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. 

Who can hope to be safe? who sufficiently cautious? Guard himself as he may, every moment's an ambush. ~ Horace

I'm at the point in life where I don't like to watch the news much any more.  I am sickened about the sex scandal at Penn State, just as I was with all the cover ups concerning molestations within the Catholic church.  Having been a child who was molested...only one time...and knowing the devastating affect it had on me, I can not imagine what it must be like to be repeatedly violated.  I never told my parents what happened to me for 7 years.  It's amazing how the attacker can make an innocent child feel like it's the child's fault, makes the child question themselves as to why they were the one the pervert focused on and not some other child.  In my case, it could have been dozens of others who might have been...and probably were....violated by this man.  He was a person whose home was open to children from all over town.  His wife worked days, he worked nites.  Perfect scenario.  Along comes me, a little girl of 9, and he targets me while a bunch of us kids were playing Hide 'n' Seek at his house and I was "it".  Those minutes on the floor of his living room alone with him will never be erased from my memory.  When everyone called "Ready!" and I had the chance to get away, I fled from that house as fast as I could and I never went back.  And I never let him within 20 feet of me ever again.

And I kept that secret bottled up inside until the day I was 16 and I finally unburdened myself to my parents.  Naturally, they were aghast and were horrified I'd kept this from them..."Why didn't you tell us?  We could've gotten a hold of the police!  He could've harmed lots of kids!"  True, true, true.  But how do you put into words something that happened to you before you even knew what sex and perversion were?  Seven years later, we had moved 140 miles away and he had died of throat cancer.  Good riddance.  And to this day, 48 years later...well, I have to forgive him because I'm a Christian but I get sick to my stomach whenever I think of what he did that day and how he took my innocence away forever.  We forgive, but we never, ever forget.

And so....

I'm at the point in life where I don't like to watch the news much any more.

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~ Anaïs Nin

A photo from Dear Hubby's recent hunting trip at a lake near Holly, Michigan.  I love Fall here.  And it's over way too soon.  Many trees have passed their prime and are dropping leaves like snowflakes.  Others are still almost all green.  As this is my first Fall in Michigan I don't know...do they eventually turn color as well?  I know when we moved here in March just about every tree other than any evergreens were bare-branched.  And there aren't many evergreens in this part of Michigan.  But I'm clueless.  And I don't know what 99% of the various trees are here.

I have GOT to quit saying "back here" when I talk to people.  This afternoon as Cooper and I were walking to school to pick Dylan up we came abreast a middle-aged couple out for a walk and I struck up a conversation with them.  Again, I said something about "back here" opposed to "out in Portland" and the husband piped up and asked, "Oh, were you from here originally?"  Ai yi yi, lol!  So I told them about having that pointed out to me recently, that I refer to "back here" a lot in conversation, but it's been a 57-year mind set...everything east of Oregon is "back there" or "back East".  Unless you're referring to Idaho...which is "over in" or Nevada which is "down in".  "Up to Seattle".  "Down in L.A".  Argggghhhh.   There's a LOT of country between Oregon and the East Coast that has always been "back there" to me.  And now I am "back there" living "back here".  Enough on it already!!!

I don't know what kinds of changes are going on in me.  All I know is I feel I have a brand new lease on life since I've been here.  After decades of feeling pigeon-holed into a tiny little corner where I never was allowed to let the "real me" out to the world, I find myself just letting me fly.  I guess we get in our comfort zones, our daily life ruts, and we don't see the forest for the trees.  We get up, go to work, go to bed, and get up again..  But being somewhere so totally new, where I am totally unknown to anyone around me...well, it's not like I'm recreating myself exactly.  But I've found the true me again and my 'original' personality, the one the Good Lord let me be born with, has found a rebirth of some sort.  Once upon a time a million years ago I was a very outgoing friendly little girl.  I didn't know a stranger.  I loved people.  Loved getting to know new people.  A new kid would show up in class in my little hometown school and I was the first one to greet them and welcome them.

I'm not sure what killed that spirit in me.

But it was gone for a long, long time.  And I've missed it.  It's awfully hard to squelch something that is a natural part of who you are.  After being passed over, ignored, forgotten most of the time...never noticed...you finally just...give up.  And then you find yourself wondering why you allowed that to happen in the first place.  But sometimes there are many instances in life that come along where you lose your footing, your confidence, a time or two and then you begin to doubt yourself, question yourself.  And eventually lose yourself.

Not any more.

I was thinking on all this today.  And I was thinking about how much I've been enjoying opening up to people once again.  And wondering why...why...it took me so long to arrive here in myself again.  How many, many years I wasted being only half of who I really am.  Thinking maybe I don't have all that many years left to enjoy being me again.  And I came to the conclusion that at least I realized all this and did something about it.  I didn't just go on...existing.

Remember the lady I wrote about a couple blog entries ago? The one I'd met recently who I thought might become a friend?  Well, I took the bull by the horns.  Got a hold of her.  Invited her over to dinner last nite.  Had a wonderful time.  And you know what?  She is such a jewel.  And she is now my friend.

Oh, how much we limit ourselves when we hold back!  When we don't act on gut instinct and push ourselves out of our comfort zone.  How much we miss!  We really do!  I don't want the rest of my life to be like so much of my middle life was...where I was too timid...too intimidated...to reach beyond myself.  I'm finding a richness to my life I haven't experienced in years.  And oh my, does it feel sweet.

