My July

 July is my favorite month every year. Maybe because my birthday is in July. Definitely because my school isn't in session in July.  The old June, July and august summer has seen school encroaching well into mid June and starting again Mid August but my July is still family time, outdoor time, ME time.

 This year my husband started a new job, and so did both of my adult sons.  My granddaughter and I have had the long summer weekdays to explore together, taking her to swimming lessons and the beach, to soccer and the local aquarium and the almost local zoo. it hasn't been too smoke filled or too foggy unlike some summers and the home area is cool but just up the river it is hot and swimmable

 imagination rules at four so we have been Maleficent and her daughter Mal, or a Doctor and Patient, or a wide variety of monsters and princesses and super heroes

Autobiography Challenge: Day 23 & 24

After Dad's Funeral

This one, the story is in the silence and the gaping hole where no one stands behind us.

Guatemala Collage

After my Dad was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, both Mom and Dad's worlds narrowed down, until the hospital bed in the living room became their universe. Mom wouldn't allow any help except my brother, no nurses or hospice, and so when my Dad did die, everything that her being had focused on for just under a year, was suddenly gone too.

Gradually she began to change and grow and be open to new adventures again, so that 6 years after his death, when she called and asked me if I would meet her and my brother Lance in Guatemala with my two boys, if she bought the tickets, I wasn't too surprised. Greg couldn't go because of work, but it would just mean pulling the boys from the last week of their 2nd and 3rd grade school years.

As a teacher, I am supposed to believe that missing school is horrible - but the last week of school is a lot of running outside with assistants and parent volunteers doing field days while the grades are done and the classrooms readied for summer. This seemed like an experience that would give them a lot more than just staying in school an extra week.

There were some safety issues, the previous year the group had had their bus blocked by piles of burning tires and groups of protesters. less than 10 years ago the Town we were visiting had a massacre of the very Mayan tribe we were going to be helping rebuild cement homes with. Now they were officially an independent zone where the Spanish Guatemalan Army would give them autonomy, but still . . . It was my "babies" I was taking there. We were warned to never talk to the children because parents were very fearful that we might kidnap them.

We went, by plane to Houstan and then Guatemala City, and by painted old school bus to Panajachel, and by motorboat across the lake and through the bullrushes to Santiago, Atitlan. Then they told us the building we were to help build had just been completed and asked if we would mind volunteering at a Mayan school for the week. It was perfect for us. We shared pictures and songs and games that needed no words with children who spoke Mayan at home but Spanish at school. Every day we feasted on wonderful fruits and by the time we were ready to go home my Mom was wearing the hand woven Mayan Skirt and my sons had friends and an adopted "grandma"

Autobiographical Challenge: Days 3 & 4

So here you see the animal print clothing Mom loved to dress her “little Pebbles” in – although I was rowdy enough at times to remind her more of Bam Bam.  When I was a toddler we lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming and one of the things my parents loved to do was go out hiking. There are a lot of lovely places around there and one of them is the amazing rock formations around Vedauwoo.  I remember riding on my Dad’s shoulders, but I also remember Mom and Dad taking a hold on each of my wrists and telling me to jump, and then they would fly me between them for several yards before lightly landing me on my feet and I’d beg “again.”

I didn’t have any siblings. Mom had a miscarriage 8 months before I was born. And then even though she was only 24 when I was born, she went into early menopause and it looked like my parents would be my only playmates. 

Well I found a playmate in the big Airdale dog next door.  He was a vicious guard dog, who loved me, but if I got over and under his belly, Mom had to wait until his owners returned because he’d threaten anyone else who came near me.

And then when I was 2 we moved back to my Mom’s hometown of Cody, Wyoming to be close to her parents.  It was actually Dad’s idea, because he had so many siblings but mom was an only child and he wanted her parents to be around their only grandchild.

My parents were really good parents, but they were not perfect.  Mom had never been around babies and became depressed and convinced that a child could never love her. She had a rough time for a couple of years, and I grew up both afraid of, and in love with her.  Dad had a sense of play, a great sense of humor and a strong work ethic, but he also was raised in Pittsburgh, PA in a time when racist language and prejudice were not even questioned.  He named our black poodle, that “N word” and balled Brazil nuts “N…..Toes” and told racist jokes about every nationality and race including his own, Polish Jokes, Hungarian Jokes, Mexican, Asian, Black – he was very willing to laugh and tell stereotyped stories about everyone.  You would never hear him doubting the “stereotype that ______ do not value life like we do”

And yet . . . everytime he met a person from another background or culture, he was polite and friendly and then surprised. Everyone he met was an exception to the stereotype – and he never quite realized that by making friends with his diverse co-workers, and telling us, “____is Bad –except this one” he was really reaching us that all stereotypical judgments are not to be trusted and individuals can surprise you in good ways.

My Dad was born on September 4, so today is his birthday. I’d love to bake him a yellow cake with bananas and fudge frosting but he died of esophageal cancer on Feb. 1, 1997.

