Blog For Free!
Archives
Home
2008 May
2008 March
2008 February
2007 December
2007 February
2007 January
2006 December
2006 November
2006 October
2006 September
2006 August
2006 July
2006 June
2006 May
2006 April
2006 March
2006 February
2006 January
2005 December
2005 August
2005 July
2005 June
2005 May
2005 April
2005 March
2005 February
2005 January
2004 December
2004 November
2004 October
2004 September
My Links
Megan and Ali's at their dad's wedding in May
Ali's Caringbridge Page (you'll want to scroll to the bottom and read up)
Video of Ali
Ali's Xanga Journal
Conservative Anomaly
My Mom's Blog
Doeedyed's Blog
Cutter's Blog
Cyberwriter's Blog
Irles Blog
Kerstin's Blog
consciousphobic's blog
Pastor Dave's Blog
Finaly Free's Blog
Surrogate's Blog
swanktrendz
69 Whisper's Blog
Inkspector's Blog
Ruined's Blog
Irish's Blog
Godsmack's Blog
Mitch Doolittle's Blog
Goldie's Blog
Thouloos Lair
Kurt Maddox Blog
Mimi's World
Bawdy's Blog
Heavy Arms Blog
Lady G's Blog
Fractal Mom
GraceShaker
April's Blog
Ottomanprang's Blog
MiMi's Blog
Ashli's Blog
Deb's Blog
Danielle's Blog
BillyRyan's Blog
tBlog
My Profile
Send tMail
My tFriends
My Images
Sponsored
Blog
|
| Mother. |
| 09.26.06 (9:21 pm) [edit] |
|
Woman Having her Hair Combed by Degas. The Frisco, Texas school board has voted not to renew the contract of a 28-year veteran teacher after one of her 5th grade students saw a nude sculpture during a field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art.
The principal at Fisher elementary, Nancy Lawson, reprimanded teacher Sydney McGhee about the fieldtrip, telling her a parent complained about a student seeing ‘nude art’, said McGhee’s attorney.
Nude sculptures? At an Art Museum? In the United States of America?
No doubt that my tax dollars paid for that lewd and insidious trash.
I believe that firing this teacher does not go far enough. After all, in this day and age, teachers are fired merely for sleeping with their students. They should lock her in a room and force her to watch Keeanu Reeves movies—then she would learn what ART was really about before dragging 89 innocent 5th graders into a pornographic playground where breasts and phalluses are bandied about like French fries in a Happy Meal.
I hope the child gets counseling. I’m sure he’s going to need it.
Mother. By Pink Floyd.
Mother, do you think they'll drop the bomb?
Mother, do you think they'll like this song?
Mother, do you think they'll try to break my balls?
Mother, should I build the wall?
Mother, should I run for President?
Mother, should I trust the government?
Mother, will they put me in the firing line?
Is it just a waste of time?
Hush now baby, baby, don't you cry
Momma's gonna make all of your nightmares come true
Momma's gonna put all of her fears into you
Momma's gonna keep you right here under her wing
She won't let you fly, but she might let you sing
Momma's will keep Baby cozy and warm
Oooo Babe
Oooo Babe
Ooo Babe, of course Momma's gonna help build the wall
Mother, do you think she's good enough
For me?
Mother, do you think she's dangerous
To me?
Mother will she tear your little boy apart?
Mother, will she break my heart?
Hush now baby, baby, don't you cry
Momma's gonna check out all your girlfriends for you
Momma won't let anyone dirty get through
Momma's gonna wait up until you get in
Momma will always find out where you've been
Momma's gonna keep Baby healthy and clean
Oooo Babe
Oooo Babe
Ooo Babe, you'll always be Baby to me
Mother, did it need to be so high? |
|
36 Comments
|
| |
| Sermon. |
| 09.24.06 (9:24 am) [edit] |
|
I was sitting in bed this morning drinking coffee, listening to Bach’s Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 and watching a bank of dark billowing clouds float my way.
It was almost as if the notes of the cello were serenading the movement of the clouds.
Bach’s music does not float in the air and disappear. It haunts you, inhabits you—like a lost spirit. It settles into an empty place inside of you and fills it until you can only close your eyes and wait to see what part of you it has healed.
The billowing clouds, Bach—and coffee. That is all the evidence I need of God’s existence. It is a tangible reminder of the perfection that he desired for us and proof of that which is to come.