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. ~ Confucius

Sometimes, when I really get to thinking about it, the distance I've put between my hometown and where I live now pulls me up so short I get that hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, like when an elevator I'm on stops too quickly.  I think it's pretty safe to say the reality is I will never see it again in my lifetime.  Another one of those facts that hits me every now and then....well, more like at least once a day....and literally takes my breath away.  That I may never ever see anyone from my 'past' life face-to-face ever again.  Or that 2/3 of the United States sits between me and Portland.  That I live in the Eastern Time Zone.  That I live in Michigan.

I'm getting tired of writing about this.  I've been here 7 months now.  It's time to just settle down and write about the things I used to write about, like my aversion to phones and menopause and books and everything else I filled up 1500 posts on.  And yet, it always seems to come back to this.  Have any of the rest of you made such a monumental move for the first time in your life as you're approaching your Golden Years?  Is it because I was so settled in my comfort zone for so many many years that I feel like a kid in a candy store in my new environment, my new life, and each day as I awaken and realize where I am it blows me away?  I did this?!  Me?!  No no no...no way. 

Dear Hubby and I were talking about this yesterday.  It's been a big change for me, yes.  But it's been of epic proportions for him.  Talk about being settled in comfort zones!  He'd worked at the same company for 32 years.  He'd been the Supervisor there for 16 of them.  He knew his job inside, outside, and upside down.  He could've been blindfolded and found his way there.  He functioned on automatic pilot because of the sameness of his days.  And then we moved here.  He didn't even know where the new business he works for was located.  He knew zip zero nada about the type of business it is.  He didn't even know what he was supposed to do.  And he was 57 years old.  Since the first of March he's definitely learned a lot.  He's put his whole heart into learning it, into pulling his mind out of its sleep mode and compartmentalizing all kinds of new information that's coming at him from all directions.  And he says he's feeling truly 'alive' for the first time in years.  He's  coming home at nite and having the most vivid dreams.  So am I.  We've both been wondering why and I told him I think it's because both our brains are functioning on overdrive since we moved here.  So much new stuff to absorb, so many changes.  Our brains are so overstimulated they don't know how to shut off.

That's ok, tho.

Because in retrospect we both realize how much we were stagnating.  How much we were just going thru the motions.  Another day, another dollar so to speak.  Get up, go to work, go to bed...only to get up, go to work, go to bed.  We were in a rut, baby.

Well, we're in anything but a rut now.  Each day is a new adventure.  It's like we've come out of a long hibernation or something.  I don't have the words or ability to define it right.  It's like I've been given a new lease on life, I guess.  Like life has a freshness to it that I'd almost forgotten it had.  Like the joy of discovery I had as a child has been given back to me.  A rebirth.

Dear Hubby and I have never ever been wave-jumpers.  We've never done anything extraordinary.  Never bungee-jumped or rafted down the Colorado River.  We were the type of couple who'd come into the church we'd attended and sit in the same pew on every Sunday, for years.  We were steady.  Predictable.  Nice. Ordinary.  I know we shocked ourselves when we agreed to set forth on this life-changing adventure.  But I think we shocked everyone we know even more so.  We've had several friends tell us they admire the "guts" we had in embarking on this journey.  They tell us they admire us.  And many have told us they wished they could do the same thing, especially those around our ages.  Those who are into their humdrum existence, who are functioning on automatic pilot.

We both felt we've been 100% led by God to do what we've done.  We both feel we made the right decision and are right where God wants us to be at this particular time in our lives.  We feel God working on us in ways we don't have answers for but we have total confidence in Him and know He's leading us still.  There is great comfort in that knowledge.  I feel like Lots wife...."Don't look back."  And I don't.  I have no regrets.  And if I never see Portland or my hometown again?  Well, that's what a memory is for.  They're right here with me, and they always will be.

If I had to sum up Friendship in one word, it would be Comfort. ~ Terri Guillemets

Ah, friendship.....

I've been doing some thinking about friendship lately.

People tell us we've had a lot of "guts", Dear Hubby and I, moving 2400 miles from all that's been familiar to us our entire lives in the Pacific Northwest to Michigan.  We've left behind everything.  Our home of 28 years.  Our church of 35.  Family.  Friends.  A job of 32 years.  Familiar faces.  Familiar places.  Everything.

 In this mobile world, this mobile society, young people are globe trotters.  It's a big undertaking packing up all your belongings and heading out into the great unknown but it's more common for the younger set than it is for people of our age, crowding 60.  Especially considering we'd lived in the region our entire lives.  Neither one of us had ever been big travelers.  We'd never taken a cruise.  Never been to Hawaii.  We took a road trip once to Yuba City, California, when we were newlyweds to visit Dear Hubby's Aunt Norma.  Outside of that, we'd never been out of Oregon or Washington on a trip together.  Are you seeing a pattern here?  That we liked staying pretty close to home?  Dear Hubby was more apt to take off all over Oregon for hunting trips but I was content staying home and keeping the home fires burning.  I liked my nest.

