Love and Concepts

I am generally good about not losing things, but a few times a year, I do.  It's usually when I am tired or stressed or both.  We had after school appointments three days this week.  I have been worried about my parents.  Jack was a little under the weather this week.  It's that wrap up the semester season.  The point is there was just a lot going on in the back ground of my brain.  

I shouldn't have been surprised that I lost my wedding ring, but I was.  Tuesday when I came home from physical therapy, I took my ring off and laid it on the kitchen table so I could peel the shrimp that we were having for supper.  I knew better - I always put my ring in the jewelry box on our dresser.  Putting it elsewhere was inviting trouble.  I have looked for it all week and today finally found it.  I wasn't panicked because I KNEW it was in the house, but I was troubled.  I don't really wear jewelry. I don't even own rings besides my wedding ring, but that is one thing I wear every day.  The worst part is that I have a history of losing my wedding ring.  

Some of you know parts of this story, but probably not all of you.  When Jack asked me if I wanted an engagement ring, I declined.  When he asked about a wedding ring, I asked him to make one. Neither of us had a lot of money.  We were also old enough to know that an expensive ring really had nothing to do with the quality of relationship we had and just wasn't us.   I really, really wanted something he made specifically for me, that only he had worked on.  He warned me it would just be a simple band and I was fine with that.  

He bought silver (my request) and ring making tools, and sure enough, come wedding day, he produced a ring for each of us.  They were from the same block of silver with a tiny bump sticking out on his and a divot taken out of mine where Jack broke them apart after they had stuck together in the molds.  This was exactly what I wanted.  That ring ended up being just a smidge large and kept falling off (I remember a mad search for it at the Simmons Center after an academic meet once), so Jack took another slice of silver from the same block and made a slightly thicker one that stayed on better.  So then I had two. I have always switched back and forth between them depending on if my hands were a little swollen or not, but I mostly wore the tight one.  Then three or four years ago, I lost the tighter fitting one.  Again, I knew it had to be in the house. We moved every piece of furniture, emptied every drawer.  It couldn't be found. At the time, I couldn't keep my original on.  I was so reluctant to melt down the original, but I wanted to be able to wear my ring daily again. I consoled my self that even though the divot would be missing when Jack recast it, it was still the original silver, and I had Jack do it.  A year and a half later, I moved the recliner and the missing one fell out, taking me back to two . . . until this week.  I obviously had a back up, but of  course the one that went missing this week was the recast from the original. The back up ring has been tight lately, so I went around all week absentmindedly rubbing my naked finger. 

This morning, after deep cleaning the house and looking in every trashcan, every drawer, it was finally found.  It was hiding behind the leg of our dresser (no where near the kitchen table). I am guessing I moved it from the table to the dresser but didn't make it all the way to the jewelry box.  I had looked under the dresser twice with a flashlight but had looked at the wrong angle until today.  I feel better. I know it's just a ring, not monetarily worth more than the $20 of silver in it.  I wanted this one though, the metal that Jack  put on my finger, that matches his, that is of the same metal as the last little chunk that Jack is saving to make something for Bell, the one made just for me.  

Our friend Roger Drummond  reminded me that a ring is nothing more than a tangible representation of the very real love I am blessed with.  He reminded me that the ring is just a concept that represents something "true and indisputable and eternal." He is right.  Even if I had not found it, all I have to do is look in Jack's eyes and know all about love.  I can tell you the exact moment over two decades ago when I realized I loved this guy, but that shiny new feeling pales in comparison to love that feels as comfortable as your oldest favorite flannel shirt and as brilliant as the sunrise.  While I am thankful to have it back, as long as I have that brilliance, I am pretty good and don't actually need the ring.  

Flannel and Wood Smoke

A few weeks ago, we had a record early ice storm.  Limbs were down everywhere, little things but also some bigger than the truck.  A lot of it was as fat as my leg so this was potential firewood.  Jack, Bell, and I spent a weekend getting the yard cleaned up.  Jack ran the chain saw, and Bell and I drug off the debris.  We worked for two solid days and only got half the yard finished.  By that time, it was clear that I had overdone it with my shoulder even though I was trying to mostly use my other arm.  I got banished to the house for the remaining days.  Jack has since then burned several of the brush piles, with me standing like a kid at the side poking it. We have two more to go.  He also cleared out the debris under the trees between us and the lake, but we still have work at the old house and in the pasture between the houses. Let me be clear. This ice storm was not fun.  We were without power for two weeks.  It destroyed some of our trees.  The whole thing created a tremendous amount of work and stress and still is causing issues. However, I had fun working outside with Jack.  Now that I am at school, I don’t get to do things with him as much as I did during the summer when we worked together at the lake. I also felt a bit like the Wilson girl I remember.  This was just like a fall or winter trip to Bluejacket. I felt young.  I felt like Grandpa’s girl again.

For most of my life, going to my grandparents during holidays  meant picking pecans, shelling pecans, butchering a steer or hog, and cutting fire wood.  If the trip involved pecans or fire wood, it almost certainly involved fire.  As we would gather pecans, we would also clear out fallen limbs beneath the trees and burn them off.  Wood cutting days were similar.  The men would sometimes fell a tree or cut up one that had fallen on its own.  Adults ran the saws and kids helped with the wood splitter and loading the wood in the truck. The little guy who couldn’t pick up heavy things might get to sit on the tractor and work the hydraulic levers for the splitter.   There were lots of small chunks too little for the wood stove that would go in a bonfire.  Sometimes an adult planned ahead and brought marshmallows for the kids. If we were working at the house, there was surely a cup of coffee near by for Grandpa.  He would drink a little coffee and poke at the fire. Dale Wilson loved a good fire, whether it was under a tree on the creek bank or in his wood stove.  I am sure it was all technically work and the adults were probably worn out, but as kids, it was a fun day out, even if it was biting cold and we were bundled up to our eye brows.  Even as an adult, when I went up with Jack for a weekend, we would often do wood.  By then Grandpa definitely needed the help keeping that wood pile close to the house and full.

This morning I made a rare second cup of coffee and am out enjoying the sunshine on the porch.  There’s no fire, but I’d build one if the chiminea weren’t wet. I wore Grandpa’s big flannel jacket to ward off the morning chill.   Grandma gave it to me after he was gone because I had bought it for him.  I only wear it when I am being lazy because it’s too big to actually work in.  It’s just right, though, for a morning pause.  I can just see Grandpa wearing it, with a cup of coffee in his hand sitting in front of the wood stove.   I’ve been Jack’s girl forever now, but with a little coffee, flannel, and wood smoke . . . Then I’m Grandpa’s girl. 

Going Home

 

I was born in Miami and lived there and in Bluejacket when I was very small before my parents packed us up to go to college.  When they graduated, they bought a house in Velma - that’s where I really grew up.  Right after I left for college, they sold the house I grew up in and bought the farm in Loco where they live now.  I lived on that farm for a few short months before convincing Dear Jack to marry me,  but it it’s never really felt like home.  Obviously, home is now where ever Jack and Bell are, but when I think of a place that is home, it is my grandparents’ farm in Bluejacket.  

Even though my parents moved us away from there when I was tiny, every summer and every holiday and most spring breaks were spent there until after Isabella was born.  I even lived there for a year in college. It’s just home.  It’s the dated but expensive real wood paneling in the dining room.  It’s the green shag carpet in the guest bedroom.  It’s the overheated kitchen and the same dining room table where we ate every holiday meal since I can remember. It’s the maple tree that started as a seedling at my great grandparents’ house across town.  It’s the hay bales I climbed and the creek I roamed and the pasture where I learned to drive and the barn where I was rolled by a cow and watched lambs being born. It is gun oil, fresh tomatoes, wood smoke,  and bread baking.   It’s sitting at the bar listening to Grandma talk, and it was riding in the truck with Grandpa to check cows or go buy tractor parts.  