Further Proof:
Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3
Vivaldi’s LaStravaganza, Op. 4 Concerto No. 1 in Bb
Mozart Requiem-Agnus Dei
Chorale #220 Turtle Island String Quartet
(Windham Hill Winter Solstice)
Sarabande by Bach
Cavalleria Rusticana - Intermezzo (Muscagni)
|
|
15 Comments
|
| |
| listening to allison krause... |
| 09.24.06 (12:13 am) [edit] |
Baby mine, don't you cry
Baby mine, dry your eyes
Rest your head close to my heart
Never to part, baby of mine
Little one when you play
Don't you mind what you say
Let those eyes sparkle and shine
Never a tear, baby of mine
If they knew sweet little you
They'd end up loving you too
All those same people who scold you
What they'd give just for
The right to hold you
From your head to your toes
You're not much, goodness knows
But you're so precious to me
Cute as can be, baby of mine
|
|
2 Comments
|
| |
| For the love of carrots. |
| 09.22.06 (6:31 pm) [edit] |
FOR THE LOVE OF CARROTS...
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. ~e.e. cummings
My battle for individuality began in the 4th grade when I refused to wear snow pants to school. I knew that it would be a bloody battle against a foe with a long history of germ phobias and an arsenal of motherly sayings. But, one snowy winter morning, with the determination of one willing to die for a cause larger than ones self, I walked out the front door, sans snow pants, screaming my immortal words, "Yes, mom, I do want to be the only fourth grader who freezes to death on the playground"!
That was the first of many turbulent battles. It was followed soon after by my final stand against the atrocity of cooked carrots. For years I had been presenting well-articulated arguments against this nightmare of a vegetable; including one particularly devastating monologue on why I was certain that they were a tool of the devil. Despite this, my father did not acquiesce on his refusal to let me leave the table unless I cleaned my plate. The conflict came to an abrupt end one summer evening as I shoved the last carrot into my mouth and proceeded to throw up all over the dinner table. In one involuntary reflex I was victorious, dismissed from the table, but clearly victorious. Had I known that this would be my big gun I would have saved the tool of the devil argument for something really meaningful like Brussel sprouts.
Parents mean well; but we are hopelessly flawed by two desires. One is to raise better children than our parents did and the other is to live our unlived lives through them.
Small, helpless creatures whose clean, unblemished slate elicits in us an overwhelming temptation to take this empty vessel and fill it with ideas and activities that bring us happiness and puts us in a favorable light with those around us. We clothe them in tutus before they can walk and put them in the outfield in preschool where we shockingly find them laying on the grass looking up at airplanes as the ball rolls quietly past them.
I am by no means untainted.
When Megan was in the 5th grade I bought her a new book, as I often did. This time, however, instead of placing it on the shelf where it would gather dust under a pile of Disney videos I handed it directly to her.
"You will enjoy this Megan", I said optimistically.
"Probably not, " she said, "I don't like to read, mom"
"I'm not sure that I understand you Megan, of course you like to read.
I loved to read when I was your age".
"I'm obviously not you mom, because I hate to read".
Crueler words have never been spoken. My mind raced. Had my years of reading them Goodnight Moon all been in vain? Had they been feigning enjoyment each time that we followed Edmund and Lucy through the wardrobe? How would she ever get into college? I wondered, lovingly caressing my copy of Sense and Sensibility. Could I sleep at night knowing that she would never experience the joy and excitement of Nancy Drew, the Outsiders, or the books of Judy Blume?
Panic immediately ensued.
"Megan!" I screamed up the stairs, "you do so like to read"!
There, I had won.
Well meaning friends, parents, spouses, co-workers, the people next to us in the pew and fellow members of the PTA; magazines, movies and television commercials, all chipping away at us innocently like water on a rock.
One day I looked into the mirror and found no one looking back, no one recognizable anyway. There was a responsible looking woman in clothes that didn't suit her and a complacency that bore no resemblance to the little girl who was willing to die over a pair of snow pants.
Somewhere along the line, we get the message that someone else's way of thinking is more accurate than our own; that others know us better than we know ourselves. Perhaps it is when people cease to actually listen or our mother insists that we love to read and we decide not to argue.
Once upon a time I knew who I was and I am beginning to recognize my reflection in the mirror once again. I see sparks of the irreverent, opinionated and wild girl from East Toledo who knew that snow pants were hideous, that it was not such a bad thing for a girl to be smart and that she quite simply and quite vehemently hated cooked carrots. How glorious it would have been to have someone trust her with that fact instead of having to demonstrate it quite vividly at the dinner table. The battle to be nobody but yourself in the world. Never stop fighting, brother.
|
|
9 Comments
|
| |
| Purgatory. |
| 09.19.06 (9:33 pm) [edit] |
purgatory |ˈpərgəˌtôrē| |ˌpərgəˈtɔri| |ˌpəːgət(ə)ri|
noun ( pl. -ries)
(in Roman Catholic doctrine) a place or state of suffering inhabited by the souls of sinners who are expiating their sins before going to heaven.
• mental anguish or suffering : this was purgatory, worse than anything she'd faced in her life.
adjective archaic
having the quality of cleansing or purifying : infernal punishments are purgatory and medicinal.
