When you finally go back to your old hometown, you find it wasn’t the old home you missed but your childhood. ~ Sam Ewing

Neighborhood friends.

This is not a photo of me with mine, but it could be.  The time period is right.  The clothes and haircuts are right.  I found it when I Googled "neighborhood friends" and I loved it.  Hopefully I'm not abusing any copyright laws by using it.

In the years when I was around the ages these kids appear to be, neighborhoods in small towns across America were loaded with children.  Our neighborhood was no exception.  In my family I had three brothers.  One family had 10 kids.  Another family had 6 boys.  A few other families had two or three kids. Summer twilight games outside were amazing fun with so many playing Hide 'n' Go Seek or sandlot baseball or games we dreamed up on the spot.

My family moved away from my hometown in 1966.  We moved to the Portland, Oregon, area which was around 150 miles away.  On occasion we'd take a drive back for a day so my mom could visit one of my grandfathers in Hoquiam.  Most of the time we kids didn't want to visit him...we wanted to be dropped off with friends in our hometown.  I can not tell you how devastated I was by that move.  I can not tell you how much I missed my childhood friends.  And thru the years I lost contact with most of them.

Then along came the internet.  People searches.  Alumni sites.  All kinds of ways to find and reconnect with people.  And I've found a few of my childhood friends.  Or they have found me.  Even tho 46 years have passed since I lived there and many moved away in adulthood there is still some kind of bond there between us.  Shared memories, shared histories.  It is an amazing thing to sit down face-to-face with one and pour over what would've been my high school Senior yearbook if I'd still been there.  To find out who's died or found success and those who never moved away.  We could remember most of those kids all the way back to first grade. Most amazing of all was to actually be sitting across a restaurant table, spending time with one of those childhood friends whom I hadn't seen in 45 years.  We reconnected just before my family moved to Michigan.  I feel so blessed to have seen her one more time.

And now, here I am at 58.  2400 miles from home.  In a city where no one shares any history with me at all.  I have become friendly with many since moving here but at this age, at this stage, I don't know if I'll ever be able to form that intimacy that comes with really knowing someone.  How does one find the time, in the busyness of life?  But the lovely thing about friendship is it comes on many levels...from the acceptance and welcoming we've received from a small community church we've been attending to have some face-to-face fellowship with other Christians...from our neighbor Donna who is one of the loveliest people I've ever met...from all the people who cross my path in a day.  Friendship itself isn't what's most important, I've found...it's friendliness.  A smile, a shared greeting, a wave across the street.  Just knowing you're acknowledged, a part of the community...it makes all the difference in the world.

I have been thinking some lately about the things I will probably never see again in my lifetime.  When you move as far away as I have, you don't go 'home' every day.  But you know, it's not the physical part of being there that you take with you anyway.  It's the memories.  It's what you tuck away in your heart for safe keeping. 

Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose. ~ From the television show The Wonder Years

This is the house we left behind in Portland.

We celebrated 28 Christmases there.

I wonder if it's missing us 

today.

The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs. ~ Joan Didion

This morning I was reading the post of a young friend of mine on Facebook.  She'd received some Final Notices concerning medical bills for her children she thought had been paid by her medical insurance a couple of months ago.  She spoke of how stressed she was.  I could so relate to her situation and her feelings.

Once upon a time, I was a young mother facing a mountain of medical bills.  And we didn't have medical insurance at the time.  I had given birth to my 12-pound son by emergency c-section.  He and I were in the hospital for almost a week.  There were the room costs, the nursery costs, the operating room costs, the anesthesiologist bill, my doctor bill.  Bills, bills, bills.  Dear Hubby was the sole breadwinner and made less than $5 per hour.  We had a two-year-old daughter.  We were young, desperate, and very scared.

