Set Free

Where is My Calendar?

For the past several years, *every* year someone in the family gave me a Bernese Mountain Dog calendar for Christmas. This year, though, no calendar appeared. I meant to get one, but I kept forgetting. Now it's March, and I have finally recycled the old one (not an easy thing to do; those dogs are cute!).

On our refrigerator there is a big, blank rectangle where beautiful dogs ought to be on display, but if there were a calendar hanging, it would look something like this:

March 8 -- #1 Son due home, rehearsal for tomorrow's worship drama

March 9 -- Spring ahead, darn it! Also afternoon meeting of advisory group for Rock and Roll Church

March 10 -- Give the Opening Prayer for the State Senate; anticipate Pure Luck's arrival home late in the day. (!!!!!)

March 11 -- Take Molly to specialty vet for consultation about acupuncture.

March 12 -- Take Molly to orthopedic surgeon for consult; Interim Ministers meeting to the north, Mission Committee meeting to the South; lots of driving all day long.

March 13 -- Appointment to have hair "conditioned," as a friend puts it, because despite all this effort to grow out my hair, I find I'm depressed by being grey. (Maybe we ought to file this one under midlife crisis.)

March 14 -- Blogger Meet-Up of Major Importance to Me!! One of the bloggers has already become a real-life friend, but the other, Oh! I've wanted to meet her for at least two years now.

March 16 -- Palm Sunday -- need I say more?  #1 Son goes back to school; Snowman arrives home for his break.

March 17 -- Another blogger meet-up, this one with Christine from Abbey of the Arts!

March 18 -- Final meeting with Main Street Church's Council

March 20 -- Maundy Thursday; 2nd appointment with new Massage Therapist who is trying to sort out my back issues.

March 21 -- Good Friday

March 22 -- Desperate attempt to vault from Good Friday to getting the guy out of the tomb

March 23 -- Utter disbelief that Easter is so early. Desperate attempt to avoid Easter Candy and cakes in shape of eggs.

March 24 -- Pedicure

March 25 -- Pack up office and move books to new church (no nickname yet, give me time)

March 26 -- Fly to New Orleans!!! Convince will smama there is no reason to be afraid!

March 27 -- Embark on RevGalBlogPals' Big Event cruise! Meet up with friends old and new! Room with childhood friend, Ruby!

March 29 -- Pure Luck leaves for next job, while I visit Cancun. I hope he won't be thinking about that.

March 31 -- Snowman leaves for school, I return home.

*************************************************

There's a chance we'll be adding a surgery for Molly to this schedule, and I can't even think about that right now. Lots to look forward to, lots to celebrate and lots to complete on this list of dates.  Somewhere in here hope to get some exercise...maybe it will finally thaw enough for long walks to be on the list while Pure Luck is home. I am off the weight-lifting temporarily until the numbness in my hands resolves or at least improves, though I'm pretty sure I hurt myself lifting Molly, not lifting the weights.

I'm sitting on a ledge (hopefully not as lasting as a plateau) where weight is concerned, despite drinking massive quantities of water and tracking faithfully. But I will not let that drop off my calendar, even in all this busy-ness.

I have some knitting deadlines, but those projects are coming slowly due to the hand numbness. I did about two inches on a second mitten for The Princess yesterday, and I have a sock to finish for a church member at Main Street Church as well as hat(s) for a Ravelry knit-along.

I'm not sure why I've written all this down. I'm busy. I bet you are, too. Let's wave to each other as we pass!

Merry Christmas!

From our house to yours~

With gratitude for friendships new and old, and hope for peace in the New Year,

Songbird
Pure Luck
#1 Son
Snowman
The Princess
Molly
and Sam

(Note to self: Five people and two dogs will not all behave at the same time for a picture.)

After the Piano Lesson

During The Princess' piano lesson, Pure Luck and I tromped around some woods on the other side of town, running through the snow with Molly and Sam. After we picked up The Princess and loaded everyone into the car, we had the following conversation.

Pure Luck: If you have a minute, we can drive by that house with the nightmare Christmas display.

The Princess (from the back seat): What?

Songbird: We're going to drive by the Nightmare Before Christmas.

The Princess: You mean the LIGHTmare?

Songbird (to Pure Luck): You are a bad influence on her.

Pure Luck: On the contrary, I think I'm a very good influence.

(I'll try to get a picture of the LIGHTmare to post another day.)

One More Day of Vacation

Well, Snowman has two, actually, but #1 Son goes back to college tomorrow, and I am feeling the tension of wanting more time with them over and against needing to finish a sermon today. My usual empty, quiet Saturday house is full of the people I love, whom I must ignore now if I want to have any sort of evening with them.

This does not compute.

Let All Things Now Living

I had my Thanksgiving dinner last night.

It was a funny little meal. Pure Luck requested a Festive Holiday Meat Loaf, which I provided and to which he and the boys tucked in with enthusiasm. For The Princess and for me, there was Festive Thanksgiving Turkey Meat Loaf (made with 99% fat free ground turkey and darned if it wasn't good! recipe below). Mashed potatoes, delicious Rosemary bread, a big salad and a store-bought apple pie finished off the menu.

But the most important ingredient was the company. I relished sitting around the table with my three children, who are so grown-up now, wondering if #1 Son will be with us next year (who knows where he might be living or what he might be doing?), marveling at how together Snowman seems, and enjoying the way The Princess holds up her end of the conversation now, pausing when the boys tease her but then plowing ahead to make her point instead of getting upset and flouncing away as she might have a year or two ago.

This year it's their dad's turn to have them for Thanksgiving, so they are moving about slowly, getting ready to join him this morning.

We've had a breach with a member of the extended family, to which I believe I have alluded, one that brought about the inevitable end to most of our joint celebrations, and I'm beginning to realize that this is better for everyone, though I did not like the way it happened. I came to the hard realization that you can't cling to the old and move on to the new without losing your momentum. Find some aspect of the old that you treasure and carry it along, surely, but do not cling.

I liked having the big family holidays, liked it for my kids, liked it that my former husband's family wanted me around, or seemed to want me. And some of them do. But it makes no sense, more than ten years after a divorce, to continue permitting the other side of the family the power to reject me one more time, whether actively or passively. How much was that dynamic a reflection of my desire to "win" my divorce? To be the best, most beloved ex-wife ever? I'm not sure exactly what I thought I might gain. In this matter my own agenda remains hidden even to me. I can only say, on this particular day in this particular year, that I know the way things are now feels healthier, if painful.

Pure Luck and I will be off to his great-aunt's house, over a river or two and down a long country road. We'll visit his mother's grave. We'll hear some family stories and wonder just how much bigger those young cousins can possibly grow! The relatives will invite him to watch the football game, and he will decline, and they all know this, but they ask anyway, because they are sweet people.

I'm thankful today for my new family, in all its configurations, for a second chance at love, for children who bore up through loss and change and have become reasonably whole human beings, for dogs and cats, for friends nearby and far away, for work I love, for a life partner who accepts my foibles and has enough of his own to keep things interesting.

I'm thankful for love.

Wherever you are today, I hope you are feeling thankful, too.

Festive Thanksgiving Turkey Meat Loaf

1 package 99% fat free ground turkey (about 20 ounces)
1.5 cups fresh whole wheat bread crumbs
1 large egg
1 cup skim milk
1/2 large onion
1 cup raw carrots
2 tsp dry sage (or use fresh if you have it)
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

Chop the onion and carrots into fine pieces, or process in food processor (I did this and it worked beautifully).

Mix all ingredients well in a large bowl.

Bake in 9X5 loaf pan in 350 degree oven for 1.5 hours.

Cut the meat loaf into 6 pieces, 3 points each. (I kid you not. I used the Weight Watchers online tools to do the calculations.)

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Sun Dog and Moondoggie

Yesterday I found myself driving westbound with my husband and two, yes two, of my children in the back seat, and just before the turn south toward the third child, I noticed my husband with his hand blocking the sun and his eye on something to the north.

"What are you looking at?"

"It's a Sun Dog," he told me, but this told me nothing. I had never heard of a Sun Dog.

It's really a  parhelion, a collection of ice crystals in the clouds that catch the light much like a prism, following the sun in its westward journey. Through the sunroof's tinted glass, The Princess and Snowman could see the full range of colors, a little rainbow in the clouds.

