Two weeks with Luca

I'm trying to get this grandma thing down pat.  Its not at all what I expected.  Everyone told me that it would be such and thus, but I knew so much better and that it would be unique to me.  It is unique but it is also just as everyone said it would be.  I am totally smitten by him, and his coming has changed the way I look at things. 

Just as Luca will settle in to a routine and give his exhausted parents sleep, and confidence that their lives will now become a new whole, but one that will soon seem as natural as breathing.  There will come a time shortly when they won't remember what life was like before him.  That's another thing grandma's have over parents.  I can remember life before Luca.  I can remember the quiet happiness at learning I was to become a grandma, the anticipation, and the knowledge that the months sped by until his birth, (and I say that knowing that when I was actually pregnant it seemed to take forever).  But I also remember the little things about his father.  The first of my babies, the one all the mistakes were made on, and the one that taught me how quickly a baby can fill your life and consume it.  I had forgotten what my life was like before him, but Luca made me remember. 

I wished my cousin, a happy birthday today, and kidded her that she always reached my age, 6 months sooner and so did the test drive.  My best friend, on who's birthday, Luca was born also hit milestones 6 months ahead of me.  Now, when we remember each other's birthdays we take a few moments to remember what we were once.  My cousin would come out from the big city of Midland to stay every summer for a week.  She loved coming to the farm, and bringing in the cows at night for milking and playing in the haymow until we were covered in itchy straw, that somehow even got into our underwear.  My dad would make homemade ice cream and we would sit on a warm summer's night and eat a creamy bowl full, topped with fresh strawberries as I was just never a plain vanilla type person.  We would giggle and talk long into the night, and be admonished several times by my mom to "quiet down and go to sleep".  Of course, we giggled all the more.  My cousin's house in town, featured an in ground pool, such a novelty back then, and something wondrous and slightly scary to me, the country mouse cousin.  Visits there were always fun and full of splashing and swimming, and I was always exhausted at day's end and wanted to go home to the comfort of my haymows and radio tuned to the Tiger games.

My best friend(s), her sister was in that equation, as we were pretty much inseparable if with one, I was with the other.  Marlene was the elder by 6 months but a grade ahead of me in school.  Betty was 8 months younger, but shared my grade progression with me.  We lived on our bikes in the summer, and played "Barbies" with homemade houses built at both of our real houses, outside in the summer, inside in the winter. Pickup baseball games and touch football in the fall.  Ice skating and sledding in our winters, and hot chocolate and thawing out after hours outside.  Hayrides and Crystal Lake on a summer Sunday.  We really had it all, and if our parents worried, we didn't know it.  We learned about politics, the birds and the bees, and the latest  childhood gossip by just sitting in our favorite places and talking.  We had worldly views gleaned from our parent's conversations, but spun with our kid's philosophy.  If only the world could be ruled by the voices of children, we would be so much better off.  And we grew up.  High school was the defining line for so many of my close relationships.  Though we remained good friends and shared high school, we drifted to other friendships and boys.  My cousin and I drifted even further attending different schools and having less and less in common as our experiences toward growing up defined us.  We rushed headlong toward that great final diploma called "adulthood".   Years later we wondered why we had been in such a hurry to grow up.

So, it is with Luca that I watch and look at his every movement.  I have gained patience, and some insight into just how fast and far he will go in such a short time.  Everything he does delights me, and I can honestly say, that everything my children did, did not delight me. 

Luca has allowed me to set new goals and feel they might be accomplished.  He has made me dream of good things again, and made me see that my life is coming full circle.  A pretty big accomplishment for a two week old baby. 

Happy Birthday Cuz, and thanks for all the memories...

I like Traditional

I think I am hip.  And I try to believe I am cool.  I also try to fool myself that outside forces will not affect who and what I am.  I tell myself I will blog everyday, and that I will tell the world what I am feeling.  But its all a big fat lie.  I am not hip and I am finding out I am seldom cool.  I have often felt this past winter like a piece of old flag flapping in the wind, at the mercy of the elements and the fact that while I am a symbol, no one really cares about symbolism any longer. And I just found out I am a big bowl of mush...

I now have to admit, that I am a morning person, and that is when whatever brain function I am still allowed is the sharpest. I like watching the sun rise and love the long days of summer before and right after June 21st when the world seems infinite and embracing.  I like the perception that summer is about being lazy and watching the clouds roll by, when in effect it energizes me.  And I like the fact that I am so very tired from good, old fashioned hard work, that sleep seems a blessing, even if I never really sleep through the night any longer.  (Blame it on hormones or worries or whatever). The further along I go in life, the more I relish and cherish these days.  But the more I dread the grays of winter.  So, against all my beliefs prior, I find I may be a sun seeker after all in my later years.  Many thoughts swirl around in this graying noggin, (though after yesterday, I am safe in that department for another month), and they run over and around each other.  Ignorance is bliss and I think with age does come wisdom, but also the knowledge that all the wisdom of age, doesn't always help in the world. 

