Embrace The Suck

Yesterday Pam posted a blog about crows. Today Dani followed up on Pam's lead and wrote some more about the black birds. Not one to be left out, I want to add another crow story. I could write it myself and embellish it, but I think I'll just copy and paste what my daughter, Weneki, has to say about the birds that have taken up residence in her life. " Zub had a native American raven tattooed on his shoulder blade. [Zubin got this tattoo before tattoos were common place, but after his future mother-in-law got hers.] And I got my first crow visit two days after Zub died. I couldn't help but think that it was a visit from Zub. It opened my eyes to all the birds, and then to the trees, and then to the nature all around me. I never was able to take everything in before, but that lil' crow visit opened my eyes and was my ticket into nature. Sounds dorky, I'm sure. I think it was a gift from Zub." It really doesn't sound dorky to me at all. I was there w...

"Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of other, for those voices. Do the hardest thing one earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth." Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand Short story author, 1888-1923) As I've been looking through the old slide boxes and scanning photos of my dad into the computer, I have to admit I've enjoyed seeing Mini Merry ME in all her splendor. When my father was in his photography mode, I was the right age, or maybe just needy enough of his attention, to be his model. Oh, he always took birthday and Christmas pictures of everybody, the dog included, but there seems to also be a preponderance of photos of the skinny little girl with the funny looking bangs. It's possible that my older sisters were of an age to not want to sit on the red vinyl hassock or chow bench posing like Marilyn Monroe. To every thing there is a season, and I think the season of taking pictures of children is probably between three and ten. If they are...

I really can't believe that I made a comfort list that did not have a) Tulips and daffodils and b)chocolate ice cream on it. What was I thinking? me

I've got some stuff rolling around in my head that I was going to get out by writing instead of shaking my head like a dog with water in its ears. Before I got to it, I checked my email and found Jon Gordo n's weekly newsletter. It's always got som ething good, uplifting, and inspirational in it about living life by using your greatest potential. I share today's message with you because it really spoke to me. I suppose all of us at one time or another have asked the question, why am I here. For me it's a recurrin g question and I can only guess the answer. At different times of my life I've had different answers. I'm writing as I sit next to Dad's bed. He is sleepy this morning and has more pain t han normal. I'm in a sleeveless t-shirt sweating. He's covered with a sheet and two blankets and still shivers a bit. His cinnamon toast rests atop the dual purpose bedside commode (toilet/tray) [Is t hat gross? Is it unsanitary?] looking rejected and ...

Katherine Center is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors. I've read all three of her novels. I also enjoy her blog . The stories aren't necessarily great literature. They are, however, told in a way that's easy to read and full of a kind of every woman's truth. In the Bright Side of Disaster she writes of having and caring for a newborn baby with such exactitude that I think my breasts filled and my nipples hurt just from reading about the effects of breast feeding! In Get Lucky and her blog Center writes of making a comfort list. Of course I can't remember why the character in the book went through the exercise - no surprise there! But I remember thinking this is something I should do to. In these rather stress-filled days, when actually grabbing a piece of comfort pie and eating it on the run might be all I can do to catch a few moments of coziness I think it is good to have a list to refer back to, so here's my version of a Comfort List, things that ...

Shortly after I moved to Jacksonville fifteen years ago to help care for my mom, my father introduced me to the White Notebook. Actually he handed me several sheets of paper filled with his almost illegible writing on it and asked me to make some sense of it. Family phone numbers, military retirement regulations, insurance policy numbers and list upon list of what to do to see that my mother was adequately taken care of in the event of his death. According to most actuarial tables my mother would outlive my father by about 5 years. My father was a man who lived by the numbers. He was taking no chance that those of us left behind would NOT know what to do or where to look for all pertinent information. Well, we know about the best laid plans of mice and men. My mom predeceased Dad by more than those 5 years. The White Notebook has been re-worked a few times to update phone numbers of his nomadic children, but mostly it's been moved to the back of the bookcase and forgotten. Last n...

Yesterday started out to be a pretty good day. By late afternoon it had turned depressing, a little scary. Dad woke from a nap, confused. Not drug confused, or sleep confused. More the kind of confusion a man who has always known what to do next might feel when he no longer has a clue what to do next or how to find out. In a divinely orchestrated moment, I stayed calm and to my surprise and pleasure, un-argumentative. I think my calm voice and gentle demeanor helped me as much as it helped Dad. I read to him from the Hospice Butterfly book which describes how the dying process works. How his body will begin to shut down. What he might expect. The book has been in the house for 18 months. I've read it more than once. I'm not sure Dad has read it at all. But that's neither here nor there. He got the message when he needed it. After awhile he was visibly calmer. He told me he was content because he knew what was coming. It's like his heart began to accept what his engineer...

"People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway. The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds. Think big anyway. People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway. Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway." © Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001 Let me begin by saying there is some really good blogging out there this mor...

I think I've mentioned before that sometime after my mother died my dad traded the king sized bed he'd slept in for nearly 50 years for a single person mechanical bed. He also began to fill up the walls in his room with pictures. The room is actually lopsided, tilts a little, because of the pictures, cartoons, certificates that are on the wall. His bed is turned facing the wall, and the TV. If there were about fifty mattresses and quilts, and no peas to disturb her sleep, it might be the kind of set up a princess would enjoy. Of course the princess would have a different selection of photos. There probably aren't many people who enjoy looking at dam projects, buildings in various states of construction, and the NASA tower affectionately called by the engineers building it, the SLUT. As each day passes I see my Dad getting closer and closer to having to, or wanting to, stay in his "I Love me" room til the end. It's becoming more than a bedroom and more of a ha...

"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two." -St. Augustine Sweetie had a bit of a surprise windfall this week. (Aren't all windfalls a surprise?) He got his firstsocial security check. I think at first it made him feel a tad bit o...