We traveled far and wide yesterday, from a time when the sun was low in the east until it was nearly gone into the west, a journey first to church and then to meet Pure Luck at a commuter parking lot, then to get Snowman at the airport in Beantown, and from there to Hiptastic University to see #1 Son play Creon in Oedipus Rex at Hiptastic University. Just as the sun in our eyes threatened to obscure our view of its faithful sidekick, the masks worn in the play disguised some aspects of our boy.

But as he entered from beneath the stage, I knew his hands, his movements, his feet in the odd platform sandals worn by all the characters. 

I remembered the story of Oedipus, of course, although I read the play in college and that is many years gone. It sets up the contrast between those who would trust only the Gods (Creon wants to have the gods' assurances before acting) and those who would control their own fate, only to have it go awry (Oedipus, of course). In the car coming home late last night, Pure Luck and I kept each other awake pondering free will. Would it count as free will, he wondered, if the only choices before us were good ones? And further, is there *any* chance we, humanity, that is, will choose collectively the good?

It was the first time in almost three months that I could see and touch all three of my children, sit around a table with them (and with Dos), a momentous day in some ways, but ordinary in others, containing the usual elements of our times together: reminiscing, teasing, conversation ranging from Battlestar Galactica to Dungeons&Dragons to the state of the world to science to the food at school and the music Snowman has heard and played and the acting #1 Son hopes to pursue as his work and right back to the Writer's Guild strike and its possible effect on Avatar, a great concern for The Princess.

Oh. And God.

And foolishness, as when we left the theatre to walk back to the car and saw a ring around the moon, and I asked, "Is that the Moondoggie?"

Losses

Molly is quite lame at the moment. She does not want to get up and walk around. I had a hard time getting her to go out in the backyard this morning, and an even harder time getting her back inside. This was true last night as well. She stayed in her cool spot under the forsythia until late in the evening.

When Molly was a puppy, about 9 months old, she was diagnosed with bilateral hip and elbow dysplasia. At that early age, she already had arthritis in both elbows and one hip. We took her to Tufts' Vet hospital for a Triple Pelvic Osteotomy (to shore up the better, non-arthritic but also dysplastic, hip), followed three months later by arthroscopy on both elbows. She really had a great recovery and four excellent years following the surgery.

But this is not the first time since she turned 5 last February that we are seeing more lameness. She takes Metacam, a Non Steroidal Anti-inflammatory (NSAID) each day as well as Dasuquin, a chewable form of Glucosamine and Chondroitin intended for dogs.

Every time I see her laming around, and particularly when I see her walking with one paw in the air, as has been going on this past week, I wonder how much longer we can keep things together. There are some other options, I learned last time: pain-killers that are in fact narcotics, which I hate to start using with a 5-year-old dog, or perhaps trying acupuncture, which is practiced by one of the vets formerly affiliated with the vet we use.

I'm feeling guilty because I don't know if this lameness is due simply to aggravation of arthritis or an actual injury. I wish I had taken her in to be checked last week. But these things usually pass with her.

I find the idea of losing her absolutely terrifying, in part because I feel it's so likely that her eventual end will be euthanasia. (In fact, I dread it so much that I left this sentence out and had to come back to type it.)

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of my father's death. October 8, 1997, was a day I had been dreading as it was the first occurrence of my wedding anniversary after my divorce. I woke up feeling a little sorry for myself, planning a morning of moping and a little studying of Church History while my children were at school and preschool. My father, far away in Virginia, woke up that morning and felt unwell, tried to reach his lady friend to take him to the hospital and couldn't, so called 911. They delivered him to a hospital that could not respond to his aneurysm. He could not be transported because the journey to the proper hospital included a tunnel, and they could not get him stable enough for the ambulance ride. I never got to talk to him, to tell him I loved him, to see him and touch him and be present for him.

And although I was saddened, I was not surprised. From the time my mother died, four years earlier, I had a sense that I would not have the same opportunity to be with my father when his life ended. Like our Old Man Cat, he did his best to hide his ailments, something my mother could not do as metastatic melanoma ran its course.

At the same time I'm working so hard to lose weight, I am aware that I am holding on tight to other things, creating a mental climate of containment, and the two are in obvious conflict. I'm strategizing, or trying to, when it feels "safe" to grieve for the Old Man Cat. I'm learning to live with just one other person for the first time in 21 years, and it's a major shift even if a temporary one. I'm pondering a very different way of being in ministry than I imagined five years ago or even one year ago. I'm sorting through both the outer and the inner closets, deciding what to give away, what doesn't fit anymore, what fits but does not flatter, what is marred beyond repair and ready to be discarded, once and for all.

Some of that feels like loss, and it makes me a little anxious about holding on to the things, the roles and the relationships I know belong in my life, but over which I do not have complete control. You may, for instance, strive to be a different sort of mother than you believe your mother was, but some other configuration of temperaments and interests and life circumstances may lead to similar feelings of distance or aggravation or dissatisfaction. You may understand yourself to be in love with a person who ceases to love you. You may love a dog or a cat, knowing full well that they will not outlive you, and still find yourself shocked when the possible becomes reality.

When I lost a baby in 1992, a loss complicated by my feelings of anger with God and a mixture of relief and guilt about the decision to end the pregnancy in the face of a bad prenatal diagnosis, I found it nearly impossible to grieve. It was so much easier to find a place in my mind to put the feelings, and to close the door on them. I'll get back to these later, I told myself. I'll go to the beach and sit on the rocks and look at the ocean and cry then. But I never did that. Instead I began to draw tighter and tighter boundaries around what I designated as "safe" territory, the places where my feelings were not too frightening and too powerful and too potentially destructive to allow myself to feel.

I'm trying to make room for those feelings, but I must admit I am still a bit cautious, still inclined to set them aside the way you might a bill you can't afford to pay this week and put in a "safe place" on the kitchen counter, and then cover with a magazine or a book or a box of dog treats.

Things I Learned from Miss Emily

I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.
2 Timothy 1:5, NRSV

I'm thinking ahead to Sunday, and my own grandmother is on my mind today. Here are a few things I learned from Miss Emily, not so much things she told me as thoughts derived from reflection on her life.

When you really enjoy something, celebrate it!

My grandmother, Emily, was born on Columbus Day in 1900, and that is the only thing about her that might be deemed politically incorrect. She loved the idea that her birthday was also a holiday, and she took great offense when Monday Holidays came into fashion. She even got married on the Saturday closest to her birthday, in 1919, long before the phrase "three day weekend" had been coined.

When you figure out your look, stick with it.

For my grandmother, that meant always wearing a hat and a pair of white gloves. She was not prissy, however, and could be seen picking up other people's trash on the street outside our house, white gloves in place. She lived until 1985, and though her style had become quaint by that time, on her it looked commanding and purposeful. When the funeral director prepared her for burial, he suggested she wear her gloves, and we were grateful to him for thinking of it.

 Use your head.

My grandmother graduated from high school in 1918, a popular girl who starred in plays, recited at the drop of a hat and received numerous mentions in society write-ups. During World War I, her family took in boarders, including a gentleman from North Carolina who worked at the local paper. That gentleman wrote a letter to his brother, saying, "You must come here and meet the girl I am going to marry." His brother applied for a job at the paper, and he came to town, and as love would have it, he became my grandfather instead. But first, my great-grandparents sent my grandmother off to the mountains to college. For one semester. I imagine they hoped to postpone or even discourage the marriage.

They did not succeed. My grandmother lived the life of a popular young matron, wiling away the 1920's playing Mah Jongg and attending coffees. Then her husband, ten years older and from all accounts a wonderful guy, wrote her a letter while away from home, saying, "You are so bright. I would like to see you use your mind for better things." (I've seen the letter.) She heard him. She took up community and church work in a serious way after that, and remained a promoter of reading and education and the improving of one's mind.

 If something is worth doing, let nothing stand in your way.

My grandmother had two great loves in her community work: the schools and historic preservation. She served on the city School Board for many years, through the difficult times in which people of good conscience struggled against those who could not find their way to understanding that all children deserved more than an "equal" chance at education. Her belief in God informed her thoughts, an understanding that in God's eyes all people have value and will not be separated for reasons of birth or heritage when we reach the divine schoolyard. Her opinions were not, to say the least, valued by everyone.