But I still like respect and cherish many of the old ways.  I like men to be Gentlemen and treat women as such, all women.  If more of that happened I believe we would all treat each other with greater respect.  I believe in manners.  I believe in opening doors for women, children and the elderly.  I believe in helping out your neighbor, not just in times of greatest need, but because you know an act of generosity will be reciprocated.  I like the church community.  It is an important bond, no matter where you live.  And I like family.  I like the big family dinners that are becoming scarce.  I like face to face talking, and a good old fashioned, newsy letter and if not that a good long email.  I want to know what's going on with everyone and not just a tweet.  Not that I tweet.....yet.  And  I like cooking and baking, and serving people food I have prepared.  I like walking into my garden now, and hearing the birds delight in one another, a baby bunny among the poppies, (oh, if it only stayed a baby bunny), and a deer cross the field behind me.  I like having a neighbor stop to chat if I am working in the front yard.  And I like getting together with old, dear friends.  My likes and desires may have changed  some over the years, as the stages of my life have changed but the traditional things I believe will always remain in place.

And that leads me to the title of my blogs as I am now officially a Grandma.  Every preconception I stubbornly hung onto, went out the window when I gazed on my new grandson, Luca.  Friends that had already crossed that threshold, told me I would love it, and it was the best thing, and I just couldn't quite grasp that my life would change that abruptly, and I wasn't even sure what all the grandbaby fuss was about.  I am here to tell you I was wrong and they were right.  My daughter in law went into labor, three weeks early.  Because she had contractions earlier, it was not a complete surprise and we were anticipating an early June arrival.  This soon however, kind of threw us.  Cellphone tweets to the other grandma, (I guess it does have its place), kept she and I informed how everything was progressing.  It turned out to be a pretty routine delivery, though women who have given birth know there is nothing routine about it, and my grandson was a healthy 7 lbs.  He had a good set of lungs as I heard him before I saw him while they were cleaning him up and we waited outside the room.  A half hour later we were introduced and Luca Camillo captured my heart, saccharine as that may sound.  He had a newborn's face but it seemed perfect to me, unblemished and a cupid bow for a mouth and he sighed without opening his eyes and a small smile flitted across his lips when I first held him.. I fell instantly in love.  I could have watched him sleep for hours.

I tried to figure out this feeling which took me completely by surprise even though friends had warned me.  I didn't remember feeling this burst of overwhelming love for my children at birth.  Not that I didn't love them, but delivery was more like a "job well done", after months of carrying that heavyweight beach ball around inside me.  I was happy but tired and nervous about this little person I had created and now would be my life for the next twenty years or so.  Maybe I now know, that life is finite.  It has an ending and in this grandson, I see that continuation of life as it will go on when I am no longer here.  He re-energized me more than a perfect spring day.  Priorities immediately fell into place and while I know this feeling won't last forever, it reminded me once again, I like traditional and I like being now a GRANDMOTHER, no matter what the title.

While the title of this blog is now outdated, I can look forward to being a grandma each time it presents itself and get that same rush of tremendous love every time.  What a joyous thing to look forward.   We are blessed.  Welcome to my new grandson.   May his parents have the same blessings all my children provided me.   

Why Do I Remember These Things?

It is another rain drenched morning here.  The April showers have spilled over in to mid-May, and some days I despair of ever having more than 3 days running of sunshine, pleasant temps and no wind out of the northeast.  This year it seems to be two or three nice days and about seven that are cruel to those of us longing for spring planting and dreaming. We now have those early mornings and long days, we wait for in February, but it seems I can hardly enjoy them.  If nothing else, those of us who have endured, know patience, and know that it will change at some point, and we will likely complain about all the heat long about August.

In my house bound musings I was wondering why, I can remember the most insignifcant memory, crystal clear, after all these years, and other precious memories have slipped away.  Viewing them is like looking in lake water.  The image is there, at the bottom, but it has a shifting, transluscent feel.  The harder you look, the more it slips from your grasp.  I can remember lying in the sun warmed grass of my childhood yard, and staring up at puffy clouds, drifting across the sky, feeling perfectly content and having no notion of anything but watching those clouds and thinking my time watching them was endless.  I can remember three little girls standing inside the huge emptiness of our Harvestore silo and singing, "Guantenamero", at the top of our lungs because we liked the echo.  I can remember going to Crystal Lake and the peppermint fields on the way, how we always looked for them, and the first sighting of the lake with the old pavillion still in view.  Stu's Beach would come later with all the promised fun of a Sunday afternoon, swimming, and playing with friends.

