With A Poet’s Heart, I Begin Again

I used to write poetry. I was much younger then, with a radical heart, raucous with emotion. Then I grew up. I learned to pull my emotions in, hug them like it was the last time I’d ever feel them because I was sure no one else wanted to hear from them. I stopped wearing my heart pinned to my chest and gave it a forwarding address deep inside. Now I find that with the passing of time and with roughness of the outside world, life used heavy-grit sandpaper on me because now, now my heart is back on the outside where it was before. Everything is raw. I can’t push it back down, and that’s a good thing, I think.

So I am mentally planning a poetry comeback. Until the inspiration hits me, I’m reading others’ poetry. Good Bones is one I feel with all my heart. I have on many occasions apologized to my children for the state of the world and my part in making it what it is now, what they will inherit and have to fix (or create a rocket in which to leave forever).

As I start down the poet’s path again, I share this work with you today. Perhaps it will resonate with you as well.

Good Bones, a poem by Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

Posted on 11/05/202211/05/2022 by Me 3

Baaaaaaaad Daddy

Serious zoom on this image because I was maintaining my more than 25 foot distance

Went on a hike with a long-time friend this morning. And, when I say hike, in this case it was more of a walk up a service road in a canyon near our home. Waterton Canyon is well known around here for the bighorn sheep that live on the rocks above the river. It is rare for me to be in this canyon and not see the sheep. They were farther up today than where I usually see them, but we came upon one large male and five youth males, so it was a good sighting. We even witnessed one little guy show off with a twisting leap off the ground. They are already losing their winter coats, which is a sure sign spring is here.

The adult male seemed like a stereotypical father in charge of the kids. When we spotted them, he was sitting quite casually on the road, his back turned to the young ones while they played on the rocky wall behind him. You could almost hear the momma sheep chiding him for his lax parenting.

“Really, Baaaaab? You let them play on the rocks alone? What on earth were you thinking? I can’t trust you with anything!”

Posted on 30/04/2022 by Me 1

Perspective From Two Hours On A Flight Next To A Hungry, Tired Toddler

Sitting in the small airplane, four seats wide, sharing the row with a young mother of three with a screaming toddler on her lap. Toddler is tossing everything she is handed onto the floor.

“It’s been a while since I had littles,” I tell her with as much patience and understanding and motherly wisdom as I can muster, “but I remember those days well. No worries.”

Her four year old son sitting behind me kicks my seat the entire flight, stopping only to push both feet long and slow into my lower back. Six year old daughter next to him bugging him for the iPad. The mom next to me looks exhausted and, boy, do I get it. Her toddler thrashes in her arms, grabs my hair and pulls. The mom is mortified and apologizes, and I nod with understanding. It’s been seventeen years since I last held a wailing toddler on a flight, but that experience never leaves you. The muscle memory of the anxiety and embarrassment remains fresh.

The toddler in her lap, likely desperately tired and frustrated, begins howling with increasing ferocity. The mom hands her off to her husband who is sitting next to their oldest daughter across the aisle from the young ones behind me. As her daughter thrashes like a shark in shallow water, the mom shrinks, puts her head in her hands, and shakes it slowly back and forth. I know she is counting the seconds until her tiny creation at last succumbs to the sleep she needs.

As she is doing this, I look out my window-seat rectangle with its rounded corners. I am grateful to be wearing a mask as the silent tears slip behind the fiber filter on my face. You see, I said goodbye again to my almost 21 year old this morning after I passed him the four bottles of wine we couldn’t fit into our checked luggage. And I’m heading home to my high school senior who will be moving away in four month’s time. The ache this mom is feeling as she wishes the time on this two-and-a-half hour journey would pass more quickly is a similar ache I am feeling as I wish these last few months would pass more slowly.

I would never tell her these things, as she will be in my shoes far sooner than she can fathom. She will discover in her own time the way childhood speeds up as it approaches puberty and adulthood. What starts as seconds moving as sand grains, imperceptibly draining through the narrow tube in an hourglass ends as deluge of sand dumped from a toddler’s beach pail. And this mom will learn, as I did, that those prayers for time to speed up aren’t selective. Time doesn’t speed for the rough moments without also speeding for the good moments. Time is brutal that way. Lucky parents will learn this the hard way, seeing their children mature in the blink of an eye and move on. We’re the fortunate ones, the ones who get to see their children reach adulthood. Many parents don’t have that same good fortune.

