No one ever really dies as long as they took the time to leave us with fond memories. ~ Chris Sorensen

There is nothing like the death of a close friend or loved one as far as making us realize our own vulnerability and how little control we truly have over our own lives.  We received news this morning that a very dear friend of Dear Hubby's passed away yesterday due to ongoing complications he'd suffered since having back surgery a few weeks ago.  In the process he'd suffered a stroke, which is something Dear Hubby is morbidly afraid of in regards to his own family history.  Also, this friend and Dear Hubby are almost the same age.  When I got on Facebook and notes from friends verified the seriousness of a message Dear Hubby woke up to find on his phone this morning:... "I've got really bad news!" from a mutual friend...Dear Hubby went off in another room and cried like his heart was breaking.   This friend had called Dear Hubby just a day or two before he'd gone in to have the back surgery, asking for prayer.  The last time Dear Hubby saw him was last summer when he'd flown into Portland and G had come out to pick him up at the airport. 

He'd asked me to send G a Get Well card right after the surgery.  Usually I am very good about doing things like that.  And even tho it isn't an excuse, in the busyness of the holidays and everyday life here, I had forgotten to do so.  This morning Dear Hubby said to me, "I hope in the future, when I ask you to do something like that for me,  next time you don't forget."  He didn't mean it the way I took it but I was a bit offended by that statement.  I try to do the best I can with the limited free time I have...and why can't men just DO something like that for themselves?  But the heat of the moment passed and I know he was feeling badly because the card never did get sent to G.  I felt badly, too.  Dear Hubby made a very valid point, tho.  He said we all need to act upon feelings when we feel them.  That's very true.  Little did we know G wouldn't make it.   In one of the Wyatt Earp movies, where Val Kilmer played Doc Holliday, as he lay dying of consumption he made a remark about not having many friends in his lifetime but Wyatt Earp had truly been one of his.  That line has stuck with both Dear Hubby and I ever since we heard it.  I know I wrote a blog entry recently about people who are well loved and then die feeling like they have no friends.  I think that is the biggest vulnerability in all our lives, never knowing how many really do love and care for us.  If only we'd take the time more often to tell not only family but dear friends just how much they mean to us. 

Myself included.

They say that the eye is the window to the soul. But it is the soul that is the window. ~ Andrew Hamilton

I had kind of a strange thought the other day as I sat watching my oldest grandson playing a wrestling video game.  Video animation has improved to the point where, if you come in unawares to a room where someone is playing a game, you aren't sure if what you're seeing is real or created.  The body movements are so fluid, so human-like.  That is, until the face turns towards the screen and you look into the eyes.  No matter how talented the animators of today are there is one thing they can't create:  a soul.  The eyes are flat and lifeless.  I have been with people who've died.  When the soul is gone from the body, the eyes are empty.  Sightless.  Immediately.

As my mother died, she shed one last tear.  The hospice nurse told my sister-in-law and me that many people do that.  Regrets?  Pain at leaving?  I don't know.  But once the soul is gone, it's gone.

People argue all the time about what a soul is.  What it isn't.  Where it goes.  Where it doesn't go.  That souls create auras around people.  That photographs show them leaving the body. 

I will tell you what my soul is.

It is the thoughts in my mind that are never quiet.  The voice of me.  The essence of my conscience.  The inner me who gazes out at the outside me.  I know it is contained inside of me and yet it isn't anything finite that I can hold up and show you.  It is the image looking back at me in the mirror.  The part of me that feels joy and sorrow, peace and anxiety, love and pain.  Who communicates with the outside world thru words and touch and gestures.  It feels the wind and holds its face up to the warmth of the sun.  It heard the voice of God and recognized it when it did.  And it yearned for something more...all my life...some way to fill the empty void it felt until it found the peace that passes all understanding.

And people will argue with me, when I tell them my soul was touched by God.  And that's ok.

I know what I know.