At the same time she believed in progress, she also believed in preservation. My favorite story about her involves the Crawford House, home of the original city father. Someone wanted to knock it down to build a bank. On the day the demolition was to occur, my grandmother, President of the Historical Society, stood in court a few blocks away asking a judge to stop this terrible act. He granted the building's stay of execution, and my grandmother ran (in her gloves and hat) down High Street with the piece of paper in her hand. I wish I could tell you she succeeded. Sadly, she rounded the corner just in time to see the wrecking ball hit the house. But that story got people thinking, and in our hometown, other buildings avoided a similar fate because of my grandmother's seemingly unsuccessful effort.

When you're wrong, say so.

As a gently-raised person, my grandmother had expectations of young people. I remember once being chided by her for not looking an older person directly in the eye. While she was right about the outcome, her method lacked her usual diplomacy. She proceeded to compare me to a neighborhood child with perfect manners, saying "Why can't you be more like A.P? She is always so polite!" (Those are real initials, childhood friend, and you will likely know who I mean!) But many years later, when I was a young bride, my grandmother apologized to me. She regretted those words many times over the years, she said, and wanted me to know that she felt I had turned out well, much better than A.P., and she hoped I would forgive her. I found this admission amazing and loving and humble and humbling.

A good friend is a friend for life.

My godmother and my grandmother were best friends. They met teaching Vacation Bible School, one a young mother and the other a teenage girl, sometime in the mid-1920's. They worked together in the area of Christian Education for many decades. My grandmother did not drive a car; my godmother took her everywhere, and although she occasionally grumbled about it to me in later years, they loved each other dearly. When my godmother, nine years younger, became ill in her late 60's and went into a convalescent home, one she would never leave due to arteriosclerosis, my grandmother remained her faithful companion. I never felt closer to her than I did at my godmother's graveside, when my grandmother said to me, "You and I will miss her most of all." "We'll have to look out for each other now," I told her, and we did.

Sit as close to the front in church as you can. Sing loudly. Pray earnestly. Smile often.

My grandmother sat in the front pew at church, at least in my lifetime. She listened attentively, sang with gusto and prayed with all her heart and mind and strength. She would have been a terrific preacher, if she had been given the chance.  I like to think she would be pleased to see me sitting even further up front, singing and preaching and praying and smiling. 

Verily, truth *is* stranger than fiction.

Yesterday I got a letter with a check representing my share of the sale of a piece of land owned by one of my mother's great-grandfathers. We had a giggle last night at dinner when I announced the sale of the previously unknown to us Lindsay Ditch on Shillelagh Road.

The accompanying letter included a list of the other heirs. My share of $122 and change was not the lowest, nor the highest. On my mother's side of the family I had a large number of third cousins. We cared about those sorts of relationships. My mother's mother's father was one of seven children, and the first cousins who were their children had some close relationships. My grandmother was best of friends with one cousin, who I knew as Aunt Dot, and I played with Aunt Dot's grandson. As a teenager I began to sort out the relationships and figure out who connected where.

It helped to know all this in my 30's when my mother's cancer recurred and she began to obsess about where and how to be interred after the death she anticipated long before the rest of the family got a clue the end was coming. In a cemetery in Jane Austen's Village, her family had a plot containing a mausoleum and a number of graves. My mother went to look at it and discovered it had grown unkempt. It had been many years since anyone had used the plot. But her infant nephew and her mother's baby sister and her grandparents had been buried there, and it infuriated my mother to see the condition of the place. She sent out a letter to her cousins, all the heirs to the plot, to see what could be done. Most of them expressed no interest and one, a very fussy man with a very fussy wife, responded positively rudely. I hate to have to say that he was a clergyman, making matters worse.

When my mother died the following spring, my first cousin undertook to have the whole family plot cleaned up: grass cut, stones set to rights--including that of the brother he never knew--grill of the mausoleum cleaned and polished. My mother had chosen cremation, and the columbarium where she and my father planned to be interred together was still under construction, so we made arrangements that she might rest, for my father's lifetime, among her ancestors, on a shelf above the mausoleum door.  I wasn't satisfied with the arrangements until I saw what my cousin had achieved in just a few days.

The Wednesday following her death on a Saturday, we traveled in a cortége from my parents' home to the cemetery, and I remember being amazed at the number of people gathered there. My father, for some reason worried that #1 Son had come to the service (he was 7), became obsessed with the idea that there would not be enough chairs under the canopy if the child had a chair of his own, but in fact there were enough, and when #1 Son climbed into his father's lap, we left an unoccupied chair at the end of the front row.

Will you be surprised to hear that my mother's fussy cousin sat right down in that chair, leaving his wife standing?

Today I Googled some of the names in the letter and found my way to a list of those buried in the cemetery in the faraway Commonwealth of my birth. That wife left standing, whose husband took great offense at the notion that caring for the family plot was in any way his business, was buried in that same plot five years after my mother's death.

Head 'em up and move 'em out

We're headed off in several different directions today.

The Princess is off to Girls Choir Camp for her fourth and final year. She'll be too old once she is in 7th grade, though she will move on to the next rung on the Choir ladder.

Snowman will be spending a few nights with his dad. He will check in on the cats.

Molly and Sam have gone to Molly's favorite place in the world, Fabulous Dog Daycare and Kennel, where they will be groomed just before we retrieve them on Friday. Huzzah!!

And Pure Luck and I will head for the Green Mountains for a couple of days of peace and quiet. I'll be bringing Harry Potter as I press on with my last lap of re-reading. Rain is in the forecast, but who cares? (Okay, maybe my hiking husband, but we'll make the best of it.)

See you on Friday!

Just Passing Through

We're having a happy family evening: corn on the cob, watermelon, Apples to Apples, Scrabble, all my children at one table.
What are you up to?

A Few Things On My Mind Today

The Princess has strep. Yes, that sore throat last week was something more than just a sore throat. She's on antibiotics now.

And now my throat hurts, too.

Having learned from the last time, I will see the doctor TOMORROW if it's any worse. No waiting until Saturday night or Sunday morning and feeling near death before going to the Urgent Care.

Despite that, there will be a walk in just a few minutes.

I had most of the colored portions of my hair trimmed off this afternoon. It's not short-short, but it's a big change. I'm going to have to get used to it. Maybe I'll look in the mirror again tomorrow.

Getting older presents some challenges, but I am determined to do it gracefully.

I miss being at the Festival of Homiletics, but will not be a baby about it, I swear.

Deeper thoughts tomorrow, or else a meme.

Mother's Day After

It started at 5 a.m. with the arrival of a noisy dog who thwumped down on our bedroom floor. Hoping to discourage her by playing possum, I didn't move, and I managed to go back to sleep.

Pure Luck? Not so much. Since he had planned to hike today, and the sun was up, he crept out and hit the road about 5:15 a.m.

When I woke up at 5:42 a.m., did I remember, rationally, that he had a hike planned, and then tell myself, reasonably, that he must have left early, taking advantage of the lovely morning?

Um, no. I had a little nutty. You know, the kind where you start off thinking he's wearing his headphones, then progress to looking for his dead body, then think, he's going to wish he was when you look out the window and see the car is gone.

Thank goodness he was still in cell phone range.

Not to be outdone, Snowman called me at the office this afternoon to report his iPod is missing. Remember how I backed over his iPod, which he dropped when given a lot of things to carry just before Christmas? And then we all felt terrible about it and wondered how he would live without portable music, so I found the money to replace it?

Yeah.

Repeat the list above.

Of course, there's always the possibility that someone stole it at school today. (Let's not even go there. Have you seen how helpful Apple is with lost or stolen items? They suggest reporting it to the police, even though the thief will surely plug in to a computer to download more typically teenage music than the material on Snowman's highbrow iPod, and wouldn't you think Apple could flag it as coming from a non-typical source? I mean, you know they could if they wanted to do it.)

In other phone-based parenting news, I talked The Princess through unloading the dryer, moving her clothes over from the washer and most of the way through starting another load. The last bits were too confusing and required an on-site consultant, her brother.

Meanwhile, at church, it's the closing dinner of the program year for an adult fellowship group, and I put the wrong time in the bulletin yesterday. And when I announced it, I asked to be sure it was right. But no one said anything. Apparently there is some unpleasantness coming. It's a good thing we have a therapy dog coming (Molly is the subject of my remarks this evening and will be making an appearance).

I'm beginning to understand the desirability of Monday as a day off, because after a big Sunday, I have a lot fewer resources for dealing with life's vicissitudes.