For now, I say a silent prayer for this mom in opposition to her prayer to speed time up. I pray that she will embrace all the moments with some quiet, inexplicable gratitude for what they are because she will be like me sooner than she knows, with greying hair and reading glasses, hugging her adult son and handing him wine bottles. She will be both excited to get home to her high school senior and afraid to get there because she knows there are 46 days until graduation.

Parenting is the greatest purveyor of perspective I’ve found. It simultaneously breaks me and saves me over and over again.

Posted on 18/04/202219/04/2022 by Me

In Vino Veritas

Wine tasting. It’s something many older (and younger), primarily white, people do for fun. It’s still a new thing for me, and I have not yet perfected the art of it. There clearly is a method to do it correctly. I have a friend who is 20+ years into this game, and he says it’s all about the pacing. Go to a couple tastings, get a substantial, late lunch, do a couple more tastings, then have a good dinner. We did one tasting this morning, then went straight to another tasting where we had tapas, which was a light lunch. By the time we got to the third tasting at 2:30, I had to stop because I was the designated driver for the afternoon. This was just as well as I am not a regular drinker and, as a smaller person, I am a cheap date. If I hadn’t sat out the third tasting, I might have needed help getting back to our car. After a couple hours sobering up while the wine and conversation flowed, I was good to drive the fifteen minutes back to Walla Walla.

I am going to need more practice at this. It’s a good thing I will have at least four more years of wine tasting in the Walla Walla valley now that our youngest has decided to attend Whitman College also. Maybe by the time he graduates, I will have honed my wine tasting skills. Hubby and I will be heading home with a case of wine, so I can start sharpening my skills straight away.

Here are some photos from our uncharacteristically snowy tasting day. Here’s hoping the vines and the fruit trees in the area survive this unexpected snow. I will need to taste and buy more wine from the area later in the year.

First stop, Rotie Cellars. The white spots in the photo are snowflakes.

My final takeaways on wine tasting are 1) it’s a fun way to spend a weekend if you can afford it and have wonderful friends with whom to enjoy it and 2) it takes some practice. I’m still learning the lingo. I am learning what to look for as I sample the wine. I love the word terroir and, although I don’t have a textbook definition of it memorized quite yet, I can pronounce it correctly. It’s a whole new world for me, but it has been around for a long time. With some attention and practice, someday I might honestly understand a wine list.

Thank god I found this school for my sons in wine country. It’s going to be a win all the way around. I likely would not have been admitted to Whitman College, but I was smart enough to get my kids here and that has to count for something.

Posted on 16/04/202216/04/2022 by Me

Believe In Your Potential To Pop

I’ve spent part of my morning doing something I don’t do often enough, reading other blogs. I recognize that I am part of a community of writers on WordPress, but in my daily struggle to find enough headspace to write and publish one post of my own, I usually neglect to read others’ works. It’s not a great plan, honestly, because other writers can provide food for thought, inspiration, and unexpected wisdom. I recognize I need to employ the Ted Lasso way of being. I need to be more curious with regard to other people. I am already a curious person regarding most things, but I’ve never been very curious about others because my childhood taught me human beings are unreliable and not necessarily worth my time or trust. This year, however, I decided to take more risks and that includes taking more risks in my experiences with others.

I found this quote today while reading someone else’s blog, and I thought it was brilliant.

I wish I had seen this quote when our sons were young and I was trying to figure out why they couldn’t do what other children their ages were doing. Parents read the What To Expect series of books about childhood development and, if our children don’t measure up according to the charts and graphs, we immediately assume something is “wrong” with them. There is nothing wrong with our children. They are simply on their own path. Some will be on target with the milestones in those books and some will not. They are individuals, and individuals come to this life with their unique set of gifts and challenges.

Because my sons are mostly grown now, I am looking at this quote with a different perspective. I learned that lesson about my kids, that they would eventually find their stride on their separate and beautiful path. It never occurred to me when I was giving my children the grace to get where they were headed in their own time to do the same for myself. From the beginning, I’ve imposed unnecessary, stringent guidelines on myself with regard to what was appropriate in my life and when. I cried hard on my 25th birthday. Why? Because I was upset I reached that milestone without having my master’s degree. Shit. I’m still aiming for unnecessary and contrived goal posts. I wrote the other day about what a person my age “should” be wearing. I am an adult. It doesn’t matter what others think is age appropriate and acceptable for me to wear. It only matters what I feel comfortable in and what I feel makes sense for my life. I don’t even have a job with a dress code. I could wear a Disney Tigger costume every day if I felt like it and not get fired. (What would I fire myself for? Being too cute?)

