Autobiographical Challenge: Days 19 & 20

Daycare Family

Some people come into your life just when you need them the most and you can’t imagine life ever being as good without them. Grandma Nadine and Papa Dale are those people for us. They are not my children’s grandparents but yes they are.
When we adopted Austin, and the maternity leave ran out and I was looking at going back to work as a full time teacher, a lovely lady we knew told us a long story of her son’s daycare. There was a small farm, with a husband and a wife running a 6 child daycare, and the story involved the Grandma taking the kids fishing in the irrigation ditch and at the end of the adventure distracting the boy until she could slip a trout she had bought, dead at the grocery store, on the boys line. He pulled it in and danced around in the thrill of success and eventually carried it all over the apple orchard and carrot patch and showed it off to everyone before begging her to cook it for lunch. She slipped the hot, muddy fish in the compost and cooked up some frozen fishsticks and the boy bragged about that fish for months.
I was so delighted when grandma Nadine had an opening for my 6 week old. And she asked me to buy him cloth diapers to keep there because she loved hanging freshly laundered diapers on the clothes line in the sun. She was a relic from another time, but 21 years later is still around. I loved her energy and creativity and joy and compassion. She added in my second son a year later, and as all our blood relatives were 1300 miles away, the daycare kids and grandparents were the most real family the boys knew. She wasn’t exactly honest. She got them to eat the ham on their salad by telling them she had taken her shotgun and killed the screaming bird next door and it was smoked peacock.
She also fed them possum and rattlesnake and amazingly bowls of caviar (banana oatmeal.) But most importantly she nourished their imagination and their bodies. Imagine Me, the sugar addict, stunned by my son begging for “broccoli Stalks” and beets. No wonder she could take two, two year olds on her lap and rise from sitting crosslegged on the floor without using her hands at age 75! The pictures show her, long after they were out of daycare surrounded by some of “her kids” at a weekend gathering, in the same spot the picture on the right was taken during the daycare days. In the older picture the boy in Yellow is my oldest. He is bottom right in the newer shot and his brother is snuggled beneath her left arm on the right of the picture

Sandcastle Days

Having two sons, only a year apart was often difficult and we were exhausted because the youngest never slept more than an hour until he was two – and probably not then. I always suspect he just started entertaining himself by telling himself stories in silence.
It was also the most joy filled time of our lives up until that point. We frequently remarked, “we’ve never been tireder or happier.”
I had a lot of toddler experience. I’d been a big sister and had taught pre-school through age 7 special education for ten years, but my husband, the youngest of six – took to playing with the boys as if it was what he had been born to do. He never wanted to go anywhere without them, and we did a lot of playing in the local parks and beaches and going to family swim twice a week.
I know we were not perfect parents but it was something we both loved doing. I read stories and sang to them and let them make big splashy paint and playdough messes while I led the way. Greg let them be daredevils and pushed them really high on the swings and encouraged them to ride bikes and scooters and jump off rocks and climb trees.
When there were tears we both came running and we each took a year off to stay at home with them. Being thirty when we got the boys and being fairly stable in our job and relationship made us have it easier, but there were a lot of moments when it was the parents crying too. It was hard, and I could have focused on the times they were both vomiting and having diarrhea, or fighting with each other, or teething and screaming all night. I could focus on the day they came running in to announce that they had washed the fire truck, and I found the paint scraped from my van with river rocks to the tune of a couple thousand dollars. But I had waited so long to have a child and could feel the relentless passing of time as they grew while you watched them and my Dad was dying as they were 2 & 3 so I was reminded to get through the rough spots and hold on to all the joy.

Autobiographical Challenge: Days 17 & 18

Teaching

I love teaching. But I don't have a lot of pictures that I feel Ok putting on-line. If the pictures are recent I don't want to use them, and as a special Education teacher, I don't want any that might label a particular child as being part of my Special Education Program. This is from a year that was difficult in many ways. I had two toddlers, and my Dad was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in April of 1996 and Died on Feb. 1, 1997. Also the schools were overcrowded and the principal had decided that making my classroom open up and also have Mrs. Horn's kindergarten in the room with us, was a great idea. It was loud and rowdy with always some student throwing objects or having explosive temper tantrums, and it was hard to communicate effectively while the room was filled with children needing attention. My principal was frustrated that I took a week off three times during that year to fly to Wyoming to my parents home, and when he decided to combine the rooms, he gave two other teachers substitutes to come into my classroom and sort my supplies to make room for the new room, without telling me until I had started class that day, when he brought them in and told them to do whatever they needed in the cupboards. He also made sure to transfer me to a middle school Severely Emotionally Disturbed Classroom when I came back the following year after 10 years in preschool. And he sent multiple copies of every memo about my desk being disorganized or my lesson plans incomplete or . . . on and on.