I can remember going to the tobaggan run with my grandparents, walking up the long hill, the tobaggan set up on rollers at the top, while we mounted it, sitting front to back, our legs wrapped around the person ahead of us, one long human snake, on that tobaggan, shivering with anticipation and fear before we were shoved down that long chute, at dizzying speeds and sometimes making it to the end of the run, and sometimes spilling out like scattered bowling pins, one person losing grip and the others being moved by the next, a domino affect.  This was always at the bottom of the hill, and we would skid on our backs or behinds, covered in the snow at the bottom, and laugh just as hard as if we had made it to the end and a safe stop. 

I remember the wonderful taste of a 7-up float on a hot summer night.  I've never liked 7-up or vanila ice cream alone, before or since, but put the two together, and it was heavenly, at least in my remembering.  I remember june bugs on warm summer nights, I remembering their scary noise as they flew against the screens, trying to get to the lights inside.  I do not remember ligtning bugs however, those fireflies that I wait for now, as a cap to warm summer evenings in June and July.  I see them now, by the thousands, but remember only a handfull of times seeing them in my childhood.  I remember fresh rhubarb, strawberries, raspberries and huckleberries, and how we ate them with every meal while in season.  I grew so weary of them, but my dad could eat them all the time and never seemed to tire of the taste.  Today, I wait with mouth watering for the first strawberries.  The first rhubarb pie and the first juicy peach I can pick from my own tree.

And I remember the Saginaw Fair and how we waited for weeks for it to arrive in early September.  I remember getting off of school for Fair day and the sights and unusual food aromas combined with the all the barn odors and the smell of exhaust fumes when the track was being used by hotrods for racing.  I remember the rides and how many would could go on before we got sick, a feeling I had one time, and never wanted to experience again.  We would dare each other for the ferris wheel, and then squeal in fright and delight when the baskets would climb slowly to the top of the wheel, only to plunge over the edge and our stomachs along with it.  We marveled and respected the huge draft horses in the barns, with rumps so large and legs so massive, a stall couldn't contain them and we made a wide berth around them.  Corraled, fat and snoring hogs, and bleating sheep were in the animal barns.  The vendor buildings were the nirvana of "free stuff", and we ended our Fair day, bogged down with bags of junk and bellies full of our favorite Midway delights, crisp french fries with vinegar and tart ketchup, sugary sweet elephant ears, squares of vanila ice cream, dipped in chocolate and rolled in crushed peanuts on a cone.  Bratwurst on a bun, barbequed chicken, and even bean soup, it was all part of the Fair, and probably the best part to a kid who had no concept of fast food.  Why do I even all these years later still smell the smells and hear the carnival music?

I am making a quilt for my grandbaby.  My daughter in law asked me to make a crib quilt for her.  When I settled on a pattern, (Tumbling Blocks, which of course I had never tried before), I waited for her to give me some color cues.  When we talked about the colors of the large area rug that would anchor the room, browns with pinks, fuschias and touches of blues and greens, I had my answer.  To the fabric store I went and was overjoyed to find so many fabrics that combined browns and pinks.  The only problem was to narrow my choices.  I selected and grouped the choices into light, mediums and darks.  I had 4 groups of these color combinations.  It wasn't until I was sewing the combinations did the "remembering" hit me again.

My mother had picked a brown backed wallpaper with large pink roses for my room when we first moved to my grandparent's farm.  Redoing my room which I would share with my baby sister at some point was her first project.  I remember sleeping in a double bed, (their old bed, upon moving they got a new bedroom set), full of sawdust from my dad designing and cutting an intricate wood soffit and shelves to frame the window wall in the room. Only one wall was papered with the rose flowering wallpaper, the rest of the walls were painted a pink to match the roses.  My mom also made a bed spread cover out of a brown fabric that matched the brown in the wallpaper's background, and more importantly to her, wouldn't show dirt for a good long time.  I didn't pick the wallpaper and I didn't hang it.  As I grew older, I disliked the colors as I was never a "brown' kind of person, or so I wanted to believe.  When I was old enough to request a room redo, I chose yellow for my bedroom.  A sunny yellow check with yellow spreads on the now twin beds, my sister and I received. 