In this collage there is me, and my Dad with me riding high. Then my Dad in a cowboy hat holding a longhorn and petting our sheep dog as he helped my Grandpa, Mom’s Dad sell horns and Antlers to tourists coming to Yellowstone park from off a black pick-up truck in the summer.  Then there is a much older, Dad/Grandpa reading to my two boys, and two pictures of mom and Dad. Then there is my dad as an adolescent and the curly haired picture his brother Walt tried to destroy because he hated that his baby brother looked like a girl.

Dad was many things in his life, a baseball fan raised close to the Pittsburgh Pirates. A Genius who was so poor he had to go to a technical high school and then into factory work although he could win Jeopardy and know about every subject.  Unlucky, he got drafted and had already lost a brother on Okinawa and had his Dad blinded by mustard gas in service – but also lucky, he became a morse code operator who ever after could type over 100 words a minute and survived his military time to move to Wyoming and marry my Mom.

They were oddly suited to each other, and fought a little but mainly got along very well.  He worked at a sawmill, and fought forest fires and worked in a wall board factory. Always he made little more than minimum wage and benefits only cane at the last job he had, but he provided a happy childhood to my brothers and I.

He always loved Babies and wanted to be a grandpa, but his first three grandkids were born in between March 29, 1993 and April 16, 1994 and then he died just a couple years later.

1996 Change and the other "C word"

When I first decided that I wanted to gather up all my old letters and add some photographs and retype them all into one location, I wasn't thinking that doing so would mean revisiting 1996

1996 was a horrible year for my family

but revisiting it reminds me that it also had a few of the last, best memories of my family

                                                 Hello,       April 10, 1996

For 13 1/2 years we have paid rent on someone else's property and we have moved 13 times in those 13  1/2 years. (if you think that sounds bad -remember we've only moved twice in the last 7 years!) - well those days have just ended (knock on wood) with approval of a 30 year loan on 2 acres and a 5bedroom house - - the land is lovely and includes several redwood stumps - one with steps carved into it and a deck on top which the boys love.  If you've never seen a redwood tree you may be wondering why the excitement but the stumps are as big as the bedrooms which tells you something about both :) - in fact our Tony Rosa Road is only a dirt driveway off of "Wonderstump Road."  Anyway, we love it and (hint, hint) there is room for company. So We're all excited and doing fine - Austin just turned 3 and is quite the big boy and even Emerson (2 in 6 days on the 16th) is rapidly losing any traces of babyhood.  Teaching, parenting and now moving!  We're numb with exhaustion, but not too numb to remember you often,  Love Dixie and Greg

Grandpa Paul, Dixie's Dad loved being a Grandpa.
Here with Lacy and Austin

     The night of Christmas 1996, my Dad was in the hospital in a room beautifully decorated but even that beauty had a message that life was ending. The hospice room was filled with Christmas lights and a small tree and there was something like 24 inches of snow, My toddlers and I made snow angels in the hospital parking lot and mom watched from the window. Friends and family came by, Ten we moved Dad back home to a hospital bed in the living room. 
      That New Year we were flying back and snow closed the roads to the airport and then we flew a day later to an area filled was flooding everywhere, Eureka, CA; Ashland, OR;  Klamath, CA. One month later, by Just after midnight on Feb 1st 1997 my Dad died. I guess I'm just remembering now how fast it went, but not as fast as the next death on the First of June, of the boys Day-care Grandpa, who collapsed of a heart attack during a stress test at the hospital and was dead before he hit the ground. So 1996, hard as it was, was at least a year all the family was still alive.

Paul, Pricilla and Emerson at Lake Selmac in Oregon

The last Christmas with Papa Paul happened here
In the Park County Hospital Hospice room

Papa Paul, August 1996
faced the boys on the beach to the top of a huge rock known as Battle Rock

But by October he could barely stand up from the couch where he slept in the living room
and jaundice was turning him Yellow
and he had missed my brother Lance's High School Graduation

The cousins on Greg's side of the family
sadly by now we have also lost Cody, the oldest

This picture taken in my parents yard in October

Merry Christmas 1996!

I hope the past year has been kind to you.  It has not been one of our best- but it has not been as cruel as it could have been either.  Every day we wake up knowing that "Grandpa Paul" is still alive and that in itself is enough miracle to require a celebration this Christmas.  To catch you up on the state of our life requires a quick journey back in time to April, when a weekend glance through the ad section of the paper changed us from rent payers to mortgage holders.  For 13 1/2 year we had paid rent o someone else's property - and moved 13 times in those 13 1/2 years. Well, on Emerson's second Birthday (April 16) we were moving into 2 acres with a 5 bedroom Farm House.  The land is lovely, with apple and plum trees and several redwood stumps - One with steps carved into it and a deck on top, and one with a small Fort built into the burnt out center - both of which the boys love to play on/in for hours - They quickly become Pirate ships, Castle or Fire trucks

If you've never seen a redwood tree, you may be wondering why the excitement about stumps, but the stumps are almost as big as the bedrooms which tells you something about both :)

Well, Finally buying a house and moving - while still dealing with two full time jobs and two toddlers is stressful but still joyous.