Man loves company even if it is only that of a small burning candle. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

I was looking at some photos on a friend's Facebook page yesterday.  One that caught my attention was of seven women taken back in the early 1990s...a group of women who've been friends for several decades now.  At that particular time they were especially close...most of their children were good friends as well and they spent a lot of time together.  But what really hit me about the photo was what was written about one of them who passed away this year.  I had always thought she had the world by the tail and lived a happy life.  But someone had written a comment saying, "She was well loved and she didn't know it."

How many of us go thru Life and feel like no one loves us?

Funny how sometimes, even when we're surrounded by others, we can feel so isolated and alone. Is it because we're so afraid of rejection that we're hesitant to reach out? I know for myself that that's what holds me back at times. Or it did when I was younger. As I'm getting older I am so much more comfortable in my own skin. But it's been a long and winding road thru Life to get to this point.

Several years ago  someone I knew quite well died.  I remember one time when she'd come over to have lunch with me at my house and she began to cry and told me she never felt like she had any friends.  It nearly broke my heart.  She was such a giving person, selfless in so many ways.  Whatever task she undertook she put her whole heart in to it.  A brilliant seamstress, she spent untold hours working on costumes for Sunday School projects.  Her artistic abilities were amazing.  And crafty?  She could take nothing and make something beautiful out of it.  I know that she struggled for acceptance amongst her peers and I don't think she ever found it, at least not on the level she so ached to attain.

And yet, when she died very tragically and unexpectedly in the prime of her life, you should have seen the amount of people at her funeral.  Kids she'd taught in Sunday School.  So many people whose lives she'd touched.


Someone came up to me not long after her funeral and remarked on what a beautiful service it had been.  Someone who'd never been particularly kind to my deceased friend.  She said, "You know, she was so well thought of and loved by so many people.  But I'm sure she knew it," and I know she was waiting for me to affirm that yes, this woman had known it.  I stood and looked at this person and didn't say a word.  Which made her very uncomfortable.  Then, a little less sure of herself she said, "She did know she was loved, didn't she?  I'm sure she did."  And again I said nothing.


When I did, I told her, "Actually, no.  She didn't."


And I turned and walked away.

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.

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.

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future. ~ Paul Boese

I've been married to this man for a long time.  37 years, to be exact.  I met him on a blind date.  When I opened the door to let him and our mutual friends into my parents' house for the first time he almost blew me away.  He had long dark brown hair that cascaded halfway down his back.  He wore a leather jacket, jeans, and boots.  He had the most piercing brown eyes I'd ever gazed into.  I was in speechless awe.  At the end of the evening, after he and our friends had dropped me off at my parents', he told our friends, "Someday I'm going to marry that girl".  They laughed him to scorn.  5 months and 4 days later, he made those words true.

You learn a lot about another person after being with them for close to 4 decades.  I sometimes feel as if I know him better than he does himself.  But that isn't true.  There are parts of each of us that are never revealed to the world around us.  But I do know the important things about him.  I know he's a man of impeccable integrity.  I know he's honest and true.  I know his strengths and his weaknesses.  He has proven to me many times that he's in this for the long run, 'til death do us part.  He has been with me in good times and hard times.  He has stayed by my side when I've been very ill, so devoted that even the nursing staff has commented to me how lucky I am to have someone who loves me so much.  They have seen many women dumped off at the hospital, the husband never to be seen again until he comes to pick them up to take them home.  Dear Hubby has been an awesome father to our two children...and still is.  And I don't think there is a Papa in the world who could be loved by his grandchildren as much as he is by our two grandsons.

For a life change as huge as the one we've undergone these past few months, learning of a possible move to Michigan from Oregon around the first part of November last year and then making it so in March of this year, it's gone remarkably well.  We hit a pretty big bump in the road when we first arrived in Michigan, only to find a mortgage mess of - to us - catastrophic proportions.  We ended up living in a hotel suite for over two weeks while everything got sorted out.  Beyond that, it's been pretty seamless.  We've settled in and already grown to love our new home and surroundings.  But Dear Hubby and I began sniping at each other, a little here, a little there.  We were irritable and short-tempered.  Instead of doing what we've always done in the past by talking such things thru, we let it fester.  With all the adjustments to a new home, a new city, a new state, and a completely new job for him I don't know if we weren't aware of what was happening or if we were too distracted to give it much thought.