When I was old enough for 4-H, my first sewing project was a skirt.   My mom picked out the fabric for my first sewing project, and you guessed it, my skirt was to be brown with a border of dark pink, green and blue flowers, and a scattering of those flowers spread across the fabric.  I was not overwhelmed by that fabric, and because I was not overly enamored with sewing at all, (I figured I had a built in clothes maker in my mom, so why should I sew), the whole making of and later modeling the skirt at the 4-H Achievement Night left me less than enthused.  When I had my first taste of modeling and saw how out of place my skirt looked, I may right then have created a lifelong dislike for sewing.  While A-line skirts and madras plaids were all the style, I was wearing a dirdnl skirt like something out of the movie, "Heidi".  It was not one of my fondest memories, and why do I remember it after all these years?   Though the personal, sewing bug never lit in me, I did develop a love of machine piecing in quilting many years later.  I never thought I liked math in high school, though Lord knows, I took enough of it, but I did like geometry, and loved the geometric lines and squares of traditional quilting.  While quilting has ebbed and flowed for me and has never become more than an enjoyment, it has stayed with me.  And when the crib quilt request came, I jumped in enthusiastically, thinking how long it had been since I had done this.  As I laid the pieces out on a white sheet to get placement, it hit me.  The colors of browns and pinks.  Mom did know best and was just ahead of her time with the browns, (which are now the new black), and my deep affection always, of pinks.  Funny how that worked out and funny how I remembered. 

Too many of my best memories are no more than a blur in my mind, making me sad that they went by so quickly and were shuffled through for the next memories.  Bits and pieces of my most precious times, my children's growing up are forever gone....or maybe it will just take bits of brown and pink material to float them back to me....

Many Things

In the last few weeks, I have found out many things.  I have found that if we wait long enough, even in Michigan, spring will come.  And it will overwhelm us with its beauty and take our breath away, when it sneaks up on us.  It will send rain our way and the days seem numbered only by the amounts of water dripping everywhere.  We will watch rain gutters overflow, and check that new sump pump to make sure it is still working.  We will lament that there is no end in sight for all of this water, and jokingly kid to remind us, of this when summer's heat is upon us.  We complain about being duck's and wishing for some sunshine, to brighten the now longer days.  We note that we are a couple of weeks behind normal for where things should be.  We chafe at the fact our garden seeds are sitting here, unplanted and that life seems at another stand still. 

But then, it is actually spring.  No more false nods our way, it is actually, really, truly spring.  The daffodils have waited and finally arrive in all the happy yellows of the sun and make us smile just to see the clumps of spring gold.  The cooler weather, means the tulips arrive later but the daffodils also hang around to co-mingle for a week.  Then one day you have an actual warm spring rain, and suddenly the green grass needs mowing, and the cherry tree bursts into a white petticoat of blossoms, and the tulips have arrived in all their majesty.  And it makes me wish I could stop time for a day or two or three.  If I could just stop and relish in the long days now that seem to have purpose.  If I could just rejoice in the cooler mornings that give way to warm afternoons and so much time to work out of doors.  I realize that the rabbits didn't eat all my new tulips, in fact, now I can only find one small clump that they so badly damaged it will not bloom this year.  The dreaming of the wondrous displays, as I looked over tulip catalogs last fall, and as I planted them knowing it would be a long winter before I would see the fruits of those bulbs,has born fruit. It is much like giving birth.  You wait, you anticipate labor and are never quite prepared for how long it will take, but then you have that child and suddenly it is spring and life has color and meaning and all the past is forgotten. 

The tulips are exotic in color and style.  Last year I bought fringed tulip bulbs, and peony flowering and lily flowering bulbs in dazzling colors and combinations.   Every morning I am amazed at how they look in the garden and with my cup of coffee in hand, walk the garden just to enjoy.  If only, I could carry this with me, but I am finding that the peace I seek is in the looking and being ever knowing that its there, if I look for it.  I'm learning....

I have found out that my old love of baking has come back, and that dog hair in just about every mixing bowl is an inevitability. I am also warned that my family who read this will probably examine every slice they eat from now on.  But I have news for them, if they haven't died yet from ingested dog hair, they probably won't anytime soon.  Grandpa always told us we need to eat a bushel of dirt before we die, so I guess a few pounds of stray dog hair isn't a big deal.