We are all popcorn. Some of us don’t pop as children, however, so it’s unfair to put that expectation in place. We will pop in our own time or we won’t. There are those among us who will remain the same coming out of the pot as going into it. Maybe our goal should be not to worry about when the pop will happen but to believe instead we will reach that potential when we are ready. Some of us might just need a little extra time in the pot to get there. Patience is key here. Don’t count us out.

Posted on 09/04/2022 by Me 1

Sadness Is On Me, But I Am Not Sad

Senior year for our youngest has flown by. I know this is how it works. Senior year is heartbreaking, expensive, and fast as hell. I tried to keep it together while standing there watching the photographer take his senior photos. I struggled when I had to compose his senior page for the yearbook. He applied to five private colleges (University of Denver, St. Olaf, Reed, Whitman, and Skidmore), received acceptances to all of them, and then committed to attending Whitman in Washington with his brother, which gave me a measure of comfort while still making me sad. With that decision made, I designed his graduation announcements. And today I created a graduation collage for display at his high school in May. Jesus help me. It feels like the universe is trying to break me.

I would like to think all of this is preparation so I can cry myself out before the actual graduation ceremony, but I know that is a false hope. Graduation is rapidly approaching. So I went ahead and made a countdown clock to the ceremony because I need to prepare myself. As of today, we are 60 days out, which means I have 60 days to cry myself free of tears lest I end up an ugly-crying, embarrassing, Alice Cooper look-a-like at the ceremony. I don’t want to be that momma. Luke deserves better.

I have a distinct memory of a time when Luke was around six months old and woke up in the middle of the night. I remember sitting with him in a rocking chair in our living room, rocking and waiting for him to drift back off to sleep. When Joe woke up in the night, I would get so frustrated about the sleep interruption. As he was my first and I was not used to missing out on sleep, it was a struggle for me to be present when all I wanted was some damn sleep. With Luke, though, I knew it would be my last time to hold my sleeping child, so I tried to focus on the moments, to appreciate that this little person needed comfort and I was that comfort. It’s such a different feeling now as I focus on my present moments with Luke because I know he is almost finished needing me. I suppose this is what drives the sadness I am feeling. We have come full circle, Luke and I. My baby is ready to launch. And although I knew this day would come eventually and have been preparing for it since Joe’s graduation, the reality of it happening now is something I’m not sure I would ever be able to prepare for.

So, perhaps, I will go to graduation and cry like the soft, mushy person I am on the inside because this too is part of the experience. I don’t have to like it. I don’t have to stay dry-eyed for it. I have to be there in it because there are only two constants in life, growth and change. Wait. I forgot taxes. So I guess that makes three constants. Growth. Change. Taxes.

I found this on Facebook the other day and it offers a different perspective of sadness:

So I am recognizing now that sadness is upon me. It doesn’t have to live here. It’s just here now. It doesn’t define me. I am not a sad person. I am a happy person with sad moments. And it’s okay to be sad sometimes. We’re meant to be sad sometimes. It means we’re fully experiencing what life offers. Sometimes we want it to be offering lollipops, unicorns, and rainbows, and it instead presents us with pain, overwhelm, and darkness. That is when we need to remember that if the sadness can be upon us, so too can the rainbows. I have 60 days to figure out how to find those rainbow-covered unicorns that hand out lollipops. If I can’t find one, maybe I’ll just have to become one. I’m sure the other parents would appreciate a lollipop at graduation. I think they’ve earned at least that.

Posted on 03/04/2022 by Me

Bless His Little Heart

A little over a decade ago, we had young children and a young dog. So it was a happy accident when we discovered that our border collie loved chasing the bubbles we blew with our kids. It makes sense. Bubbles float carelessly on the breeze, disorganized and wayward. They are a herding dog’s dream chase. I was pleased to learn that little herding dogs like to herd bubbles as much as their larger counterparts.

Herding bubbles is pure joy for Loki. He loves the chase and will stand on hind legs trying to reach one that goes too high. I found it so charming when our border collie, Ruby, ran after bubbles. She was so determined, focused, and dignified in her pursuit. But there’s a different energy when Loki does it. He’s fast, but his height is a hindrance. He’s accurate, but not always the most graceful. Still, his spirit is in it. You can see it in his eyes.

