Pleasure is the flower that passes; remembrance, the lasting perfume. ~ Jean de Boufflers

It's been one of those weeks:

Dylan and his mama left for Atlanta at 11 PM on Monday.

He was invited to come on to the jet

by the flight attendant

on their stopover.

Toured the cockpit.

Seventh heaven for my little gear-head grandson.

Tuesday, Cooper arrived,

totally lost without his brother.

We walked to the library.

Wednesday, it rained.

But we walked to the bakery

for

blueberry muffins.

Thursday, Coopy and I took a bus ride in to downtown Portland.

We went to the park by the court house.

Fed the pigeons bread we'd brought along.

Took the bus home.

His first bus ride.

He was enthralled.

Friday, we took the bus to go shopping.

Walked to the store.

Walked back to the bus stop.

Took the bus to Clackamas Mall.

Took the bus home.

He could've ridden forever.

In the midst of it all, several phone calls from Dylan.

Who was terribly homesick.

But having a blast.

Allergic to cats, we found out.

And his mama's friend,

who they'd gone to visit,

had several.

And Dear Hubby.

Gone on vacation all week to Idaho.

Bear hunting.

Got a bear.

A BIG bear.

And yesterday...drove up to my hometown

with my son and Cooper.

My son had never been there before.

We were going to walk thru the town so I could show him

my childhood.

Saw the house I grew up in.

Went to the lake on the outskirts of town.

Cooper loved the water.

The waterfall dam.

The fish we saw caught.

We drove in to town to have lunch.

Just as the food arrived

my son's cell phone rang.

My daughter on the phone.

"Mom, we've sprung a leak in the basement!"

I am 150 miles from home.

Water gushed every where.

The neighbor had a valve key and was able to turn the water off.

So much for the trip down Memory Lane.

We drove home.

I tried to be Red Green and patch the pipe

with duct tape.

Didn't work.

Called a 24-hour-emergency plumber.

Thankfully,

he was able to come.

Patched the pipe.

We are $385 poorer.

Overtime holiday rates, don'tcha know.

And today,

daughter-in-law and Dylan arrived home safely.

They were all just here.

I got

a Florida key chain.

An alligator magnet.

A lighthouse magnet.

Auntie got a lighthouse snow globe.

Papa got two coffee mugs.

One says:

"I'm a little bit crabby"

with a crab on it.

All picked out by Dylan.

And tomorrow?

Grocery shopping.

My Grandmother's Desk...May 29th, 2005

There's a piece of furniture that's followed me around for most of my life. It's my Grandma's desk. She died when I was 3 years old and I have no conscious memory of her but I wouldn't and couldn't part with this desk for all the money in the world. I'm not sure how old it is...but it IS old tho I don't think it would bring in thousands of dollars like some old pieces of furniture do on Antiques Roadshow. This one pictured here is very similar to Grandma's desk...dark wood and about the same size and height. It came into my possession when I was around 9 years old. I'd gone with my Dad to clean out my Grandpa's house after my grandfather had passed away and as I was wandering thru the house I spotted this desk in an upstairs room and asked my Dad if I could have it, as well as my Grandma's old sewing basket and her cast iron bed. Dad said sure and at the end of the day we hauled it all home.

I spent more hours than I can count at this desk. I always had the desk in front of a window no matter where we lived. I did a lot of daydreaming as I sat there. I had an old turn-of-the-LAST-century Underwood type writer on top of the desk that I'd rescued from the attic of our old house before we'd moved to Vancouver and I would come home from school or spend endless summer days typing away on the old Underwood. I wrote endless stories and poems. In fact, a couple years ago my friend Liz found one of my old stories I'd written in Junior High and given to her... it was packed away somewhere at her house and she sent it to me.....arggghhh...it was so dated and silly compared to kids having sex at 11 and 12 nowadays. Life was so much simpler in 1967 for us younger teens.

When I married, my possessions fit in the back of a pick up truck...my clothes, my chest of drawers, my desk chair, my stereo, my album collection of around 200, and my Grandma's desk. I went from living at my parent's home to living in my husband's little apartment...couldn't take much with me. Didn't really want to. Fresh start and all that, you know. Lack of space, too. Next month we'll be married 31 years...31 YEARS!!!! .....and that old desk has gone everywhere we've gone. Now it sits here in my dining room with my computer on it, facing towards my dining room windows. I still do lots of typing here. I still do lots of daydreaming, too. I still have a stereo but now it's a collection of CDs I have. We got rid of the record albums when we no longer had a turn table stereo to play them on. There are lots of scratches and scars on it and a little burn spot in the lower right hand corner where a stick of incense I was burning fell over and scorched it when I was about 17 years old. I used to rest my feet on the bar underneath and my shoes have worn away the finish there. Will I ever refinish this desk? Will I give it lacquer and shine? No...it's beautiful to me as it is. It's my Grandma's desk....but it's MY history.