And now here we are, living on the outskirts of Motor City.  Motown.  Detroit.  We have a beautiful little house here.  Dear Hubby makes a good living.  Our children are here also, as well as our grandchildren, which has been a tremendous blessing...we are each others' support system and at least some familiar faces.  Dear Hubby and I are very content and we love it here very much.  We plan on dying here.  One big move like this in our middle years is enough to last us the rest of our lifetimes.

With all that said, where do you begin in making friends?  It's almost like going out and starting over in the dating field after being married for 40 years.  You don't have to worry about the physical attraction part.  At least I don't care what a friend looks like...I dunno about you.  Maybe you love to surround yourself with beautiful people.  Eye candy.  Me, I look at the heart, the inner person.  That's what attracts me to a friend.  At the age of 57 I have a lot of history behind me.  Heartaches.  Joys.  Milestones.  Deaths of parents.  A happy marriage of 37 years duration so far.  I have friends 'back home' who go back to my girlhood, my childhood.  I have friends from my very first job out of high school.  I have church friends.  Neighborhood friends.  They're people who've known me for what seems like forever.  And I don't have to start from square one and 'define' myself.  They know me and they love me for who I was then and for who I am now.  I can relax.  I don't have to explain myself.  They know I'm a little....a little?!...eccentric.  They know I'm really goofy.  They know I'm loyal and true and I love them every bit as much as they love me.

But now.

Well, you can go and introduce yourself to your neighbors and you become very friendly and they bring you over extra fruit salad or talk to you over the back fence.  And that's very nice and that makes you feel very good.  It makes you feel like a part of the community, like you're accepted and they think you're nice and all that.  And for the most part that's all I require.  Plus I have my 'home base' of family and friends on Facebook and keep in daily contact on there.  Which is about all I had when we lived in Portland since I do full time day care for my grandsons and my life is so, so full.  So full.

And yet.

I love my daughter and daughter-in-law to the point of distraction.  I enjoy being with them and doing things with them.  And I do consider them friends but not....friends.  Not contemporaries of my generation.  Not someone I can sit down with and talk to about Woodstock and know they're traveling right back down Memory Lane with me and revisiting that time and place in their heads.  Someone I can talk woman-to-woman to...someone with adult children, empty nests.  Menopausal.  Women who have a few years of experience in living under their belts.  Someone who really, really gets me.

I've met someone recently who I think might fit into that category.  Someone very sweet and kind.  The lady I posted about on Facebook who told me at a gathering recently that she liked me the moment she met me...and I felt the same about her.  But where do we go from here?  Do I call her and invite her out to lunch on a Saturday?  Is her life so full already that she has no room for another friend?  Will my time and schedule limitations be too much for her to work around?  I always have the fear of the same thing happening to me that happened to a friend several years ago who'd come back to my church in Portland after being gone for many years.  She'd approached an old girlhood friend, hoping to re-establish that bond, only to have the other woman tell her, "I'm glad that you're back, but I have all the friends that I need right now."  Ouch.

Ah well.  I'm not my dad's daughter for nothing.  I'm game to reach out and I will.  And I will let you know where it goes from here.  Because I like people.  And I'm not afraid of reaching out, even if I get bruised in the process.  Bruises heal.

A Day is a Thousand Years and a Thousand Years is but a Day.....

This is Cooper with our neighbor Bob.  Bob is a man of infinite patience.  If you only had any idea how much Cooper is filling him in on the story of his life up to the age of 3 1/2!  Cooper loves Bob.  Loves him.  And Bob is going to be 90 years old on Thursday.  Unfortunately, I am still on vacation so Cooper won't be around this week to wish Bob a Happy Birthday.  And he'll miss Garbage Day, which is also Thursday.  Sometimes Life just isn't fair.

I spent a day doing touch-up painting on the white woodwork in the house and tomorrow I plan on caulking the shower stall.  Then I think I'll be done with inside home improvements.  I need to do a final weeding before the cold weather hits so I think I'll do that on Friday.  I'm on vacation but I don't know the meaning of sitting still.  I seem to have lost the ability to sit around and do nothing.  And of sleeping in.  But getting up early seems to make a day last longer to me.  Which is funny, considering there are 24 hours in a day regardless of whatever time you decide to get up or an alarm of some sort beckons you.  But I love that feeling of getting up early and knowing I have a whole day ahead of me to enjoy.  Once the sun goes down...well, it's bedtime.  I've been geared this way for so long the only time I can sleep in is when I'm sick, and since I don't like that to happen very often I'm usually up before the birds.

I have never experienced the full four seasons before moving back to Michigan.  Not to say that Oregon doesn't have them, too, but here in the midwest they're each so distinct.  This is the beginnings of my first Autumn here and if what we're having now is just the foretaste I can't imagine what it's going to look like in the next month.  Yesterday Dear Hubby and I were taking a drive and the landscape we were passing by was so beautiful.  Not the riotous colors of brilliant leaves and foliage yet, but the different hues of greens, golds, russets, scarlets, and browns of the earth and the fields.  It was kind of misty across the fields as evening approached, and the old farms and barns in the distance were blurred and softened by the fading light and shadows.  Cows and horses grazed, as well as sheep.  It had been raining hard when we set out but the rains had let up as we headed for home and patches of blue were opening up between the high, billowy clouds.  So peaceful.  I told Dear Hubby you truly do feel as if harvest time is here...you can feel the earth kind of letting out a deep sigh and settling in for a long rest, tucking its covers in and hunkering down to sleep thru the cold of winter.  The life and seasonal cycles keep on; the clock never stops ticking.

