The Cheddar Bunny Girl

Under Bea's arm, you see a small stuffed bunny. This is Paco. Although Paco has been through the wash any number of times, he retains his status of favorite toy. I don't know why Bea named him Paco. It sounds Spanish, but I can't find a translation for it. She named one of her dolls Loco. I think that means "crazy" in Spanish. Maybe there are things about that doll she knows that we don't. Paco and Loco have very special places in Bea's heart and therefore in ours.

Bea named her stuffed doggie puppet "Yuppio." Remember when "yuppie" meant "young upwardly mobile professionals"? But Yuppio doesn't seem to have a great deal of ambition, and seldom speaks unless spoken through, so I am guessing his name means something like "delicious sherbert" in Transylvanian.

Like most 3-year-olds, Bea is fond of asking questions. Yet, to my knowledge, she has never asked her mother, where did I come from? Rather, Bea accepts her place in the world as a beloved person as an established fact, too familiar to be questioned.

Perhaps she will be like me, and won't even begin to wonder where she came from until she gets to be about 40. Then her existence will be an intriguing mystery that will keep her tossing and turning at night. Like me, she'll say, "I know where my body came from, but where did my spirit come from? And who am I, anyway?"

And even more intriguing, "Where was I before I was here? Or how did I just get here from nowhere?"

Once I asked my first husband, "Would you still love me if I lost an arm?"

"Yes," he replied.

"And would you still love me if I lost both my arms."

"Of course," he said.

"And would you still love me if I lost both arms and one leg?"

At this point, he began to waver. "Yes," he sighed, "but I probably wouldn't marry you."

But what I was trying to get at was, what exactly did he love? Was it the me that he could see and touch or the me that was invisible? Is it only God that loves the invisible me?

Nowadays, I am getting old and all my potential mates are also getting old, and they do not love the invisible me, because they only see the visible me, who is getting shorter, fatter and wrinklier by the moment. (And have you seen the photos of Hillary Clinton in this week's Newsweek? Oy vey! And she's younger than me!)

Too bad, you guys. But like the Cheddar Bunny Girl, there is more to me than meets the eye, and always has been, and that soul-mama is not going away any time soon. Me and Hillary are just getting started. Our spirits are not afraid of wrinkles!

So Merry Christmas to everyone, and thanks, Beasie, for sharing your own beautiful, accepting, cheddar-cheese-bunny eating spirit with all of us. Like your name, "Beatrice," you are blessed, and always will be, even when you are 110!

It's nice to be nice!

Here is another photo of Bea on the New Hill Railroad's Santa Train.As you can see by the look on Bea's face, she is blissed out. My daughter Amy, Bea's mother, also went on a Santa train up in Connecticut when she was about the same age. (She's probably remembering that as this photo is being taken, because she looks blissed out, as well.) I will always remember that when the bell-ringing Santa on the Connecticut train asked my little Amy what she wanted for Christmas, Amy replied shyly, "I want to ring your bell." And so he let her ring the bell and she was very happy.

The Santa in the current photo is a very good representative of the Santa clan. He has the requisite twinkly blue eyes and a lush beard and mustache. It's hard to know whether Bea is into believing that he's the real Santa. We haven't emphasized Santa and getting presents. When I asked Bea a few weeks ago what she was going to do for Christmas, she exclaimed, "We're going to get a big Christmas tree that goes all the way up to the ceiling." Clearly, that was what Christmas meant to her--helping to decorate the tree. I'm glad she thinks that way. She'll never be disappointed if she doesn't get sucked into the commercial side of Christmas.

When I was a small child, I didn't see a lot of Santas. I think having Santas was not very popular in the society of the 40s. The Depression, with all its miseries and woes, was too recent. My father told stories of bleak Christmases past that would wring tears from a stone. He got one orange a year--always at Christmas--and he would eat the whole thing, rind and seed included. I always felt terrible about that, every time he told that story.