We didn’t stop going for the holidays until we outgrew her house.  Once there were three of us and then there were five and then seven and then nine and then after that, it seemed that we went from nine to seventeen in the blink of an eye.  The farm just couldn’t accommodate my folks, us five kids and our spouses and children. Holidays moved to my parents house instead.  That is good and it’s still a joyful thing.  I miss going home though.  I miss the Wilson clan gatherings and I know Grandma does too.  Our hearts ache a bit.

Go ahead and judge away, but in the midst of warnings to limit our travel and stop the spread of Covid, Rachel and I went to see Grandma.  Two Thanksgivings ago, Jack and Bell and I went up for the first few days of break to see them. It was the last time I got to see Grandpa at home next to his wood stove and hear the Wilson and Coble legends until long after we all should have been in bed.  A week before our next visit was supposed to happen, he fell and broke his hip and that was the end of life as I knew it.  In a month he was gone. 

I know I could have picked up Covid on the way.  I know I could have it and not know it and could have given it to Grandma. I also know that she is getting older and weaker and there is so much risk.  There is also so much risk in not going.  We NEED our families.  Our hearts and minds need the connection of the ones we love.  She needed to tell the stories of her family tree and needed to show us her quilts and to walk with me across the yard and show me her plants.  She can talk to me on the phone, but that’s not the same.  We talked from the from the time we got there until we got in the car to come home.  So many words yet it was just a drop in the bucket for all the words we needed to say.  So yes, judge me for not doing my part to slow the spread, but I think people can suffer just as much from depression and sadness as they can Covid.  Her health is failing.  There won’t be many more trips, and it is really simple.  She needed us now. She has my cousins and that makes all the difference, but I thinks she needed us, the granddaughters too. 

I needed her as well.  I needed to soak up her words and gestures.  I needed to go home again.  It really is where I think of as home. It’s a place of magic and love that doesn’t exist anywhere else.  I weep as I type this morning.  My cousin lives with her now, and I know he will take care of the place when she is gone, but once she is gone, the light will go out and the magic will be gone.  I needed to go now and soak up the magic of home and the magic of my last grandparent before they are gone. 

Lost and Found

 

This was my find on this morning’s walk. I know, I know.  I really need to at least be running intervals instead of walking, but I have the edge of a headache and I needed some quiet prayer time.  

 The past two weeks have been a trial.  Bell is having trouble with an older student in a class, and I am at a loss of how to help her without helping too much.  I hate seeing her so sad and this situation is stealing her joy.  Throw in the never ending power outage and a lot of stress, and we got the longest stretch of discord Jack and I have had since we became friends 25 years ago.  That’s saying a lot.  We sometimes get annoyed and on rare occasions get mad, but it’s always resolved quickly.  Being out of peace with the person you most love is awful.

It turns out that when you lose power for a long time, there is a ton of stress worrying over losing everything in the fridge and freezers, keeping enough water to flush toilets, trying to keep everyone fed and clean, and keeping Rubilee warm enough and fed.  Let me tell you, homework by kerosene lantern was not fun either. Neither of us were getting enough sleep, and the stress and hassle of keeping everything and everyone functioning was nuts.  I was close to tears of relief when the power came back on day 16. However, it really did teach me a lot about the things I need to work on.  There is enormous room for my growth in patience and forbearance and holding my tongue and having a cheerful spirit. I didn’t always handle things with as much as grace as I could have, and I am blessed in that I married a forgiving man. 

The physical damage to the landscape of that ice storm has  hurt my heart as well. We spent two weekends just piling up fallen limbs and cutting the bigger pieces into firewood. We didn’t lose any trees entirely, but they are surely ravaged. Today Jack is going to start cleaning up the trees in the pasture around the house, at least the ones that are in our view of the lake. Then we will have to work on the trees at the old house. We actually got very lucky as far as damage to our trees goes.  So many people lost more than we did.  

I know trees grow back and can be replanted, but it hurts my heart to see so many damaged.  I have walked, ran, and driven past this tree a 

thousand times. It always made me smile because the branches formed a long skinny heart in the middle of the canopy. Now, those branches are broken and the heart is gone.  I was mourning this poor tree on my walk to the river earlier this week.  

This morning I walked the other direction.  There where I have so often walked was a perfect heart embedded in the road.  I don’t know if it was dropped and simply driven over until it became part of the road or if it’s been there since the road was resurfaced, dropped by some workman on a whim.  I don’t think it is just a natural heart shaped rock. However it came to be,  it made me smile. It’s not a tree, but I will take it.  

Returning. Maybe.

 I haven’t written here is so very long, the winter of 2017 to be precise.  It seems that for the bulk of the past four years, the things that have weighed on my mind and that I needed to put down on paper have involved others. Rather than betray their privacy, I’ve written on good old fashioned paper, but mostly I’ve not written at all.  I think I need to.  I need to relearn the art of writing, the peace that it can bring.  Yesterday, I sat on the porch and started writing again as I watched the sun come up over the lake. Maybe this will be a real return to writing. 

I find myself in such a weird place this fall.  In ways, I am more content than I can ever remember being.  We were playing D and D last night.  Jack’s character is in a deep dark dungeon and was asleep, so he was lying in the floor trying hard to get in a real nap.  I was trying to come up with a cunning plan to rescue him without also ending up in said dungeon. B. was the DM and puppet master of the whole craziness.  I looked at her, all confident and laughing as I made a spectacularly bad roll of dice, and I marveled that I am the parent of such a creature.   I looked at Jack half asleep on the floor and marveled that I was the wife of this handsome man (even if I have made his hair fall out and given him wrinkles around his eyes). I needed to soak up that moment.  I feel the same way every morning when he kisses me goodbye or I hug B before she heads off to class. It’s even there when I sit on the porch and watch the pasture and lake as the day begins or ends.  It’s this feeling of “this is what life is supposed to be.”  It is supposed to be grand passion,  but it’s also supposed to fire in the chiminea at dusk and playing games with your kid and pruning tomatoes in the fall. 

Things have been a bit rough the past few weeks.  Last week Willie the dog was hit by a car.    Bell is very upset with us and thinks he could have been saved.  He couldn’t have been.  I will just leave it at that, but Bell is young and sheltered in ways.  I will say that I grieved him all week.  I think I am also edgy because Mom’s diagnosis has terrified me.  I KNOW we serve an awesome and merciful Father.  I KNOW he is control. At the same time, I have really struggled.  I spend too much time in head thinking about loss - we were given so much when Dad got hurt, but there was a  loss. The following fall we had to go through Jack’s dad dying and hospice at home and all that entails.  The next year was a repeat except with my grandfather.  Last winter things weren’t so sad, but there were smaller, new causes of concern.  I am trying really hard to remember to praise and be thankful and faithful and not let fear or sadness win. They still sneak up on me.  It’s not just mom and knowing about chemo and surgery and all those things she will face. I have done this every change of season for a long time, just more so in the past four years.  It is hard not to wish for those perfect falls when life was simple. 

It’s a weird place - being so content and really deeply happy but also not. I am not sure I have found a rhythm.  Maybe writing can be a little cathartic for me.  I should be grading papers this morning but think I won’t.  We will listen to a church service.  I am toying with some fiction writing.  I started something back in the slow part of the summer and then abandoned it.  I want to pick it back up again but it’s scary - I am a writer of essays, not fiction.  Maybe I will jump into that again today. Later, we are going down to mom and dads.  My fabulous sister-in-law has arranged a family portrait to be done this afternoon.  Mom has wanted a new one for a few years; it just keeps not happening, but we are making it happen today. 