And I have found out that the Betty Crocker coupons are no longer redeemable.  In fact, the coupon books retired in 2006, almost 5 years ago....That means the cake mix I just cut the points coupon from has been in my pantry cupboard for awhile, and that's putting it nicely.  I have Betty Crocker coupon flatware.  When we were young people and the eldest of us were headed to marriage, Mom told us to pick out a flatware pattern from the Betty Crocker coupon catalong.  She was going to redeem the coupons for us so we would each have an 8 piece setting of all the flatware availalble.  I picked Patrick Henry for mine, a simple, straightforward, Oneida piece that I loved then and still love.  But as with anything, over the years, pieces went missing and the knives developed a problem of splitting.  With the redeemable points coupon I had just cut out, I thought now was the time to dig out the other coupons I had saved and replace some of the flatware that had vanished over the years.  Woe as me, when I found searching online, that it is no longer.  Of course, as with everything in this day and age, there is an online source for that.  "Replacement.com" had my flatware pieces, as many as I needed, but also at a pretty hefty price.  In this time of looking to my future, I thought, "Do I really need 8 matched forks?".   I haven't quite come up with an answer to that yet, but I have the address saved and maybe next winter it will be something I will "have to have".  Somehow, though, like the Betty Crocker coupon books, I willprobably continue to go about my merry way with forks that don't all match, too few teaspoons and regular knives and steak knives mixed on too many occasions.  Hopefully I can do it with flair and smile and say, "Its the quirkiness of Grandma"....

Finally, I have found that Mother's Day is about being a daughter as much as it was about being a Mom.  I took Mom to her church on Mother's Day.  I have done this for a few years now so the order and makeup of the service was not unique or a surprise, but somehow a morning that started on the "poor, pitiful me" side, opened up as I watched children help with a service dedicated to moms.  I saw a mother of ten children, the middle ones of whom, had been my grade school friends, sit down with my mother as her "kids" were all busy with their families and being mom's.   She required no pity for attending church on Mother's Day alone, as her kids were there for her often.  She enjoyed the time to herself she said.   After church we stopped by unspoken agreement, at the cemetery.  We stopped at Dad's stone marker and once again I marveled and grieved that he had been gone for over 4 years and it still didn't seem right that he was no longer, here.  We looked at the newest "craft" craze in cemeteries, metal crosses with flowers welded on at the crosspieces and painted in rather gaudy colors.  There were several in the cemetery and we both thought them kind of ugly, but then we both laughed that Grandma Laurenz would have loved them and been figuring out a way to make us all some while down in Florida for the winter.  And again I remembered what it was to be a Daughter.  Mom and I spent time together today, and that was important.  I remembered once again the things, that have bound us and the things that in the past made me say, "she's my best friend".

On Saturday we had a baby shower for Jennifer, my lovely daughter in law.  Part of the gift giving was a request for a baby book in lieu of a card.  I remembered the large stash of the kid's books I had saved in an old doll cradle of Annie's, as it was convenient at the time.  So, I crawled into the crawl space, and muttered something about cleaning out all of this stuff I was saving and bending over looked through all the children's books.  I found most of them were Annie's as she wrote her name in all of hers, but I did find a few of the boys, and some brought back smiling memories of reading favorite books time and again.  The Giant Jam Sandwich and Where the Wild Things Go and many more.  Where did the time go?   And so I learned once again, that time doesn't stand still and even when the moments seem like hours, they are gone.  Four books wrapped as a bundle with much love and I can honestly say there were no replications in my gift, but once again I learned how in tune my mom and I are, or as the saying goes, "I am my Mother's Daughter".  When the books were opened  and I found Mom had brought a "little Golden book", a staple of my childhood, that she had saved and read to Korey, no doubt, as the book gift for Jen.  It made me smile as neither of us had any idea that the other was doing such.  I am my Mother's Daughter, and I am humbled and proud to be such.  I have learned the best we can do in this life as women, is leave behind children who will remember us with a smile and have conversations that start and end with, "  I learned this from Mom"....

Perspective

The weather channel is on as I sit out the remnants of another rainy morning here.  The wind is kicking up now so the rain is likely on its way out, but there is water everywhere, and its going to be another cool day here, and one that just seems to the never ending long period of cold and gloom we have experienced. 

Last night at a meeting of our Historical group, I looked around the lined faces of those people I had known all my life.  They are now the standard bearers of the memories for our town and what it was and what will be remembered in the future.  We talked about the rain and the weather as people in small towns always seem to do.  It is the single greatest influence on our lives, day in and day out, when we take time to think about it.  I asked how our grandparents had lived through endless, (or so it has seemed), crappy weather, and not  just endured, but had found reasons to be optimistic.  Without the distractions of television and even today's instant knowledge of everything going on everywhere, you turned to family and community to see you through times that seemed would never end.  Long winters meant time to do those things put off during the sunrise to sunset outdoor work of summer.  You took the time to do those solitary activities that the hustle of good weather didn't always allow.  You read, knitted, quilted, repaired and mended, and made music.  Families played cards and board games and did puzzles together.  Communities gathered for dinners, and local school sporting events, and town activities.  Church's were the lifeblood of most small communities and kept people in touch, and content that winter would end.  We knew only what we could see out our windows, and we also knew that each season held charms and we embraced it as we could not conceive of doing different.