What I remember best about Santa from my own childhood was my grandfather, Papaw Williams, telling me to look out the window, quick! because he had just seen Santa peeking in to see if I was being good. I would race to the window and look all around, but I never caught a glimpse of Santa. However, I never doubted that he was out there, because I believed my Papaw's every word. And still, every December, I try to be nice -- just in case Santa's watching. I'm sure I passed that on to Amy, and she'll pass it to Bea. Be nice!

Dinner at Panciuto's

These are two of my best friends from long, long ago. I will not reveal their names for fear of starting a stampede, but let us just say, the three of us are not Peter, Paul and Mary.

We all grew up in what is now Knoxville, Tennessee, and after high school, went our separate ways. We had completely lost track of one another. But because of another friend in Knoxville, who planned some wonderful reunions for our class, we found each other and got together for a meal last Saturday night.

It's amazing, when your earliest memories of a person are of a little girl or boy, to meet with them in their seventh decade and start talking just as if all that time had never passed.

We toasted absent friends and one another's health, and we had a wonderful relaxing dinner. What could be a better gift for the holiday season than the opportunity of renewing friendships grown ever more golden with the years?

Taking the holidays easy

So far this Christmas season has been a mixed bag. There have been great days and not-so-great days. Sometimes I think it's all about expectations, and we should definitely lower our expectations if we don't want to get all frustrated.

What I wanted this year was some time to reflect, but I only got it after making a complete fool of myself at a conference on, of all things, lovingkindness and meditation. I had signed up for the conference months ago and paid my fee, which was a bit exorbitant, to start with, for a day-and-a-half with Sharon Salzburg. The event was a big disappointment. Like many New Age speakers, Sharon Salzburg spends a lot of the time when she's supposed to be teaching something just talking about herself. She does a lot of name-dropping: "The other day, I said to Ram Dass, I said... ." That sort of thing. I kept thinking, "For this, I paid $75?"

The worst thing about the conference was the venue, a local UU fellowship (I can't bring myself to call it a "church.") They set up the check-in tables and locked all the doors but one. Then after participants checked in at the check-in table, they had to be checked in again at the door of the meeting room. So I felt from the get-go that this event was all about money, and it really made me mad.

Anger is a natural part of Christmas. People make each other mad. If you don't believe me, try driving at the rush hour to any destination in the Triangle. People get mad in the stores. They get mad in the restaurants. There is no peace, because every one has so much to do, and everyone is rushing.

Everyone except the blessed Bea, who was photographed recently taking a break in a recliner from her work and play. She is such a great role model. I want to be just like her when I grow up. I want to put on my stripey socks and just chill out for a little while. Thank you, Bea, for shining the light of your three-year-old wisdom on your frazzled old Grammy. (And may all of us be free from suffering, just as soon as possible!)

A ride on the Santa train

Here is Bea taking a ride on the Santa train that runs from a station in New Hill, NC. A girl always wears her nicest hairbow on the Santa train and takes along a cookie or two to enjoy as she looks out the window. What an ideal way to spend a cold, frosty Sunday afternoon in December. She is living a very sensible and imaginative life. Santa is nice, but he's not the main event. Bea doesn't know yet about how Christmas has been commercialized beyond recognition, and therefore she is able to approach the season with great joy and enthusiasm. She inspires me to the core!

Breaking news: My clothes dryer went on the blink last night. I was upstairs watching disc 5 of the Civil War and seeing the paintings of Lee's surrender to Grant. I loved that Grant had on his old mudsplattered clothing because he had not wanted to keep Lee waiting while he changed out of his work clothes. That's so real!

When the film came to a stopping point, I went down the stairs to put the wet clothes into the dryer. I then pressed the start button. NNNNNNNN said the naughty dryer. Then I held the start button down for a very long time. NNNNNNNNNN said the naughty dryer, and this time white smoke began to waft from its innards. If I could have figured out how to open the thing up, I would have put out the fire. But I just had to stand there and hope it would go out on its own. (It did.)

So today I begin trying to either get it fixed or replace it. So much for living simply. I cannot see drying my clothes on a clothes rack and having to iron everything.