 I know there will be some tears today - I feel fragile.  I also know there is joy to be had and embraced so that is what I will try to choose today. Do that with me.  Choose something to be joyful in today and give thanks for His blessings and grace.

What I Wish I Could Write

At the end of a long week of waiting,  of hospice, of not knowing but knowing, my father-in-law died last week and my mother-in-law asked me to write the obituary.  Really, what she wanted was for me to type something that she had written.  That was fine - I think most obituaries are written in silly, stilted language and I wouldn't have written at all what Jack's very traditional mother would have wanted.  As it is, she got a neatly typed digital version of exactly what she wrote by hand (with a very few choppy sentences combined).  It was traditional and appropriate and perfectly fine.

When I think of obituaries, I shudder.  Such odd phrases abound, things like "wife ____ of the home" . . . where would she be if not of the home?  Do husbands keep their wives under rocks?  Stashed away in some remote place just to be trotted out in times of need?  Or maybe it means that she is still at home and not in a nursing facility.  In that case, the phrase is forgiven.  I hope someone has the sense to not write that I am "of the home" when Jack dies.  Phrases like "she loved spending time with family" or "he enjoyed hunting" just seem to gloss over what must have been such a full life.  "He was dedicated family man" is so hollow in comparison to the man that must have read bed time stories and helped his child catch tadpoles.  I suppose I just shudder to think of a whole life summed up in a few lines.

I also never get a sense of who that person really was.  I think if an obituary is going to be written and say more than I died, then I want it to be honest.  I want people to pause, to consider, and then to say, "Why yes, that was Sarah for sure."  Thinking about what I would have said about Harold would not have given us a very proper (for public consumption at least) write up in the local paper, but I have been thinking about it none the less.  It goes something like this . . .

Harold Rucker was crotchety, but he had lived long enough to earn that right, his political views reflecting his age.  Harold was narrow minded when it came to any race or religion or political affiliation other than his own, and his comments to others sometimes made me want to crawl under the floor and hide.  He was prickly.  Just plain prickly for a man that I never heard curse.  As crotchety as he could be, if he liked you, he was loyal and generous to a fault.

Despite this prickly nature, he knew everyone under the sun.  He was gregarious and never met a stranger wherever he went.  At home, he never failed to tell me I looked nice (if I actually did) or act pleased to see me on my daily visits.  He would act like he hadn't seen in me weeks and was sorely missing my company when really we had argued about politics just the day before.  Harold Rucker could dole out scathing criticism of everyone from the president to his own children, but he also could be lavish in praise.  He loved a good cookie or pie - I once heard a several minute rhapsody over the snickerdoodles a friend made for him.  He admired hard work probably more than anything else - he loved to tell about how hard Mary Jahn works and how hard his uncle the tailor worked. He despised anyone being lazy or mooching off the system, but he also had some compassion for people who deserved it, especially kids who didn't have parents to help them.

 In the last years I got to know him, what Harold seemed to enjoy most was a good drink and telling a good story.  It didn't matter if it happened eighty years ago, Harold could tell a story like it happened yesterday.  He was so firmly rooted in his past on the farm where his father grew tomatoes and his mother canned peaches; his narratives relived a lot of his days on the farm.  One of his favorite stories to tell was about the time he went to Paris for a few days and bought a car because it was cheaper than a taxi leaving it unlocked and running at the airport when he left.  He told tales about flying to Russia and his children and grandchildren - I think he was equally proud of all of them (the flying and the family).  Stories about Tony and his escapades as a child and teenager were frequently retold along with accounts of what felt like every bakery job he ever did.

Harold was a teaser - if you couldn't take it, you weren't going to get along well at all.  Brook could take it and dish it back, so they got along famously.  Other people could get their feelings hurt because he didn't handle people gently.  You just learned to fight back.  Harold didn't really respect people who didn't have common sense - either he didn't pay attention to them or his teasing could get almost mean. I think we got along because I let him be cranky when he was ill,  but I could stand up for myself at the same time.

Harold was dismissive of his intelligence, but he had a brilliant mind.  He retold every bad joke he ever heard, could recite poems from his youth that were pages long, and could repair or re-engineer nearly anything.  Even when he was old and sick, his children would still ask him how to go about solving mechanical problems.  I hope Isabella's inheritance is his analytical engineer's brain and his generosity.

I hated to see him sick and hurting.  I fretted when wasn't himself. And now, well now, I will miss him.

One Year

Today is September 19th.  It isn't lost on me that one year ago today, one year ago right now, we were waiting in a room at OU Medical, waiting while dad was in surgery, waiting to be told that life as we knew it would be over.  We were offered the services of a chaplain.  We were told to make calls.  We did make some calls, but we declined to pray with the chaplain because we had something better.  We had the prayers of the Saints, some holding our hands right there, some praying from afar. Through the mercy and greatness of God, the faithfulness of my parents and the body, the prayers of the Saints we were given a miracle, and I don't think a day has passed that I don't remember that.

The terrible thing did not come to pass, but life as we knew it was gone because now we were aware of our fragility. Now we had been reminded how temporal life is. I had no idea how for granted I took it that my family would always be there, that we were safe.  Before, I had the luxury of ignoring a ringing phone or the beep of a cell phone.  Now, I never turn it off entirely.  I did not know how fragile we were, how dependent on each other we would become.  I might be needed.  I might need one of them.  So the phone stays on.  I also had forgotten how much I loved to just be with them.  Just to sit next to my brothers or my sister.  Just to sit and know we all have the same beginning, the same foundation, the same stories, the same remember whens. So even in the darkest days of the past year, there was joy.  We found joy in each other and  joy in the Lord as we were reminded of his blessings.  We found laughter.  We made sure to work harder at loving in the moment and not assume the tomorrows would come.

There have been hard things in the last year for all of us in all areas of our lives. Even as dad got better, life kept happening and it wasn't a smooth ride. But it has also been a year of great mercy and joy and grace.  We have been given so much.  I look at what where we have been and where we are going. Tuck and Lexi just had an anniversary.  Jack and I have our 15th in a week and a half. This weekend Harley and Ian will marry and begin the next branch of this family that my parents have worked so hard to nurture.  I look at houses being built, literal and familial. I look at spiritual journeys.  Jobs lost and found.  Miles run. Harvests made. Children taught. Loss and blessing.  So very much for one year.

This one year has been a year of tears - I cry at everything now.  I have wept in fear and grief and despair.  I have wept as encouragement and solace came.  I have weput in relief and thanksgiving. In a few days, we will cry tears of joy and gladness with Harley and Ian.  For now, I want to simply put this year away and look forward to a new year of us.

Life in General

How can it have been four months since I have posted here?  During the day, I get sucked into work and life and plan out posts in my mind but never seem to commit them to the page.

Where do I start? The rant in my head all morning has been to ask the woman on Facebook who wants our school to start an after school program for her kids until she gets off work if she voted for tax increase to give teachers a raise.  Or maybe I will ask her if she wants us to feed her kid supper and teach him to brush his teeth while we grade papers and sponsor a club all at the same time? (I might need another cup of coffee.) I won't though because I don't get into ugly things on social media and I do get it.  I really do.  What do working parents do who have little kids?  It's a problem and there simply isn't a good solution.  I am really blessed that my mom was Bell's safety net and I didn't face those problems. I am just not convinced that it is the school's job to fill yet another gap though I don't know who will if not the school.

