While I have joined millions of Americans who make daily use of a Kindle, I also have a modest collection of children’s books housed on the bottom shelf in my office for easy access. As a new foster mother to a voracious reader, it is a great joy to share my love of literature and it is “Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel,” first published in 1939, that caught my attention this week.
I usually move kicking and screaming into pumpkin season, for I adore the moderate days that characterize Whidbey summers. I love exploring beaches and eating crab out on our picnic table. The long days contribute to my level of energy and enthusiasm. Even moving about is easy. Light sweaters and flip flops replace my waterproof jacket, scarves, and boots.
Think back on a time when you looked around the room and felt like the most blessed person on the planet. Where were you? Who was with you? What were you doing?
My paternal grandmother died in 2003 at the age of 97. To help contribute financially to her family, she stopped attending school in the sixth-grade to work, instead.
She married my granddad relatively young and gave birth to five children. She remained faithful to him until his death. Together they owned a modest home situated with acreage on the plains of Oklahoma and remained self-sufficient.
Do you attend church? According to the Barna Research Group, a marketing research company that regularly polls people across the nation about their morals and beliefs, those most likely to engage in a weekly church service are adults 50 and older, African-American, married, and living in the south, southwestern, mountain and Midwestern states. On Sundays the majority of these folks are sitting together in church sanctuaries and Sunday school classrooms.
My son will live here at home another month before returning to college, but we’ve started gathering essentials to outfit his first apartment. While moving personal items to the attic this week, I came across a box labeled “family correspondence — college years.” The enclosed letters are a great representation of my parents and the ways both chose to communicate with me. Newspaper articles and news about family and friends came from my mom. Dad contributed carefully crafted words, representing deep thought and sentimentality. Today I treasure everything about those letters, just as I did 35 years ago when I was a young college student, wanting to know what was going on back home.
It has been almost six years since my dad passed away from metastasized pancreatic cancer. That fact does not weigh heavily on me as a daughter or us as a family everyday. In fact, there are short stretches of time when life captures our attention to such a degree that we no longer mentally insert him into our present story. Life engages us and we press forward. We remain active in the here and now.
I’m not a devotee of spiritualist Marianne Williamson, but I agree with her when she says that “our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” Within days, we will watch Olympic athletes from nations around the world clear hurdles, swim into record books and stick landings. They chose tenacity over fear. Dared to envision themselves in successful activities. Embraced the reality that there is pain with gain.
How many of us choose comfort and mediocrity, over-plan or vegetate because we can’t seem to take the next scary step?
Thirty-one years ago, I walked down a church aisle to make public vows Matt and I had written in private for each other prior to our wedding. I remember being filled with such joy I had to gather all the willpower I possessed to stop a massive flow of tears, because I don’t cry with elegance.
Rain or shine I’m crazy about Whidbey Island. Each season gifts me with weather that supports unique experiences and I can honestly say I embrace them all with enthusiasm.
But entice me with long days mixed with moderate, dry weather and I soar. I don’t mind a brown, crunchy lawn underfoot. Instead of mowing I’m kayaking. And while I’m drawn to a cozy fire, I also love to open windows around the house with abandon, inviting fresh air and outside sounds in.
On my way home this week from visiting my daughter in Seattle, I listened to Dr. Laura Schlessinger on XM radio. She is an interesting, articulate and self-assured woman, no matter her opinions.
They are known by many as the “Santa Anas” and are winds heated by the California desert. They frequently blew into my childhood home of Ventura, Calif., bringing a dry heat we loved. I’m missing them just a bit this week as we find ourselves surrounded by rain and chill.
I have countless childhood memories of waking to see the curtains in my bedroom gently swaying to the warm, rhythmic gusts of air outside. The blankets hanging over the side of my bed, kicked off during the night, and the slight creaking produced by the wood frame of the house were other signs that the strong, gusty winds had arrived.
What a day it’s been! I thought to myself on Thursday as I grabbed a few things from the grocery store on my way home from a late-night meeting. In spite of my waning energy, I decided to look for blessings amidst the tiresome task.