Dear Hubby and I took another drive not too long ago.  Further from home.  And we ended up lost down in a holler set back in the mountains.  Very lost.  So I told him to stop when he spotted a person and I'd get out and ask for directions.  We came across a woman in her yard outside of a log-style home set close to a river and as I climbed out of the truck she squinted cautiously at me as I crossed the deserted road, flapping a piece of paper at her.  "I need directions!" I told her.  "We're not from around here and we're very lost."  She let me approach and as I got closer to her she looked like one of those mountain women I've only seen in pictures up until now.  Weathered skin, not an ounce of fat on her.  But beautiful in her own way...you could see the life she'd led etched into the deep creases on her face and around her eyes.  "Whereabouts you coming from?" she asked me.  And when I told her we'd recently moved to the midwest from Portland, Oregon, she looked at me like I'd told her we'd just landed from Mars.  But as I told her where we needed to go she was so gracious and kind and kept calling me "Honey".  She got us pointed in the right direction and wished us well.  It almost made me wish we hadn't needed to leave, that we could have sat with her by the river the rest of the afternoon and listened to stories about her life.  Something tells me she would've been just as fascinated to hear stories about ours as well.

We love taking our meandering drives and seeing what an interesting country America is.  In the past most of my trips outside of Oregon were done in the air.  I'd never really seen or experienced this country of ours firsthand, up close and personal, on ground level.  As we go here and there we're amazed how much diversity and variety there is in the landscape and the people, even if all we travel is a hundred miles or so from home.  And having the privilege to have Canada so close by now, and being able to discover it and our wonderful neighbors there.  I would've never dreamt a year ago I'd be where I am and experiencing what I am now.  It truly does feel like Dear Hubby and I are in some kind of a dream fugue state.

We went on another drive not too long ago, heading out early and driving to a farm town in the middle of nowhere.  We decided to stop for breakfast at a little restaurant on the main street and we were the only patrons there who weren't farmers.  So we sat and ate our breakfast and listened in to conversations and thoroughly enjoyed our morning in Small Town America.  A town where everyone seemed to know everyone else and denim overalls and caps on their heads were the uniform of the day.   There's a feeling here in the midwest I can't quite put my finger on but it's a good feeling.  I feel safe here, enveloped in the America of my childhood.

I know, you're thinking I've lost my marbles.  That I'm living in a fantasy world of some sort.  That my bubble will burst and I'll be horribly disappointed one of these days.  But I got an email from my younger brother the other day and he said, "You know, when you first moved back there I thought the way you felt about the midwest was too good to be true.  But you really do love it back there, don't you?"

Yes, baby brother.  I do.

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning. ~ Ivy Baker Priest

What a breezy, beautiful day!  I'm on vacation for most of this month while my grandsons' other grandma is visiting from Texas.  Last week I was gone quite a bit.  This week I'm looking around and thinking of little odd jobs around the house that need to be taken care of but never are because I usually have two more-than-willing helpers to step in and lend me a helping hand.  That doesn't work so well when it's painting or grouting or sanding down an old desk, all three of which I need to do.  I got the desk done today and it turned out very well, if I may pat myself on the back here.  It's a desk I'd inherited from my paternal grandmother when I was 10.  I don't know any history behind it, outside of the fact that it went out to Aberdeen, Washington, with her from New Hampshire back in the 1940s.  Then I got it and it moved to my hometown.  When my family moved to Vancouver, Washington, in 1966 it moved with me to the 3 different houses my family lived in there.  When I married Dear Hubby it moved with me to our first apartment.  Then to another apartment.  Then to a little mobile home tucked back in a couple acres of woods.  Then to a house on the Columbia River flood plain of Woodland, Washington.  Then to a little house in Chehalis, Washington, and to a townhouse apartment in Battle Ground, Washington.  A house in Portland....then to another house where, finally, we settled down for 28 years.  It was probably thinking, "Whewwwwwww!" by that time and figured it would live out its life there.  Not so.  One more BIG move, almost 2400 miles and 2/3 of the way back to New Hampshire with us to Michigan!  As we moved it into our house here I looked at it and thought, "You poor thing!" and decided when I had some time I'd give it a complete facelift.  I have no idea whatsoever just how old it is...but I know it's a lot older than me!  So Dear Hubby helped me take it out to the garage on Saturday and today I spent a few hours very lovingly sanding it down and rubbing about half a bottle of Old English Furniture Oil into its very thirsty wood.  It's a beautiful old piece of furniture...but I had no idea how beautiful until I sanded off years of dirt and grime and scratches.  The burn in the wood from the time a stick of incense I was burning tipped over and scorched it is still there...but those things are 'life scars'.  I look at it and I remember being 16 again.  I wouldn't want to be 16 again, but I don't mind remembering it.  Not much, anyway.