Bugle Song

I hope it won't trouble anyone if I tell you I love doing funerals. I don't really know where we end up when we leave this life, but I believe in some grand theo-ecology in which everything we've learned, our essence, is not lost when our bodies give way to illness, accident or age.

I know it's become fashionable to refer to a funeral as a Celebration of Life, and really I do when I'm writing a bulletin (unusual, by the way), but for me it's the celebration of the new life to which the person has gone, a word of hope to those left behind, a reflection on the departed loved one intended to bring tears to those who have simply refused to shed them previously, a container for the sadness and the hopefulness that meld for those of us who believe we go on being, somehow.

Once when Pure Luck and I were visiting the little country cemetery where many of his people rest, I began reading the old stones, Victorian era markers with verses, and I began to weep at the sight of those hopes for reunion carved into stone.

Pure Luck, skeptical and non-theistic, doesn't believe we go on to anything else. (He might be surprised how true that is for people who nominally believe in God, too.) I tell him I do, and he chuckles or makes that noise like Lurch on The Addams Family, the same noise my Daddy used to make. Then I tell him that either way, I win! If he's right, neither of us will know any differently, but if not, we'll be together and we'll both know I was right. Therefore, I win.

I usually get a sad shake of the head in response to that little speech.

I still think I'm right.

Today I stood in the cemetery with the family of a man who died at 92, after a happy marriage of 68 years. His widow alternately cried and smiled. The service was much like others I have done, and you would think the words might lose something in the repetition. But on this day, I felt God's power of reassurance in them, and I felt privileged to be speaking them. I shared in the reassurance that we are encompassed by God's love in life and in death.

Military honors followed the graveside service. Surprisingly we had a live bugler rather than a soldier with a boom box and a tape. The young musician stood off at a distance and played "Taps," played it clearly, piercingly.

I remember my mother bursting into tears once when taking visitors to Arlington National Cemetery to see the Kennedy gravesite. A little ways down the hill, a soldier was being buried, and a bugler was playing "Taps." It brought up memories of her own father's funeral, in another section at Arlington, fifteen years before. I believe I was surprised that a memory so old could make her cry that way. But I couldn't have been more than 10 years old. I did not understand.

Today while the young bugler played, I teared up at the thought of my mother, gone 14 years next week, gone--but where? What you believe and what I picture and what she came to consider likely may not be the same, but I do believe we're going somewhere, somewhere as pure and clear as the bugle's song, even if we cannot see it with our eyes.

We Ran Away

We ran away for 24 hours to Non-Contiguous New England State. I would share pictures of our joyous, though short-term, reunion with Pure Luck, of #1 Son and Dos and the college play we saw last night, of #1 Son made up to the be the Ghost of P.T. Barnum, of the fun suite we stayed in at the Residence Inn and of the little green shoots pushing up through the ground there, but I left the camera battery plugged into the charger here at home.

I have a little work to do to get ready for tomorrow. For the first time I am grateful I don't have a Sunrise Service to lead. The weather forecast here is 25 degrees tonight, with snow.

Snowman and The Princess are filling little plastic eggs with jelly beans for the children at church, and God bless them for it.

When my father used to think we were, ahem, not being completely frank with him, he would say, "Don't give me any of that 'Who Struck John.'" Is it a bad sign that I'm thinking of quoting him in my sermon tomorrow morning?

Big Noise from Winnetka

I stood by the piano last night whispering a little story about The Princess to Snowman, and then I turned, and my father was smiling right at me.

He smiled from a 4 by 6 frame holding a snapshot taken at Boothbay Harbor in the summer of 1991. The baby in his arms was Snowman.

How is it that someone who has been gone for almost ten years, someone you haven't even been thinking about particularly, can suddenly be so enormously present and absent at the same time?

I've read the words "tears sprung," and I suspect I've used the words as a description myself, but I've never felt quite the spring in them, the force of a spring, that I felt as tears suddenly shot out of my eyes.

Snowman was pulling up to stand that summer, and I remember he smiled delightedly, watching his  Granddaddy drum with pencils on a coffee table while singing, in his not-very-musical-voice, "Big Noise Blew in from Winnetka."

God, what a loss that he cannot know Snowman now and hear him play his clarinet, cannot know his grandson appreciates Benny Goodman just as he did so long ago. Sometimes it feels soft and nostalgic; sometimes it gives me pleasure to know they have joys in common, as when I remember the love of Jane Austen I shared with my late mother-in-law and think how happy she would be that The Princess is a reader, too.

Wikipedia tells us: "In classical physics, a spring can be seen as a device that stores potential energy by straining the bonds between the atoms of an elastic material."

It seems the heart is elastic, and in one sharp moment its bonds strained by old grief, potential energy let fly.

The Cast of Characters

I seem to have some new readers and thought it might be a good time to clear up any questions about the cast of characters.

Songbird--yours truly--blogger since 2003, but really didn't do it seriously until March 15, 2004. Made the switch from Blogger to Typepad in September, 2005, which is why you see no comments on earlier posts. I am a reader, a knitter and a music lover, as well as a writer. I like my life at 45. I grew up in Southern Commonwealth, but have lived in Vacationland for almost 20 years. I'm a United Church of Christ minister, ordained in 2002, the same year I married...

Pure Luck--a brave man who married a woman with three children and numerous cats. He travels for his work in the nuclear biz, is an AT thru-hiker (Southbound in 2000), excels at puns, is an excellent writer and put a lot of that skill to work over the years devising D&D universes for tabletop games. He is 11 feet tall.

(He's really 6'4", which is humorous since I am 5 feet tall).

Supporting Characters:
#1 Son recently turned 21, attends Formerly Methodist Currently Hiptastic University in a Non-Contiguous New England State, where he is a Junior double-majoring in Theatre and English. He hopes to make a career of acting, but if he should end up teaching English, it might not be a bad thing, considering that I have never known anyone with a better memory of and love for books, or a more powerful evangelical drive to get people to read the books he loves. He has been dating Dos (a blog name she picked for herself) for about a year, if dating is what they do in college. When he is home there are more dirty glasses and we go through a lot more milk.

Snowman (aka #2 Son) is 16, is a sophomore at Hippy-Dippy High School, plays the clarinet and is generally into music. He has a dry sense of humor. He used to work at our vet's office, so we still say he is "the closest thing we have to a doctor around here." He plays in two youth ensembles and gets together with friends to play jazz, too. He fills our house with the sounds of Mozart and Schubert, which is a good thing. He is hoping to make music his career. He has been known to fall asleep standing up in the shower.

(Yes, that's two sons likely to come home and live in the attic.)

The Princess is 11, a 6th grader at Renowned Middle School. (The Princess is on the leadership team for the service project highlighted on the linked page.) She takes a great interest in the relationships amongst her classmates and is an expert at accessorizing. She sings, plays piano and xylophone, and every now and then tells me she might like to be a minister. Being the mother of an 11-year-old girl is challenging. I now feel sympathy for my mother. Sadly she died in 1993, so I cannot apologize to her for having been 11 once myself.

I post pictures of the kids occasionally, but most of them are on my private Flickr setting. If you want to see pictures and are on Flickr, let me know and I'll make you a "friend." I was married to their dad from 1983-1997. He lives close by and sees a lot of them, and is known here as The Father of My Children.

The Children of the Second Marriage:
Molly and Sam are Bernese Mountain Dogs. Because of them, to my utter amazement, I joined a dog club, where I've had the privilege of doing two Blessings of the Animals. You can find pictures of them by clicking on my Flickr badge. Molly recently turned 5 and is certified as a therapy dog. Sam will be 4 at the end of March and likes to eat things he should not. When Pure Luck is away, my saving grace is the dogwalker, LeashWeCanDo. Molly has a blog. Sam prefers watching the door and notifying me when we have visitors.

The Cats:
Nicky, the Old Man Cat, is 15 and starting to fade. He was the cat who kept me going during the marriage break-up in 1996.
Puss Puss, the Cat Who Likes People Outdoors, came to us at the same time and is going on 12.
Baby, the Cat Who Pees and Vomits, joined our family when we moved to this house in 1998. She is 11 or 12 (her age was uncertain when we got her) and seems to enjoy skating on the thinnest imaginable ice.

