Category Archives: Life at Home

Here I Am

29 Friday Oct 2010

Posted by in Home Restoration, Life at Home, Prayer, Soul Care, The Great Outdoors, Writing

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

How is it that none of the month’s joys or sorrow have anchored the days?

So much has happened.  Engagement announcements, baby showers, my 55th birthday and last week’s unexpected short getaway to San Antonio.  And then there have been all the many mini-dramas and comedies which fill everyday life.  And though I touch upon it all in my off-line journal, it’s only here that I really work to get underneath the surface events — to explore and name my deepest feelings of the moment.

So its unfortunate (for me) that I have not written here this month.  Mostly, I have been uninspired to write here.  In part, the thought of trying to write beautiful sentences has exhausted me.  And if I’m being honest, maybe I just wanted to have a good pout — what my younger sister likes to call, the Pappas Pout —  where one goes off to sulk alone in a bedroom, after slamming a few doors to ensure everyone and the neighbors too, know that you’re mad and sad.

But today, as I sat in my favorite living room chair after writing three morning pages, I began to think that maybe I should just sit down and write a few lines of everyday sentences in my blog  — and not worry over making them their Sunday Best.

So.  Here I am.  And just writing these three little words — here I am — reminds me that the prophet Isaiah also spoke these words to God before God set his charred lips loose to say a few words on His behalf.

So what is it that causes me to sulk rather than write?  I can only point to my Aunt Jo’s death.  It doesn’t help to tell myself that she’s in a better place.  And all of this is mixed up with my own mortality, of course, as that older generation ahead of me falls one by one, like a row of dominoes, each one falling closer and closer to me.

But yesterday, I realized that this particular vintage of my favorite month is almost used up.  And on the most important level — the one which has me taking notice of glimpses of Reality —  the month has unfolded its goodness and truth and beauty without my notice.

I am sorry to have missed out on the the miracle of cool crisp nights and lovely fall foliage and the particular way the autumn sun causes my living room to glow and shimmer for a few minutes each October day.

This weekend, I will be in the cool sunshine days dipping a paintbrush into a bucket of paint at my sister’s house.  The plan is to finish what she and I began last April —  the restoration of her homestead inheritance.  And knowing myself as I do, knowing that I grieve best with a paintbrush in my hand, my plan is to finish with this grieving of Aunt Jo’s death.  Because I don’t wish to miss out on the deepest and best part of everyday life.

October, here I am.

Putting Mystery to Bed

14 Thursday Oct 2010

Posted by in Life at Home

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

,

Kara and my son-in-law Joe have decided to welcome their first child the old-fashioned way.  We won’t know whether it’s a girl… or a boy …until this babe is born.

I rather like living in the mystery since all of life is mystery.  There is so very little that we actually control.  The who.  The what.  The where, when and how.  All that fills our days is mystery… until Father Time puts the day to bed.

Of course, we make plans for life.  Lot’s and lot’s of plans.  We make plans that we hope, wish and dream to fulfillment.  Sometimes we make plans we’d prefer to avoid.  That’s what my Aunt Jo was doing the week before she died.  Looking back, I think Aunt Jo had more than an inkling death was near.  But I’m not sure she knew she was as close as reality ultimately proved she was.  What a blessing it is to live in mystery, to not know the time of our own deaths.

Would you believe Aunt Jo lined up a preacher to preach her funeral service six days before her death?  Then there was the no small matter of  asking for help to write a tribute for her daughter-in-law Judy.  With distance, I see Aunt’s Jo’s desire as not only gracious but a very old-fashioned way of blessing, just like the Patriarchs did on the pages of the Old Testament before they put their own lives to bed, which they called “gathering to their ancestors.”

Last Sunday four generations of women and children gathered at my sister’s house to bless the new life Kara is carrying.  My Aunt Georgia and I suppose Jane represented my mother’s generation — those who could be great-grandmothers or great-grand aunts —  though Jane is really between this generation and my own.  Then there’s my generation — those who are grandmothers or great-aunts.  Then my children’s generation — those now having children, like Kara.  And then the children themselves.