He tries so hard. Bless his little heart.

Posted on 29/03/2022 by Me

The One Where Fun With Flags Pays Off

On Wednesday nights, our neighborhood coffee shop/bar/gathering space hosts DJ Trivia. We have gone a couple times with some of our awesome neighbors. This week, none of our neighbors were available to join the festivities. We thought about skipping out too but, with Joe home from college and Luke without homework before spring break, we decided we had enough of a team with just the four of us. The boys were so not thrilled that we were dragging them along that Luke decided the only appropriate team name was Two Willing Participants since they didn’t want to be there.

We got through the first round with all the possible points, but it’s the easy round. We clinched the bonus question because of my gift with lyrics. Who knew that my brain would pull Def Leppard’s Pour Some Sugar On Me out of its cobwebby recesses? I haven’t willingly listened to that song since, well, ever. Anyhoo, we struggled the second round and ended with 20 out of 40 points and didn’t even dare take a stab at the bonus question. We were sitting in 6th place out of 7 teams, and our confidence was flagging. Somehow, though, we rallied in the third round, scoring 60 out of 80. Luke knew the bonus question about the alloy of copper and tin (it’s bronze), and we were right back in it. Suddenly, we were sitting in third, which meant we were in prize territory.

The final round is fill-in-the-blank questions rather than multiple choice. We got the first two fairly easily, but missed the next two. We were somehow still in third place as we waded into the final bonus round, called the Do Or Die Dare round. We strategized how to play it and decided it was go big or go home. If we got the question right, we would double our entire score and could finish in a higher place, or at least hold on to third and win a prize. And then, as if the gods were on our side, the title of the bonus round question hit the screen. The title was Fun With Flags. We all looked at Joe. This was our Slumdog Millionaire moment. Joe has long been a fan of geography and flags. He’s a regular vexillologist. In his senior year, he had to give a 45-minute presentation on a topic of his choice. The title of the presentation he shared with his classmates? Fun With Flags. I shit you not.

Steve pushed himself back from the table with a “this is it” flourish of glee. A flag appeared on the trivia screens. Joe looked at it for a nanosecond, leaned forward, and said quietly with the utmost confidence, “Uzbekistan.” I grabbed the paper and wrote it down. We handed it to the DJ judge in five seconds flat while the rest of the tables sat hemming and hawing and conjecturing. It appeared no one wanted to risk all their points with an answer. Finally, a representative from the Vandalay Industries team stood up and walked to submit their answer. We all knew Joe had provided the right answer. Not because any of us had a clue about the flag of Uzbekistan but because Joe. The DJ did all the tabulating and then announced that only two answers had been submitted for the Do or Die Dare and only one of those was right. The correct answer was Uzbekistan.

The DJ read off the name of the third place winner. We smiled. Second place went to the team that often wins each week, Hot Fuzz. The room was dead silent. Someone had pulled off an upset. The DJ put our team name on the screen, and we high-fived all around while Hot Fuzz looked over at us like we’d just kicked their puppy. Two Willing Participants won largely due to the efforts of its two unwilling team participants, and the coveted $25 brewery gift card and bragging rights for the week were ours. It was positively glorious.

A member of Team Hot Fuzz, still flabbergasted by their unexpected loss, shouted over to Joe to inquire how he knew the answer to the flag question so quickly. To which Joe replied, “I have the flags of the world memorized. It’s a good party trick.” This twenty year old kid just ruined their evening, and I couldn’t have been any prouder. It made all the hours I’ve spent quizzing Joe on flags and listening to him prattle on about the poorly designed ones totally worth it.

Joe with his personal Uzbekistan flag at home after our win

I guess there are a few lessons to be learned from our trivia evening. First, never, ever assume something you are asked to do (like attend a trivia night with your parents) will be a waste of time because you never know what you might learn about yourself or others. Second, if you encourage your child’s obsessions, they might pay off. Third, if you’re going to trivia night, take Joe and Luke with you. Their arcane knowledge about flags or every letter of the Greek alphabet or the names of Roman emperors might be just what you need to humble Hot Fuzz. And finally, if your kid wants to collect flags, let him.

Posted on 16/03/2022 by Me

Loki’s Big Adventure

Loki enjoying some free time on the deck

Our seven month old corgi puppy has been getting more and more free time out and about in our house. We started with thirty minutes to an hour of supervised run around time. As time has gone on, we’ve worked to stop watching him so closely. Often, after an initial trek around the house to check out his usual haunts, he settles down with some toys and plays nicely by himself. So we have slowly allowed him more freedom.

