Thoughts of approaching summer 2018

On this Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend, spring is definitely giving way to summer. I sit reading a book in my shady living room, with the doors and windows open and the sound of my husband chopping kindling fills the air, even though it has been too warm to use the woodstove much lately. We use more kindling on these days with only a brief fire to take the chill off the morning, than on the bitter cold days when we never let the fire go out.



Life has been fairly consistent for us for a couple decades, and the changes of aging have been slow enough to mostly ignore. Our children grew up but grandchildren appeared to fill our rooms once more with a jumble of toys and our laps with snuggly
hugs.


In three weeks my husband stops being a music teacher, after 29 years. But he goes year round teaching at the big prison down the road. GED prep classes instead of music. Sadly working in a prison he will get paid a lot more and be a lot more secure that working with children in a public school. It reminds me of the medical insurance willing to pay to treat diseases but not for the much smaller preventative care.

Speaking of medical care, I am still trying to get a diagnosis on the degenerative issues I have been having health wise. It seems to be hard to get an answer but the loss of simple little abilities continues. So my goal for summer is to keep moving, develop enough coping strategies to regain some flexibility and strength while also keeping up on Dr visits. I also want to de clutter the house, turning what was once a playroom but became storage as my kids grew up and moved out, back into a playroom for my three grandchildren and their cousins. And the last big goal is to become more active as a writer again, not just writing on Facebook but finishing my eighth book and getting back into the marketing of the ones I have already published.

But when Fall rolls around, the only goal I will feel like a failure for not achieving is the goal to be there for my boys turned men, and their children. Grandma time is more important than everything else

Looking forward to 2017

I have ever been one to cherish the idea of a new year, a new season, a fresh chance to evaluate and change my life. That doesn't seem odd to me, even though my life is usually one I am thankful for. Even being mostly content, I have always seen the things I do wrong, and wanted to do better. I like the clean slate, the fresh journal. I buy blank books to write diary entries in, or begin a novel, or fill with poems. Nine out of ten times I fill no more than five pages, and then the book loses its freshness and sits, abandoned.  I don't just do this for January First, either. I will hold the same hopes and dream of new beginnings each Fall as well, because after 47 school years, the start of the year for me, really is when school begins.

I've heard a lot about how bad 2016 has been, and it hasn't been an easy year for sure, but it has had moments of pure joy. It has had laughter and hugs and growth. It has had the birth of my grandbaby boy. I published my 7th book, and my husband and granddaughter both like it so far. I earned enough money that we have less bills now than this time last year. I hate that hate has dominated so much of the global news this year, but refuse to let it change who I am.

What are my goals for 2017?
Do I want to write a long list of small things I've been tolerating and then go through and start fixing them?
Do I want to choose a focus word and leave it at that? Maybe simply, "Love" because the world needs it still, and yes, my mind did break into song.
Do I want to challenge myself to a poem or a photo or a page of writing every day?
Do I want to work on health or finances or . . . .?


I haven't quite decided yet which direction to go. Finding the answer is not always the goal, sometimes just thinking through the process is enough to make me realize I love my life. I've connected with some family but lost touch with three people who really are important to me and somehow I need to reach out to them, for my own sake even if they don't need me to too.  I'm excited and curious and a bit fearful of 2017, but I'm buckling in for the ride.

Another September, Another Chance

I love September, especially when we're in it.
Willie Stargell 

We know that in September, we will wander through the warm winds of summer's wreckage. We will welcome summer's ghost.
Henry Rollins 


I also love September, and yet I find myself often depressed by it. As one who has lived 45 years on an American school schedule, I feel September as my true New Year. This is when I evaluate how the last year went and promise myself that I will change the things I didn't like and hold on to the things I loved.

After 45 year it becomes easy to see that doing that isn't easy. The resolutions each year sound a lot like the resolutions of the years before them.  So hope and depression mingle, like the perfection that is my home area in September, when the fruits are ripe and scenting the air and free for the taking. When windows hang open and the temperature both mid-day and mid-night is comfortable without air conditioning or heaters. Life is perfect but also tainted by the knowledge of how quickly things must change, and when they seem perfect, even a small change feels like a loss.

Yet This picture of my Son reminds me that the more things change, the more they stay the same.  As a toddler he wanted nothing more than to be on a boat with a line in the water. So when grandpa took him and his brother out, he was in his element, and now, when he thinks I'd  rather have him in college like his brother, 

he is a commercial fisherman with a lot of hard dangerous work and he is not always happy, not always content, but he is where he was born to be and he is true and loyal to who he is in a way that makes me proud of him.

 Wouldn't it be boring if everyone made the same choices?  If the world had one color, or one species or one religion or one dream?

I find my dreams and hopes in my family and my students and in the books I write and the books I read. I don't think my way is better than yours though, if you never want to have a child, or write a book, if exercise delights you, and you like to get physically tested, I love to hear your stories and watch you work out.