It came to a head a week ago.

We sat out on our porch on that Saturday morning.  Grumpy.  Not very talkative.  And then Dear Hubby opened up like a dam and let all his frustrations, his hurts, pour out of him.  I sat and listenend in rather stunned silence, letting him say his piece, mulling over all that he had to say.  And I found myself agreeing with him.  I told him it was too bad he hadn't opened up sooner instead of bottling it all up inside.  But I'd done the same thing.  So after talking these issues thru we decided we'd start from square one, from that point forward, and put all our grievances and gripes behind us and move on.  We also agreed if we saw ourselves falling back into that rut, to point it out to the other one and change it right then.

You see, communication is the secret to a happy marriage. 

We have had many people say to us thru the years, "If you guys could bottle up what you have and sell it you'd be billionaires".

There's no bottling up of any secret formula.  There's no magic elixir.  What there is is the want-to to make this relationship work.  It's mutual respect.  It's realizing that my opinion, my feelings, are only half of a whole.  His are the other half.  It is leaving selfishness behind at the marriage altar.  It is a building process, one day at a time.  It is what you make of it.  It doesn't just happen.

There is no white knight in shining armor, coming to sweep you away.

If you're lucky, as I have been lucky, you find a good man you want to spend the rest of your life with.

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!

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be. ~ Thomas à Kempis

Photo by DesignMD

What was your relationship with your mother like, if you are a daughter? That's a loaded bomb waiting to go off, isn't it? For some of us anyway. For me.

I lost my mom when I was 35. She's been gone for 21 years now. I'm not one of those women who wallpapers her walls or any other surfaces with family photos. I have one of Dylan on display. One of Cooper. A portrait photo of my maternal great-grandmother at the age of 18 on her high school graduation day in 1898 or thereabouts. A large photo of my kids taken when they were around kindergarten age, others of them around graduation. One of Dear Hubby. That's it.

So...if I need to remind myself what my mother looked like I go to an elaborate antique cigar box that belonged to my maternal great-grandfather. I have many snapshots and old family obituaries that date back to one of my great-great-grandfathers, and I rummage around in it until I find a photo taken of both my parents. It was taken not long before she died. She is sitting on my father's lap and actually has a half-smile on her face. I can't tell you how rare that was, to see her with a smile. To see her having any physical contact with my father. If I need to remember how she sounded I dig out an old VCR tape of a family Christmas in 1987, I believe it was. When she was ill with cancer but not terminal yet. I hear her cackling laugh. My daughter has inherited that, and her tendency to talk to the television.

And if I need to remind myself of who she was...well, I'm at a bit of a loss there. I have my memories of who I thought she was but, the older I get, the more distorted those memories seem to be. I don't really think she was the woman I remember her as. As much as she talked, talked, talked to me...I don't think she ever revealed her real self. So much of her is a mystery to me and, regrettably, will remain so. So much of what she did reveal to me...well, I don't know how accurate a lot of it was. A few years ago a cousin of hers who grew up with her came out from New Hampshire to visit and on a day when Ginger and I spent several hours together I asked her to tell me what my mom was like as a young woman, as a girl. Ginger told me as much as she could but I think I went away feeling even more confused than I'd been before. Some of the family history she told me wasn't quite like the history my mom passed on to us. I don't think my brothers ever cared one way or another but maybe because I'm the only female in our family I wanted a more tangible grasp of who our mom was. But she'll forever be an enigma to me. A swirly vapor. A breeze that lifts the hair on the back of my neck. A smoky haze hovering just over the edge of the horizon.

My younger brother and I spent a day together during my vacation week and we did a lot of talking about a lot of things. We both know she made the comment she would've had a happier marriage if she'd never had children. We both know she was emotionally frozen. That she had no idea how to reach out to people and when people reached out to her she'd deliberately sabotage any friendly overtures. She was bitter. She was mad at the world. Nothing made her happy.