Do I start by telling you that living with my entire family for a week (2 parents, their 5 kids each with a significant other, 5 grandkids) in one big house with 30ish more for dinner every night made me love my family but bite my tongue . . . a lot and still probably not often enough?  We just got home from the big Wilson family reunion at a Grand Lake and it was an experience, almost all good.  We rented a huge house in the same area that the cousins were staying so our house and Cousin Wes's place  became a hub for eating, drinking, laughing, swimming and tubing and just general Wilson craziness for Wilsons from North Carolina and Florida to Hawaii, from southern Oklahoma to Denver.   I already miss them. I miss getting to have four sisters instead of one.  I miss my late night talks with Cousin Mo.  I never even got a good visit with Cousin Ryan.  I grew up with so many good memories at the lake with family and am so thankful that we are continuing the tradition.  It was different though - my siblings and I haven't had that much forced togetherness in twenty years.  A few toes may have been trod upon.

Then there is the wedding!  My youngest brother is marrying the sweetest girl next month.  I am so excited for them and to have another girl whom I really like in the mix.  That means the rest of us get to host a shower in two weeks.  I honestly have never hosted anything before - not really my thing, but I so want this to be special and pretty for Harley and Ian.  Rach and I have been plotting and planning food and decor.

It's summer so that means running, gardening,  and preserving.  My own running has been good - sometimes I manage a long one but I always at least manage intervals.  We tried to do couch to 5k with Bell but it got too hot to run at dusk and she is not a morning person.  In other words, a big flop.  The garden is so-so.  We tried some new things, new varieties, and even some hydroponics.  That is a whole post in itself.  Perhaps the highlight here is that Bell wanted to learn how to make jam this year and I had wild plums that needed dealt with.   I was her age when I first helped mom make wild plum jam so this created a satisfying circle of life for me.  I didn't care about "homemaker" type things until I was in college, but maybe I can plant the same seeds in my daughter that my mom planted in
me.  I want her to know the satisfaction in growing things and making something wonderful from them.

In 17 days, life as I know it now will end and I will be sucked back into school.  At times, I bitterly
dread it, but I am also excited to try some new things, see how far I can stretch young minds, see my own friends.  I have been revamping my AP curriculum and am really hopeful that I will hit on the magic mix for my students.  That is actually on my agenda today - I went to bed last night and my mind raced with ideas I still needed to tweak and develop.  I want to get those things on paper before I lose them.

For now, I am going to finish the Saturday bonus cup of coffee and get caught up with Elephant Soap and Cindy.

Fortune Cookie Confirmation

Coming down I44 today, Jack and I wove dreams of what we would like to do with a little  land some day. Feed out a steer. Have a few goats and chickens.  Greenhouses.  Self sufficiency.  I jokingly pointed out that he was already 51 and I was 41 so that we had better get on the ball and teased that I was having second thoughts about having married an older man.

In actuality, I might find a younger man but not one who loves me more.  This weekend was the perfect example of Jack's love for me and investment in our family. We were on our way home from a quick trip to see my grandparents in Bluejacket.  It's a good five hour drive away, depending on how many times we have to stop so we don't get to go often.  Jack Dear had a few days off this week and gave them up to be my driver and my grandpa's helper.

It was not a romantic trip since the kiddo slept on an air bed in our room. It wasn't even particularly lazy.   We just happened to pick the weekend that was slated for working cattle.  Jack's presence meant enough helping hands that  Grandpa and Grandma could watch and direct while my cousins and Jack did the labor.  It didn't matter that Jack was an in-law and that these were my cousins' cows and not his.  He spent the day cheerfully helping process the cows and calves, holding calves to be cut, worming, dodging crazy cows, untangling horns and fences all while slogging around in mud and manure.

He might have earned a break after the last cow scrambled from the chute, but he kept up being a family a man through the evenings. Years ago, Jack transferred all the old Wilson home movies to DVD, but we had never had a chance to sit down and watch them.  We had the chance now, so Jack spent his evenings tape recording my grandparents as they narrated the videos for us.  I am sure three hours of vacations, Christmas dinners, and horse rides got old, but I never would have gotten all the locations, faces, and dates right on my own and it was a joy to watch how big of a kick Grandma and Grandpa got out of those old movies as they relived their early years. I know he was probably worn out from tromping around in manure all day, but he gamely set up the recorder and soaked up some Wilson lore.

I cannot calculate the value of a man who every day shows his love to me and mine through not just words, but with his every action.  He was so patient with everyone this weekend.  The rain was miserable on the drive up.  Tempers flared in the corral.  Grandpa hurt too much to be cheerful company.  Bella was sometimes bored.  I was generally busy in the kitchen.  Through it all, including shoe shopping for Bell on the way home, Jack was ready with a smile, a kiss, a flirty pat, a laugh, a helping hand, whatever I needed, whenever I needed it . . . Even  if helping me meant he was really putting his shoes on to do go do a chore so my granddad didn't have to.  I think too many people never get past the idea of love being a sweet word connected to canoodling.  Jack can still make my heart go pitter patter with a look, but I think we would have a such a desolate life if that is all we had to offer each other.

On the way home, we stopped at a Pei Wei for lunch.  The slip of paper in my fortune cookie said "love is a gift that you can give again every day."  Perhaps some people would rather see "you will win the lottery," but I think I would rather give love and be given love in return.  I watch my grandparents with each other, the tenderness and care they show.  They may be in their late eighties, but, oh my, are they still in love.  That love spills into the way they raised their children, the way they hold their grandchildren, they way share their stories with their great grands.  This morning I over heard Grandma telling Bell "when your momma was little, we used to . . ."  And I stood in the hall, tearing up listening to them.  It's a family thing - it means that cousins help work cows and uncles give their nieces a ride on a horse. Watching Ben and Bell on a yellow horse reminded me a lot of Ben  riding his horse Babe with me when I was little.  I see the love my parents so carefully guard and nourish.  I see that love in the way my husband looks at me and  looks at our child, in his touch, in his word.   I look forward to a life of that kind of giving.

