Dropping back in to say we just returned from the most wonderful and I mean, MOST wonderful vacation.  We spent three weeks in Germany, Austria and Ukraine.  The best part of all was it was all with our son who arranged and planned everything.  Every day was full!  I’m still recovering from jet lag, but soon, I will post pictures and tell of the adventures.  It was a dream I never thought we would realize!  Ahh!  

     How this year has slipped by!  Mostly it has been a time of healing for me.  Like many healings, once the pain is gone, it is easily forgotten and you feel like yourself again.  For a bumped shin or bruised finger, it is only a few days. What does it mean when you find yourself connecting to 25 years ago and realizing that you’ve been healed of something?  I’ll tell you; it is amazing!  There is no real explanation except to say that something that was broken is no more.  Many old hurts are just memories.  What an experience it has been! 

So last weekend our youngest daughter got married in a picture book wedding.  We had a wonderful time with her friends from Seattle who had come here to Texas to be part of the celebrations.  I miss the excitement of it all; that’s for sure.  This week the house feels more empty than before.  I know I’ll get used to it again, but for now there’s a bit of sadness. 

For the past few months, every evening I’d check my emails to see if there was something I needed to do in preparation.  Boxes came almost every day for the last couple of weeks.  We got votive candles, candle holders, crystal beads, chair ties, napkins and table cloths, and lots more.  Then the people came and put it all together.  We truly had a wonderful time.  I love my new son-in-law and his family too.  But oh, how I miss my girl, all over again!

Twice this weekend I was awed by beauty.  Both times I was doing something I really did not want to do.  The first time was late one freezing night.  Nick had gone to bed early so I was stuck with taking the dogs out.  I really wasn’t excited about going out, but when I walked outside, I was greeted with a beautiful full moon.  The night was so bright that there were shadows under the dogs.  And it was silent!  So rarely do we have silence here.  When we lived in the mountains, I came to appreciate quiet.  I stood there listening intently to the silence and letting it fill my noisy soul.  Oh, I slept good that night.

The next time was the night that we were going to have a hard freeze.  Here in Texas, we are not prepared for 20 degree weather.  I realized, again late at night, that there were cans of paint in an outside storage building.  I dreaded going out to get them, but since I was the only one up again, I had to.  As I walked across the yard, my flashlight caught a wonderland of ice diamonds on every blade of grass.  I felt like I was walking through a field of jewels.  It took my breath away.  I had to stop, freezing toes and all, to just drink it in.

Surely there is something to learn.  You just never know when something beautiful is hiding behind a dreaded chore!

Fall is here and with it comes rain, finally!  We were truly parched!  Now we have to crank up the lawn mower again.  I am certainly not complaining.  I miss the sunshine, but not the heat.

In June my doctor told me to go on a six-month diet.  He said it was to give my pancreas a rest and reset my metabolism.  At my daughter’s suggestion I set July 1st as the start-up date.  This means I’ll be on it for another three months until January 1st.  So the diet goes like this: No sugar, no grains, which means no bread or anything made with grain, no starchy vegetables such as potatoes, corn, peas, beans, sweet potatoes, no grain-fed beef or pork, no milk, no artificial sweeteners, and no fruit.  I am allowed chicken, fish, venison, eggs, cheese and nuts.  I can eat any vegetable other than the starchy ones and I can eat berries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries.  For some reason berries don’t activate the pancreas like other fruit does.  I can also have black coffee and unsweetened tea.  I’ve stuck to this for 3 months now and have lost 20 pounds.  Honestly, I didn’t think it was possible at my age!  I’m excited at the results! 

I’m also going to several classes at a Bible College at our church.  They are challenging and are requiring me to re-evaluate my self-discipline.  I am finding it woefully lacking.  A good challenge is invigorating though, and I plan to put extra effort in being all I should be.  I sometimes feel like a Rubik’s cube.  One side gets in order and all the others get messed up. 

I’ve been spending some time on Facebook.  Again, my kids got me involved.  They were the ones to get me started on Xanga and Myspace too.  The interesting thing about Facebook for me is connecting with friends from different eras of my life.  I found the head of our commune in Denver in 1970.  He is now a wildlife conservationist living in Wyoming.  I found some high school friends from San Antonio.  One now lives in Canada.  I found out that several friends have died so I quit looking for them.  Others come from the time in Breckenridge when we lived in mining cabins and panned for gold in ice cold creeks.  I found friends from our church in Telluride and those who have moved away from our church here. People I knew as children are now mothers and fathers with children of their own. Sometimes the children look just like their parents did when I remember them best.