Years ago when we lived in Wendell, NC, I knew an elderly woman whom we called Miss Nellie. Miss Nellie showed me a pair of lacy fingerless gloves that her mother had knitted from tobacco twine. The gloves were to be worn by Miss Nellie's sister as she pinned clothing to the clothesline in the wintertime.When Miss Nellie showed me the little ivory-colored gloves, it made me think of back when I was a little girl, before my family had a clothes dryer, when I helped my mother bring in damp clothes at the end of a winter's day--armfuls of shirts and pants and towels, not quite dry and sparkling with ice crystals. We would hang the clothes to finish drying on a rack next to the Warm Morning heater in the middle of the living room. But now I have lost my innocence. I have to have a dryer. Woe is me! Santa, are you listening?

The Bliss of Being Centered

Yes, T-ball is a very good example of ultra-centeredness. He started as a kitty named Oliver, had his name changed to Baal (after the Old Testament idol) and then--when Bea was born and adopted him as her special companion, she renamed him T-ball, which suits him just fine.

Equanimity--that's the word I'm looking for. All the world is fine with T-ball. He has a full bowl of food, a warm couch to steal a nap on, and a loving compadre who keeps him alert and makes sure his face is looking into the camera when his photo is being taken. Would that all of us had such a friend!

I must mention Bea's pajamas, which are handmedowns from a boy friend. She loves the trucks! This is a girl who doesn't even know from Disney's "Princess" line and would run shrieking out of the house if we tried to dress her in that awful bright pink stuff. We don't "do" Disney at our house. We are raising Coco Chanel, not Brittany Spears.

We have high aspirations for this little girl. She will eat no foods that aren't organic. She will wear clothes appropriate for a little child, not a mini-hooker. She will grow up to be a balanced, well-rounded, richly intellectual being with a lovely heart and mind. She will have good taste! And she will drink no wine before its time, because she will be able to differentiate between good, better and best. And she will know--just as T-ball knows this very minute--that she is a beloved child of the Universe and all that happens will be for her highest good. Let it be so!

What does the future hold?

So my daughter sends me this photo taken last August of my little granddaughter Bea. Her questioning face seems to ask: What does my future hold?
Bea, this is how it is:
We inherit the foundations of our existence, but we alone are responsible for our future. We begin by living with what our parents achieved, and we arrive at old age with what we have worked toward all our days, whether that's peace of mind or a big bank account or a wall full of diplomas or a cave in the woods. We begin with the world our grandparents and great-grandparents left to us, and we go on to create the world we want to live in and leave to our children and grandchildren.
I've just finished watching the first disc of Ken Burns' Civil War, the 1990s television series that has now been remastered and released on DVD. I remember when it was on TV; I remember that I didn't watch it. Back then I was busy raising my daughters. I didn't want to think about slavery and killing, however it might be glorified. The Civil War made me queasy to think about. I hate violence and racism and everything related to them.
More recently, though, with my children grown, I've started to think about the history of our nation. In the mail yesterday I received a pack of poems from the other participants in a writing workshop that I'm planning to attend in January. The workshop is to be held in Kentucky, that "dark and bloody ground." I sat down this morning at 5 a.m. to read through the poems and was immediately noticed that all of them, or nearly all, are about death. We all write dead grandma poems, dead grandpa poems, dead parent poems, etc. when we're starting out to write poetry. Very few beginning poets write happy poems. That comes long afterward, when all the sorrow inside us has been put into its place. It doesn't go away; we just learn to accommodate it.
So here is the story of American history: We slew the Indians; we enslaved the Africans; we then turned on our brothers and neighbors and killed as many of them as possible. That's the history we have to live with. The media and the advertisers and the big corporations and the military industrial complex try to keep us distracted so that we don't even realize who or what we are. We have to fight to find a peaceful moment--a silent, peaceful moment--to reflect.
But the future that we make is another story. We can work for peace. We can spread kindness around us. We can take a stand against poverty and persecution. We can vote our consciences. We can hope for a day when children can grow up safe and healthy, whatever their country, whatever their race or religion. We can give, as God has blessed us to be able to give.
We can keep open minds. We can keep learning.
Bea, I hope the future holds nothing but happiness for you. Just know that wherever I am, I will be doing my best to make that happen.