Girls Trip

   Really it has only been in the last few years that Rachel and I have hung out much together.  The twenty year age gap means that it took some time  before we had enough common interests and free time at the same times to really do fun things together without one of us being the grown up and one of being the kid. We have gone to my grandparents' farm for a sisters' visit a few times and had toyed with a fall trip but other family things intervened.  This past weekend, I had a long weekend and Rachel finagled days off to match mine, so off to Bluejacket we went. Jack can't really leave his parents now and I have a few hundred baby plants to tend, so he graciously opted to stay home to let me have a getaway with Ra.
     I think this was the most carefree and relaxed I have felt since our stolen day of hiking at New Years. Bluejacket is like going home for me.  It hasn't been in years and years, but my roots are there . . . holidays were spent there until fairly recently, summers sweated there . . It just feels like coming home when I round that curve coming out of Timber Hill and descend into town.  The rail road crossing, the sad little football field, the final curve before their farm is nestled in gentle slopes and held in by creeks at the edge of town.    When I pull up before that old brick house and the shabby barns, I can just feel all the weights of the world slide off my shoulders as I exhale.
     My grandparents are in their  eighties so it isn't as if this was a vacation where we were pampered and spoiled, though my Grandmother made some wonderful brisket and chicken stew and dumplings.  Instead, bright and early Saturday, Grandpa hit us up to fix up the fence around the chicken coop.  Several years ago, Jack, Dad and my brothers built this fabulous, huge chicken coop and yard for them, but eventually, they quit keeping chickens and it fell into disrepair . The coop became became a storage shed and cows invaded the yard. A friend recently gifted them with 9 fat red hens, and it was time to give that coop a face lift. We drove posts, put up cow panels (at Grandpa's decree though I felt like the chickens would escape)(and after we cut them out of wild rose bushes and green briars and  Grandpa  drug them through several acres of mud puddles and cow pies), scavenged old wire . . . It is the ugliest chicken yard ever but it is not going to fall down in a wind storm or be pushed over by a cow.  Those hens were so happy to be out of the coop and scratching in the grass and muck.
      Of course, the next day those wily hens did escape.  As fast as my cousin would grab a chicken and put it in the pen, two more would find freedom. We had to string the chicken wire I   suspected from the beginning that we'd need.  And of course, just like the old panels and old wire we  had to beat into shape, the chicken wire was bent and had tree roots frowning into it. I appreciate not having to buy materials, but it takes a lot more work to reuse old things that have been allowed to rust away. Ra and I spent the better part of the weekend wading around in cow and chicken poo while we made repairs, but oddly, that is the most content I have been in weeks.  Other than our hike, it is the most at peace I have been in months.  We chatted and joked whole we worked really well as a team despite the age and personality differences. There was something deeply satisfying about menial labor on the family farm, labor that might make my grandparents'  chores a bit easier, and doing the work with someone I love.
     It wasn't all chicken mess.  We helped my grandmother clear limbs out of the yard - so many had fallen over the winter from those trees that are getting old.  Grandma told us the stories behind them - the one that had been a seedling in her mother's yard, the one that was my grandpa's favorite, the ones that they planted when they first bought that farm. At one point I looked up to see my long legged sis scrambling up a tree.  Grandma says she is the only grandkid to have climbed that one. I was delighted that this girl who can make boys drool can still be a kid when she needs to be.
      We heard about the time my grandpa hitchiked to California and became a forestry service fire fighter and then joined the marines.  We heard a man sing Amazing Grace in Cherokee at church. We  got stuck in the truck when the doors jammed.  We went for a run together. We cooked together.
      We laughed, we ate, we hugged long lost cousins, we teased - we  just soaked up the spring like  weather and love that we always find on that farm.

  

Blue Sky Satisfaction

 Just look at that sky. No filters. It was the last day of Christmas break and the temps were closer to spring than winter, bumping 70 with only a gently breeze.  It was also really the first day that we weren't doing something with my family or Jack's family, that someone wasn't a little or a lot sick, or that we weren't tied up with actual work and repairs that needed to happen around the place.  I had so hoped to sneak in visits with more friends, maybe a cup of coffee with at least one, maybe multiple adventure days, but it just wasn't meant to be.  Instead, we traded head colds, used an extraordinary number of tissues, and didn't get out much at all besides trips to my parents or for groceries and chauffeur duty for the in-laws.  I did read a lot of fluff, we watched a million episodes of Mythbusters, and Christmas cooking and baking happened and just kept happening.  But those are not as deeply satisfying as adventure and outdoors, so on this last day of freedom we drove the nearly two hours to the Quartz Mountains and found that adventure.

Bella is not always a very enthusiastic hiker - she takes more breaks than she moves and if we ever do get her going, she over does it, takes a tumble, and then is weepy and never wants to go again.  Today was unusually perfect. No fussing, no quarreling, no excessive breaks.  She was up for anything.  We wandered very poorly marked trails without a map - there is one that I took a picture of but there was a distinct lack of markers and it wasn't much to scale. We were well on our way up one trail and hit a "closed for hunting season" sign so had to do some backtracking.  Jack snagged a geocache. We found the most wonderful walking trail around the bottom of Baldy Point.  It was strictly walking through the woods around the base of the mountain, but it was a really beautiful walk with all sorts of things to explore (caves) and to avoid (bee hives) and to look for (was it a squatch or just a rabbit?).   We made it around the base and almost up to the top of Baldy Point when Miss Bell had a mishap and sat on a prickly pear cactus.  Then we had about twenty minutes of Jack removing cactus spines from Bella's back and shirt.  She was a trooper.  We ended up not going to the top but going off trail around the upper third and down the other side hooking into a trail we had looked for that morning and missed.  Next time we will get the rest of it. Part way around and down, Bell saw a cool outcropping and had to mountain goat up nearly to the top of the mountain to it.  She and I explored up while Jack scouted a way off the mountain.  When she got to her outcrop, the sketch journal came out and she needed an art break to record the mountains across from us.

It was a day of poking with burned sticks, squishing moss, determining what animal likely made what poop, being honked at by wild geese overhead, scaring quail, dumping scree out of our shoes, and throwing away a glove that was just to cactus filled to save. We went up rock faces on hands and knees and sometimes had to come down almost sitting.  We laughed and explored, and Lordy, it was a beautiful last day of freedom.

Mercy Beyond Measure

Here I sit, with coffee in bed on this first frosty morning of the fall; I should be cozy and content, yet I find myself snotty and teary.  I don't even know exactly why.  I am a mess of emotion, part worry, part thankfulness.  Part tired and stressed. Just weepy.

Partly,  I am overwhelmed with thankfulness for my dad.  For those of you who don't know, he came home about two weeks ago.  Dad is walking, talking, eating, putting his own clothes on, taking showers - all the normal things one does, just with a neck brace.  He will have more physical therapy later when the neck brace comes off.  We don't know if he will be able to return to life like it was before.  For certain, there will be some limitations but we just don't know what kind or how many yet. There are still problems that have yet to resolve themselves so we don't yet what the future looks like.  I do know this:  I have never been so thankful to hear anyone's chuckle of amusement as I have his.  I have never before been so grateful to hold someone's hand and have them squeeze back as I am with him.  We have been given a second chance in our family.  The terrible thing did not happen.  My mother still has her soulmate, and we children still have our father.

I think back to that first terrible day and night, that first week.  I think of watching my brothers, grown men who seem to handle anything, nearly broken.  I remember watching Ben crying silently and praying at 2:00 AM and thinking that I wish that driver could see him.  I wanted to take that man, lead him to my father, whose face was all that visible, body covered in tubes and machines. Take him to Rachel, still a baby at 21, still needing her parents whole.   Take him to Ben, tears coursing down his face, and say, "Look.  Look at what you have done. This is my family and look what you have done to them." I am not angry. I really am not bitter.  People kept saying that I shouldn't be bitter.  The thing is, when I think of the driver, I am not angry.  I don't wish him ill. I hope he will be wiser in the future, more cautious, but goodness, we have all been guilty of inadvertently harming someone in someway at sometime.   Instead of wishing him ill, I have been concerned - I cannot think what it would be to know I had caused this much harm to someone.  I think of all the things we are not careful in, things we are ALL not careful in, not just him on that day.

Do we live deliberately or do we float through life, careless in our thoughts and actions?  My dad has lived deliberately for a very long time, his choices in his work, where he lived, how he raised his children all a reflection of his commitment to God.  No, my father is not a perfect man, but he is always becoming a better man.  Both my parents live this way.  I wonder how confidently we could have prayed had my dad been a different man, how much faith would have held my mom up had she been a different woman.  I know that God gave us great mercy and I believe that mercy was given because my family, particularly my parents have been faithful to Him. Can we all expect great mercy?  Are we living deliberately?

I think of that driver - I haven't spoken to him.  I don't know him.  But I wonder if he was floating along or deliberately, actively focused on being careful.  Then these thoughts spill to me.  How often am I deliberately careful with my thoughts and words and actions.  Do I float along?  Do I work at thinking and doing and speaking things that are Christlike? Somehow the idea of not being careful enough driving has become this bigger idea of being careful with my life and the lives that have been put in my care - my husband and child, my parents and siblings, my in laws and extended family, my students and co-workers.  No, I am not deliberately bad, I am not deliberately careless, but I also think I am not always consciously choosing to be careful with what I have and who I am responsible for.