Tonight we let him out after dinner and a visit to the yard. He did his usual rounds and then ran off towards Luke’s room behind Luke. With Luke watching Loki, I was free and so I went back to practicing my Italian on DuoLingo. Awhile later, I looked up and saw Luke at the kitchen counter. He and I began having a conversation. About five minutes into said conversation, it occurred to me. If Luke was in the kitchen, where the hell was Loki? Crap! We had a left our puppy unattended for at least five minutes. Do you have any idea how much damage a freaking corgi puppy named after the Norse trickster god can cause in five minutes? You should see what he can do in thirty seconds. Let me enlighten you. His usual run once he gets free is first to pull down all the dishtowels that hang in the kitchen. Then he runs straight for the hall bathroom where he unrolls some toilet paper and drags it through the house. Then he will tear over to the entry bench where he will grab any glove or hat someone has left behind and run away with it. After that it’s off to his toy bin from which he will pull every single toy out onto the floor. In. Thirty. Seconds.

We tore down the hall to Luke’s room and from the doorway we began to see the carnage. Some cardboard had been gnawed near the door. The roll of toilet paper that had been on the wall was shredded all over the bathroom floor. He then broke into Luke’s Closet of Shame (which is filled with Legos), and that was where we found him. We’re not sure if he ingested any Legos, but we’re impressed that he realized that plastic Legos were a higher value prize than the cardboard and toilet paper. As soon as Loki understood he’d been caught up to no good, he got a case of the zoomies and sped out of Luke’s room. When we finally managed to recapture him, he was panting heartily. And, if I’m being honest, looking a bit smug.

Puppies are something else. Loki is somewhere between a cranky toddler and a rebellious teenager right now. Sometimes he’s one, sometimes he’s the other. Either way, he earned his trip back to his pen after his free-for-all in Luke’s room. Loki tells other dogs he gets put into puppy jail after he tries new things. But, he’s just being dramatic.

Posted on 07/03/2022 by Me

Cookies Are My Love Language

As I was once again making homemade chocolate chip cookies for my family today, I started thinking about love languages. Acts of service is at the top of my love language list. If I take time away from doing something I would like to do so I can do something for you, that is my expression of love. Making cookies is a perfect example of this. I am gluten free for health reasons and rarely eat baked goods or make gluten free baked goods for myself. Baking a batch Toll House cookies consumes about an hour and a half of my time in a day. So if I make you some cookies from scratch, you matter to me. End of story.

Out of curiosity, I went online and took the love languages quiz to see how the five love languages land in terms of importance to me. They went in this order: acts of service, words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, physical touch. I sent this list to my husband and asked him to take the quiz as well. These were his results: words of affirmation, physical touch, quality time, acts of service, receiving gifts. Hmmm…it appears hubby and I might have to do a little adjusting so we can ensure we are meeting each other’s needs in the best possible way. It would appear I need to be more affectionate with him, and he will need to help me out a bit more.

People innately understand the love language of physical touch, even if it isn’t their thing. But, acts of service can be a bit confusing. It may sound crazy to say, “I know my husband loves me when he takes my car for its oil change or when he washes out his coffee mug so I don’t have to,” but those small acts make me feel worth the effort. It can be difficult to get people to understand how doing something small can make a big difference making someone feel appreciated, acknowledged, seen.

My sons will not be thrilled about this, but I have decided they also need to take the love language test so we can compare notes and make sure we are showing up for each other in the best ways possible. I might ask my sisters to take the test as well. I grew up knowing love mostly via an intellectual understanding of what love is supposed to be. I did not grow up in an affectionate household. Words of affirmation were few. I thought if my parents worried about me and made sure I had dinner to eat and clothing to wear that must mean they love me. Although I am certain my sons have experienced love from us (they have told us as much), I want to make sure that we are all doing our best to communicate our feelings in ways they can best be received and internalized.

The older I get, the more I have realized love is all there is in this life. Making sure the people who are important to me hear and can absorb my love for them is everything. What if my message isn’t getting through because I’m delivering it via a sub-optimal method? I think it warrants a conversation.

Posted on 22/02/2022 by Me 2

Live Now and Zen

Because even when it seems like a gag gift, the present is still a gift