Needless to say, I couldn't stand that man, but fortunately I haven't seen him for years. As always, the good part of teaching was the time spent with kids, and in spite of the way we were thrown together, Mrs. Horn and I had many good months with this group of children and our assistants. We did a lot of art and field trips and having themselves immersed in a room of "Regular Children" stressed my kids but also stretched them.

I think I never quite recovered from this year. I took the next year off to stay home with my boys and then my husband took the year after that off. then I quit being a full time teacher and have substituted ever since, although subbing and writing has been wonderful and allowed me to spend a lot of time being Mom, as the boys were growing up, I know financially we would be in a much more secure place if I hadn't stopped teaching full time. I don't regret the choice I made, but I regret making it out of exhaustion and harassment instead of out of confidence and a plan.

April 1994

Because I had gone through menopause at 20, like my mother did when she had me at 24, I knew I couldn't get pregnant, but 10 years after we got Married, we managed to adopt a 14 hour old baby boy. When the adoption agency called to ask if we would be interested in a newborn, we said Yes, but when is the birth Mother due, and they said

Two Weeks Ago.

So then we had our son and it was instant love, and every moment revolved round how lucky and happy we were. And six months flew past, and we were to finalize the adoption in front of a judge but first we needed a physical for the baby to prove that he was thriving in our care. The Dr. asked how I was doing and I mentioned that I was afraid I might have breast cancer because they HURT!!!

"No," he reassured me, "breast cancer usually doesn't hurt. Go pee in a cup."

Then "Think Positive" and 18 days after my son's birthday, his baby brother was born. Look at this picture. I love it because it clearly shows, what we tend to miss. It shows how fast a baby changes between birth and 1 year old.

The day I went to the Dr. (17 days after my oldest turned 1) complaining of back pain, and figuring with 6 weeks to go I might be needing bed rest, the oldest son also had a fever and was demanding being held even more. instead of bed rest, I ended up in an ambulance to a hospital 127 miles away and my 1 year old was at the daycare Grandmas home. I was sick with HELLP syndrome but din't realize how deadly it could be, Even when I was waking up from the emergency C-section all I could think of was my feverish, 1 year old 127 miles away from me and his Daddy. I came out of the general anesthesia sobbing, "I want my Baby!"

Not surprising in a woman who has a newborn in the NICU but when the Dr. and nurses tried to reassure me, "Your baby is doing great. He's on oxygen and in an incubator and in the nursery."

I just screamed, with tears pouring down, "Not That Baby You Idiots! I want MY baby!"

the next day my husband drove the 250 miles round trip to bring back the toddler and I still hadn't been allowed to leave my recovery room to see my newborn. When the 1 year old and my husband came in, the boy took one look at his Mom, and had totally been missing me too. He sobbed "Mommy" and flew across the floor, climbed up the bed, threw his arms around my neck, kissed my cheek

and then, the only time in his life
delivered a punishment for having abandoned him.

He turned his head and bit my shoulder hard enough I still have the scar - then hugged me like he'd never let go

There was however never sibling rivalry, he was a proud, loving helpful big brother from the first moment they met.

Autobiographical Challenge: Day 5 and 6

When I was a child I lived in the desert, the high mountain desert of Wyoming, and spent summers at 10,000 feet in snow and tundra. But somehow, I wanted to grow up and be a dolphin. At first I went through a phase of being very angry that my parents had not named me flipper, then when I talked the two of them, who were both so afraid of water that they held on to the towel rack all the way through their bath, into signing me up for swim lessons, I spent hours swimming underwater, pretending to be the mermaid I knew I would grow up to be. And that was years before Disney showed me there could be redheaded mermaids. Ariel came to the big screen the year I started teaching and I took my first class to the theater to see her.

From there I decided that what I needed to become was a dolphin trainer, working with my beloved animals at Marine Land or sea World.  I know that there has been a lot of negativity toward the idea of the marine mammals being trained and kept captive. I am sure that some of those complaints are justified but I firmly believe that humans only save what they care about, and only care about what they know. I don’t think there would be people making films like Blackfish, or Free Willie, or doing things to try to ban the slaughter in the wild of those incredible creatures, if there had not been a place where children like I was, could press out hands to the glass and see the dolphin making eye contact or see the killer whale begging us to play.