Thesaurus: torment, torture, misery, suffering, affliction, anguish, agony, woe, hell; an ordeal, a nightmare. antonym paradise.
So much of my life was picture perfect. I had no real worries, no real problems…just the ‘what ifs.’ When my children were young and would catch a cold, I would get an upset stomach listening to them cough at night and being unable to make it better. When Ali was first diagnosed with cancer, I felt as though I might never sleep again.
One minute we were running to soccer games and the next to Mayo Clinic where facts were thrown at us like fast pitch balls at a batting cage. After a while, we couldn’t even duck. The doctors tried to make us feel better with anecdotal information…infert ility, loss of hair, amputation; and oh yes, we treated a girl who had rhabdomyosarcoma and she actually graduated from college. A girl. One girl. One single solitary girl. I pushed this aside and hid it under hope and did not retrieve it again until much, much later.
So began our journey with cancer…in a hospital room in Rochester, Minnesota on Christmas morning. My barely 15-year-old girl looked weak and innocent as she lay quietly in the bed recovering from surgery the day before. The day after New Years we began pumping her body full of the poison that we hoped would be our salvation.
Five days of chemo…three weeks off. Two days of chemo…three weeks off. Blood drawn at the hospital every Monday and Thursday. This was our schedule for over a year. Then, of course, the inevitable loss of hair, infections, transfusions, injections, nausea, even starting her period sent us to the emergency room. And after a two month reprieve the cancer came back.
This was our life--not what I expected--but our life never-the-less. After a while, it didn’t seem abnormal, it didn’t seem scary, and oddly enough I never laid awake at night worrying. It’s strange that when all of your worst fears knock at your front door, it somehow frees you. You no longer worry about money, the size of your house, getting stuck in traffic, being late for an appointment or molding your child into a prodigy of some sort.
In retrospect, so much time is spent worrying about the ‘what ifs’, but very little time living like they could actually happen. How much time and energy is spent complaining about inconveniences that are mistaken as problems? No wonder there is stress and dissatisfaction… when every minor detour is seen as some sort of cosmic punishment aimed directly at you.
When you are in the middle of a war, the only thing that is important is living. So many things that seemed important went out the window…useless things, wasteful things, a profusion of rules and fussy behaviors. I know that I use the word ‘joy’ a lot, but rarely did I experience it prior to Ali’s cancer. The capacity to experience joy was always there but had been long buried beneath a pile of car payments, petty arguments and dirty laundry.
I cannot define what joy is for you. I do not presume to know about your life or your struggles. All I know is the sum of my experience and what it has taught me. If I had to define what it meant for me to live joyfully, I would say this: joy is found in simplicity. It is the ability to find good in the day despite your circumstances. It is the ability to find good in other people despite your expectations. Joy means adopting a philosophy of boldness and courage; it is learning to be outrageous and child-like; to live according to your heart and not the opinion of those around you. Joy is not found in things but in each other; talk more, touch more, listen more, and laugh more. Start saying “I love you” and stop saying ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’.
I know that joy and hope go hand in hand. Sometimes that means readjusting what you are hoping for. As we drove to the hospital on Mondays and Thursdays, I would sometimes grab her hand and hold it. I remember exactly what her fingers looked like because I held them so many times. She never pulled away. Sometimes she would switch radio stations and then reach for my hand again. This simple act communicated everything…our fear, our pain, our love and our hope. For me, this was joy.
When I started this blog, I had no idea what was around the corner. You always believe that your child will be the girl who graduates from college. Hope—even hope that is smaller than a grain of sand—is what allows us to take the scenic route through life—even when we are traveling through Purgatory.
|
|
11 Comments
|
| |
| When the leaves turn... |
| 09.18.06 (9:11 pm) [edit] |
For many years, we celebrated the arrival of fall with a trip to Lemon Creek Winery in Berrien Springs, Michigan. We happened upon it one year by accident while on a drive in the country looking for apples and pumpkins.
Year after year, the ritual remained the same. We would go to the tasting area for some samples and then each of us would get a glass while the girls picked out which sparkling juice they wanted and we’d head out toward the orchard..
Our requirements were generally 2-3 bushel baskets each of apples and concord grapes…enough to make applesauce, apple-butter, apple jelly, and grape jelly the next day. The car smelled wonderful on the drive home.
Following this we would look for a pumpkin patch. Pumpkin picking was no simple matter. Megan, of course, had to have the largest, heaviest pumpkin on the lot and Ali didn’t stop looking until she found one that satisfied her acute sense of aesthetic and proportion.
Our final destination would be to Tabor Hill Winery in Baroda, Michigan where we would have a delicious dinner and stock up on wine to take home.