However we closed on the house the same day that we learned that Dixie's Dad had been diagnosed with esophageal Cancer and it has been a struggle to keep sight of the joyous aspects of our lives. The Emotional roller coaster of needing to be in Wyoming with Paul and in California with our jobs and new house have never slowed since April.  Paul needed major surgery - removal of part of his stomach and then was told he was cancer free - only to learn in August after a visit to us, showed him still strong, but with massive pain in unrelated places like his shoulders, that he has multiple areas of bone cancer with a need for serious chemotherapy but little hope for a cure. But because he really wanted to be around for his grandkids, he had to try. Time and some treatments completed made that hope grow stronger.

So we went to Wyoming on Emergency leave in October when things were grim and my toddlers were saying daily prayers and asking each day, "is Papa Paul still alive."  Now we return for Christmas to celebrate still having this wonderful man and the successful completion of four rounds of Chemo.  You sometime wonder if the cure isn't as bad as the disease but where there is life there is hope.

 (But between writing this Christmas letter and getting to Cody, that hope was replaces with the knowledge that life was measured in days remaining and the cancer had spread to kidney's and internal organs and hope was gone)

Without going into great detail - those who know Dixie's family know the detail, I must say that the major surgery done in Denver on my nephew Luke (at 6 months) and the cancer in the families of some of Paul's siblings all lead us to the heartfelt prayer that 1997 is a kinder - safer year for those we love.

On a happier note we decided to remember that we do have much to be thankful for - our jobs - our home - and most of all our family which may be battered but is intact and un-beaten.

So we gave ourselves a much needed Thanksgiving Vacation by driving up the Oregon Coast to see Keiko - the killer whale star of the Free Willie Movie in Newport's "Oregon Coast Aquarium" and he put on an awesome display of breath-taking intimacy - he came right to the glass and flattened his nose against it and bobbed and played in response to our waving.  In spite of the glass we were so close.  I was and still am profoundly moved.    ( note From 2013 I hear the talk of the movie Blackfish and the fact that whales and dolphins do not belong in captivity and the horror of being held prisoner and trained but I wonder, without marine land and sea world and trained whales, would anyone ever have known enough to care about them and map a movie like blackfish, or would they already have been exploited to extinction)

And that is not all - we spent some time with Greg's sister April and her husband which was great and they treated all four of us to three meals in quaint, ocean view, cliff top cafe's and we went to Sea Lion Caves and the Bandon Petting Zoo - so in our four days, we saw a killer whale - climbed in a sea cave filled with sea lion - petted a 6 month old tiger and visited "Auntie April"

So Greg and Dixie are doing OK, or so we keep reminding each other when the stress gets overwhelming.  One plus about having one family member with a serious illness is it does remind you to appreciate all your family members more - and the things which used to seem like major problems don't really seem all that important now.  Every time Dixie's jerk of a principal rears his ugly head she can think how insignificant his Harris-ment seems and laugh.

Daycare Grandparents, Dale and Nadine at Austin's 3rd Birthday
in old house

Now BRAG time about my two favorite boys.

Austin - at 3 years and almost 9 months he no longer allows
me to call him my baby although he is and always shall be my baby. He is also right.  He's growing and learning so much and is sometimes almost a miniature adult.  When asked what he wants for Christmas he said, "New muscles for Papa Paul so he'll be strong, and a train, and Candy."  He is learning to recognize letters and words - he saw WAL*MART and thought it said Willie*Marc  (Willie goes to day-care and Marc is her Dad) He is an observant, strong, highly verbal boy with a ton of energy but he can also be so warm and loving.  "I love you as much as the stars. I'm so glad I'm your kid."  He says almost as often as he says, "I can if I WANT to!"

Emerson on his second birthday at new house 18 days later

Emerson - 2 years and 8 month, wants to be "Captain Jim" the hero of his favorite book.  He is quiet unless he is screaming.  He's gentle, say-going but volatile and stubborn.  He is a contradiction and is OK with that, and uses the word "BUT" a lot to rearrange the world to fit his truth - When told Captain Jim Wouldn't wear diapers he blithely informed us, "But I'm Captain Jim AND I wear diapers."  And we love him.

Again, Merry Christmas

Greg, Dixie, Austin and Emerson

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

June at last!

 Good Morning,

May you have a June filled with Joy.

 I have decided that I shall find something every day to remind me to get in touch with the deepest most Joy filled aspects of living on this Earth.  This Morning I was awakened by the chime of an incoming photo message showing me the faces of two of the  most beloved people in my life. A great way to start off this resolution

 Also, fun almost magical discoveries for children top the things that make my heart glad and these simple little bits of polymer invisibility were a big hit among the children and adults in my classroom. This is full of water and marble sized gelatinous spheres, but they are invisible in water

If I scoop them up they appear

and on a flat surface they magnify what is below them and project light like a crystal ball will

They remind me of water droplets like the rain on my calla lily

When I had a baby the best advice I ever got, was "when he is cranky, put him in water"

Works for every kid I know

including my inner brat.

 I also delight in color
So flowers
and painting with melted crayon on a warming tray
 both give me joy.
 I'm actually easily joyful if I don't watch the news too often or worry about the fact that I live paycheck to paycheck. I do still live and Life is GOOD