The Locations:
City By the Sea is the small city where we live, population in the 60,000's with another 100,000+ in the Greater CBtS Area. We are on a Bay, near the ocean, surrounded by natural beauty and lots of fine and performing arts. It's a fairly hip city.
Main Street Church in Old Mill Town is about 45 minutes away; I'm doing an Interim there for the next year, give or take a bit.

Any questions? (Anyone still reading?) Can you believe we're supposed to get a big snowstorm today?

What Google Can Do For You

I have a post brewing about things at church, but tonight I am tired and found myself Google-ing old friends and distant family members.

Thus I discovered that the third cousin who I remember most for looking like Al Franken and being great fun at a party is now Senior Warden of his church and a lawyer who volunteers his time to defend people on Death Row. How cool is that?

I guess now that we are in our forties (or fifties, in his case), we are real grown-ups.

More tomorrow,

Your very tired Songbird

One of Those Family Problems

Last Easter, some words were spoken at our family gathering that, while true, were perhaps regrettably delivered, and there has been a chill in the relationship with a portion of my former husband's family ever since. The person who was unhappy about the tone and perhaps the content of my remarks did not make the problem clear that day, and has never spoken to me directly about the situation. There has, however been a lot of triangulating ever since, with the result that I heard from my ex that I was no longer welcome in his brother's home.

This was very disappointing, given that we have worked hard to establish and continue family traditions that can, at as many events as possible, include both of us and our children in the same place at the same time. While that was excruciating for me in the early years, it has become our "normal," and I am amused rather than concerned when I end up sitting between my two husbands, as I did last week in a concert hall when Snowman played with the City By the Sea Youth Ensembles.

But the suggestion had been there in the holidays of last winter that perhaps this particular member of the ex-law clan didn't feel all this good will herself. In her suggestion that I might be upset if she hosted Christmas dinner, and in her question on that day about the reality of our situation, I did not pick up the correct subtext.

Since the realization came last spring that I was being, in effect, shunned, I ceased to put myself in a position where I could be rejected or excluded. I simply made other plans. But here we are at the Holiday Trifecta of Thanksgiving, "The Production" and Christmas Day, and the matter is still unsettled, and the triangulating continues. My former husband and his sister have both been the third point on the triangle, and as much as I have tried to avoid participating, it is sometimes seemingly irresistible.

My strategy has been this. For Thanksgiving, we have made other plans. But "The Production" is the joy of the only grandparent my children have living, and they will be there. I considered not going until my former father-in-law turned to Pure Luck at the concert last week and said, "You'll be doing the Grinch, right? Back by popular demand?"

So, we will all meet on December 20th, whether we like it or not.

I suppose it's possible I was riding for a fall, as my mother would have put it, when I spoke so confidently last winter about how we were doing as a post-divorce extended family. I suppose I never should have said anything about whether my daughter and her cousin would be in the same group at middle school and should simply have asked the school for what I wanted and kept quiet. I suppose I could have called up the offended party as soon as I heard there was a problem and taken the verbal beating she thought I deserved and made peace that way. But this opened old wounds. There were times in the past when as two wives of brothers we lost our tempers with one another, and things were said, and each time her answer was to deny me the family. Long ago, my mother-in-law stood up to her and said, "I will not be there if Songbird is not included." God bless her. She would have missed her own birthday party to show her solidarity with me. Since her death in 1998, there has been, I guess, an unconscious battle for the position of matriarch. I believe this is what my former sister-in-law may want, to be the center of power for the family.

And I probably need to admit that I enjoy feeling like the one who is most interesting, most central, most fun, most shiny, most powerful, just the way my mother-in-law used to be.

We took ourselves out of the Thanksgiving equation with my ex-laws. The Father of My Children has a significant other and has gone away with her, and we're going to Pure Luck's people today. His family is happy to welcome his wife and his stepchildren, even though the little house is always crowded. With Snowman's help, I'm preparing our contributions to the meal. I'm sure we will be well-fed, and we will certainly enjoy the company as well as the trip together to one of Pure Luck's old home places.

But I must admit to a feeling of loss this morning and a lot of questions about how I created the situation and did not attempt to resolve it.

Did I Ever Tell You You're My Hero?

Some of you may remember sitting in your mother's laps, or snuggling up next to your dad, listening to them read to you.

But my most vivid memories of being reading to are not of the people in my house, or even the children's librarian at Jane Austen's Village Public Library. My most vivid memories involve pictures on a screen and the voice of Captain Kangaroo.

Just remembering the jingly theme song for his show brings a smile to my face.  I can remember the journey into The Treasure House, the not-so-hilarious knock knock jokes, the schemes of Bunny Rabbit and the hi-jinks of Mr. Moose, the charm of Mr. Green Jeans and the grace of Dancing Bear.

But most of all I remember Captain Kangaroo reading to me.

He read "Caps for Sale" and "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel" and "The Little House" and "Make Way for Ducklings" and the book that still brings tears to my eyes, "The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge."

The image in these stories are burned into me. I know from reading them that unlikely things can really happen, that those who feel they are less than useful can prove to have a purpose, that the small are not without their effectiveness, value and power.

In January of 1972, Captain Kangaroo came to Washington, DC, to film location footage for "Americana Week." My father, a Senator from Virginia, was considered to be a Jeffersonian Democrat, and he was invited to accompany the Captain to the Jefferson Memorial. I was 10, and in the 5th grade, but my father knew how fond I was of the Captain and arranged for me to go along. (My younger brother declined, to my relieved delight!)

I knew by then that the Captain was an actor, and I enjoyed talking with him about his costume. He told me he had worn a wig until he was old enough to have his own long grey hair. In honor of the theme, he was wearing a red tie with his white shirt and blue jacket, and even his watchband was red, white and blue! Charlie MacDowell, who wrote about Washington for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and was a friend of my father's, came along, too, and he reported that I gloomily commented, "And *I* have to watch you in black and white!"

I told the Captain that I didn't much like school and really preferred spending the day with him, although we were outside and the weather was as cold and as grey as his hair. He said kindly, "It gets better, Songbird. It gets better."

Somewhere I have a picture of us standing there together, my daddy, Captain Kangaroo and me in a little girl's raincoat, a funny expression on my face. But it is the picture in my heart that means more to me today, of a kind man who took the time to pay attention to an unhappy little girl, a kind man who brought Curious George and Ping the Duck and Ferdinand the Bull alive for me and so many other children.

Road Rage Redux

Today I heard The Father of My Children's fuller explanation of the incident on Thursday. He was in the right lane, trying to pass a line of inexplicably slow left-lane traffic. Trucks and cars were honking and flashing their lights. He saw my car at the head of the pack and called me. As he drew even with my car, he says, #1 Son was driving along dreamily, apparently unaware of all that was going on behind him.

My father, a brilliant man, was never a successful driver. He was too busy thinking great thoughts. In the Army during WWII, he flipped over a jeep with four guys in it. (This happened in camp, and apparently no one was hurt.) Let's just say they didn't so much have him driving after that.

Daddy lived in places where a car wasn't necessary. Can we even imagine that now? He got around Wahooville without a car while going to law school. And in Jane Austen's Village he lived within walking distance of his law office and the courthouse. If he needed to go to Big City Across the River, he went on the little ferry connecting the two downtown areas and walked to wherever he needed to be. For jaunts and adventures, as well as grocery shopping, he had my mother, a clever woman who did the driving.

He never had a driver's license until 1966. He was running for the Senate and his opponent began some talk suggesting he was less than fully a man because he did not drive.

I'm not kidding.

He got my uncle to teach him the basics and passed the test.

Then one morning he took the car out early to do a little practicing, got to thinking about something and drifted into a tree at a low speed.

My mother was less than amused, as I recall.

At least #1 Son didn't drift into anything. And think we may conclude that the The Father of My Children was trying to save me from the Road Rage of others.

As far as #1 Son goes, "I guess it's better than knowing he's speeding," said TFoMC with a bemused shake of the head.

Road Rage

Act One:

(Songbird's cellphone begins playing its hopped-up version of "Dies Irae.")

Songbird: Hello?

The Father of My Children: (in an aggravated tone) What are you doing? All the drivers behind you in the right lane are irritated because you're going so slow!!!

Songbird: I'm sitting at my kitchen table.

TFoMC: Oh.

Songbird: #1 Son is on his way to pick up The Princess.

TFoMC: I'd better call him!!!

Act Two

(About an hour later.)

#1 Son: (entering house) Hello!

Songbird: I hear you got a call from your dad.

