', charis, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2726040735002266757.post-46874081475983916012012-12-25T22:23:00.000-08:002012-12-25T22:57:02.564-08:00Feels like rain<br />
Rain, rain, go away... is what we sing, right? <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPjv98ycmiVbo-tQpLkxppG4eWhvm1gt8pEe3ZLxg_2Mu3xBWmPqrCmDEm4QJfId6_fDVG6q8aNyulgdJrsuV5MK1kl6VSJySHvYV0sPo4GHxOMZUxjOvWbpTvi01SsndFwmUiS3dOSiNk/s1600/Distant_rainstorm.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPjv98ycmiVbo-tQpLkxppG4eWhvm1gt8pEe3ZLxg_2Mu3xBWmPqrCmDEm4QJfId6_fDVG6q8aNyulgdJrsuV5MK1kl6VSJySHvYV0sPo4GHxOMZUxjOvWbpTvi01SsndFwmUiS3dOSiNk/s1600/Distant_rainstorm.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Yes... mostly... especially when I have a houseful of restless kids that I wish I could send outside to do whatever it is kids are supposed to do outside. But in the last week or so, I've been thinking about the rain a little differently. <br />
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It's winter in the Bay Area. Christmas Day, to be exact. And it's raining. Buckets. Torrents. Gutter-flooding, mud-shifting, hours of pouring rain. That's what it does around here, usually from about late November or early December, until sometime in late March or early April.<br />
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However, we live in a climate where we get NO rain after the rainy season has ended in the Spring. We have gorgeous, sunny, movie-perfect weather for weeks upon weeks upon weeks. The sprinklers kick on every so often, the lawns stay green, and life proceeds in the way that makes the whole world want to pick up and move to Northern California. <br />
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But outside the range of sprinklers, something different takes place. The ground on the grassy hills gets hard and packed-down, the drought-hardy native plants grow and then wither through their appointed season, with the grasses and wildflowers drying up and ending their life-cycles in a blaze of sunlit gold while the ever-dark-green valley oaks look on. By October, the hills are achingly beautiful in their sheen of gold against the blue sky that seems to both borrow and reflect the brightness of the sun-baked hills. That's when we enter another season here in paradise: wildfire season. All those beautiful months of nothing but sunshine have left the landscape gasping for the relief of rain and threatening to burst into flame at the slightest ignition.<br />
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Boy, have I felt that way at times...<br />
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If I'm perfectly honest, looking back over so many "sunny" pieces I wrote before Andre's death, I have to say that I was living in that artificially-sprinkled dry season, sustained by whatever moisture I could find, working hard at staying "green" on the outside. If there were people in my inner circle who could see that the "green" in my life was closer to astroturf or green-painted concrete, I never heard about it. <br />
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And so we have arrived at the rainy season in my life, and I am having a hard time not letting the mud get all over my soul's carpets. The rainy season here, when it comes, is at once disruptive, overwhelming, occasionally destructive... and a source of astounding, miraculous transformation. We watch the sun set on a Cezanne / Provencal landscape and wake up in an Irish travel poster: from sun-bleached golds, browns, and ochres, to deep, velvety emerald and evergreen, almost overnight. The rain changes dust-scapes to lush meadows and causes houses to slide off their foundations. It awakens wildflowers and causes traffic crashes. It ruins outdoor plans and makes me want to pause for a cup of tea in a cozy chair by the window. <br />
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I was living in that desperately dry "lovely weather" season for quite a while, about to go up in flames, it felt like, and now the rains have come in my life. Much of that rain has been disruptive, some in a horrifying way, and some of it in a good way, but disruptive and threatening nonetheless.<br />
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So, I'm wondering today, what if, just for a while, I could acknowledge that I'm in the midst of a pouring-down-torrents-that-drench-to-the-bone rainy season in my life, acknowledge that it feels like the house of my spirit might get washed off its foundation any minute, AND look at that rain as a blessing? I am indeed, greening up again. My life is being watered more deeply now than at any time I can remember. I can't help but see transformation, even if the rain feels overwhelming. I can complain about the rain, or I can focus on the transformation and choose to trust that even if my retaining walls get washed away, I'll rebuild when the rain stops.<br />
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This new friend of mine, the one who told me that my passionate side is a gift (see <a href="http://rideofthevalkyries.blogspot.com/2012/12/gifts-skip-wrapping-paper.html">my previous post</a> ), has been opening my eyes to a new appreciation of the guitar work of BB King, Buddy Guy, and John Baldry. This song by John Hiatt (performed by Buddy Guy and Bonnie Raitt in the youtube clip below) has a title and a decidedly sensual mood that has gotten me to thinking about this concept of rain being a blessing.<br />
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(Note to friends: Point me in the direction of stuff that challenges my brain, or touches my heart and you just might end up in my blog. Whether that's a threat or a promise is up to you, I guess. :-)<br />
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Sorry, no ethereal, angelic hymns full of air, light and Holy Infants today. Today, we're walking on the muddy earth, drawing music from a slightly different source. <br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY0sAVMfrWM">Feels Like Rain - John Hiatt (performed by Buddy Guy and Bonnie Raitt</a><br />
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Feels Like Rain (lyrics - first verse)<br />
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<i><span style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px;">Down here the river meets the sea</span><br style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px;">And in the sticky heat I feel you open up to me</span><br style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px;">Love comes out of nowhere baby, just like</span><span style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px;"> a hurricane</span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px;">And it feels like rain</span><br style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px;">And it feels like rain</span></i><br />
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(and then the last verse says)<br />
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<i><span style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px;">Batten down the hatches baby</span><br style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px;">Leave your heart out on your sleeve</span><br style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px;">It looks like were in for stormy weather,</span><br style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px;">That aint no cause for us to leave</span><br style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px;">Just lay here in my arms</span><br style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px;">And let it wash away the pain</span><br style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px;">Feels like rain</span><br style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="color: #474747; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px;">And it feels like rain.</span></i><br />
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<span style="color: #474747; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 23px;">******** Come on in, but take off your shoes and let me lend you some slippers, ok? ******</span></span>Valhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15364051245571530793noreply@blogger.com0