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.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
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!
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!
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