On My Mind Monday (3/30)

But it is important to know this, to know your roots.  To know where you started as a person.  If not, your own life seems unreal to you.  Like a puzzle.  Vous comprenz? Like you have missed the beginning of a story and now you are in the middle of it trying to understand.

Khaled  Hosseini

And the Mountains Echoed

I know my origins and still there are times my life feels unreal to me.  Not just my life...but life in general. There is so much I struggle to understand.  Like the relationship between chance and fate, or joy and sorrow, or suffering and celebration.  Good and evil are right up there too.  I always come to the same conclusion : each day we wake up and go forth and through we are living a miracle.  That allows me to stop trying to make sense because miracles are beyond reason and understanding.  By very definition they have none. Something tells me that at the end of my story I'll still be searching for meaning.

2 day pass

it was a weekend free and clear.
no alarms. no to dos. no shoulds.  only coulds.
there was only one of us with any set in stone plans on every any given day.
he happens to be busy being busy these days.
the rest of us were gloriously happy not to be.
unscheduled time is like winning the lottery in my book.
that leaves vast open windows for reading and writing and watching a movie in the middle of the afternoon thank you very much.
it leaves time for rather spur of the moment trips to the lake to read in the afternoon sun with toes dug into the smooth sand.
the air was no longer an oven, but the water was like a warm bath in only the most pleasing ways.
there were waffle mornings and walks in the mid afternoon.
so what if miss bit added 2 tablespoons of baking soda instead of 2 teaspoons.
syrup is forgiving.
a sunday afternoon storm derailed end of weekend festival plans.
shhh...but as the skies darkened, i prayed for a shower or two.
instead of going out we snuggled in to chill and nap.
then we gathered for an impromptu panini dinner.
and we were no worse for the wear.
we may have been better for it.

be.here.now. (2/30)

There was this ordinary mother at the beach yesterday who struck me as rather extraordinary.  It appeared to me that she lived with struggles in her life (the kind that you can see and I'll simply leave it at that), but what reeled me in was her enormous joy in the face of them.  It was contagious.  She was there alone with her children and they had her undivided attention for the whole afternoon.  She was playing tirelessly and genuinely laughing out loud with them.  They were all being silly : dunking one another and having serious splash wars.  I overheard her having a heart to heart conversation with her teenage son.  What she said and the way she said it...well it was rather poignant.  I had this strong urge to swim up to her and tell her how inspiring she was.  I wanted to tell her that I admired her...struggles and all.  I wanted to applaud her as a mother.  I didn't, but we did share a smile and what I can only define as a knowing glance from one mama to another that spoke volumes.  Goodness begets goodness I know.  She made me want to be good.  She inspired me to be a better mother yesterday.  She made me want to get out from behind my book and get in the thick of things with my kids.  She made me want to plug in and be 100 percent present.  She reminded me : be. here. now.  I did.  I was.

I only wish I had told her.

(For the next 30 days I'll be participating in Christina's just one paragraph challenge.)

when a man says he hears angels singing...(1/ 30)

he hears angels singing.

We were in the car bound for a day on the water.  On my last rounds through the house to make sure we had everything, I grabbed Mary Oliver's A Thousand Mornings.  It was an urge I simply couldn't resist despite the fact that I had two other books in my bag.  I started to read the poems chronologically cover to cover as soon as we hit the road.  I love to do this and am always reassured by the way the same lines and poems speak to me every time no matter the order in which I intake them.  I had just read and reread Blake Dying. I always get stuck on the lines that read:

When death is about to happen
does the body grow heavier or lighter?

No matter how many times I read those lines I need to stop, sit with them and mull them over.  These are the kinds of thoughts that keep me up at night.

My phone rang.  It was Jess.  Jess who had called earlier to tell me that her close friend's husband, her friend too, had been in an accident.  An accident on a  4-wheeler.  Facebook told her he needed prayers, but she finally received direct word that nothing short of a miracle was going to save him.

It's a tragedy in every way.  A thousand ways or more.  A young husband, father of one soon to be two, a son, brother and friend plucked so painfully from his life on a perfect July night.  I doubt he had the opportunity to ponder whether he was light as a feather or heavy with the weight of what his loss would mean to his world.

All day I watched the people on the beach around me with suspicious eyes.  They were laughing and smiling and merrymaking.  There were two precious brand new babies being passed around a large group gathered for a life celebration, and I couldn't stop thinking about this friend of a friend who would never know his daughter.  This daughter who will never know her father.  How?  Why?

When?

I wasn't begrudging them their moments.  Sometimes that's all we have.  Sometimes that's all it takes.  I was simply praying that they know how precious the moments are.

Grateful Friday

Today I give thanks for...

Dinner with girlfriends last night.  It was so good to catch up and enjoy some time away from home on what turned out to be a beautiful summer night.

Air conditioning.  Like much of  the country, our temps have been hovering in the oppressive 90s.

Cool fronts.  One is on the way.

Invitations to swim.  This week we were in many a pool and several times at the lake.

Ping pong poolside.