It seemed this winter all we did was complain about the length of it, the cold, the snow, and the failure for it to depart on time and allow a true spring to descend upon winter weary, Michigan.  Now two weeks of heavy and dangerous storms have passed through the South.  Yesterday, tornadoes spawned all over the deep South from Arkansas to the East coast.  I have a good friend near Birmingham, AL.  He warned me early yesterday morning that they were predicting bad storms and an emergency level for tornadoes they had not experienced for 30 years.  He said it was likely I would not hear from him as power would go out.  He requested prayers for he and his family.

I watched the Weather Channel yesterday in the afternoon as the first round of bad storms went through and as Alabama prepared for the next round which was predicted to be worse.  It was almost hypnotic to watch the video captured of engulfing funnel clouds being shown almost as they happened.  Today's instant technology can make us voyageurs of so many weather events while we sit safe in our homes far away.  I don't know if that's a good thing or bad.  I have googled the town's involved to find out what I can, and I am impatient to know my friend and his family are all right, but know full well it will likely be days before he can get online to let me know.  Without power, cellphones, a wonderful savior for disasters, will die after a bit and I understand need to be used for imediate aid and relief.  So, I wait and know that my weariness with gray weather is nothing as compared to what is happening to people I know and many more I don't. 

Its all about perspective, and we need to have the lens of ours, scratched, shook, and smoothed every so often.  We learn to be more human when we realize there are so many others who have life altering realties, not just life stressing ones.

Its good to get perspective....just please, Lord, don't give me more than I can handle, at a time....

Drip, Drip, Drip...

Drip, drip, drip, little April showers.   A line from a song in one of my all time favorite movies, "Bambi" and yes, I haven't met a Disney movie of old, I haven't liked.  They were the movies of my childhood.  The first movies at the drive in to lure young parents with small children.  The Disney movie would start just before dark and be done, the kids bedded down in the back with pillows and blankets, an hour and a half later.  The adult movie would then be shown and parents could seemingly have their cake and eat it too, all for a by the car price.  I saw most of the Disney animated movies that way, and the music from them is something I can still sing in my head whenever I recall the movie.

So it is drip, drip, drip, little April showers, and it seems it has been dripping or worse, (snow and sleet), the whole of the month and will pretty much end on that wet note.  At a time when I long to be out checking on my spring blooms and doing battle with pesky Peter Cottontail and his assault on all my new tulips, I am confined inside, trying to be optimistic that this rain will make for gorgeous blooms later on, and the cooler temps keep those precious daffodils flowering now, around longer, and that come summer's heat I will be wishing myself back to this time.  Right now I have my doubts I will ever see summer's heat again....

I wonder how my grandparents and great grandparents endured such times of long winters, unending snows, wet, cold springs and drought laden summers.  Did they complain as much as I seem to do?   I complain a lot and the older I get, no scratch that, the more mature I become, the higher the frequency of weather complaints spouts forth.  It would seem with all the distractions we have to combat every kind of mood, in our techno world, that such things as SADD and plain old boredom would be unheard of, but yet everyone I talk to complains about the weather.  We complain about the cold, coming too early in December.  We dread the long cold dark of the winter months, and even if we like the snow originally, by the end of January, it has lost its charms for all of us, and when we have to endure a March such as this year, which seemed to hold no signs of spring even when the calendar proclaimed it, it seems unendurable and we long for spring days like a duck to a junebug.  Speaking of which, those ducks have no sense as they arrived here in very early March and sat on the pond ice like they were nesting....