Better Times Are Coming

Bea is feeling much better and resuming her usual high-jinks. Here she is as a happy Halloween lion, all decked out for a luau. Who could be more enchanting?

I include this to illustrate my point that better times are coming, even when our lives seem at their lowest points. Goodness knows, there are times when we can't see a way out. But there always is a way out.

Today at work, I was unlucky enough to tune in to the breaking news about the shooting in Orlando. I was absolutely mesmerized by the fact that I was seeing an event in another state while it was still happening. I checked the front page of the New York Times. They were still going on and on about yesterday's shooting at Ft. Hood. We are really getting spoiled by the Internet. It's like brewing coffee. Any process that takes more than five minutes is just too slow for me.

Like back in the 60s, a girl could spend all evening just fixing her hair. Brushing it, washing it, rolling it, drying it. pin-curling it, putting on a sleeping cap. Morning she would have to take out the pins, brush it, tease it, spray it. And we thought we were so modern! Nowadays, I wear my hair cut short. I leap out of bed, grab my instant coffee, fly into the shower, wash/condition my hair out of the same bottle, jump out and blow it dry, and I'm out of the house in about 30 minutes.

Likewise, we used to get the afternoon paper, so we had to wait until suppertime to find out what happened in the world that day (or actually, the day before). Radio sped up the news, TV gave us pictures. But all that was so slow. We lived so slowly then. We had a lot of time to cook and sew and think. Now we just rush from one thing to another. It takes having a child like Bea around to recall to us that we need to stay right in the present. Kids resist being rushed. They hate it. Have you ever tried to rush a 3 year old? Have you ever tried to rush a cat?

Perhaps if someone somewhere along the line had taken the time to talk to Major Hasan he would not have had to express his anguish by killing fellow soldiers bound for Afghanistan. Perhaps if Mr. Rodrigez had taken a walk through the park this morning and fed the pigeons, he might have thought better of going to his former place of employment and blowing his former colleages into kingdom come.

William Tecumseh Sherman, who liked to be called "Cump," said, "War is hell." William Stafford, my favorite poet of all time, wrote a book entitled Every War Has Two Losers. I think they were right. I think the speed at which we live keeps us from reflecting on the wisdom of the past and the lessons of history. I call on the people of the world to slow down and dwell on the sweetness of the present moment. Look at your child--and smile. Look at your cat--and scratch him under his chin. Look at the Internet, but don't let its superspeed fool you. We are people living in human time, not machines living at the speed of light.

The Puking Pumpkin

Halloween was kind of a struggle this year. Bea was dealing with a rotovirus and it was no fun at all. Her daddy made her a sympathetic "puking pumpkin" so she would not have to suffer alone.

I can remember when Halloween was so, so different. There was no such thing as going out and buying a costume. You made a costume out of stuff from the ragbag. You could be a gypsy or a hobo.

You could only go trick-or-treating to close neighbors that you knew, and only right after dark. I always went to the neighbors who lived right across a field from us, a couple named Dotty and Woody. (Wow, those would be good cat names.) There was a path through the field from my house to theirs, and on their end of the path were two apple trees, one was a red apple tree and the other was a yellow apple tree. They would always have a treat for me, maybe a homemade popcorn ball, but in addition, they would invite me to help myself to apples from their trees. Now that was really neighborly.

Today Halloween is all about adults and drinking and sex, and I could just care less. The churches have tried to take up the slack with such festivities as a "Holy Ghost Weenie Roast." I am not kidding. I saw the sign outside a Baptist Church.

Even for a rational person like me, the very idea of a Holy Ghost Weenie Roast made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

So on to Thanksgiving, until some wretched fool somewhere finds a way to commercialize and Christianize that as well. I am definitely planning a vegan meal. I saw four wild turkeys crossing the road in front of my car last weekend and I pledged to them that I would not eat turkey flesh this year or probably ever again. I do thank the pilgrims for inviting the Native Americans to a feast and so beginning what I like to think of as the Democratic party. Let's all feast with peace in mind.