Deliberately. Carelessly.  Thoreau went to the woods to live deliberately. I would like to think I am deliberately living - choosing for my life to be be  meaningful.  I know that mercy beyond measure has been shown to my father, to me and mine, in simply having Dad alive.  Perhaps equally merciful is a reminder to live carefully, to make each day matter in the right ways.  I want to have that peace and confidence in God's mercy and faithfulness toward me.  I want to know that better than only doing no harm, I did something good.  I think I needed reminding about the choices I make, while there was time to be reminded.

I look at this day of Thanksgiving that approaches.  I cannot believe that November is half over - I still feel like I missed half the fall. Blessedly, we have been given so much more and been reminded to savor each moment of it.

Waiting

I am so tired.  Just so very tired.  I can sleep the sleep of Ambien and be groggy the next day until noon or I can sleep of the fretful and be groggy till noon.  It doesn't seem to matter.  And while I say that I am so tired, I feel so guilty because my mother and brothers and sister and even Jack and Bell are just as tired, mom surely more so.  But I am just so tired.  Twice in the last two days I have lost my patience with Bell and snapped at her for something that was probably not snap worthy.

And I don't even know if I am so tired because because I haven't been able to exercise or eat enough green things or the emotional roller coaster each day has become or if it is just the sleep.  I have been given a lot of help from above in being peaceful and not giving in to doubt and fear, but it creeps in when I least expect it.  I find myself tearing up just driving down the road. 

To say that someone is hit by a semi and then drowned sounds like a preposterous thing that happened to the coyote when one of his sabotages against road runner backfires.  How can a man possibly survive?  He has survived, but his future, and thus ours, remains uncertain.  Every day there is a new hurdle - some cleared, some not.   We made it through the scary surgery Tuesday and I suppose we all just felt so much hope afterwards.  Then yesterday, he had to have an emergency tracheotomy when he wasn't able to breathe after being removed from the ventilator.  Setback. Setback. Through the night, when I woke up, I prayed that his pneumonia be cleared and that when his sedation wears off today he will be calm and at peace.  We don't even know for sure what he knows or thinks, just that he is sedated because he tried to remove some tubes yesterday on his own and was pretty angry acting.  Maybe with the ventilator tube gone, today will be better.  While I walked yesterday afternoon,  I prayed he would be calm, at peace, and not discouraged or afraid, my prayer for us all.

We have had so many friends and co-workers and church family members reach out with prayers and generosity and it has made all the difference.  I believe my father will be healed. That He will finish  this work of healing that He has started, but I am weary.

Yesterday was my happy 14th anniversary with Jack Dear.  Not a lot of celebrating around here, but let me say that I do not think I could have made it through the last 9 days without him.  Fourteen years.  It is unfathomable to me that life could have taken us down different roads.  I am thankful for my family, for my husband, for the mercy my father and family has been shown while we wait. Wait and pray. 

Addendum to Summer of Run

Progress is slow, to be sure, but progress nonetheless.  Today, I had to slow to answer a phone, carry a kitten, and slog up a hill against the wind, so my my pace was down.  But my feet still moved.

My mother-in-law has been fussing.  "You should just do a little light weights everyday" and   "Walk while you watch TV" and "You just need to watch what you eat and you won't need to do all that"  are her comments about how she thinks I shouldn't run.  For some reason, she thinks I am not acting age appropriate and should just give all this up.  Other days the point is that I should join a gym and exercise with people and run on a treadmill.  I totally get that she hates me to run on the road.  She is convinced that some one will run over me or steal me. However, I have zero desire to exercise with other people - I am around literally hundreds of people every day at school.  Running is bit zen like - just me and my trail of cats and dogs who follow me - pied piper style is the way to run apparently. I certainly don't want to have say hi or even wave or head nod.  I just want the solitude with my sweat.  We have conceded to look for a treadmill to use when it gets cold - Rubilee thinks it will be too cold in just a month. I still plan to run on the road and brave that hill (it's like a glorified stair master) anyday  it is decent.  In Oklahoma, we have a lot of decent winter days.   For now, it was a gloriously cool morning for August.

Graceful Living

I am purely exhausted this morning.  I need sleep in the worst way - elusive is far too gentle a word to describe my connection to sleep the past several days.  I should be out running on this gloriously cool morning but I sit here with coffee.  Now I will have a bit for coffee and running don't have a good relationship for me.

I am neither in the mood nor do I have liberty to address the stress that I think is driving away my sleep and inviting ludicrous anxiety ridden dreams.  Instead, I would rather think of strength and grace in the face of adversity.  Some people, by bent of temperament, just seem to have more natural calm and poise than others, joy that daily defines their interactions with the world, quiet strength that marks their struggles.  Perhaps some is termperment.  Perhaps some is something they cultivate, choosing mindfully each day.  Perhaps some is given by God, a blessing for their faith.

This year, I have more students with learning disabilities than any year since I taught classes dedicated to remedial English. Students with these hurdles are like all other students - they deserve an education and they should be held accountable for learning in a manner aappropriate for their particular needs and abilities.  At the same, just like any other student, they can be likeable and a joy or students I have to work to simply tolerate. Eager, class clowns, surly, conscientious, lazy, creative, disorganized. What ever label can be found for a "regular" student can be found for a special needs student. One child in particular makes me think of Flowers for Algernon.  I wonder is this student knows the difficulties and limitations that are reality.  Every morning, I am greeted with enthusiasm and a smile.  If we bump into each other during they day, this child seems genuinely happy to see me and every one else, for that matter.  What ever we talk about during class - grammar, lit, whatever - that hand is up volunteering answers and asking questions with more eagerness than I see the entire rest of the day.  Where does this well of positivity spring from?  Does she know that she likely won't have the same opportunities as others for education and careers?  Does she know how much she faces?  I am in awe.  I want to yell a bit at everyone else and say, "look how much she does with so little."

I have an adult friend who generates a similar response in me.  To be sure, she has many blessings, but she also deals with some very serious health issues that limit her ability to go and do.  I know life and future are always uncertainties for all of us, but short of miracles in medical advances or divine healing, it seems certain that her health issues are not going away and will likely worsen.  Some people are stoic and closed off in the face of such things, but this friend just keeps working, momming, friending, walking in all her roles of life full of grace and kindness.  There are no complaints.  She admits concerns and difficulties, but seems to let living her life rather than living in fear and worry dictate her actions and attitude.  I inwardly yell at me, saying "look at what she does despite so much burden."

I am tired.  I have not slept enough in three days to equal one good night. I am concerned about so many things, fretting about things I can only pray about rather than actively take on myself.  I need to dig deeper, rely more on God to resolve  issues and to know that he will give me the grace and strength I need to deal with them.  I need to tap into that joy and power I see these two examples modeling everyday.

Before I take a nap, let me say . . .

It is the last Saturday.  So much in the way of what I should've done and could've done but didn't do floats around in my head, mixing with the mental stretching that comes with that first cup of coffee, mixing with the reading of education blogs telling me how to start my year.

So I have been evaluating this whole "what I accomplished this summer" thing over my coffee this morning, thinking in terms of garden, fitness, home, school.  I think it is just a wash.  I need a do over for sure.  The garden? Well the cucs died, the greens were too bitter to eat, those peppers are the slowest to ripen.  I have had plenty of tomatoes but have fought summer blight so much I am about ready to just give up. Likewise, I got very little done towards school.  I love my job but I just really needed a break from all things educational or  studentish.  I just don't have enough oomph to care much about any of it right now.  Instead, I chose to do things like strip and repaint  my old desk during the last week off.  It is easy work and let's the brain drift.