I don't know how Grandma and Grandpa did it, without hurting the dog or frying pans flying very near spouse's heads.  A couple of decades ago, I wouldn't have thought twice about all of this heavy stuff.  I didn't wonder at what my grandparents did during the long winter evenings, before tv, to keep from going CRAZY.  And I loved history, it was just that I would rather fantacize about riding into battle at Gettysburg, then actually contemplate what people in the 30's, 40's and 50's did to combat cabin fever.  Maybe I should blame it all on television.  While a wonder and one I grew up with, it takes what essentially for most of us, is the small worlds of our day to day existence, and enlarges it for us to see how globally, everyone lives.  We can see that in Argentina, in the midst of our winter, it is their summer.  We can look at Hawaii, the Bahamas, and even Tahiti and make them travel destinations, (at least in our dreams), and are no longer content to sit and wait out the bad weather, or bad times.  Its the word, content, not con-tent, but to be content, and I'm not sure any of us know how to be in that place any more.  We know what the world does every minute of every day, and we know the excesses and the tragedies almost as they happen.  These are anxious times and its hard to be content more than a minute at a time.  Its not that our grandparents didn't have troubles, heck, they had troubles far more life threatening than most of ours, but the troubles were something they dealt with.  If they had a roof over their heads, food to eat, a way to make a living, good kids, and a church that was their community, life was pretty good.

Maybe its the Norman Rockwell image I persist in believing that makes it appear that grandparenthood, if you lived to get there, was a time of ease, fishing with your grandchildren, making cookies with them, and enjoying the company of family and friends.  Maybe I am totally off base on this, and Norman Rockwell just saw things the way people wanted him to.  Maybe its what sold those illustrations.  I sincerely hope not.  I need to believe that there were elements of Norman Rockwell and his art, everywhere.  No decade and no generation was immune from war and strife, but maybe it was their perspective and their contentment in their situations.  Maybe.  The world and the U.S. in particular seems to be throwing itself headlong into a chaos of what has been before will be as fading as kodachrome film, but maybe there are pockets of humanity everywhere who don't buy the hype and the doom at the other end, and work towards being good neighbors, friends and family.  They love God, their spouses and their kids.  They love their country and get tears in their eyes at the Star Spangled Banner, no matter how hard it is to sing, and have known those who gave their last full measure to protect us.  They pay their taxes, though not without complaint at times, go to work, and try to be good employees and employers.  They try to do what is right, and though it often seems today that is like swimming upstream, they still do it.  Yes, they become jaded and yes, they are depressed about what is happening to us, but they believe and hope we will finally get it as a Nation. 

Maybe Grandma and Grandpa faced some of the same things I wrestle with.  That life in every stage hasn't been what I expected.  Maybe we are all just figuring it out as we go along, and every new generation has to do it all over again, as it changes.  Challenges change and our capabilities change.  Maybe that's the secret.  As long as God gives us breath to breathe, He is giving us a chance to figure it out, at least for today...

I wonder if I'll remember all of this to tell my grand kids.  And I wonder if they'll listen...Maybe we'll just make cookies...

Easter

Even as a child I knew what Easter weekend meant.  I knew it was the crucifixion of Jesus, though I was pretty fuzzy on what that actually meant.  I knew Easter Sunday meant that Jesus had Risen and because he had risen, the Easter bunny came and delivered eggs, but more than that at my house he hid our Easter baskets and filled them with CANDY and lots of little surprises.  While not in any way like Christmas, in many ways it was more fun as there were lots of little things.  Things, which today would be viewed as mundane.  A new toothbrush, a small stuffed toy or even a book, was a big deal to us. My younger sister was born on Palm Sunday and my brother and I stayed with our grandparents while Mom was in the hospital.  We spent Easter morning at Grandma and Grandpa's and it stands out as it was the only time as a child I went looking for my Easter basket not in my home...

As the verse goes "when I was a child, I thought as a child".  Then somewhere along the way, I grew up.  I had children of my own, and Easter weekend seemed to become about "rushing".   Rushing to buy the candy for the baskets and trying to decide what Easter basket gifts were appropriate.  Trying not to go overboard, but seldom suceeding. New Easter outfits and trying in the headlong last week rush to remember Lent and what it really means.  I didn't often remember aside from trying to attend church at Zion on Good Friday, even afer we had moved over to St. Peter's.  You see it was a tradition nearly back as far as Mom could remember to sing a certain song, "Lord Jesus, We Give Thanks to Thee" to end Good Friday service.  The church bell was always rung all the way through the song.  Somehow that song affected me like little else did.  As my children grew and people that had been special in my childhood, my grandparents, passed away, the song made me ache for the way things once were and how I wanted to leave this world and pass to Him.  Different ministers sometimes had a problem with a song being a tradition at our church on such a somber day.  We had some who didn't want the bell rung and others who didn't want the song even played.  But for years it prevailed and for me and a small number of parishoners, it made our Good Friday. 

This year I went back after a couple of year's abscense. It had been a long winter, and for the first time in a while I keenly felt Lent and the sacrifices generations before our "enlightened" one had made every year for those 6 weeks.  It wasn't about Fat Tuesday and Mardi Gras, in fact I had never even really heard those two words used together until a couple of decades ago.  I read the Gospels, each of them, as Jesus entered Jersusalem on Palm Sunday through that last week.  My own somber state of mind, seemed to make me more in tune with what Lent was meant to be about.  But why does it take something that threatens our sense of well being to make us look at what was always there?