I found that some people I thought I would be close to have faded from my life.  Children I was sure I would be like a grandmother to are in high school now and hardly know me.  I’m not saddened, only a bit surprised at how it has all turned out. 

One of my favorite things on Facebook is to connect people to each other.  Each time I find a new friend, I think of who they might know and “suggest friends.”  It  is delightful to watch old friends connect and to connect with them myself. 

I love Xanga too.  I faithfully read all my subs and sometimes comment.  I think that Facebook is a more like a casual acquaintance, but here I feel a greater potential to form actual friendships. Thanks to all of you who write so faithfully.  I am not the writer that so many of you are, but I appreciate your words and pictures more than you know! 

I collect yarn and beaches.  My yarn is in plastic storage bins and on shelves.  Some skeins are in baskets or knitting bags on half-finished projects.  My beaches are in small square plastic boxes.  They fill several shelves in a bookcase by the front door.  I have beaches from all over the world that friends have brought back and a few I have collected myself.  When I feel trapped and wish I could travel, I’ll take out a beach and think about where it came from, the Strait of Magellan or the Thames River in London.  I love them!

My husband, on the other hand, collects dead vehicles.  They don’t store as easily as a ball of yarn.  I cannot imagine that they could give him the pleasure of far-away places.  I cannot fathom why he even wants them.  I could tell you stories of each one, but I could do that without having them in our yard.  For years he has promised to get rid of them.  Only one has left in the past 10 years: the one that he promised would never end up here. It was the only one that I had no story for.  He had bought it to salvage the motor, nothing more.  So it sat for only 2 years with no motor before he finally got it towed away.  So today, he drove his old dump truck out to the back of the yard.  I have spent the day feeling edgy and frustrated.  Then I finally realized why.  He has added another piece to his collection.  He canceled the insurance several months ago because he wasn’t using it enough to warrant paying for insurance. I should have seen the warning signs.  I don’t know what I could have done though.  He is very determined to keep them all for whatever reasons he has.

I can’t help but wonder, is this penance for something? I must have done something really bad to be saddled with this! I want to draw up a Death with Dignity contract for his cars, trucks and vans.  No heroic measures, no prolonged years in limbo.  Let them die and bury them properly in some junk yard, but please, not in the yard anymore!

After our grandson’s burns last fall, he simply quit trying to talk.  He was already delayed because he was born with his tongue tied.  It was one of those things that grandmothers notice, and nurses don’t.  They thought it was not a big deal and could be clipped later.  What a mistake!  He was almost one year old before it was clipped and he could finally move his tongue past his teeth. So he was late learning many sounds.

He was working on it though and had a few words he used when he got burned.  Afterwards he had none.  He simply quit.  Oh, he babbled, but nothing that we could understand.  Rather than keep him in a place of frustration, we began teaching him sign language. Being a very physical guy, he loved talking with his hands. He has developed a good vocabulary in signing and still babbles.  He also learned a few words: no (What two year old doesn’t get the power of that syllable?) wow, whoa, mama. That’s been about it, except his mom decided to teach him phonic sounds since he wasn’t using words.  He loves the letter A.  He can find capital A anywhere and says it with great affection!

This week, at  two and a half, he learned his first multi-syllable word: HAPPY!  He loves the sound and always smiles.  What a perfect beginning!  I am sure more will come.

We just returned from the viewing for our friend’s daughter.  Tomorrow morning will be her funeral.  I watched her group of friends gather around and comfort each other.  Most of them graduated from our small Christian school between ’82 and ’85.  They had gone through elementary school, junior high and high school as best friends. They are closer than most cousins.  I envy them for their life-long friendships in this sadly transient world. 

Thank you all for your prayers.  Tomorrow at the funeral her seven best friends will sing with the teacher who coached them all those years ago.  I wonder if they realize what a testimony to faithfulness and friendship they are. I hope Kiana gets to listen from heaven. 