After the divorce, these fall trips stopped; it just didn’t seem right to pretend that everything was like it used to be. In the fall of 2004, I felt that it was time to revisit the orchard experience—it wouldn’t be the same, but it would be what we made it. Ali had a radiation appointment so Megan met us at the hospital. I didn’t tell them where we were going but, it didn’t take long for them to guess.
We picked our grapes and apples and found our way to some pumpkins before heading to Tabor Hill. I’ll never forget that night. For me it was magical and I saw them with new eyes. In the middle of dinner it became clear to me that without even trying it had changed from a family outing to girls night out. We were three women talking over the glow of candlelight…tellin g secrets, laughing…and yes, shamelessly flirting with the waiter.
We talked until the sky grew dark and the rows of grapes were just shadows in the moonlight. They thanked me countless times on the way home and I could tell that they were genuinely grateful. Part of it stemmed from the fact that I could barely afford gas for the car, let alone dinner at Tabor Hill. But there was more to it. It was one of those moments in your life when you know that something special has just occurred and it was reflected in the sound of our voices all the way home.
We had pulled a precious piece of our history from the rubble of divorce. We shaped it into something new and different—something all our own and beautiful.
That would be our last time at the orchard. Ali died less than six months later.
When the leaves begin to turn, I think of that night. It is the closest I will ever come to having a grown-up night out with both of my daughters. Sometimes I think about going back, but, it would be as though I were treading on sacred ground. Some things aren’t meant to be resurrected.
God gave us memories that we might have roses in December. ~J.M. Barrie, Courage, 1922
|
|
11 Comments
|
| |
| Local Party Icon turns 21... |
| 09.08.06 (1:55 pm) [edit] |
|
Please see my Postcards page today for my 'tribute' to my oldest daughter Megan as she celebrates her 21st birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MEGAN!!! I LOVE YOU.
|
|
18 Comments
|
| |
| Tributary. |
| 09.06.06 (12:20 pm) [edit] |
I whispered good-bye
as she walked through the door
past her dreams
to her silent sleep.
I called her name
But it had all been said
And she did not answer.
I sit on the riverbank
Dangling my feet
in swiftly moving currents
of accumulated tears
a tributary flowing from
all my worst fears.
dawn and midnight
hold hands
like red rover
They call out my name.
I run with determination
But can’t break through.
|
|
9 Comments
|
| |
| Getting good at letting go. |
| 09.05.06 (4:16 pm) [edit] |
It is September. The sun looks different as it shines through the window and the weather is almost cool enough for flannel sheets. I get up early, throw on an old hooded sweatshirt, make a cup of tea and sit in the great room looking out at the garden and the last of the tomatoes. It is quiet and I’m soaking it in before I gather up the ingredients for pancakes.
I like to look at them for a while before I wake them up. I wonder what they are dreaming about and what the year will hold for them. I hope that they will get a teacher who still loves her job…one whose classroom welcomes them with posters of Clifford the Big Red Dog and a border of brightly colored apples around the blackboard.
I kiss them awake. It’s never too hard to get them moving on the first day of school. Breakfast goes quickly because there are a lot of wardrobe decisions to make. We sorted through the school supplies the night before; dividing notebook paper and writing their names on Elmer’s glue. We leave a little early so I can take their picture in the front yard—another year, another hairstyle. There is an art to keeping them balanced under the weight of the backpacks.
It is scary letting them go into the big, bad world; fighting it out all on their own. You want them to make friends and be accepted. You want to protect them from getting their hearts broken.
I think that I am having a physical reaction to the fact that it is fall and I am all out of first days of school. No taking the tags off clothes from the GAP, no smell of freshly sharpened pencils…no kissing them awake.
We don’t think about that when we have children--that every single day we are a day closer to having to let them go. Our purpose is to prepare them for life without us and the better we do our job, the more independent they become—and our victory may to some degree become our sorrow.
Luckily—we don’t have to do it all at once. It starts with their first step and progresses from there. We let go of the back of the bike, allow them to cross the street by themselves, and reluctantly give them the keys to the car. The first day of school is merely a reminder of these steps; a ritual of separation.
It is September. The sun looks different shining through the window and I’m putting the flannel sheets on my bed. I got up this morning, put on an old hooded sweatshirt, made a cup of coffee and looked out the bedroom window at fishing boats on the lake.
It is quiet and I am soaking it in—but in a different way. There are no pancakes, pencils or bottles of Elmer's glue but, as I look through a pile of pictures documenting the journey from first step to empty nest, I realize that I have given them the one gift that they will truly require…I loved them enough to get good at letting go.
|
|
3 Comments
|
| |
|
Grace, beauty, humor, strength.
Alison Haley Cloud
Nov. 16, 1987-March 1, 2005
|
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