Welcome to America...June 21st, 2005

This is Ellis Island where the vast majority of us had ancestors land in America. My great-grandparents, Otto and Christina, came over to Boston on a steamer ship from Sweden back at the beginning of the 1900s so they never passed thru New York's Harbor...don't imagine they ever saw the Statue of Liberty, either, since they were pretty poor immigrants and had two young children with them at the time, one of them being my grandfather Paul. They settled in Worcester, Massachusetts, and my great-grandfather found work in a wire factory there. He spoke some English as time went on but I don't know if my great-grandmother ever learned any or not. A very dear friend of mine named Liz has been doing a Family Tree for me and we were recently looking over the census papers from around 1920, I think it was, giving me just a snippet of information as to what my ancestors' lives were like almost 100 years ago. It's a weird feeling looking at those papers, thinking if they'd never been brave enough to set sail for America where I might be! What made them decide to come here? I don't think Sweden was ever in as dire of straits as some of the other European countries were...I'm thinking of Ireland's potato famine for one where those poor people were only one step away from starvation. I was talking to my Dad about Grandpa Paul coming to America and he said one of the reasons they chose Worcester to live in is because it had a strong Swedish American community where a lot of people from 'home' lived and Swedish was spoken so my great-grandma wasn't totally isolated.

Portland has a large immigrant population, probably because we're a port city and we're on the West Coast. In the 70s and early 80s it was mostly people from SE Asian countries who moved in...then a lot of people from Romania and Russia. Now we have a lot of Latinos moving here. I don't know what it is about my face that makes them trust me but I can be in a grocery store aisle with 10 or 15 people around me and I'm always the one our immigrant population approaches if they're confused about the price of something or want to know where they can find something. I've become a pro at sign language, lol! But I always manage to get them to understand. My Dear Hubby says it's because I'm always smiling. I think it's because I love people and when I make eye contact with someone I'm not afraid to say hello or chit chat for a moment. I also have infinite patience. But mostly I think it's because of my great-grandparents coming to America, knowing that it was a scary and confusing place for them, too. And I like to think if I ever am blessed to travel this big wide world of ours and I get lost on the streets of Paris or Bucharest or Vienna or Rome or Moscow...someone will see my fear and take a moment to be kind to me, too. The wonderful thing about it is it makes YOU feel good, knowing you've made a scary moment a little less intimidating. You've touched a life...but they've touched yours, too.

...though everything I write is a poem to my mother. ~ Sharon Doubiago

It's the image of you that stays with me.
You,
at the table.
A coffee cup ever present beside you.
A cigarette smoldering,
and your hands
busy playing
Solitaire
Over and over and over
again.
Quiet,
eyes downcast,
concentrating.
The shuffle shuffle shuffle
slap
of the cards
the symphony
of my childhood.

Just so I don't forget...

Things Little Boys Love to Do:

1. Feed ducks in a pond

2. Splash in mud puddles

3. Throw rocks in mud puddles

4. Squirt water out of the spigot when they wash their hands

5. Collect all the worms they find when digging in the dirt

6. Spit on the window and then watch it slither down the glass

7. Cram as much sandwich in their mouths as they can

8. Show off that half-chewed mess in their mouths

9. Squat down and watch ants coming in and out of holes on the sidewalk

10. Poke pieces of stick or grass down those holes

11. Pick dandelions for Grandma

12. Endlessly put things in something, then take them out again

13. Love to get down and get dirty

14. Set up the coffeemaker for Papa

15. Help Grandma cook

16. Fold laundry

17. Dust

18. Hide under blankets

19. Race dump trucks from one end of the house to the other

20. Garbage trucks and garbage men

21. Fire trucks and firemen

22. Give tight squeezes

23. Cuddle in the rocking chair while watching "Super Why"

24. And "Word World"

25. And "Sponge Bobby"

26. And "Curious George"

27. And "Between the Lions"

28. Go barefoot...must've gotten that from their Grandma

29. Shriek outside for the fun of it

30. Balance and walk along walls

These things, darling boys, are what fill your days with joy

in 2010.

Ages 2 and 4

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one. ~ E.B. White

Yesterday morning I stepped out on the front porch with Dylan right behind me. I had the bath mat in hand and was beginning to give it a good shake when BOOM! The front door slammed shut behind us. It was locked.

Cooper was inside alone.

I had no key to get in.

Oh no.

Oh no oh no oh no.

I made a mad dash to my neighbor Sharon's, praying she was home. They have an extra key of ours for such emergencies. She was home. But the key couldn't be found.

Now what?!

I'd had an extra key made for us, just for this purpose, but life has been so...distracting...lately, I'd hung it up inside the house and forgotten about it. The two closest family members who could come to my rescue were each at least half an hour away.

All the windows were locked. At least the alarm system was disarmed. So I did what a good Grandma had to do. I broke in to my own house. But...the window I was able to break had a good 5-6 foot drop to the floor. So I did what a good Grandma would do. I dropped. And I hit hard. But I got inside and rescued my little two-year-old grandson. Who was waiting at the gate at the top of the stairs. Who said, "Hi, Ahma!" and smiled at me as I arrived at the top of them and heaved myself over the gate. Nothing had fazed him. All the excitement had been happening outside!

But me...I was a wreck. I had a good cry. I had a very good cry, the woman who rarely, if ever, cries.

And the key? It's hidden. Outside.

Ride 'em, Cowboys!