Luckily a friend of ours worked at the small town hospital where I'd given birth.  She was able to provide us with some paperwork to fill out to help us with the hospital bill, as long as we qualified.  Boy, did we ever qualify!  On top of everything else, our son had picked up staph infection in the hospital and was a very sick little baby.  The hospital 'forgave' us our entire bill.

Which left us with all the doctor and anesthesiologist bills. 

As Christians we felt compelled to pay off those bills, even tho the amounts seemed astronomical, especially my doctor's.  We barely had two nickels to rub together but I sat down and wrote letters to the anesthesiologist's and my doctor's business offices, telling them we had no medical insurance but we would pay every penny owed to them because we were Christians, no matter how long it took.  This was back in 1978.  The anesthesiologist's amount was something like $275 and we got that paid off fairly quickly...within a year, I believe.  The doctor bill was closer to $1000.  Some months I was able to send $5, some months $50...$10 here, $20 there.  Slowly, slowly it dwindled down.  And finally I came to the point where I wrote out the final check and sent it off.  Our son was almost 5 at the time, and we'd moved from that town, eventually landing in Portland where we lived until earlier this year.  As we moved, I could've easily not sent my forwarding address to them.  I could've skipped town and never paid off that debt.  But pride and a strong sense of right versus wrong kept me true to my word.  It gave me a great sense of satisfaction, dropping that envelope into the mailbox.

The funny thing is, a week or so later I got a card from my doctor's office in the small town.  A Thank You card, from the office manager.  She wrote and told me how the whole office had been aware of what a struggle it had been for us to pay off that bill.  And when they received the final payment, how good it made them feel.  She said it restored their faith in people, a person who actually kept their word and did such a thing.  She said it didn't happen like that very often.  She wished us the best, on all their behalf.

I sat and stared at that card in amazement.

You see, we go about our lives making simple decisions, to do what's right.  And we go about our business and faithfully send off that money, figuring it's just going into the doctor's bank account and the amount due is a little less each time the bill shows up regularly in the mail month in, month out.  You have no idea what kind of an impression something that seems so mundane to you such as paying a bill might be making on someone else.  An entire doctor's office, for instance.

And then you sit there with the proof of what it has meant to those people held in your hand.  And you feel very humbled, because it is a testimony to them what God has done for you in your life.  Made you honest.  Made you a person of your word.

And 33 years later, it is a memory that is still very precious to me.

Home. At Last.

Can it possibly be?! Are we finally moved in? Do I have a house to call home now? The answer is yes, yes, yes!

What a journey.

We arrived in Livonia on March 5th. We spent two weeks 'living' in the Comfort Inn on Middlebelt Road a tantalizing 5 blocks away from 'our' house. But thanks to the very incompetent ministrations of Chase Bank's home loan department in Portland, we arrived thinking we were ready to move right in, only to find the loan couldn't be processed in Michigan if it originated in Oregon. They hadn't even bothered to open up the FHA Appraisal that stated a few repairs were needed before the loan could close. They hadn't even bothered to inform us of all this. Every phone call, every email I sent, I was given the same answer: "Everything's moving right along. It's with the underwriters and should be closing at the end of February". So Dear Hubby and our d-i-l set out to drive across country at the end of February. And when they were in Iowa Dear Hubby received a phone call from our realtor: "We've got problems!" He hadn't heard anything from Chase in a long time and took it upon himself to call our loan officer, only then to find out we didn't have a loan, let alone being even close to closing. We were nowhere! So Dear Hubby called me with this news, totally freaked out. Not only ours wasn't any good...neither was the kids' loan for their house. Now what to do?! Here Dear Hubby and our stressed-out d-i-l are in Livonia by this time and the rest of us are living...surviving...in a Days Inn in Portland waiting to fly out to Detroit that Saturday while our belongings and vehicles were on their way across the country. Arggghhhh.