And yet...rare moments...she could be funny. She had a razor-sharp mind. She was hard-working, dedicated. I know she meant well. I knew she was lonely...but I couldn't fill her empty voids. And she resented that. Deeply. She wanted me to herself and she didn't want to share me with my husband, my children. And the less she had of me as I grew older, the more she wanted. I loved her, but I resented her, too. I wanted to be free of the web, what I considered the millstone around my neck. I wanted freedom to live my life.

These are wise words: "Be careful what you wish for".

Sometimes you get it.

My mother and I made peace with each other before she died. She told me many times, "I wish I could go back and do it over again when it comes to you". I told her it was water under the bridge, that I survived. That I loved her.

And here I am, a motherless daughter. For a long time now. And sometimes, as I think of her now and then, I realize maybe I know her better than I thought I did. Maybe, as a more mature woman, I understand her better now. That the water under the bridge has taken me over all kinds of rips and rills and free-falls and boulders along the way. I have a lot more of Life tucked into my belt now. I am less mystified. I am more forgiving.

She was who she was. I am who I am. And I am my mother's daughter.

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

Do we ever stop learning? Do we ever throw down the pencil, rip up the paper, toss it in to the garbage and say, "Enough already!"

As a little girl, with three brothers, I was a major tomboy. I had to be, not only to survive but also to be included in everything. Our neighborhood sorely lacked girls outside of myself, my friend Angie, and Ruthie...but Ruthie wasn't really one to come outside and play so we won't count her. Angie was a little more girly-girly than I was but she quite often followed my lead. We'd have our afternoons of hauling all of our Barbie stash out under the cherry tree in her yard and play dolls for hours, but quite often you'd find us playing baseball with the boys in Dr. Moore's parking lot, "War" in the Rambo's back field using real dirt clods for hand grenades. It was a toss-up most nites as to who was the dirtiest, myself or my brothers, when we'd come in at bedtime.

I'm left-handed but that didn't discourage my brothers from teaching me how to throw like a guy. I could throw a perfect spiral with a football. I was the girl 'star' in my class at kick ball. But I was a great pitcher. I perfected a killer curve ball. I threw hard, I threw fast, and I was deadly accurate. And I practiced and practiced. And practiced some more.

My dad taught me a lot of life strategies as a child that have worked well for me all of my life. Never back down. Never take a back seat to anyone. Being a girl isn't an excuse. You can do anything you set your mind to. Don't give up. No matter what kind of ball Life pitched at him he never struck out. He had a marvelous attititude. If you asked him how he liked his job, even if he detested it, he'd tell you, "Well, it's the only job I've got right now and I'm glad for that." He was generous. He was good-hearted.

So...I guess you could say I'm a chip off the old block. I try hard to see the glass half full. Dear Hubby tells me I'm about as easy-going as easy-going can be. After 36 years with me, he ought to know! I like to think I'm generous and good-hearted. I really do enjoy life.

I'm hoping all of this will hold me steady in the days to come. I'm hoping when I come across something I don't know the answer to, that I have no idea how I'm going to come to terms with, I'll dig deep into Dad's treasure trough of sound advice and put what I find there to good use. This is not going to be a time in my life when it's ok to falter, ok to back down, ok to give in and give up. This is a time when I need to hunker down and plan strategy. Someone is depending on me. I can not and will not fail them

Some persons are very decisive when it comes to avoiding decisions. ~ Brendan Francis

I recently wrote about being one of a set of twins. My twin died in utero and even tho we never shared life in the outside world, I've always felt as if a part of me is missing. There are even 'syndromes' about such a thing: Vanishing Twin and Lost Twin. I had no idea either existed until I typed in "lost twin" a few years back in a Google search, wondering if there was any one out there who shared the same lost feeling I have at the core of me. Shocking to me, there are probably millions.