Children are really helpless at the hands of adults. If you have ever been a child, you can identify with the feeling of absolute powerlessness and the feelings of hatred it can induce in children.

Yesterday, my daughter and I tried to get my little granddaughter dressed and into the car for a fun trip to Old Salem. Fun for whom remains under discussion.

Anyway, Bea did not want to go. She resisted getting dressed, had to be carried to the car and forced into her carseat. All the time she was weeping and saying she wanted to stay at home.

Well, we got about halfway to Winston-Salem, and finally gave in and took her back home. Turns out she really was sick and there was plenty of evidence of that that I will not go into here.

My daughter and I have been cursing ourselves for the past 24 hours for making Bea go when she so clearly did not want to. We have apologized over and over to her. We have groveled. We have been very angry with ourselves for imposing our will on her.

This brings up a lot of memories for me that I would rather not go into here. The thing is that I am learning, learning, learning. There are times when children have to do what their parents tell them to do, and there are times when the parents need to back off and listen to the children.

We have decided to delay the day trip to Old Salem for Bea for a couple of years. As Amy says,

"Bea doesn't know from Moravians!" Oh, isn't it so?

And Amy revealed that she was only going to Old Salem to please me. She doesn't really care deeply about the Moravians, either. Who knew?

My biggest mistake is assuming that people are as interested in history or whatever as I am. I just have to get over that. And it's definitely OK not to care about the Moravians. Care or don't care, it's OK! Was this vital lesson worth a lost day's vacation? You bet!

Footprints

Wow, October.

The kids are taking one more weekend at the beach, as the autumnal colors are
already beginning to show on the Piedmont. I love the dry spareness of autumn and winter, after the lushness and humidity of summer.

My son-in-law Tim has been doing some work on my house this week, enclosing the laundry room that used to be open on one side to the raw underpinnings of the house. Looking over there at the view from under the house used to be very scary. There could be snakes or spiders living over there--or worse yet, ghosts.

We leave footprints wherever we go, as well as other traces of ourselves. A camera with a heat detector can photograph the very air that we warmed with our bodies after we've left the scene. If you watch CSI, you know that DNA and loose hairs and fuzz from our clothes can prove clues to where we have been. A lot of criminals have been caught that way, by a careless fingerprint or a discarded paper coffee cup left at the scene of the crime. "Be sure your sins will find you out," is a saying that I grew up on. Best then, to just be good all the time.

If my life were seasonal, I'd be in Autumn now, for sure. I can feel the colors ripening in my spirit, even as my skin and hair fade to shades of winter. If I were a vegetable/fruit, I guess I'd be a pumpkin. Or maybe a gourd, with a lot of loose seeds to rattle.

And I'm very conscious of the footprints that I'm leaving as I travel through this world. Others have traveled before me, and shown me the way. I honor them, and I try to be worthy.
This week I watched a documentary on Harlan County's (Kentucky) tremendous and history-changing miners' strike of 1974. I felt as though I were watching my kin.
The people in my family who were grown-up when I was a child were a lot like the Appalachian folk who appeared in the documentary, gold teeth, missing teeth, lanky build, pale skins, salty language, and all. I am like them. They are me.
My great-grandfather Frank Reed was a farmer in the summer and a miner in the winter. He had six children and a wife to feed. I know that he struggled. My grandmother has told me about seeing the miners come down the road in the predawn hours with their headlamps shining. They left some big footprints for me to follow.

We are responsible for doing all the good we can in this lifetime. The Universe will guide us if we let our consciences be clear and open and innocent, like children. We know what we ought to do. God help us do it!