The Good Friday service was beautiful.  Beautiful in its somberness, in our sorrow which we know turns to joy on Easter morning.  Beautiful in that last song, played while the bell proclaimed over the country that we were giving Thanks for Thee. And I came near sobbing as the song was played.  I had heard of people sobbing in church and in my arrogance I always thought it extreme.  Now I know different.  I went home, quiet, but also at peace.  I wish I could say it lasted through to Easter but it didn't.

Easter for many years was a big dinner at my grandparents house.  Searching for little plastic emptied whipped topping tubs, Grandma and Grandpa had made into Easter baskets, filled with plastic grass, brightly colored eggs and candy.  Grandpa delighted in hiding those baskets all around his yard, and even when I, as an older grandchild was too mature to want to look for a hidden basket, my younger cousins continued the tradition and then my own followed.  Easter changed over the years as my kids grew up, Grandma and Grandpa were gone, my brother and sister lived out of state, and Easter dinner reverted to just a hand full.  I had it when we could all be home and together but that became rare when two of my children no longer lived in the state.  I was doing Easter dinner but not with much enthusiasm as the restless feeling I have had for months now was still with me and I just didn't want to do a big dinner for 5 people.  But some things you just do because its expected and somewhere in between doing the expected you get a nugget of truth and the day turns into something you didn't quite expect.

Dinner would be simple, a baked ham, cheese potatoes which I made up the night before and just had to be baked in the oven, cut up fresh pineapple and fresh asparagus.  Mom brought dessert, a peach pie, which was just perfect.

I must admit I woke up at 5:00 a.m., not overly enthusiastic, but once in the shower and with water beating down on my head, my eyes were open and I was good to go.  The church service at 7:00, was crowded and Ryan and Alison met us there.  It was a good service and I felt better and even a wee bit joyous that Jesus had Risen, the universal truth for all Christians.  We came home and I made a pancake breakfast for everyone, something I hadn't done in a long while and it felt good.  The kids cleared out for a bit, and I finished up dinner preparations and picking up the house.

A cloudy morning gave way to sunshine and a nice day in the afternoon.   Mom came and the kids were here.  We said grace and had our Easter dinner.  Such a small thing and yet so unending in the circle of tradition.  After we told stories of past Easters and life in general.  These days, Mom likes to remember times when Dad was alive and they were young and life was ahead of them.  It comforts her to pass down the stories and even if we have heard them before, we gather some bit of wistfulness at the times before, as they seem so much better.  Dad used to be the storyteller, and Mom would roll her eyes at yet the same story told again and again.  I think she misses the stories and having him tell them.  In fact, I know she does because we all do.  We looked at old pictures from an album of Mom's I had borrowed and we remembered.  Mostly it was Mom and I remembering but it was good for the soul to remember.  We are so dispersed now and families are just one here and one there, and we always used to all be in one place.  We can't go back to those times, but I still miss the simplicity of them...

In the early evening when everyone had cleared out again, the dishes were done, the kitchen cleaned and the leftovers doled out and put away, I got my bicycle out and went for my first full fledged bike ride of the new year.  Winter was a long time leaving and spring still seems a long time getting here, but it was a quiet night and that's always good enough for a bike ride.  A crop duster plane was dropping crushed corn cobs used in eliminating mosquito larvae around all the wetlands and wooded areas.  These planes are common every spring around here and this one had been spraying all weekend.  Last night he was flying close to our house and as I rode by a home with small children I noticed them all outside with their parents awaiting the plane's next pass.  The pilot didn't disappoint as he flew low, seemingly 20 feet over top of us and then banked the plane sharply around.  I could see into the cockpit.  The children ooohed and aahhed and for a brief moment I was a kid again, amazed by what that pilot could do on his ordinary job.  It was magical.  If only we could stay in that land of joy and amazement, when the ordinary become extraordinary.  And if we could only cup those moments in our hands and cover them and keep them forever.  But it doesn't work like that and I rode on and the children continued to watch though each swathe of the plane was farther away.

The maple trees have the reddish cast that tells me they are just waiting and the willow trees from a distance show a limey green, also just waiting.  But there are no leaves this year yet, and we wait through more than the average rain and more than the average clouds, but it is an extraordinary sunset, and one that we must live on for a few days.  We need to cup it in our hands and hold it tight so we can remember, all that was good on this Easter day.