Friends who not only loan you their AAA card, but wait with you in the heat on busy street corners for the serviceman to arrive.

15 minutes of fun, but 15 minutes of fun for 4 days in a row.

My frog whisperer.

Miss Bit played her final softball game of the season.

They won, but I think the girls would have cheered either way.

Miss  Bit had a date with a friend she hasn't seen since the last day of school.  She's been missing her.

T. Bone had 2 golf dates.

Sports wrapped up this week.  Camps wrap up next week and then we have a week off before football and sailing start.

Fireflies.

Plans to go to the beach tomorrow and then to Festa Italiana for mass on Sunday.

Alter Ego

You know how sometimes you utterly surprise yourself?  You don't feel the least like yourself or recognize yourself at all.  You say, self is that really you?  It cannot be you.  Hello, where have you gone?   Who is this stranger?  I kinda like this stranger.  Hey self...don't hurry home.

I've had two such encounters with my alter ego in the past 24 hours.

The first chance meeting occurred yesterday at 3:00 when I left work very happy to be heading home to a quiet house.  T. Bone was at a baseball game with friends and Miss Bit was swimming with the sitter.  When I got in the car, I was considering my music mood but all I heard when I put the key in the ignition was my car making a horrible on its last legs sound.

Three hot and humid hours later the AAA guy arrived at 6:00.  It's a comedy of errors involving false identities and wrong addresses and being kept on hold for 20 minutes at a time.  I was ready to lose my cool until I realized it was THE Eric, AAA guy who deserves a AAAA.  That's 4 A's!  He's come to my rescue before, and I knew once I saw him that everything little thing would be all right  (That song actually came on the radio on my way home).

As he stood there changing my corroded battery, he kept telling me how this could have been so much worse.  So besides a battery installation I got a pep talk.  Platitudes on positive thinking and a glass is half full cocktail.  The thing is...I didn't really need one.  Sure I was feeling a tad irritated that my three bad things happened last week and this was a fourth I wasn't really waiting for, but it was minor.

There were many points in this ordeal that would have had me undone under normal self circumstances, but yesterday I just couldn't be ruffled.  I was actually finding the humor in it all along. That usually takes me at least 24 hours.

I got home at 7:15: roughly 4 hours and $150 later and smiling somehow.  Maybe even dare I say...feeling gratitude.

I recognized this impostor again this mid morning when I confessed to Coach that I knew upon waking today  this day was not going to be mine, but I said it with resolute happiness instead of irritated angst. T. Bone came home with four ripe smelling friends fresh after a party and sleepover last night before lunch and suddenly I was not in for the day I planned. So what did I do?  I went out to buy not one, but two slip and slides and then I made a vat of lemonade and big huge pan of mac and cheese...homemade mac and cheese!
And I'm totally OK with it.  Better than OK...I'm good with it.

I'm also OK with the idea that this alter ego may just be me altered.  a little less intense...a little more go with the flow...a little lighter, and with a little brighter outlook.

2 day pass

why is it i always feel summer slipping away this same time each year?
how is it?
after all...there are many more dog days before us than behind us.
and even knowing this, i still struggle to adjust my viewfinder.
i have a hunch that the unforeseen early end to the baseball season factors in here somewhere.
a sneaky suspicion.
friday's game was one of those games the knight's should have won.
it quickly became one of those games the boys could have won.
reminding us all in an unforgiving poignant way that it ain't over til' it's over.
i felt for all the boys...especially my two.
a party after the loss didn't seem like a good idea, but then it was.
there was still much to celebrate about the season, the team, the fans.
and they did...we did.
none of the boys wanted the night...the season to be over.
they were all scheming for sleepovers, and asking parents who had imbibed in a summer shandy or two.
t. bone came home with two of his teammates...two of his closest friends.
when i peaked in on them before turning in for the night, they were all sleeping soundly.
no doubt dreaming of the next day or adventure and not errors on the field.

we returned to the same fields for miss bit's all star game saturday eve and the stands were filled with the same family and friends that cheered t. bone on the night before.
she had a pit in her stomach nervous she was to be in the spotlight...
god forbid to get the ball.
she loves to hit but loathes the fielding.
we'll be working on that now that coach is down 2 teams for the rest of the summer.
our favorite fans gathered at casa wags for our favorite pizza after the game.

sunday morning t.  bone was home long enough to eat a donut before the phone rang and he was off with friends for the day.
the rest of us bathed in deep woods eau de parfum and headed to the audubon to frog and hike.
miss bit caught so many frogs that i lost count...big ones, little ones, teeny tiny ones, green ones, brown ones, loud ones, quiet ones...
she was hot on the trail of a snake out for a swim too.
he was too fast and slippery for her net though.
we ended up on the beach where we waded in the cool lake michigan water and where every other rock on the shore was heart shaped...at least to me.
coach carried them all home for me.
after we deloused, we made dinner together.
coach grilled steaks and i sauteed spinach and shrooms, and it was delicious.
we all collapsed in the family room for a movie at the end of the weekend...
full in every way.