The artist at her work

As you can probably tell, this is my granddaughter at the beach at Avon, putting the finishing touches on her sea turtle made of sand. All of us scoured the beach for the fragments of shells that make up the turtle's back. Bea thought of giving it eyes, nose and mouth. The seaweed, presumably, is the turtle's lunch.
Words cannot explain how much I miss seeing her from day to day, because she's growing so fast and changing so much. I love to see how her mind works.
I brought a student paint set, some brushes and some watercolor paper to the beach thinking that if it rained, Bea would enjoy doing some painting. On her first try, she dipped the brush in black paint and applied it lavishly to the paper, creating a very large dark shape of many tones. She resisted (rightly, I think) my suggestion to add another color to her painting. She wanted just the black against the white. That picture is now on my refrigerator, where I see it every time I go into the kitchen. I see a lot of thought and direction in that black shape now. I see the dark patch in the middle of it and the lighter patches around the edges. It's very Zen.
On another painting, she painted one front and one hind leg of what I suppose was going to be a dog or something. She studied her painting intently, and then remarked, "The other legs are on the other side of the paper." Of course!
Last evening, I went with my friend Bonnie to a poetry evening at the Nasher Art Museum, which featured a lecture and reading by a famous American poet named Jerome Rothenberg. Dr. Rothenberg spoke on the poetry of Picasso and read some of Picasso's poetry and some of Gertrude Stein's poetry, as well as his own. As you can imagine, Picasso's poetry is utterly incomprehensible. Dr. Rothenberg, however, read it with such passion and vigor that the sounds virtually leapt out of his mouth. The result was that I as a listener began to feel, after a while, a pleasant heat in my brain, as if it had been vigorously massaged. I explain this by saying that when I heard these nonsensical poems, my brain lit up like a fireworks display frantically searching for some meaning or some connection in the juxtaposition of words. This seems to be the whole point. Dr. R. also showed us a series of slides depicting concrete or found poems, in which the poet/artist simply arranged letters or symbols or words on a page. If you didn't know it was supposed to be a poem, you might have assumed that it was a typesetter gone mad. Visual poems also included collages of junk and leavings and fragments of words and strips of newspaper and even twigs and bits of string. Fascinating!
What I love most about it is that Bea has been doing this sort of thing since birth. Wasn't it my Bea who snipped off the cat's whiskers? What better "word" for a poem, since cat's whiskers arouse all sorts of feelings in the viewer, to say nothing of the poor cat, whose face looked unbalanced for weeks until his new whiskers grew in. But such is art. Oy vey!

The Best of Times

Yes, I am back from the Outer Banks, and yes, I am a different woman. Boy, did I ever need a vacation!

When you work from day to day, seemingly 24/7, you can so easily lose perspective. I get so locked in to my routine that I deaden myself to changes needed. For example, on a typical work day, I get up, make a cup of coffee and some kind of quick breakfast (instant cereal, frozen waffle, etc.), then go plop down in the recliner and turn on the TV. I watch the local news, which is just about as interesting as watching my hair grow. Who bloody cares what the temperature is or whether it's going to rain or what the traffic is like? If I could find something else more interesting to watch, I would. The point is, I feel like I can't just eat without having something to entertain me, and I can't read while eating because I would be likely to get food on the pages of my book or magazine. Ick!

However, since I've some back from being away from TV news for a week, I realize that I can actually eat my food without having the TV on. Wow! What a revelation!
The other thing is this: When I'm in my usual routine, I do absolutely crazy things like mop the kitchen floor even when it isn't really dirty, but just because it's Saturday. And if I don't get it mopped on the weekend, I'm perfectly miserable every single day until I finally get it mopped. It weighs on my conscience like a dirty rag.
But after only one week at the beach, not mopping, I can now easily choose to sit and knit awhile or paint my toenails or read Newsweek or by golly, just sit and rest, without mopping. How did I become so compulsive about mopping the kitchen?
The truth is that I am not alone. There are a lot of us locked into silly meaningless routines because our brains have gotten into a rut. A vacation gives us the chance to rethink why we do things the way we do. Do I mop because my brain is full of guilt and anger over things that happened years ago? Am I trying to purge old regrets or stall off depression? What is this brain-clutter that I call thinking?

As my favorite poem states:
"The new life begins when you can sit still,
even if only for a moment,
and feel the waves of your own breath
rising and falling, ebbing and flowing--
an ocean of diamonds in the center of your chest."