Isn't the internet an amazing thing?  I re-posted yesterday the 9/11 tribute I wrote a couple of years ago for one of the victims who died at the World Trade Center.  I saw her name scroll across the bottom of the TV screen yesterday as the names of all the victims were broadcast.  Eskedar Melaku.  It was such a strange emotion I felt.  I didn't know her personally but I almost feel like I did.  This afternoon I went to check the comments that were waiting for publication on my blog and I found this one:

"Eskedar was my friend since 1st grade. She was one of a kind. I miss her so much. The last time I saw her was exactly one year before 911. Rest in Peace Esku! Miss you some much!"

The person who wrote this didn't leave their name but if they ever come back I want them to know how much I appreciated what they had to say.  Because by researching and reading about Miss Melaku I'd learned that too...that she was one of a kind.  And even tho I never truly did know her, I miss her, too.

Loneliness is a place that I know well. It's the distance between us and the space inside ourselves. ~ Annie Lennox

We arrived here in Michigan on the 5th of March, I believe it was.  We've been here almost 5 1/2 months now.  I can honestly say I haven't been homesick or lonely yet. 

It's a funny thing how once upon a time I was very shy and unsure of myself.  Self-confidence wasn't something I possessed at any level, to any degree.  I have written many times about my "epiphany" year of 1999 where my whole world imploded on me and I was face-to-face with a person I didn't know at all any more...myself.  Somehow, somewhere, I'd lost the basic essence of me.

That's a very scary place to arrive at in a person's life.  I was 45 years old.  You would have thought I'd have it all together.  But spiritually...emotionally...physically...mentally...I was scraping the bottom of the barrel so hard yet coming up empty.  My doctor had told me if I didn't begin to change a lot of things in life I wouldn't be seeing too many more sunsets.  That drew me up short and zapped me right between the eyes.  I began to look and I began to see.  And I sure wasn't very happy with what I found myself confronted with.  A woman functioning on nothing but fumes.  I had nothing left to give anyone.  Which means I had even less for me.

Thus began a long and arduous climb out of the pits.  I felt like I scraped and slithered back and forth for a while, one foot forward, two feet back.  But I persevered and realized one day I'd made it.  I no longer feel I'm a doormat.  I no longer say 'yes' all the time even when I'm dying to say 'no'.  I no longer despair if the whole world doesn't love me.  Do I love everyone I come across?  No.  So if someone doesn't become my best friend five minutes after I meet them, I can let it go.  I don't sit and worry and fret about what's wrong with me if they're not responding.  Life is too short to be worried about other people's shortcomings.  

Coming to a new part of the country to live, almost 2400 miles from everything I knew, everything familiar and dear to me, as we've settled into our new neighborhood I haven't sat back and waited for people to come to me.  I've approached every single one of them myself.  And I've shook hands and said, "Hi, I'm Kris from Portland, Oregon, and I wanted to say hello and tell you how much I love it here!"  And do you know, I haven't had one negative response from any of them.  If anything, I think they're thankful I've broken the ice.  And nearly all of them have told me how hard it is to get to know the neighbors, tho everyone is basically friendly.  We have one couple who live next door and everyone has told me how standoffish they are so I've made a special point of talking to the wife.  She was out in the back yard the other day with her little twins and Dylan and Cooper were talking her ear off over the fence.  I went over to them and told her, "I hope they're not bothering you!"  and she said no, she loved it!  She said after living there 6 years she'd never had anyone to talk with over the fence before and it was wonderful.  So there you go.  She's shy.  Nothing else.

There's a scripture about how, if you want to have friends,  you need to show yourself friendly.  I never understood that before my epiphany year.  It's one of life's most important lessons I've learned.  I don't have to be lonely.  I don't have to be homesick.  All I have to do is be friendly.  And it works just about every time.

Weather forecast for tonight: dark. ~ George Carlin

I awoke to rolling claps of thunder this morning that seemed to resound thru the heavens forever. The rain was drumming down on the roof and lightning flashed and lit up the bedroom. I can not remember ever waking up to a thunder storm when I lived in Oregon.

Yesterday Dear Hubby and I took a drive to West Bloomfield early in the morning. He has been a bow hunter for many years and had heard about the Detroit Archers club, one that Fred Bear, a legend in the archery world, had been a member of. There was a pea-soup fog and it was 44 degrees as we left Livonia. We didn't see much of the surrounding countryside during our drive. We could barely see 10 feet in front of us. But once we got home the fog lifted so quickly it was hard to believe it had ever been here. And within a short span of time it was 82 degrees.

Since arriving here in Michigan, natives have been telling me if you don't like the weather, wait. It'll change in 5 minutes.

You know what? They're telling the truth

A Life of pages waiting to be filled... -- Michael W. Smith

It's a funny thing, moving away from all that's familiar to a place where things are seemingly the same and yet...aren't.. I mean, Michigan is part of the United States of America, as is Oregon. And yet Michigan is so different. The air is different. The terrain is different. The architecture is different. The roads are different. There aren't potholes back here...there are teeth-jarring craters in the road at the end of winter you quickly learn to dodge if you don't want your front end knocked out of alignment every time you drive to the grocery store. Life doesn't stop back here when it's 5 degrees outside. Babies and toddlers are swaddled up to their eyeballs in parkas and caps and mittens and boots. I have not seen one feral cat. In fact, outside of a neighbor's cat I spy every now and then sitting on a table looking out the window, the only other cat I've seen was one dead by the side of the road a few weeks back. Today is April 5th...the sun is shining...and yet flurries of snowflakes were falling in the sunlight. I thought they were cherry blossoms until I realized there aren't any trees in blossom here yet.