At 50 I have lost enough loved ones to know that the sadness I feel in September is the knowledge of things slipping through my fingers and away, no matter how tightly I grip.  I know my enjoyment of the vivid sunflower will be bittersweet for the knowledge of the grey rainy winter on the way. I know I play with the young dog, and already see him old and limping and grey muzzled now that I have had a series of wonderful dogs live out their life as my friend.

 But I can anticipate more than pain and loss. I also have lived long enough to know the death in the family, is followed by another birth, that the withered sunflower stalks drop the sees that volunteer next springs green shoots, and next Septembers glory.

So I have been thinking about what I have and what I have not done. I was going to make the bucket list of the things I wanted to visit, and do, and own, but while it is true, I want to see and do more, I'm not too concerned with owning THINGS anymore So this is what I really want for my resolutions

 I want to get rid of the clutter the way my neighbor has spent the summer removing the old junker trailer.

 I want to enjoy the gifts of life, like free blackberries

 and beautiful friends
 and bright
vivid
blooms

Easing into 2013

 Where I live, it feels like all the seasons are available today. It is raining here but there are pink flowers and yellow and red Maple leaves and Green Grass, just up the hill and inland in a 45 minute drive I am in the snow and the trees are bare or lightly frosted.

 My January has been like that too, one day the house is filled with family and food and laughter, the next it is just me and a good book and my computer.  One day I am healthy then without warning I am screaming from an ear infection then coughing from a cold or doubled up with abdominal pain and the flu.

 So will it be a good year or not? 9 days into it, I have experienced such a wide range of emotions and experiences and I have no idea what else the year has to surprise me with.

 But I do know I can choose how I greet the surprises as they come my way, wide awake, or sleeping through them, fearfully or trusting that there is good wrapped in there somewhere.  I know I have been shown time after time that the most important element in deciding how my day goes is the attitude in my mind when my feet hit the floor.

When I wake up moaning, "I hate being me" I have a day I hate. Simple as that.

 When I determine to find the magic and blessings in the day. I do. Strange how that works.

 "If You Don't Believe in Miracles, Perhaps You've Forgotten You Are One."

http://www.positivelypositive.com/2011/10/25/if-you-dont-believe-in-miracles-perhaps-youve-forgotten-you-are-one-pic/

from Karen Salmansohn

 And there are little miracles everywhere I look today.

So I do not know what will happen to me in 2013, but I have decided who I will be when they happen.

I will be the one who greets the changes with the knowledge that things will be great, because so fat, in my nearly 50 years, every year has held a lot of greatness and more amazing people and events that bad ones, by so far the scales will never balance.

Don't wish your life away!

My Grandma Grace in the redwoods, she lived to be 81 and died just after my college graduation

I am down to 8 days before I take my youngest son nearly 500 miles away for his freshman year of college and kind words from friends, nostalgic movies and old pictures are among the many things bringing tears to my eyes this month. My grandma always told anyone she heard wishing it was already . . . friday or evening or Christmas or Summer, "Don't wish your life away." 

 I think I have done fairly well living by that advice although, not perfectly by and means, and I have managed to store up a jillion and one good memories and to reach the goals on my bucket list fairly completely.

1994

 I have graduated from college with a teacher's credential and spent 10 years teaching severely handicapped kids.  I had one lovely baby boy by adoption and one I gave birth to and I got to spend a lot of time loving and playing and teaching them, and my husband has been my best friend and biggest support and has worked really hard so that I cold cut back to working part time as a Sub and be a full time Mom.  I have travelled to Europe and Asia and central America and published three books, but the biggest success in my life is that I have raised young men who are strong and kind and wonderful.

my Dad wanted to be a grandpa forever but got the Cancer diagnosis and was dead not long after this

my sister in law was young and active and died in the Heat of the Grand Canyon on a hike, much too young

I really don't know were I will go from here, or what my life goals will be now that things are changing.  I can already tell that it is fun to get to think more about my husband and I again, but that means revisiting where we want to head now that this chapter is coming to a close.

I just know that I am blessed and that blessing began when I started whining, "I wish it was Friday.  I wish it was next Christmas, I wish . . . 

And my Grandma took the time to take me in her arms and tell me to slow down and enjoy where I was right at this moment

"Don't go wishing your life away.  It'll get here before you're ready anyway."

My oldest Baby, is a hard working young man

my flame haired old man has snow on the roof a bit now and our youngest baby is heading to College

I have a wonderful addition to my family to make me laugh in the same loving way as some of the people I have lost along the way.  She would have loved my Dad and Sister-in-law and Grandma Grace

taking time to just enjoy being alive on this beautiful planet we all share

Mom and I

My Brother, Lance

 Life is fast, it is amazingly fleeting, but there is so much that is great in it.

I hope that you too, have a chance to slow down, breathe, pat yourself on the back for the goals that you have met and then look ahead with a grin and figure out where you want to be in the future and then relax and tell yourself to enjoy every moment on the way to that future.

What are your best successes and your brightest dreams?