Yes, the moments are diamonds, beyond price, and we should waste none of them. While I was at the beach, an old friend died of pancreatic cancer. Do you think, if she could come back to advise us, she would say, "Be sure and mop your kitchen floor?"

Soon -- to the beach!

Can't wait until Saturday when we all go to the beach together. It's going to be wonderful to have a whole week with my family, including my granddaughter Bea.

I haven't written a post since July 14, mainly because I've been so busy dogsitting in addition to working full time that I haven't even had time to think. But the hardest work is now over and life is opening a door on a new experience--taking a full week's vacation for the first time in years.

I'll be bringing a couple of British novels and a bottle of gin, since I just learned from the New York Times this morning that a moderate amount of alcohol seems to prevent or at least delay Alzheimer's. Coffee does, as well. Does anyone know about chocolate?

My old classmate writes that he is appalled at seeing photos of a recent reunion of our grade-school buddies. He's feeling the same feelings I go through every time I go to a reunion: Who are these old codgers? Surely I'm not as old as they are. But the answer is, yes, you are just as old as your buddies. So get used to it. None of us wants to get old or deteriorate or die. But what are you going to do about it? That's just how it goes. Pass the gin!

Blood is thicker

Have I said lately how much I love my family? My girls are just the finest women in the world, and you can quote me on that.

I love to think about Amy and Sara when they were little. I remember the first photo we ever took of Sara. It was on a sunny spring day and we put her on a baby quilt outdoors. In the photo, her older sister Amy is bending tenderly toward her. Sara was just the best thing that ever happened to us as a family. Watching her grow up, with all her talents and all her charm, has been a total joy.

Today there are problems to be dealt with, but I know that we as a family can handle them. We are thinking positively and holding no malice against anyone. It's just one of those painful transitions that families go through now and then.

And, as I said to Amy, who is a mother herself now, this is parenthood. It never ends. My own dear mother is no doubt looking down anxiously from heaven to make sure her loved ones are being cared for properly. God just makes us this way.

My dogsitting job is almost over -- one more day and then I'll be home. I look forward to being among my own things again, simple as they are: dishes, potted plants, books, photos. They're what spells home to me. And Sara will make her own home, and it will be just as sweet to her.

We're all holding each other in the light and sending love to each other. We'll get through this.
All about us are opportunities for a fuller, happier, more prosperous life--and we are ready to claim the blessings that lie before us like clover in a field.

Here I begin

After years of blogging on Divatribe's site as Black Crow, Blue Sky, I knew I needed a change and more room to express all that I was feeling and seeing and learning about life in my 66th year.

This is it. I begin on a Thursday in July, and I'm at work, and tonight and for the next six days, I'll be going home to my second job: house- and dogsitting. It's good for me to be away from my own home now and then, because when I finally do get to go home, it's really delightful.

Yesterday after work I stopped at a craft store to buy yet another ball of cotton yarn. I've been happily knitting dishcloths and facecloths all this summer, because I love working with the different colors and completing a project within a few days. While I knit I listen to CDs from the Great Courses company. This summer it's been the Civil War, in all sorts of detail. I've learned so much that I never knew before. I had an ancestor in the Union Army and another ancestor on the other side of the family, a Baptist preacher who was a recruiter for the Union Army.

Slowly this summer I've grown to comprehend what it must have meant to live in Knoxville, Tennessee, nominally a Confederate state, but where most of the sentiment favored the Union. The bloodshed of the war is horrible to read about. If my high school graduating class had suffered proportional losses, it would have meant that out of the 200 students, 40 would have been killed in combat and another 120 wounded, sickened or left suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. And what of the women? There would have been many widows reduced to ruin. What a well of loneliness. No wonder the general environment of the South tends toward the morbid. In fact, I always think of the South as a place where terrible things happen.

Perhaps next I'll listen to a series of lessons on meditation by Pema Chodron. It's the complete opposite of sadness. Although most of us carry around a lot of negativity in the form of memories and fears, we can change that. We can train our minds to be calm. We can cultivate gratitude to carry us over the rough spots.

And at the end of it all, we have a stack of nice dishcloths. What a great idea!