I have visual memories that will come to me every now and then during the day. Like on Sunday when Dear Hubby and I walked all the way over to Farmington Road and I said to him I was almost more tired walking 4-5 miles of flat streets than I was when we walked to the top of Mt. Tabor. And then I pictured the beauty of Mt. Tabor -- pictured above -- and the vista of downtown Portland from the western side, and the majestic beauty of Mount Hood from the eastern side. And I could see it crystal clear in my mind's eye, the many mornings we'd trudge up there around daylight or on a warm summer evening. It's a moment's memory like that that will jar my heart. And I'm not sure if I miss it. I haven't had a moment of homesickness yet. And yet a moment's memory will make me feel...unsettled. I guess where I'm at right now is somewhere between finishing pulling all the roots up before planting them down deep in new soil. The work is being done but I've yet to experience the harvest.

I love my new home. I love my new town. I love my new state. I feel welcome here. I am not lonely here. I am at peace here.

It is amazing how quickly we humans adjust, how quickly the unfamiliar becomes familiar. How I wake up in the middle of the nite and know that I'm home already. I am not lost.

Homeward Bound....I wish I was homeward bound....

I don't know how to start writing tonite. I don't know if I even remember how to write. My mind is so fractured and full and spilling over. I can hardly keep a cohesive thought in my head. My focus is non-existent. My daughter-in-law and I flew back to Detroit last Thursday and spent 3 whirlwind days house hunting with Bill the Real Estate Guy. A wonderful man who was so friendly, so funny, and so charming. He and I got along like a house afire and my d-i-l spent a lot of time in the back seat laughing at us. She texted my daughter, "I never knew your mom was so goofy!" My daughter texted back, "Yup. This is what I grew up with." Do I take that as an insult or a compliment?! Haha! Actually, the two of us had a great time together. I think we viewed something like 30 houses? But we finally found two that we like, within a mile of each other and only about 10 minutes from work for everyone. Dear Hubby and I are putting in an offer on Monday and we'll see where it goes. He told me as he was leaving for work that Thursday morning, "I hope you find the house of your dreams back there. You deserve it." No wonder I love the man. As long as he has a room to tinker in and to put all his hunting gear and trophies....which he will...and a place in the yard to target shoot with his longbow...which he will... he doesn't care about any of the other details. He told me wherever we've lived in these 36 years together I've always made it home...and he knows I'll do the same with this one as well.

This is the house I found. This is the house I love. This, I hope, will become home.

If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it. ~ Toni Morrison

Well, it's official now. The refrigerator magnets are all packed away. We really must be moving! All the art work and photos are boxed up. All but two of my house plants are gone, given to friends who I know will give them good homes. The glass, porcelain, and china objects from my curio and china cabinets are all lovingly wrapped up and carefully tucked away, with hopes they'll survive the 2300 mile trek 2/3 of the way across America to their new home. Which hasn't even been looked at in person, let alone bought and ready for occupancy. But that should soon change. My daughter-in-law and I are flying out of Portland around 6 am in the morning to go house hunting for a few days together. Wish us luck, not only in finding homes but also luck with the weather so we don't face all kinds of delays or, perish the thought, cancellations!

I thought when we began this amazing odyssey to Michigan that I'd find the time to blog about it and update at least halfway regularly. Well, obviously that hasn't been happening. Too much to do and too little time to do it in. It's looking more likely we'll be moving in the first part of February. We're trying to prepare our house to put it on the market as well as sort and purge and pack. As well as taking care of my grandsons 55 hours per week. As well as trying to find time to see beloved friends and family one last time before our day of departure. I feel like my sinuses are made of sponge, I've done so much crying in the past few weeks. I've always considered myself pretty strong when it comes to emotions but when you're confronted with realizing that a lot of these goodbyes are probably final ones with a lot of people...well, it's a lot to take in. With the threat of gas prices reaching $5 per gallon in the not-too-distant future, it will be a real sacrifice for any one to come or go. When we're finally in Michigan, we're finally in Michigan. Very sobering.

But still....even so....we truly feel we're doing the right thing for so many reasons, many of which I don't feel like indulging in public. Suffice it to say we're very comfortable with our decision and can see the Lord working it out, every step of the way.

I had lunch with a very dear friend on Sunday, my lunch lady buddy Miss Ivona. We met in 1996 when we both first became lunch ladies for the Portland schools. We became instant friends. As we were talking I said to her, "Now, isn't this ironic? Isn't it the human condition? We may really like or love somebody for years but it isn't until we're faced with losing them, possibly forever, where we finally come forth and tell them how much they mean to us? How much we'll miss them?" She knew exactly what I was saying. And we never did say goodbye to each other. She said if we don't see each other here again on earth we'll see each other in eternity where we'll be lunch ladies together again feeding all the baby angels. Oh, I do LOVE that woman!

And so a new chapter starts tomorrow, finding homes. I am excited and full of anticipation as we prepare to step out into our futures. As much as I've loved this old house we've lived in for the past 28 years, like my daughter said the other day, with everything coming down off the walls, the boxes stacked all over everywhere, "It doesn't really feel like home any more, Mom."