#1 Son: Well he can bite me! I know the unofficial rules of the road. But I was going 70!!!

(The speed limit? 65.)

Edited to Add: #1 Son says I remembered his part incorrectly. He said the other drivers could bite him. As to my unconscious redirection of his comment, I plead the 5th.

Guess What?

Pure Luck finally posted at his blog again. Go and see.

Dinnertime Stream of Consciousness

Songbird: I read something today that says church has become feminized.

Pure Luck: But the whole thing is totally patriarchal!

Songbird: Something about the color of the walls being pink. These walls are lilac. Do you feel less manly when you come in here to eat dinner?

#2 Son: Definitely.

Songbird: So what color should the walls be? Blood red?

Pure Luck: That's right.

#2 Son: And black. Red and black. That's why we like ketchup! It's the color of blood.

The Princess: When I was at Montessori, there were girl colors and boy colors. Girl colors were pink and purple and occasionally yellow, but all the other colors belonged to the boys. I couldn't have green as my favorite color!

Songbird: They were also complaining that flowers on the altar were too girly.

Pure Luck: We should have the bodies of those we have slain decorating the church.

#2 Son: Yeah.

Songbird: They also seemed to think men wanted to hear more high content sermons, full of theology and the Bible.

#2 Son: More like high contact! "Praise God from whom all blessings flow" (POW!!) "Praise God all creatures here below (SHOVE!!)

Pure Luck: You need more pictures of David and Goliath.

Songbird: That performance certainly went over well.

#2 Son: I told you. High Contact.

Pure Luck: You should make church more like the World Wrestling Federation.

Songbird: I see. That would certainly be manly...I read some unbelievable stuff about how women should step back and accept the headship of men, step aside and let them lead, even if they don't want to do it. I guess the root of the problem is people who are unhappy about the ordination of women.

The Princess: I don't see why. You, and the other ministers you know, you're preaching and bringing the message of love. God made you want to do that, so how could it bother him? Uh, her? We need a new pronoun.

Pure Luck: Well, according to some things in the Bible, you aren't even supposed to talk in church.

The Princess: But they were just writing about the ways in their time. If we were writing now about who we think should preach, people in 500 or 1000 years might look back and think we had different ideas. They might think animals should preach!

Molly: Wroo!

Choosing True

At dinner on the 4th of July, The Princess asked, "What are you going to do with your silverware when you..."

I looked at her curiously. "When I?"

"Well, when you--"

"When I don't need it anymore? Because I'm dead? Honey, this isn't even the sterling!"

We all laughed.

"But I like it," she said. "It's pretty!"

It's an Oneida pattern, "True Rose," bought when Pure Luck and I got married. My everyday stainless from the first time around had thinned out, and it seemed like a good time to replenish. That pattern had long since been discontinued. Some friends from an online group banded together and gave us a gift certificate at Amazon, and I was tickled to discover they sold things other than books. Who knew? I found I enjoyed choosing something new.

My mother went through several sets of everyday dishes and flatware in almost 43 years of marriage. Meanwhile, her sterling sat safely in soft little rolls, labeled with little pieces of paper: 16 forks and knives and spoons, 16 iced teaspoons, 16 shrimp forks, 16 everything you can imagine. 1950 was a good year for sterling silver wedding presents.

My first wedding took place in the year of the wok.

My brother has my mother's silver, and that's probably just as well. I don't remember the last time I had use for a shrimp fork. We live a more casual lifestyle here in Maine than my parents did in Virginia. And I don't believe I've ever served iced tea at a meal.

But I do have my grandmother's silver, her dear old Fairfax, wedding gifts of 1919 with the old-fashioned dinner knives. She had a set of 8, and they sat in a drawer a bit jumbled, just as they are now at my house. I have a mismatched set of teaspoons, and an inadequate number of salad forks and six extra dinner forks and knives in a repousse pattern no one can identify that came from who knows where. I can set a table for 14, if need be, and stretch it out for children with my childhood junior silver and the junior sets of Fairfax my mother bought for #1 Son and Snowman (aka #2 Son). The Princess came along too late for such a gift; I wish someone else had thought of it.

We were 14 when we sat down at Easter with my former husband's family. I had just bought more of my everyday silverware, wanting to be sure we would have enough to go around at these family parties. There was a new tablecloth to use when we put three leaves in my mother's dining room table, long and white, and over it I laid a pastel cloth with Easter eggs that fits the table in its smallest form. New pink napkins tied it all together, and I was pleased with the effect.

Because of something I said that day, we probably won't be sitting down with them again. I told the truth, perhaps not as nicely as I might have, but I cannot have the words back again, and there is a family member who will not forgive me.

In the years since my divorce I've held on tight to being with "the outlaws." I told myself I needed to make it possible for my kids to be with that family since mine is so far away. It hasn't always been pleasant for me, but other times we have had great fun. There are things I will miss, especially the Christmas "performance." I suspect the grandfather will invite me even if I am on the bad list with one person. But I think I have to accept this as inevitable. Maybe the ex-wife of the oldest son cannot be comfortably part of a family when she has a new husband. And maybe there is anger that is more easily directed at the expendable un-relative than at its real target. Maybe that's the real truth.

We have celebrated two birthdays and Mother's Day and the 4th of July without the extended family, and the five of us have been happy together. I have a *lot* of Oneida True Rose, almost enough to set The Princess up in her first apartment some day and still have some for home. But the day will come, and probably sooner than I imagine, when my children will make our family larger and the extra leaves will go back into the table and the white tablecloth will cover it again and little hands will use the junior silver and the room will be filled with my true family.

Getting Over It

The other night we watched our tape of Saturday night's "A Prairie Home Companion," the 4th of July show recorded at Tanglewood. One of the high points of the proceedings had to be their rendition of The Prodigal Daughter, who asked her mother to wire a million shekels to her bank in Sodom and Gomorrah, where she had taken a sublet. After inventing a cocktail called the Philistini, accepting an internship as a hog-swiller and avoiding the persistent ministrations of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Daughter returns home, where her mother kills the fatted calf to the great dismay of older brother, Wally, the good son who has never given his mother any trouble at all.

My children have heard the more traditional version of this story many times. When we acted it out in church a couple of years ago, Pure Luck played the father, #1 Son was the disgruntled older brother, and #2 Son ran off down the center aisle and tried to bum cigarettes from the congregation. In synch with our congregation's life, the Father called for a celebratory Roast Beef Supper on his son's return!

It was quite a moving moment for me when Pure Luck wrapped his arms around #2 Son and gave him a big hug. It was the first time they had embraced, stepfather and stepson. It opened the door. When #2 Son left for summer camp a few months later, he initiated the good-bye hug, and now they hug whenever there is a major leavetaking or arrival home. Whatever feelings of awkwardness they might have had about what was then still a fairly new relationship--Pure Luck and I will celebrate our 4th anniversary in September--dissipated in the telling of an old, old story.

On this watching, The Princess reacted to Garrison Keillor's conclusion to the story. Grace, he said. It's in the Bible. Those who show up late get paid the same. She seemed to feel this was outrageous! She put herself in the place of the good son and felt his pain.

"It's like if you're good, and someone else isn't, they still get a party, and you're supposed to just get over it!"

Just get over it. It sounds unfair, doesn't it? But that's the message of the story, or one of them. I let both The Princess and #2 Son stew over this briefly, and then I said, "Are we always the good daughter or son? Isn't it comforting to know that we're still loved, even though sometimes we're the one who wandered off?"

It's hard for them to understand because their slips and wanderings have been relatively undramatic.

Still, they have their complaints against one another, and The Princess informed me yesterday that her brothers don't treat her as an equal. I pointed out that being an equal means participating in their give and take of teasing and not expecting to be special due to being younger.

Earlier in the day, #1 Son had recalled 4th of July 2002, when it was so hot that we couldn't bear to fire up the grill, instead went out for Mexican, and later hid out on the 3rd floor in our only air-conditioned room instead of going to the fireworks. That year, The Little Princess kept saying, "It's the worst 4th of July ever!!" She had a very specific definition of how each holiday or birthday could be best celebrated, and she was inflexible to an extreme degree. When some little thing went wrong in our meal preparation yesterday, her brother said to her in his dryest tone, "It's the worst 4th of July ever!"

When she agitated for equality, I used his teasing as an example. He's not really hurting you; he's playing. How can you play along? That's how you claim your equality, not by moping in a corner. You can't have it both ways.