I may be the most frustrated with my personal body. Last fall, I went to the doctor for my yearly lady appointment.  My cholesterol was a bit high which was new.  Usually, all my numbers are so low, someone asks if I am actually a member of the undead.     So I have been making better food choices, though they were already good ones.  I have been a conscious eater for years, but I tried to trim back some foods a bit more.  I got serious about it all in February. I have been losing weight, wogging and running, lifting and doing all of it for over six months now.  Everyone always says, "lose weight, exercise, drink more water, eat these greens.  You will look and feel great". I don't.  I have spent the last few weeks simply exhausted.  I just want to sleep.    I am crabby.  My body doesn't feel any stronger, any more limber, any fitter than it did twelve pounds and six months ago. My bursitis is flaring up. My sinuses are a mess.  I have spots on my face despite my diligence in wearing a hat.  Mostly,  I just feel tired. I will admit that I look better.  I like what I see in the mirror.  I feel content, confident, often sexy.  But I am too tired to do much with those positive feelings.  I have tried to work in some rest time but it isn't helping.  By the time I need to start supper, I am barely thinking clearly enough to chop an onion, let alone follow a recipe.  By the time I get the kitchen cleaned up, it is all I can do to set the coffee pot for the morning and stumble out of the kitchen.  My mother asked if I was losing weight too fast.  I haven't lost an ounce in a week so I don't think that is it.  She asked if I exercised too much.  Less than an hour a day doesn't feel like too much.  She asked if I was getting plenty of iron and taking the vitamins I am supposed to take.  Yes, yes, yes.

I am sure some of this is stress.  Harold and Rubilee have not been a picnic lately.  I love my in laws but sometimes keeping two households, one ten year old, and two 80 somethings who act like ten year olds on an even keel is tricky.  It isn't so much that I do lots of work for them.  I send extra portions of our dinner up a few days a week.  We check on them twice a day.  We groceries shop for them and run their errands.  But there lots of surprises - things like surprise company that we need to help with or the doctor appointments they failed to tell us about or just days they decide they need us as chauffeur.  They often don't make good decisions so we have to deal with the consequences.  Yet, they also aren't ready to give up their autonomy. I am also stressed about Jack's lack of work.  I keep praying that a door will open.  I am terrified of what happens when unemployment runs out soon.  He has put in applications everywhere he can think of.  It is always under qualified and over qualified.

So I don't know about the success of the summer.  I swear, the next chipper person who asks how the summer went  . . .   I may be too tired to answer.


Let me say that I am not depressed.  I had my best run ever yesterday.  I am excited to start some new things at school and have a new batch of great kids.  Things are more than okay with Jack and me on a personal level - who knew that being middle aged and married would be so much fun?  I am just so damned tired.

Before i take a nap, I would just like to say . . .

It is the last Saturday.  So much in the way of what I should've done and could've done but didn't do floats around in my head, mixing with the mental stretching that comes with that first cup of coffee, mixing with the reading of education blogs telling me how to start my year.

So I have been evaluating this whole "what I accomplished this summer" thing over my coffee this morning, thinking in terms of garden, fitness, home, school.  I think it is just a wash.  I need a do over for sure.  The garden? Well the cucs died, the greens were too bitter to eat, those peppers are the slowest to ripen.  I have had plenty of tomatoes but have fought summer blight so much I am about ready to just give up. Likewise, I got very little done towards school.  I love my job but I just really needed a break from all things educational or  studentish.  I just don't have enough oomph to care much about any of it right now.  Instead, I chose to do things like strip and repaint  my old desk during the last week off.  It is easy work and let's the brain drift.

I may be the most frustrated with my personal body. Last fall, I went to the doctor for my yearly lady appointment.  My cholesterol was a bit high which was new.  Usually, all my numbers are so low, someone asks if I am actually a member of the undead.     So I have been making better food choices, though they were already good ones.  I have been a conscious eater for years, but I tried to trim back some foods a bit more.  I got serious about it all in February. I have been losing weight, wogging and running, lifting and doing all of it for over six months now.  Everyone always says, "lose weight, exercise, drink more water, eat these greens.  You will look and feel great". I don't.  I have spent the last few weeks simply exhausted.  I just want to sleep.    I am crabby.  My body doesn't feel any stronger, any more limber, any fitter than it did twelve pounds and six months ago. My bursitis is flaring up. My sinuses are a mess.  I have spots on my face despite my diligence in wearing a hat.  Mostly,  I just feel tired. I will admit that I look better.  I like what I see in the mirror.  I feel content, confident, often sexy.  But I am too tired to do much with those positive feelings.  I have tried to work in some rest time but it isn't helping.  By the time I need to start supper, I am barely thinking clearly enough to chop an onion, let alone follow a recipe.  By the time I get the kitchen cleaned up, it is all I can do to set the coffee pot for the morning and stumble out of the kitchen.  My mother asked if I was losing weight too fast.  I haven't lost an ounce in a week so I don't think that is it.  She asked if I exercised too much.  Less than an hour a day doesn't feel like too much.  She asked if I was getting plenty of iron and taking the vitamins I am supposed to take.  Yes, yes, yes.

I am sure some of this is stress.  Harold and Rubilee have not been a picnic lately.  I love my in laws but sometimes keeping two households, one ten year old, and two 80 somethings who act like ten year olds on an even keel is tricky.  It isn't so much that I do lots of work for them.  I send extra portions of our dinner up a few days a week.  We check on them twice a day.  We groceries shop for them and run their errands.  But there lots of surprises - things like surprise company that we need to help with or the doctor appointments they failed to tell us about or just days they decide they need us as chauffeur.  They often don't make good decisions so we have to deal with the consequences.  Yet, they also aren't ready to give up their autonomy. I am also stressed about Jack's lack of work.  I keep praying that a door will open.  I am terrified of what happens when unemployment runs out soon.  He has put in applications everywhere he can think of.  It is always under qualified and over qualified.

So I don't know about the success of the summer.  I swear, the next chipper person who asks how the summer went  . . .   I may be too tired to answer.


Let me say that I am not depressed.  I had my best run ever yesterday.  I am excited to start some new things at school and have a new batch of great kids.  Things are more than okay with Jack and me on a personal level - who knew that being middle aged and married would be so much fun?  I am just so damned tired.

On Cue

While running this morning, I thought about careers. I think I was distracting myself from how many minutes I had left of a running interval, but I fell down a rabbit hole of  reflection about what I thought I would do and what I actually do.  When I was in high school, I was adamant about not wanting to go into teaching.  Zero desire.  I also didn't want to follow the path of so many other Wilsons  into medicine or law.  Instead, I had become addicted to the high of public speaking.  I haven't really played with theatre, but I think that must be a similar  high. I am rubbish at talking with people, especially in mundane small talk and social niceties.  I am shy to the point of being miserable.  You've no idea the lengths to which I will go to avoid speaking with someone I don't know.  So how does a shy girl end up giving speeches?  Well, there is art to public speaking and it is magic to persuade someone. There is a cue and then you are in the spotlight for a few minutes and no one talks back. You have this golden oportunity to sway your audience to believe something,  to take an action, to make a change.   You don't have to learn their names, you will never see them again, the Q and A afterwards will be be about the topic and not personal . . . At the same time, it is exhausting.  To be sure, there is a high, but it is followed by a crash because you pour your everything into making those few minutes count, making them really spectacular for your audience.  You have to be charismatic, inspirational . . . You are selling something and have to be Salesman of the Year.  I am not sure it can be explained to someone who hasn't done it, but public speaking was one of my great passions.   I really wanted to be a professional public speaker or perhaps a speech writer, because although I'd never heard of logos, ethos, and pathos, I was also a good writer.