To make a long, stressful-beyond-belief, and wild story short, our wonderful guardian angel of a Real Estate Guy named Bill and a mortgage broker friend of his named Sam went above and beyond the call of duty to secure home loans for both of us from square one, doing everything they could to push the closing dates up as quickly as possible. And two weeks later we finally took possession of our homes. But our possessions themselves were still in storage, somewhere in Indiana, so we had to wait a couple of extra days to have them delivered. But they arrived and some great moving guys got us all settled. The kids didn't even have to stay with us for a couple of weeks, like we'd originally thought. Sam the Miracle Worker got everything closed on the same day. I could've kissed the guy.

And now I'm all hooked up to the fastest internet I've ever had. I am back typing on a keyboard at 70-75 wpm instead of plunk-plunk-back space-back space-plunk-plunking on my new Droid phone. I am more than happy to put that thing back to just being a phone, tho I must admit it was nice to have something give me limited internet access. I was just abominably slow typing with my left thumb. And 9 times out of 10 whatever I wrote wouldn't post or send anyway. Sigh. I wish I knew how many emails are lost somewhere in the outer darkness of cyberspace.

I feel like I'm starting from the very beginning again. Like it's going to take time to find my 'blog' voice once more. It feels like forever since I've written anything of any substance. I feel rusty and very out of practice. Like my voice is creaky from lack of use. But it feels so good to be here once more, chronicling our lives for the grandboys. I wish I'd been able to keep it up-to-date while we made our way 2/3 of the way across the country. But so much of it was so hard. So much of it was scrabbling around to find the needed paperwork when everything was stashed away somewhere in the back of a semi truck trailer somewhere in Indiana. It was days of trying to keep two little boys who were beyond sick of being stuck in hotel suites for three weeks entertained and quiet. It was more dinners out in restaurants than I care to eat ever again.

Ah, but we survived. We did. And in looking back at it now a couple of weeks later it doesn't seem so bad after all. I'm sure a year from now we'll laugh about it, rolling our eyes and calling it our Grand Adventure of a Lifetime.

But do I want to move again any time soon?

No, thank you.

Peace - that was the other name for home. ~ Kathleen Norris

Is this our future home? Is this where Dear Hubby will hang up his hat at the end of the day, whose windows I'll look out? A street I'll begin to think of as 'familiar'? Grass he'll cut? Rooms I'll decorate? We sure like it, is all I can say. But only the good Lord knows the answers to all those questions.





I put in an inquiry on this house. This morning I got a responsive email from a gentleman who's been selling real estate in the Livonia area for 30 years. He asked what our requirements are. This is what I wrote back to him:





Since my husband and I have raised our family and aren't interested in keeping up with the Joneses, we're pretty modest in our needs at this stage in life. We would like to have a 3 bedroom home, using one as a den/office and one for a guest room as we'll probably have visitors from out of state. A living room. Not necessarily a formal dining room, but a nice eating area. A bright kitchen.....I love windows with lots of light in the kitchen and the living room areas! 2 bathrooms would be nice. A garage and finished basement would be nice. A fireplace or wood stove would be nice! A fenced back yard isn't a total requirement but it would be lovely to have as well, since I'll continue doing the day care for my grandsons in Michigan, too. We don't need a huge lot....here in Portland we live in an older urban neighborhood where we can basically reach out and touch our neighbors' houses....the lots are narrow but fairly deep so we have a nice little yard out back. The dimensions on our lot are 45'x90'. We would like a LITTLE more room between houses, tho we have wonderful neighbors and have lived here peacefully with them for almost 30 years! As to a price range....we have lived in our home for 28 years. It's an old 1912 Craftsman bungalow. Our current payment with tax and insurance figured in to it is around $$$$$$ per month. Because this is a very comfortable mortgage for us, we'd like to keep it around the same amount back there. We don't care if it's new construction or old, tho we do like older homes. We're not "fancy-schmancy". All we ask is that it's in decent shape, not a fixer-upper, and the basics are updated...furnace, roof, stuff of that nature. I love to garden so landscaping isn't important...I'll be changing that to what I like. If we can find a place with the basic appliances and washer/dryer included, that'd be great....then we won't have to drag ours across the country. We like trees. A neighborhood that's quiet. How's that to get you started out?