No, it doesn't.

But when those things go back up on the walls, back on the refrigerator, when my bird feeder is hung outside a window and new birds I've never seen before perch to eat, when my grandsons come rushing in to stay with me in our new house...well, it will begin to feel like home.

I truly believe that.

Home is where the heart 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.

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~ William Wordsworth

Once upon a time there was a young girl. There wasn't anything special about her, not to the naked eye anyway. She wasn't born with beauty or grace. But her love of life and thirst for knowledge was apparent at an early age. Throughout her life she recorded her joys, her sorrows, in the best way she knew how...thru the written word. She put it out there for the world to see when she reached her 50's...she grew up, by the way...never dreaming anyone would ever come read it. Never dreaming it would ever impact anyone.

She's really a pretty simple woman. On the outside, anyway, the 'side' most of the people around her see. She's not a woman of a lot of verbal words, verbal thinking. She observes and ponders and wonders and stews. Oh, she has opinions...yes, she does. But she doesn't dole out advice. If you want to know what she thinks you have to come to her and ask. Just like it is with the physical side of her, too...affection isn't always easily given, but it's appreciated and taken gladly when it's given to her. She appears to be open. She appears to face the world around her with a friendly, easy demeanor. She appears to be a lot of things. But she isn't.

It always boils down to her words, her written words. That's where you find her, tucked in to her almost-daily musings. You read about her life, her loves, her heartaches, her losses. You come to know the woman behind the name of "Grandma". You feel her contentment with her life even amidst the busyness and fullness of her days. You can feel the peace in her soul as she writes about her love for her grandboys, for her books, music, and her garden. For The Man She Loves and her family.

And that is where this is taking me this evening, to my written words. To those of you who asked for, received, and responded to my life story. It is to thank you for opening your hearts to me, for not judging me. For reading my written words and knowing it was written from my heart, which is where all my written words dwell anyway.

Privacy: the state of being free from intrusion or disturbance in one's private life or affairs: the right to privacy.

When I was a teenager there wasn't anything I valued more and protected more than my privacy. And I was blessed to have a mother and father who respected not only mine but the privacy of my three brothers as well.

When do we parents overstep those bounds? When does 'concern' become 'invasion'? I had friends...my daughter had friends...whose mothers felt it was their right to snoop thru drawers and closets, between the mattress and box springs, under beds, in pockets and purses. My mother never did that to me and I never did that to my daughter -- or my son. Some aspects of our lives really do belong to us as individuals, even when we're 10 or 15 or 18. How do we teach them to trust when we don't respect their privacy?

I was not and still am not a perfect parent. My two children are both in their early 30's now. I've made mistakes and I've admitted to them and apologized for them. But I don't think either one of them will tell you that I've ever pried in to their personal business. As teenagers, when their bedrooms became impossibly messy, I always asked and was given permission to go in and straighten things up. I never looked at anything. Seriously. My mission was to clean and that's what I did. I practiced the same respect for privacy when I cleaned people's houses, too. You shuffle papers together in a neat stack, keep your eyes averted, and set them down when you're done. Whatever is private is private. When my son got married I had a talk with my daughter-in-law and told her I would never pry, that he was hers now and I was 'handing him over'. And I meant it. And I have. He is my son but he is her husband.

I reap what I've sown, too. Do they come and talk to me, seek my advice at times? Yes. Do they sometimes confide? Yes.

I guess what I'm trying to say to some of you younger mothers who are in the middle of mothering preteens and teens is: How you treat them now is going to be the foundation your adult relationship with them is based upon. They do grow up. And if you're really blessed and lucky, they evolve into some very special friends in your life, not just your kids. You have to trust them; they need to know they can trust you.

Bring the past only if you are going to build from it. ~ Doménico Cieri Estrada

Paths

(For Sara)

Our path starts
from the moment of conception.
We float in darkness
and dream to the beat
of our mother's
heart.
And once we're here
our path
is directed by
those around us,
those who make decisions
for us.
We are like grains of sand,
blown this way
and that,
no sense of direction,
no light.
But as the winds ripple,
the gales howl,
a sweet breeze is there
at the end of
the tunnel.
It lifts us and buoys us.
It beckons to us
and we find ourselves
shifting our
path
in that direction.
We find ourselves
straining our faces upwards
towards the sun,
the promise of warmth
and
sustenance.
The promise of
a
beautiful day.

With Love,
Aunt Kris

Turn around and they're one, turn around and they're 4...

I stumbled across this gem today, sticking out cockeyed from a bookshelf Dear Hubby and I have in the bedroom. As I went by and began giving it a push back in alignment with the other books I stopped when I realized what it was: an autobiography written by my son when he was 9 years old. As well as that, there was also a biography in it he wrote about me:

"When my mom was little she had a dog. My mom has 3 brothers. There names are K, T, and E. K is the oldest of her brothers. My mom ran away one day and when her dad found her and her friend he took them to have ice cream. One day at school she was caught reding a book when she should be working. Then her teacher took the book and burned it up. She married a man named D. She loved D. He looks nice. She had my sister in 1977. She had me when she was 22. Her favorite foods are apples, popcorn, and elk meat. My mom is very pretty. She has brown hair, beautiful eyes. She loves me very, very much and I love her! She likes writing and reading and a hole lot of stuff. She likes watching baseball games if there exciting. She is a busy mom. She is very alergic to cotton wood trees."