I didn’t know her well.  She had already graduated and was in college when we moved here.  I became friends with her mother though.  Her baby brother was the age of my son, and they became friends as soon as they met.  She married several years later.  I learned that she and her husband both contracted measles and had to cut their honeymoon short because they were so sick.  Each returned to their own parents to recover.  The marriage was strong.  Before long a baby girl arrived.  Then a son and another daughter.  I heard bits and pieces of her life.  I saw her children at church with their grandparents.  Sometimes I saw her and her husband. 

Friday morning she went to the doctor.  She has been experiencing a lot of tiredness and headaches.  She didn’t complain much, but then what mother of teenagers has the time to think about herself!  When she had visited her mom the week before, she didn’t want to go to the river with the kids.  Just a nap and I’ll feel better.  Her mom was concerned about the bruises under her arms.  She said she didn’t know where they came from. 

So on Friday, back at home, the headache was unbearable.  The doctor was alarmed at the bruises that were now on more of her body and ordered blood tests.  The tests revealed Stage 4 Leukemia.  He told her to pack up and get to the hospital immediately.  He’d meet her there.  She had barely gotten settled in the bed when her eyes began to get a far-away look.  The doctor asked how old she was.  “Nine years old,” she answered.

He turned to her husband, “Is she joking?”  

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, no,” the doctor cried as her eyes closed, and she slumped into a coma.  She never woke up.  They air-lifted her to a major hospital and performed surgery in a desperate effort to relieve pressure on her brain from the bleeding. Family was coming from all over the country to be there for her husband and kids.  She lived on life-support for a little more than a day.  Long enough for her family to arrive.  Long enough for good-byes and tears.  This morning this 44 year old mother died quietly and peacefully. 

Please be praying for her family and her many friends.  She was a very loyal friend who had friendships that were almost as old as she was. 

This past month has been busy as the end of a school year always is.  The research papers are graded.  The final grades have been recorded.  Report cards are checked over, and all I have left is to clean the room and plan for next year.  Strangely enough, I find summer hard at times.  I think it is because of the lack of schedule.  I am not naturally a very organized person so the structure of school days helps to order my life.  I am determined not to let this summer pass in a blur though.

So as a prelude to a wonderful summer, I flew to Seattle to spend a long weekend, Wednesday night to Monday night, with my youngest daughter.  She had invited me to come to the Northwest Folklife Festival there when she was here at Christmas.  She knew I would love it, and she was so right.  I spent most of Thursday resting and finishing up some homework for a Bible class I’m taking.  Friday we rented a bicycle and went riding for the whole day, 8 hours.  We visited Theo Chocolates, yummy!  Then we rode out to the beach and stepped in the icy water.  By that time i was feeling the pain of an unpadded seat and my lack of conditioning.  Ah, well, we still had the ride back!  We figured that we rode around 16 miles altogether.  For the final ascent up to Capitol Hill, we rode the bus.  Fried fish was the reward for a long day’s ride.

On Saturday we went to the festival.  Oh, my, there were a lot of people!  Along every pathway there were bands, jugglers, dancers, and drums.  The regular shows were almost secondary to the local talent.  We ate Ethiopian food, which I love, and Greek gyros.  Most of all, it was just fun to watch all the people.  I am a seasoned people watcher and this was a superb opportunity. 

Sunday morning early we went to church.  Her church is much more sedate than ours, but I love the sense of reverance and the orchestra.  It had grown since we were there last August, both the orchestra and the congregation. Afterwards we enjoyed brunch at an outdoor cafe, then wandered through the neighborhood of big old houses.  Trees canopied the streets and gave a sense of cool greenness and elegance. 
 

As we neared Broadway, the main street of Capitol Hill, apartment houses replaced the old estates.  Right outside of the Farmer’s Market, we saw a punk VW with saw blades on the roof like a mohawk. We got special cheeses and organic vegetables and headed home.

 

Then it was back to the Festival for another afternoon.  We caught the monorail back to the center of the city on the way home and once again walked the couple of miles uphill to her boyfriend’s apartment.  We gathered ingredients for supper and walked to her apartment to fix everything.  It was hard to go to bed that night.  We just wanted to visit a bit more.

Monday morning we went to the food coop to grab a couple of items I wanted to take back.  There was one last trip to Value Village, the local thrift store.  And then we had to head to the airport.  It all seemed too short, but I guess that is to be prefered to being too long.  I must admit I shed a few tears saying good-bye.  I wish far away weren’t so very far away!