I guess what I'm trying to tell him is we want a home.

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. ~ Mark Twain

My grandson Dylan has really gotten in to painting since he began preschool. When he brought home several of his works of art the other day I asked him if I might have a couple to hang up on the refrigerator so we could all enjoy and admire them. He very seriously sorted thru them and gave me two. "What are they?" I asked. One, he told me, was a turkey. The other was Lightning McQueen with a hat on his head. Hmmmmmm...as I looked them over I couldn't have agreed with him less but they weren't my paintings. What right did I have to suggest, "No, no...isn't that one a fish in the sea? And that one a red pepper?" Why are we adults so insistent upon trying to influence the creativity of our children...or, in my case, our grandchildren? How often do we squelch that creative flair they possess by trying to force our perception of what is and what isn't?

I know bowling isn't a creative art but my dad was an avid bowler, belonging to several leagues and participating in many competitions during his life. One thing we shared was our left-handedness. When I was around 10 or 12 he decided he was going to teach me how to bowl and I was quite willing to learn. We went to the small alley in my hometown and he showed me how to hold the ball, where to stand, then let me launch off several balls. I thought I was doing quite well...some of the pins went down! But no, no..."Here, let me show you how to do this," my dad said, and he began positioning my arm this way and that, telling me when to release the ball, when to do this, how to do that. As I began rolling gutter ball after gutter ball, getting more and more tense as I tried to please him, more and more frustrated when I didn't, I finally burst in to tears and told him I didn't want to do it anymore. It ended up being such a stressful experience for me it killed off any interest I'd had in learning the sport.

I have tried to keep that memory close to the surface while raising my kids and helping in raising my grandkids. Whenever the urge comes over me to barge right in and tell them they need to do it my way...I remember that day with my father. I remember how badly I felt when I couldn't perform to his satisfaction. And then I back off. I tell them it's beautiful...it's a job well done...I love it!

And it is!

God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spilled. ~ Author Unknown

(Portrait of an Old Woman by Adolph von Menzel)

Today would be my mother's 83rd birthday if she was still alive. I am posting a poem I wrote for her shortly before she died in 1989. I've printed it before, but this is one that she especially loved, so this is for her:

Private Pain

There is a place of private pain where only you can trod.
The path is not an easy one unless you trust in God.
The times you feel you can't go on, when no one understands,
The Lord is there to ease you through, to take you by the hand.

There is a place of private pain where silent tears are shed,
Where Jesus is beside you, giving comfort as He said.
His arms wrapped close around you and His Holy Presence near,
You know you can rest easy and you needn't ever fear.

There is a place of private pain...I'm in its midst right now.
I know the Lord's preparing me...I cannot tell you how
But in my heart of hearts I know that when I need Him near
The only thing I'll do is ask and He will be right here.

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.

Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere. ~ Chinese Proverb

Guess what we had for dinner!
And guess who cooked it!
The grandboys!
Dylan, aged 4, browned up the turkey meat and added the spices.
Cooper, aged 2, helped stir.
Both added all of the kidney beans.
They stirred it up well.
We put a lid on it.
It simmered on the back of the stove.
Delicious!

You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right. - Maya Angelou

Home


Originally written January 16, 2007

I was watching an episode of "Buy Me" on HGTV this afternoon, one I'd taped on our DVR recently. This particular episode dealt with an elderly couple, both of them 84 years old, who were trying to sell the house they'd lived in since 1953. That's the year I was born, 1953. They'd raised their five children in that house and the mental struggle the wife went thru as she sifted and sorted thru all the memories and bits and pieces of her life was very bittersweet. The pain in her eyes, her indecisiveness of what to keep, what to get rid of, is something I think every woman of every age goes thru at different stages in life. It seems like we're always saying goodbye to something...our girlhood, our youth, our children...and, if we're blessed to be together as long as this woman and her husband have been...sometimes even our beloved spouse.