I remember a friend telling me that her insensitive husband once responded to her sadness by saying roughly, "Get over it!" It was so awful it was almost hilarious. It changed my opinion of him. There is a nicer way to put it, always.

But, grace. There it is. The ones who show up late to work get paid the same. The third child is as much loved as the first and the second.

I'm one who enjoys a good wallow, I really am. I suffer over injustices and get caught up remembering old wrongs. But something happened to me not long ago. I turned 45 and I did the math and I realized my life was most likely half done. And I realized I didn't want to dwell in those places in the time that is left to me. I realized I needed to get over it and them and these and those.

A nicer way to say it might be: "Accept the reality and keep moving."

Last night we decided to play some more games after dinner. We wanted to include The Princess, and she wanted to play, but she worried that she would not do as well as everyone else.

"Well," I said, "you have a choice. You can come and play and learn more and get better, or you can decide you would rather not and do something else. But it's by trying to play that you will learn how to play better."

Now I would have gotten into a terrible snit if someone rationally said this to me years ago, or maybe even last week. But I want a different life for my daughter, for all my children, a life in which they don't spend their time examining perceived slights and withering at injustice and hiding from small losses. I want them to get in there and play, to learn to distinguish what really matters from what is merely amusing and to find joy in the latter when the former is too much to bear.

That's grace, too.

We played a rousing round of Yahtzee and six of Scattergories, sustained by strawberry shortcake, brownies and vanilla ice cream, in a climate of such general hilarity that we were all exhausted by bedtime and never even thought of going to the fireworks. It was the best 4th of July ever.

The News from Camp Songbird

It's been a busy day here at Camp Songbird.

Chapter the First
We were excited to prepare for the visit of yet another blogger with exceptional taste in vacation destinations. By prepare, I mean we finished the cleaning we started the other day, then suspended when we learned the day of the actual visit. There was sweeping and vacuuming and cleaning of the "powder room." (Now, seriously, we never call it the powder room, but it is a cute little half-bath just off the mudroom, added during the Winter Olympics of 2002, an absolutely sanity-saving addition to what was a one-bedroom house, then housing four people and about to expand to five.)

I guess I cut things a bit close, since I was still combing my hair when reverendmother arrived with her husband, two adorable daughters and in-laws.

Okay, no problem. I will forget about the half-combed and wet head I had to present to them and tell you that it was fun to hold an armful of baby, to have lunch with rm, to show off Small Church and City By the Sea, all while the rest of her family went to Tourist Shopping Mecca in a nearby town and did not have to be bored by our shop talk.

We also had a very special, surprise phone call from none other than St. Casserole. It was a treat to hold the phone to reverendmother's ear while she changed the reverendbaby.

Chapter the Second
Two of the men in my family have been busy on teh Internets today. #2 Son resurrected and redesigned his blog, Snowman Requiem, and today he has a post asking, "What is Patriotism?"

I had just finished reading this link from The Green Knight, when I discovered that Pure Luck was responding with his own diary on The Daily Kos. He got a little het up, as we liked to say in the South of my childhood.

I'm sure both of them would appreciate your comments.

Chapter the Third
And speaking of het up...
We've been doing some dogsitting for the adorable Chloe, 7-month-old Siberian Husky puppy of my Director of Music. #2 Son is her primary caregiver, but today he needed some time off to prepare for his clarinet lesson. I said, "Go and get your brother, and he will spell you."
"He'll what?"
"He'll spell you."
"What are you talking about? Are you speaking some kind of Southern words from the olden days that no one here and now understands?"
Yes, I am an old, old lady.

Chapter the Fourth
In what my husband refers to as conservation of resources, I seem to be passing out of a major phase of womanhood just as my daughter is passing into it. She has cramps, and, oh glory, I have hot bones.
I think it must be something like a core meltdown, and while my husband is dubious about this comparison and the eventual results of the real thing, it is indeed true that I feel I am overheating from the inside out. What a bizarre sensation! The good news is crushed ice seems to help, and organic Cookies and Cream ice cream is not so bad either.
As long as my bones don't liquefy, I suppose I will survive.

Chapter the Fifth
Everyone in my house is having fun playing games.

The Princess has a new video game, Harvest Moon. Her character is being courted by the town doctor, who she feels would be a good match. Oy. On the other hand, the character is engaged in earning "notes" for a song that will bring the Harvest Goddess back to life; she has been forgotten by the people. Since I am het up about our relationship with the Earth, I'm all for that plot thread.

We finally broke out Settlers of Catan, a Christmas present for #2 Son. It is a really good game, and I'm not just saying that because I won when we played the other day. Really, I'm not. I liked it because there is a good combination of skill and luck required, not giving an advantage to the smart (#1 Son) or the lucky (Pure Luck), but favoring those of us who are well-rounded. (Yay, me!) Hat tip to Alison at the blue blog who touted the junior version of this game, much loved by her young twins.

#1 Son also encouraged us to take another crack at Game of Thrones
, a Risk-type game situated in the universe of George RR Martin's books, much beloved by all of us. It is a pretty complicated game. I did beautifully playing the first half of the game with coaching from #1 Son. But when he thought I had the hang of it, he turned his efforts to winning, and I flamed out miserably. Too bad I care about winning so much. I grew up in a household where Candyland was a fight to the death, and I continue to be competitive. #1 Son grew up with a mother who stacked the deck so we wouldn't be sent back to Grandma Nutt and have to pretty well start over again, so he expects to win easily. See what happens when we try to change the family dynamics? We just find a new way to screw things up!

Because I have computer game envy, I downloaded Hoyle Card Games and played Solitaire last night until I thought my hand would fall off my wrist. But it's such a good feeling when you defeat La Belle Lucie!!!

Chapter the Sixth
After traveling far and wide for two funerals in the previous week, it was really nice to come home from church yesterday and hang out with the family. I have today and the 4th off, and it is really pleasant to be with them all. Tonight's dinner was pizza from our favorite local pizza place.

Chapter the Seventh
I rejoice that I am married to a man who doesn't mind a fan blowing directly on the bed all night long.

At Camp

Tomorrow morning I will drive out to a country cemetery to celebrate the life of a woman who died a few months ago. Her family wanted to wait for their summer friends to return, because being "at camp," as they say here in Maine, was an enormous part of their life. These little plots of land and the humble summer homes built on them have been part of the lives of many of the older people in my church. They are thankful their parents or grandparents spent the money all those years ago that make possible special family times away from the pressures of the work world. They rejoice in being at the lake, whichever lake it is, where their grandchildren and now great-grandchildren are not jacked in to the matrix of modern living.

No ordinary working person could easily afford to buy these properties now, and that magnifies their thankfulness.

When I was young, my parents sent my to Fairly Posh Summer Camp for girls in the hills of West Virginia.

Oh, the hills, beautiful hills, How I love those West Virginia hills!
If o'er sea o'er land I roam, Still I'll think of happy home,
And my friends among the West Virginia hills.

I remember how it felt to leave the busy Washington suburbs behind and ride on a bus full of girls many hours into the mountains. We stood on the shore of the river and waited for the little barge to come and deliver us to camp. And we looked up into the hills surrounding us, the hills covered with beautiful green trees, the hills off which the sounds of thunder would surely bounce during some night at camp, the beautiful hills.

We all need to get away and be in places of beauty. They clear our heads and open our hearts.

Here in Maine, the United Church of Christ has Summer Camp on a Lake, which just celebrated its 50th anniversary. The Princess and #2 Son will each spend a week there in July. It's a very different place than Fairly Posh Summer Camp. They don't offer tennis and archery and rifle. But there is swimming and canoeing and arts-and-crafts and other activities dependent on who the volunteer counselors are from one week to the next. The Princess will be there for a week focusing on peacemaking, for young people entering 5th, 6th and 7th grade. #2 Son is going to Sr. High week, led by a dear friend and colleague and his wife. The theme revolves around the lyrics of Libby Roderick's song, "How Could Anyone."

How could anyone ever tell you
You were anything less than beautiful?
How could anyone ever tell you
You were less than whole?
How could anyone fail to notice
That your loving is a miracle?
How deeply you're connected to my soul.