I looked out my sister’s window to watch this new generation at play.  They were having so much fun.   Spending time together.   Going back and forth between Christi’s house and Jane’s.  They are at that wonderful age before shyness and self-consciousness sits in, when eyes connect to make instant best friends.   These young cousins were running the wide open spaces like my children and their cousins did  before them…  and like me and my cousins did before them — not too long after my grandparents purchased the land in the late forties.

Will this new child be a girl or a boy?  Oh, perhaps I have an inkling of which it will be.  But I’ll keep my own counsel, since  it won’t be long before Mystery reveals her hand.  All-too-soon, this unborn babe will be running hard to keep up with his or her older cousins.   They will come inside smelling like grass and sunshine.  And like little Kinsey did Sunday, Kara’s child will tear up at having to say good-bye to her  new playmates.  And he or she will be too tired for the bath.  But not too tired to hear a story and get thousands of kisses and drinks of water before being tucked into bed.  And when it’s time to turn out the light for bed, he or she will tell their mother they are not tired.

But here’s where the mystery ends — Mother Kara will put her child to bed anyway.

Slices of Toast and Family

07 Thursday Oct 2010

Posted by in Life at Home, Prayer, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , ,

It felt good to sink into everyday life this morning.

With a beautiful candle lit, a cup of coffee nearby and three snoozing canines around me and my favorite chair, I picked up pencil and journal to write.  These days my journal is filled with short stories of ancestors — some told me by aunts and uncles, while others come from reading old newspaper articles.   At yesterday’s funeral, I invited my mother’s oldest brother to recount tales of his youth and memories of his grandparents; he seemed glad to share that which he could still recall.  Uncle Bob’s stories now fill two pages of my journal.

Having lunch with Aunt Jo — whose funeral we gathered at yesterday — has been hovering at the top of my list since Daddy died.  Just three weeks ago I told her, “I want to get together for lunch with you real soon.”    Unfortunately, I didn’t make it happen; and now the opportunity is gone.   But I’m grateful for the scraps of stories she spoke of Sunday evening, and those, of course, take up a page and a half of my journal.

All this gathering of family history has me realizing —  family is more than sharing common bloodlines.  Two weeks ago, I picked up the phone to talk to a second cousin who I didn’t know existed until running across him in research.  My Greek grandfather’s younger sister, Anna — who died three days after my father was born — left three children.  Neither my father nor grandfather ever mentioned them — but it certainly helps explain those trips my young parents took to Vermont, during their early days of marriage.

Amazingly, all three second cousins — born in the mid-1920s — are still alive.   I called the youngest one, John, who is now 85.  Once John recovered from his surprise, he invited me to send up a copy of my research, with a promise to answer whatever questions he could.   I’m still working on the package I promised to send him — hopefully, it will be gone by week’s end.

After finishing today’s morning pages, I made a slice of toast.   The smell of toast always reminds me of grandparents — either my Greek grandfather or my maternal grandmother.  Today it was both.

As far as I know, Granny always had a piece of toast covered with jelly for breakfast.  ‘Toast and Jell,” she called it.   As a young school girl, it was what I often had myself — not because it was my favorite — but because it’s what my Greek grandfather could make me in a hurry before school.  The toast was always burnt around the edges but generous with butter.  Real butter not margarine —  so the bread was always a little smushed from Papa’s effort to spread cold butter over it.  Papa always served it to me with a cup of strong black coffee.  Greek-style, I suppose.

I don’t know if my new-found cousins from Vermont grew up with toast for breakfast or not.  And if they did, whether it was burnt around the edges or covered with jelly.  And it’s not important for me to know — it certainly won’t make my list of questions that my second cousin John so graciously offered to answer.  But possessing these unimportant facts is something one just owns about family.  And this morning, when my teeth crunched into a bit of crispy slightly black around the edges toast, slathered with soft yogurt margarine but no jell, I remembered my grandparents.  And gave thanks.