I've lived in many houses in my lifetime so far. One in the town I was born in, five in my hometown. Three in Vancouver, Washington, before I was married, and seven others with my Dear Hubby before finally settling here in the house we live in now, where we've been for close to 25 years. This, by far, has been the happiest home I've ever lived in. It's a Craftsman style bungalow built in 1912 and is in an old urban neighborhood that's a mixture of houses built anywhere from the late 1800s to a skinny little house down the street, 14 feet wide, that was built on a narrow vacant lot over the past few months. We're within walking distance of every school my children attended, and many of our neighbors have been here even longer than we have. We've watched each others' kids and even grandkids grow up. We're a close bunch, but never intrusive. Somehow, we've managed to co-exist very peacefully all of these years. A good thing, since most of our houses are so close to each other we can reach out a window and almost touch the house next to us.

What makes a home? Is it the creaky old fir wood floors that have been scuffed with countless feet over the past 94 years? The old lathe and plaster walls that are cracked and warped in places? The kitchen cabinets that needed an updating 20 years ago, and will get done when we get to them? The groanings and creakings of the old gas furnace in the basement every time it comes to life? Is it the envelope we found tucked in a wall, postdated in 1941, during a remodel job 23 years ago? No. It's the ghostly shouts and laughter drifting in thru the windows on a summer day, of endless games of Capture the Flag all the neighborhood children played together. It's finding a couple of little boys building a fort in the huge laurel that borders our back yard boundary and feeding them popsicles. It's digging in my flower beds and unearthing an old Fisher Price toy fireman buried under the dirt for who knows how many years. It's going searching back in a dark corner of the basement for something and coming across my daughter's wooden stove and sink set, unused for 25 years and covered in dust. It's looking for the cedar waxwings each early-Autumn, never knowing if they'll show up in the huge holly tree out back and hoping with all my heart they do...being thrilled beyond words when I spot their beautiful yellow wings flickering among the branches. It is cradling my little grandson in my arms for his first ride on my front porch glider. It is coming here, a young mother of 28 and, most probably, never leaving until the day I die. So, yes...I can relate to the pain in that older woman's eyes. I can see myself sorting thru the boxes and bins that store my life and not knowing which to toss, which to pass on to my children. Are they going to want my old paper dolls, my useless bits of jewelry from my childhood that mean nothing to them but transport me to certain moments, certain friends and people, who've passed thru my years here on earth, every time I hold them in my hands? Are they going to want this blog journal? Do they care that much about how I lived, what I thought, what I felt? What I dreamed? The woman that I truly am here within me?

I agree with Maya Angelou. We never do leave home. Every house we've ever lived in has helped form us into who we are, has followed along with us every step of the way. It's the ghostly whispers, the quiet moments, the tears and grief, the joy and love, the celebrations we celebrated in each and every one of them that make up our dwellingplace, the inner heart of us. Home is not walls and a roof, no. It's the structure that houses the very essence of who we are.

For me...for my 54th birthday

I Am I See

I am a child born of snowdrops

in a land

where

raindrops

rule

the skies.

I am mid-century woman

and

I am a

child

of the ‘60s.

I am Mother and Wife.

Friend

and Foe.

I am Fire

and I am Ice.

I am changeless

and then

I change

yet again.

Where rivers run deepest

is where
I dwell,

in the dark waters

where shadows dance

in the passing

light.

I am passion and I am pain.

I see peace

in

the ocean’s

rage.

I see freedom on

the wings of

the osprey.

I am the daughter of

sorrows

who found forgiveness

in the end.

I am a woman

and in my hands

I see

time.

I see years of

a Life well-lived.

I see me

and I see

serenity.