(#2 Son at camp last summer)

Camp for me was a place of competition, a place of disappointment, a struggle to fit in and succeed. My last year as a camper, I was the only girl in my tent not to win an award, and I went home feeling a failure. Six years there, six summers, and I had not been recognized as being special in any way. It really hurt. I don't know if I was looking for the wrong things, or just going to the wrong kind of camp.

When I look back now, I try to remember the beauty of the hills, the feeling of paddling my canoe on the Greenbrier, the fun of being in the plays in the old wooden hall, the beautiful sounds of our singing in the hollow of the hills.

And I am thankful for Summer Camp on a Lake, where my two will hear the loons at night, worship on the lakeshore, bring their mission money to support the Back Bay Mission and hear and see and feel how much they are loved by God and what that calls them to be and do in God's world.

Short Takes for a Summer Weekend

*This is a complicated weekend for us. Tomorrow is Father's Day, and as far as I know none of the children has done anything to prepare for it with regard to their own father. The dogs have a present for Pure Luck. (Ssh, don't tell!)

*Monday is The Princess' birthday, and we will be having a party, the five of us, at lunchtime tomorrow. (On Monday our window of opportunity is limited because she has Art Camp until 3, and #1 Son works 4-11 p.m.) I kind of want to stay home and celebrate here, but realistically, I'm exhausted after church, which makes going out somewhere preferable. To further complicate matters, their dad is picking them up at 4 to go to a Father's Day cookout with his family. It's frustrating when I feel my time to celebrate a special day with my child is being pushed around by things I cannot control. Further, his birthday is Tuesday, which just adds to the general festival air, or at least to the need for shopping. Although I must say he did not remember to help the kids do anything for my birthday, so perhaps I can bag out of this one. Meanwhile, I have a present for her, but the guys haven't done anything and expect me to help them figure it out today.

*On a happier note, I got to spend yesterday at Fun Town with The Princess and three friends: SmartyPants, Best All Around, and Call My Cellphone. The four girls had a great time, took turns pairing off for rides and declared me "the nicest mother ever" and our day "the best birthday party ever." This might have had something to do with my willingness to buy pizza, frozen lemonade and, just before we left, "Dippin' Dots, the Ice Cream of the Future." Or maybe I really am pretty nice. I certainly know how to host a party. We had to take a disposable camera, since Pure Luck and #2 Son were hiking with our digital, so photos will come later.

*The hike was huge, to the top of Mount Lincoln and then across to Lafayette. #2 Son was tired but happy when they returned. The boy is a hiker! This is pleasing to Pure Luck, who was looking for a hiking companion at the same time he was looking for a woman in his life, but really only got the latter in me.

They planned the next photo hoping to get a gasp out of me. They came close.

They saw and managed to get (somewhat blurry) pictures of an American Marten, a really exciting development in their hike.

*Finally, the best moment of yesterday had to be sitting on the "grandstand" beside the Grand Prix cars at Fun Town and listening to two mothers sitting behind me talk about their kids. One of them kept referring to her 13 and 10 year old sons by their names, which are, and I am not kidding you, Keanu and Topaz. When I told him the story, Pure Luck said, "You might as well name them Please Beat Me Up."

Proud of You

My parents were not effusive people.

When #1 Son was little, I gave my mother a copy of "Grandmother Remembers," a sort of reverse baby book in which grandparents (there is a grandfather version, too) can write about their lives and their children's lives in a book for their grandchildren. My mother put it aside, not feeling inspired to work on it, and it sat on a shelf for several years. But in the fall of 1992, after a cancer recurrence, and with a knowledge of her own impending death that had not come from doctors or been discussed with anyone else in the family, she began to work on that book. She didn't like the way some of the pages looked, so she went out and bought a fresh copy to be the "final" edition, working through some of the writing as a draft in the original copy.

On the page that describes "My Child's Teenage Years," one item had been left blank. It asked her to fill in the following:
"I was very proud that ______________________."

She was ill, and we all knew it, by the time I caught up with the work she was doing on the book, and I had spent a weekend helping her sort through old photographs as she tried to choose just the right ones for the book.

That's when I saw the blank page. It hurt to see it, because I feared she had never felt that way about me. She certainly had never indicated pride in anything I had done. I grew up feeling my brother's prowess in sports was valued and my interest in music and drama was not. I have to say Mother was always right there to sew a costume, but she never expressed any particular enthusiasm about the plays or the concerts or my participation in them.

Somehow we entered a conversation about the blank page. I think I said, "I notice you didn't have trouble answering the one about household duties ("Household duties were nil, except you would help occasionally."); wasn't there anything I did that made you feel proud of me?"

And my mother said, "I never even thought of saying I was proud of you, because I thought saying that might give you a swelled head. But I was always amazed that you could get up in front of people and sing and act. I could never do that."

Oh.

She was protecting me from thinking too much of myself, in her mind, by never giving me any affirmation at all.

After she died, I opened the book and found what she had written about me.

"I was very proud that (Songbird) could sing beautifully as a child and wrote a play her senior year in high school that won an award."

Daddy was not much more expressive in his commentary. He prodded me along the way when he thought I wasn't fulfilling my potential. (I gave him lots of opportunities.) He was absolutely, rock-solidly present when there was trouble. When I was on the verge of washing out of college after breaking up with High School Boyfriend, I figured he would never let me go off to England for the College of Knowledge in Virginia's Summer Program at Cambridge. I guess I thought I deserved some sort of punishment, and I expected the Wrath of Khan when he saw my grades.

I'm sure he wasn't pleased. Lord knows, I wouldn't be. But he put me on that plane at Dulles, because he believed getting away and having a fresh start at figuring out who I was would be the best way to spend that summer of 1981.

Many years later, after my mother had died, Daddy came to spend Thanksgiving with us. I had just started seminary. The whole weekend was full of conversation about how much I loved going to school now, and although I didn't have many grades yet, it looked like I was going to do well.

When I took him to the airport, we said goodbye on the sidewalk as he got his bag out of the car. I stood on tiptoes to kiss his cheek, and as we pulled apart he said gruffly, "I'm proud of you."

Random Monday Holiday Moments

*I first woke up at 4:55 a.m. It was already getting light outside. Did I wake up in Sweden?

*I next woke up with the alarm at 6:45 a.m. We call that "sleeping in" around here. Neither of us leapt out of bed, but The Princess arrived and sat beside me and eventually decided to go downstairs and see the dogs. We could hear the sounds of much excitement. Pure Luck got up, too, and left me blissfully contemplating a day off.

*The Princess returned and got in on PL's side of the bed. "How do you ever get out of this bed?" she said, dreamily. We have a very comfortable bed. I was really enjoying it. I dozed again.

*Meanwhile, NPR was playing on my radio, and they told the story of a ban on cigarette smoking in Australian brothels. I thought I must be dreaming until I heard The Princess say, "What?!?!!" (Hat tip to Kathy for being awake when she heard the story!)

*When I finally got downstairs at 7:40 or so, I noticed the front door was slightly ajar, just as it had been when I went upstairs last night. I remember telling Pure Luck to leave it unlocked, as #1 Son was out with some of his friends from high school days. A sudden horror gripped me, and I sent The Princess up to the third floor to see if #1 Son was in his bed. He was not. I called his cellphone, which rang and rang and rang, and finally went to voice mail. As I was preparing to leave a frantic message, I heard the beep on my line indicating an incoming call. It was a sheepish and sleepy #1 Son. "Hi, I stayed at Genius Boy's house and slept here. Sorry." "We will talk about this when you get home," I replied icily (secretly relieved, of course, but miffed nonetheless).

*After breakfast, we took the dogs to one of the off-leash areas here in City By the Sea. This one is used by people and dogs and is not completely fenced. Sam gets to be off-leash the whole time, but Molly has to be guarded at certain points. Sam got very excited about a squirrel and went bounding around after it. We call squirrels "Sam Snacks," not because he has ever eaten one, but because he wants to *so* much. The squirrel ran cleverly up a tree. Sam continued to sniff around the trunk, puzzled at the Sam Snack's disappearance.

*Both dogs got very, very muddy.

*We had to hose them off when we got home. We discussed the possibility of taking them to the Dog Wash place, then decided it would be worth the money to make an appointment at the groomer's instead.

*#1 Son got home before we did. He came downstairs while I was sweeping the kitchen floor (see dirty dogs above) and apologized over and over for having been so thoughtless. He allowed as how there had been some drinking. I told him I would rather have a late call saying he was staying at Genius Boy's than a heart attac