After writing about this I had several comments and emails about it. It brought to mind one of those 'family secret' stories passed down thru the generations that I thought I would share because I think in itself it's quite unusual but very interesting. Interesting to me because it seems destined that whole sets of twins don't seem to survive in my family. So...I thought I would share this with you. I have a feeling I might've touched on it somewhere in the past but with almost 1000 posts in my archives on this blog and several hundred on my 'first' blog...well, the thought of digging thru those is so daunting I'll just leave it alone and start from scratch. And it was so long ago I might've written about it most of you wouldn't remember it anyway.

My paternal grandmother gave stillbirth to a set of twins, back around 1920. As to whether they were boys, girls, or one of each I don't have a clue. But as the story has been passed down to me by my mother, my grandmother was recovering in the hospital afterwards and that is where this story begins. My grandmother died when I was 3 years old so I don't remember her. I don't know what type of person she was emotionally to try to gauge just how this might've affected her. My oldest brother is 6 years older than me and was 9 when she died...he's told me she was one of the best grandmothers in the world. I do know she was also a Christian woman, so I'm sure she must've felt the assurance in her heart that someday she would be reunited with her two 'lost' babies. But I imagine the reality of losing them at that moment in time must've been tragic.

Grandma had a roommate, a French-Canadian Catholic woman who'd just given birth to her 12th or 13th child. As my grandmother lay there in her bed she couldn't help overhearing the conversation the woman had with her husband when he came to visit. They both spoke about how they had no idea how they were going to feed and clothe yet another little one. They were already under tremendous strain trying to provide for the others already there. As Grandma listened a seed sprouted in her heart and when my grandfather came to visit her later in the day she told him of the other woman's dilemma. "Why don't we ask if we can adopt the baby girl?" I believe they'd already lost my uncle, a toddler who'd died from spinal meningitis. My grandfather agreed, and they approached the other couple with their idea.

I don't know how all the details were ironed out, but the little girl was adopted by my grandparents and christened with the name Claire. In those days adoption was kept very quiet in families for the most part. And even tho Claire was olive-skinned and had dark hair and stood out in photos amongst all the fair Swedes and English family members, she grew up not having a clue she was adopted. My father, who was their natural born son, came along a few years later. He never knew Claire was anything but his natural sister.

When my grandfather died when I was 10 my dad and I went to his house to sort thru Grandpa's belongings. My dad found a strong box stashed away filled with all kinds of papers and tucked in among them were Claire's adoption papers and Birth Certificate. To say my dad was stunned is an understatement. But my brothers and I were told the news. I guess my parents figured with Claire living in New England and us living here in the NW, especially in the 50s and 60s when air travel was a luxury and not an every day occurrence for so many like it is today, they figured the odds of us seeing Aunt Claire and spilling the beans was pretty remote. Even so, we were sworn to secrecy. When I finally did meet her, in 1968 when I was 14, I wonder what she must've thought of me, peering at her so intently most of the time. But her unknown history -- to her, anyway -- and knowing I had such an important secret stowed away deep inside made her quite mysterious and special to me.

Years later, when one of Claire's sons joined the military and was shipped overseas to Europe, she was going to take a trip to visit him. When she applied for a Visa, tho, she needed a copy of her birth certificate, which she didn't have but my father did...when he'd found it in Grandpa's strong box he'd never sent it to her. So dad mailed it off...and a few days later he received a rather hysterical, frantic phone call from his sister. What did this MEAN, she was adopted?! No WAY was she adopted! Grandpa and Grandma were HER parents! When dad had found out her history he'd had no idea how to tell her...emotional issues were never his strong point. Instead of preparing her for it, he'd decided to let the Birth Certificate tell her the news.

It was this incident, in knowing this secret for so long....and other important life secrets that belong to other family members that have had devastating affects when they've also been revealed...that have made me be honest with our children. Sometimes probably even bluntly honest. But skeletons in closets usually don't portend any good news. Being forewarned is forearmed...I've felt that way in every aspect of raising children. My children grew up knowing all about whatever's been hidden away in generational memory vaults. And as to my history and Dear Hubby's history...they know all about our faults and foibles, too.

I guess in some ways too much knowledge can be a bad thing. But there is also safety in knowledge. Comfort in knowledge. Security in knowledge. And there is love in knowledge.