So we have learned, and need to change as we grow, but that does not mean we could have ever gotten to the point of caring without the zoos and Aquariums which turned the animals real in the minds of those of us who care, not just about animals in general but about the death of one specific Orca named Keiko and the happiness of a sealion named Red and the friendship of Flipper.

No, I didn't grow up to be a dolphin or a Mermaid or even a dolphin trainer, but I teach children every bit as funny as Flipper and I live by the Sea, and more than once I stood eye to eye with Keiko and shared a glimpse of similar souls

this picture, for my brothers birthday back on August 27 Is the one that made me decide to spend this month with old stories and old family pictures.

My parents were sure that they could never conceive another child after I was born, and then one day asked me what I thought of the idea of a baby in the family. I thought having a little sister would be wonderful and told them so. I hadn't known that the reason I had been having a babysitter once a week was because they were attending pre adopt meetings. At that time adoptions were very secretive things and babies were placed far from their family of birth. So we had to drive nine hours to pick up the six month old baby boy. My brother was adopted when he was 6 months old and I was almost 5. I remember driving clear across the state with my parents to pick up my new brother. Actually I was convinced it would be a girl, and when the social worker heard me ask where the girl was, she pulled out his picture and showed me, and said, "I guess we have to find another home for this boy then" and I remember screaming at her as I stared at the photo, "Don't you dare give my brother away."

 I gave up the idea of a sister as soon as I saw his picture and fell in love.

The worst part for me was that my Dad’s big sister came to see the baby and decided that a new baby and my long hair were too much work for my mom, and gave me a pixie cut. I hated it and soon started school where I became known as Pixie-Dixie but wasn't allowed to grow out my hair for a few years.

I did love having a baby brother. But we hadn't had him long before he ended up in the hospital with pneumonia and children were not allowed in as visitors. I wasn't happy that they took my baby away, and even angrier when mom bought him a stuffed panda. I cried and begged and got her to give it to me. So then she bought another, this one in powder blue and pink to take to him in the hospital. My panda still gives me a twinge of guilt - even knowing that sibling rivalry is common and knowing that little girl was missing her brother and being the center of her parents attention - I still cringe about trying to steal the toy from a sick baby.

When we first brought him home, he became hysterical at night. The social worker only told us it was because he had been used to sleeping in a crib with two other babies. I was never sure if that meant he had been a triplet or merely that there were a lit of babies in his pre adopt foster home

Now 46 years later, and the mom of an adopted boy myself - I can say adoption is a wonderful way to build a family.

From Letters to pictures

Lately I have been working on putting together the old letters, and once i had them assembled I tried to load them into one of the blog2print sites and make a book.  It worked but was expensive, so that the letters and picture part of my blog, just from two months of posts made a book over $120 for a hardback, so I bought an $8 pdf of it and called that good.

Now, while I am thinking about what to write about next I have been looking at the pictures I have on my desktop from playing with old Photographs on 365 project and on PicMonkey and Ribbet

So I will share some of those today

 When I was a child I lived in the desert, the high mountain desert of Wyoming, and spent summers at 10,000 feet in snow and tundra. But somehow, I wanted to grow up and be a dolphin. At first I went through a phase of being very angry that my parents had not named me flipper, then when I talked them, who were both so afraid of water that they held on to the towel rack all the way through their bath, into signing me up for swim lessons, and I spent hours swimming underwater, pretending to be the mermaid I knew I would grow up to be. And that was years before Disney showed me there could be redheaded mermaids. Ariel came to the big screen the year I started teaching and I took my first class to the theater to see.

 The picture is of a cigar box that a friend from an online forum made because he knew me as "Echo"

Hello, Hello!! I have named myself "Echo," not because of the myth connected to the sad girl who wasted away to nothing but her voice, although after I am gone, I should be pleased to think that some of my words linger on. I love the images of places where one stands and shouts out in joy and waits to hear the echo come back.

When I was a young girl, going through the, "I love horses" phase of my life, there was one very special Morgan mare living on my cousin's ranch in Wyoming. I never owned her, but I rode her, and fell off of her, and admired her and dreamed of her. Her name was "Echoes of Pandora" but we called her "echo" and when I first began posting on forums like backpacker.com, and guideposts.com I used her name as mine, "echo." I have posted some of my things on redgage using "echo" too. Sometimes that name has been taken, and spaces aren't allowed so I use pandorasecho, on twitter and a few other places as well.