It was my Mother's Day gift that year. Taped inside is a paper tulip he'd made and given me, too.

I write about my grandboys a lot. But when I read thru this little journal this morning, this book written by my son who is their father, it transported me back 22 years ago as if it was yesterday. And I remembered the darling little boy with the flyaway hair, the skinny little butt that needed suspenders to keep his pants up, and cowboy boots splattering thru every mud puddle they could find. And I marvelled and was appalled at how fast those years have gone by. Did I treasure them enough, him enough? And as I searched my heart I knew that I had. But if I'd only known then what I know now I would've treasured them more.

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.

Loneliness is a place that I know well. It's the distance between us, and the space inside ourselves...

And I've got a longin'

That's hard to find

Won't give me no peace of mind

Something that I've lived with all along

Days and weeks and months and years

Filling in the time my dear

Tryin' to find the place where I belong

--Annie Lennox "Loneliness" --

I'm almost 56 years old. You'd think at my age most people would have learned their life lessons by now, wouldn't you? Not so for me. I'm going to spill my guts once again so go grab a cup of coffee or cup of tea and settle in. I dunno how long-winded I'm going to get on this one.

Maybe it's from sitting on the couch with my daughter this morning and talking about friendships and self-images and others' perceptions of us. Maybe it comes from doing some more soul-searching lately. Whatever. But I've come to a painful realization of how I've limited my own life in years past. Me. My actions. My reservations about letting people in, letting them get to know me. My fears. My inadequacies, either real or imagined. Oh, this is so hard to admit to the world in general but especially to myself. It is so hard to peel back the layers of skin and see myself as I am, the time I've wasted. The opportunities missed.

You know, shy people are selfish people. Really. We get so wrapped up in worrying about ourselves we forget about how the other person might be feeling in the same situation. We see only our needs, our wants, our yearnings. We don't even begin to think about how the other guy might be feeling the same emotions, the same self-doubts we're feeling as well. Maybe even tenfold compared to ourselves. And we freeze. And we don't reach out. And we go away disappointed. Over. And. Over. And. Over. Again. In ourselves. Ourselves.

I just looked at the calendar on my computer, down where Time is listed. I had a huge shock when I realized it's November 21 and it was 33 years ago today I became a Christian. Especially since I'm writing about the topic I'm writing about at the moment. Because it has been relationships with people within my church that I have limited myself from more than anywhere else in my life. 33 years. Oh, that is painful. Because it's just been lately where things have begun to open up for me. Well, in the past few years, anyway. First it was my friendship with Karen. Then going out to dinner with a couple we've known for 31 years. Then getting on Facebook and...tentatively...putting forth the effort to say hello to those within my church circle, to 'Friend' some of them. Sending notes and cards and emails to people I know. Showing myself friendly. Because, by setting so many limitations on myself these past 33 years I have not shown myself to be very friendly. And it hasn't been because I'm not friendly. It's because I've been afraid to be friendly. Dear Hubby, thru the many different areas he's been involved in thru the years, has gotten to know a lot more people than me. And when people have said to him, "You know, Kris is so nice but she's so quiet!!" he's always amazed by that. He tells them, "You don't know my wife! There isn't a shy bone in her body!" Maybe that's been true in every other venue of my life...but definitely not at church.

What is so humiliating about confessing all this is by looking at it in retrospect I can see these issues have been because of me. Because of my attitude. My building the castle walls of defense around me and blaming everyone around me. Never myself.

Because...you see...by letting myself begin to reach out tentatively and letting that armor crack, by opening myself and allowing myself to be vulnerable...something that is very, very hard for me to do...I'm finding that people in my church are responding to me like everyone else does. That they're finding me nice. And likable. And thoughtful. And funny. And interesting. That I'm not that lump of dough who's been occupying the same pew space for the past 33 years. That I have a voice. That I'm really and truly a person.

My grandson Dylan's days are filled with "my buds". These are all the people who've become familiar to him over the past 3 1/2 years we've been out walking. There's Bob-the-little-gray-guy...he collects our regular garbage every week in the gray can. And Roger the mail man. John, a warehouseman at a plumbing supply company a few blocks away whom we've befriended as we pass by. All the men who work at a radiator supply store we walk by almost daily. The UPS delivery man. The checkers at the Save A Lot store. The librarians. The people who work at Walgreen's and Little Caesar's Pizza, the neighborhood bakery, and the Subway down the street. The postal workers at the front counter at the post office.

I love how getting out has created a sense of community for my grandchildren, even tho we live in a large city. I love how they wave at and greet everyone we come across. In this world full of Stranger Danger, I don't want them to be fearful of everyone they come in contact with because not everyone out there is waiting to do them harm. Race and religion don't even enter in to it for them...everyone gets a wave and a cheerful "Hi!!!" And rarely does anyone ever ignore them. Even teenagers.

I teach them caution. I tell them never to wander off, to stay with Grandma. But they feel secure in knowing when they're with me all's pretty much well with their world. And hopefully it will stay that way. Because, in all actuality, this world is still a decent place to be in. Most of the time.