Gradually I reminded myself, when it became tempting, even fun, to get involved in the sniping and rude behavior that the anonymity of the web invites, that I only wanted to leave behind "echoes of kind words," and I remembered that what Pandora had left behind, an echo after all the troubles she had turned loose on the world, was HOPE. So passing on Hope, and kindness became my goal for any interactions I would have on-line. A goal, which has helped me to police my own words and posts so as not to injure someone I've never met, just because I can think of the funny, cutting thing to write.

I have always needed creative activity. I have to write, or draw, or weave or sculpt or paint, or doodle on a rock with a sharpie. Having a blog seems to fit in with this need very well. I usually, doodle and then put it away in a storage box but sometimes I want to share what I have done, beyond leaving the doodled on rock on the river's edge for someone else to find and wonder about.

When I wonder what are the things I am expert at, what can I share, I come up with the following things that I have quite a bit of experience in:

travel
children
art
writing
teaching
adoption
photography
camping
books

hopefully, I will send echoes of my knowledge out to where it can help someone else as well. It is such a mixed world of pleasure, beauty and pain and ugliness. Hopefully the echoes of my life leave a little bit more in the balance on the side of appreciation and a little less on the side of isolation. I know that I have read things other people have written, and looked at their artwork, and found myself just a little better because of it. Perhaps it is my turn to give a little back.

 This Pioneer Cemetery is on the Campus of the Oregon Ducks. I got to stroll and take pictures while my husband was attending a music Festival


“And I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle—
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.”
― Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology

“the much-sought prize of eternal youth
Is just arrested growth.”
― Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology

“I tramped through the country
To get the feeling
That I was not a separate thing from the earth.
I used to lose myself
By lying with eyes half-open in the woods.
Sometimes I talked with animals…”
― Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology

 Here the real winter sport seems to involve trying to keep up with the weather and understand that it isn't spring. Everything is confused by the drought and unusually warm December and January so it looks like April around here and I'm afraid none of the blooming fruit trees will produce fruit this fall.

 this is a painting I did years ago when I was a freshman in college, but we are in the midst of clouds and getting a real full moon is not happening, in fact we had 9 1/2 inches of rain at my house since last Friday

“I fancied my luck to be witnessing yet another full moon. True, I’d seen hundreds of full moons in my life, but they were not limitless. When one starts thinking of the full moon as a common sight that will come again to one’s eyes ad-infinitum, the value of life is diminished and life goes by uncherished. ‘This may be my last moon,’ I sighed, feeling a sudden sweep of sorrow; and went back to reading more of The Odyssey.” 
― Roman Payne

 This is my oldest son with his blind, loving dog and the fishing float that he found while our at sea crabbing
and my husband and I with our youngest son

 Hobbs Wall was a redwood logging company which had the logging camp shown above. That isn't my picture but one that the Del Norte County Museum was displaying on their facebook page from the late 1870's or 1880's I'm guessing. The three bottom pictures are mine. Two rooms in my house were two of these bunkhouses. Then a third room was built between them to make a three room house and gradually a second floor and other rooms were added but the original roof and wooded shingles is in the closets and crawl spaces upstairs.

 In this picture the books that stand out are the three I have published.  There is
Duffy Barkley is Not a Dog
Duffy Barkley: Seek Well
and Double Rime In the Oregon Trail

 another Christmas photo collage

 a treasure of a picture that my son Austin took while out at sea to tell his Mom a special message

 My life has been filled with books, and it started with these, the kids picture books that were always abundant in our house even when we were low on money for almost everything else. On the wall is the quilt from my crib that my grandmother made for me.

"You may have riches
and treasures untold
mountains of rubies and
boxes of gold
but richer than I
you never can be.
I had a Mother
who read to me."
Author unknown at least by me

It isn't possible that weather can be just one image, I swear. You have to have others to convey the concept.

"La la la la la dee oh,
Whether the weather be rain or snow
Pretending can make it real
A snowy pasture, a green and grassy field

Walking In the Sunshine, sing a little sunshine song
Put a smile upon your face as if there's nothing wrong
Think about a good time had a long time ago
Think about forgetting about your worries and your woes
Walking In The Sunshine, sing a little sunshine song " Roger Miller

 Here the real winter sport seems to involve trying to keep up with the weather and understand that it isn't spring. Everything is confused by the drought and unusually warm December and January so it looks like April around here and I'm afraid none of the blooming fruit trees will produce fruit this fall.

a poster I made when my boys were little and the youngest was deeply into the Irene Vinton picture book

Look out for Pirates