Then I went off to college and had crappy advisers who told me those weren't real careers and I somehow drifted to the English department since I only seemed good at reading and writing and really couldn't think of anything else I'd really like to do except horticulture, which my parents discouraged.  Once there, I was told that I must teach, for what else is there to do with an English degree?  And so I became a teacher, not for any lofty goals of bettering mankind or wishing to serve or even love of teaching or language.  I just fell into it.

In a few weeks, I will be starting year nineteen of teaching English.  That is a long for time for a career I didn't passionately pursue. Somewhere along the way, I did discover that I really do like what I do.  Often, I love it.  Sometimes, I don't at all. I am not at all the most fabulous teacher ever, but I am good at it, hopefully better than just good.   What I didn't foresee is how much like public speaking it would be.  When I am up in front of twenty or thirty sophomores or juniors, I have a narrow window of time to get them to buy into what I am selling.  Maybe it is a grammar skill that I need to convince them to learn.  Maybe a point of view I need them to consider about what we are reading.  I have to be enthusiastic, I have to teach the skill, I must be ready for the Q & A, I have to hold their attention for as long as it takes.  It is not option for them to not buy into the idea - there is a state test that will determine all our fates. Trickier than public speaking, I also am doing a little refereeing and crowd control, maybe real discipline. I might have to  move a child or make someone put away a phone. I might have to play counselor.  Maybe dispense a band aid to the child who discovers a cut while I am in the middle of verb tenses.   If I am lucky, I will only  be interrupted  twice by the intercom or a knock on the door. Don't forget, I have to hold their attention and sell the idea, which means I have to believe in my product.  It is fifty minutes of being on a stage with an audience that might argue and whine.  And most days, I love it.  Between classes, I will race to the bathroom or sort out some class sponsor thing or  run a paper to the office or answer a question about what we did yesterday  . . . until the bell rings again.  That's my cue to start class.

I always dread school starting and look forward to it at the same time.  Working with teenagers is this perplexing mix of exhaustion and rejuvenation.  All those new ideas, still some measure of innocence, new minds just waiting to be stretched.  I dread being "on" for six hours a day. Five days a week.  Every week. It purely wipes me out.  I think I physically wilt for a few minutes when the last kid walks out.  On the other hand, there is some magic that still happens in the give and take of being in a classroom.  And until this morning, I hadn't thought about how alike teaching and public speaking are.

The Summer of Run

Back in January, I bought my self a Fitbit.  I had bought one for Jack for Christmas and liked his so much that I felt the need for one as well. At first, I just tried to keep my step count up.  Then in mid February, I joined Weight Watchers online. I had gained a few pounds a year each year for the past four years and hit a point that just wasn't acceptable to me. I had really gained a lot in the past year when I quit exercising because of the shoulder trouble I had.   It was a wake up call, as if those clothes that I couldn't wear weren't calling loudly enough already. I know that the nearly 41 year old me does not have the energy, stamina, and metabolism to manage the goal weight I managed at 31, so I set some realistic goals.  I am fine with not being thin, but I do need to be healthy.  And I need to be able to fit in my clothes.  My immediate/ necessary goal was twelve pounds, with loftier amounts set as secondary goals.

So anyway, all spring I worked at getting a little more exercise and eating better.   Jack put up our old Bowflex that had been in storage.  I started walking on the road, trying to work in a few minutes of jogging during each mile.  I did well until the last month of school and lost about six pounds.  Things got hectic, there were going away dinners and banquets, and just too much stress and not enough me. I gained back some of my progress but swore that as soon as school was out, I would get serious about getting fit.

I will be honest - the first week that school was out, I did little more than sit in the recliner and read.  I just felt mentally wiped out, but since then I have made up for it.  I made it a point to wog (walk and jog) two miles a day and lift every other day.  I kept track of my WW points.  I bumped up to three miles a day.  Jack and I went to Red Coyote and got better running shoes and started the Couch to 5k training.  (Let me just say that  it was easy until week 4, which just sucked yesterday. ) There were plateaus, and I swear this whole thing has been so much "one step forward, two steps back" followed by a few steps forward all at once. Today, I finally hit the 12 pound down mark  after six months.  When I was 32, that only took six weeks, not six months. It is a sobering reminder of age, and I am sure I am due for another step back.

What really worries me is managing to keep this loss up or at least sustain it once school starts.  My routine has been to wake up around 5:30, and as soon as it is light enough to see the road, I am warming up.  Then on lift days, I manage to lift before the well house (where the Bowflex lives) gets hot.  I have been up by at least 6:00 every day but Sunday the entire summer.  Sunday is the day off. It is just too hot later in the day. When school starts, I  have to walk out the door at 7:30 in the morning, which means waiting for daylight and getting in a few miles every morning and still getting presentable afterwards will be impossible.  Each day, it gets light a little later.  Factor in a shower and hair wash and making sure the kid is ready and fed.     Ugh.  I suppose I will have to shift to evening runs, but until October, it will still be stifling until after dark.

I think this encroachment into my time of getting healthy is what I dread most about school.  Despite Jack's lack of job and the accompanying money worries, it has not been a bad summer.  I run, I garden, I pick berries, I have canned summer bounty.  I have snuck in afternoon naps with my husband, I have read and read and read, I have snuck in morning naps with my husband, I have worn only the amount of clothes I wanted to wear and not makeup at all.  We have actually worked pretty hard, with gardens and for the in-laws and on a bedroom remodel for Bell. There have been lots of days when I worked until I made myself ill and couldn't take another step.  And all of these things were part of physical health and mental health.  Each choice fulfilled a different need in me.  Working hard  and running hard and living in a pajama shirt   have  all felt like  really healthy choices.  It was my choice to get up before the sun came up and lace up those shoes and run.  Yes, my sides heaved and muscles and lungs complained.  And yes, I relished the quiet of a solitary run that let me listen and learn what a scissor tail's voice sounded like. Yes, I liked doing something just for me.  I am simply not ready to give up the summer of run.

Green Therapy

Right this moment, I am dreading school starting.  I am dreading the intrusion on my time, waking up early to work rather than to run, not losing track of hours as I muck about in the garden.  I dread the rushing and busy and noisy and  . . . Well, I just dread it.

This morning I woke up at six to run and lift and then spent my morning in the garden.  I need this green therapy.  When I am pruning plants and picking berries, I am not thinking about the actual problems with elderly, ill in-laws (as opposed to annoyances that I am shrugging off).  I am not worrying about what will happen with a job or lack of job for Jack. I am not fretting about Bell.  I just am.  I think about green - what I am going to grow in the fall, what is ripe or needs pruning, what I will cook with it, what Thoreau said about it. And then my mind is off on tangents - maybe I have fallen down a literary rabbit hole, maybe I am dreaming of what we can do if we are really a farm, maybe I am sailing through the islands with Jack and have left English in the dust of Oklahoma.  What ever it is, I am not worrying.

So what is it that I am growing?  The tomatoes are finally here, at least in amounts to satisfy my daily requirements. I am fighting something that I think is summer blight - maybe this copper fungicide will do the trick.  Some of the peppers are ready and the plants are loaded.  The Armenian cucumber has tiny babies that will be big in a week, but alas, I found squash bugs on the squash today.  I have picked four quarts of blackberries from my six tame plants and the same from the wild bushes on the lake.  Both plots still have red fruit so I will get a few more quarts in before it's over.  The blueberries are not doing so well - they are just existing and not really growing so we are looking into some changes for their care. The herbs - well, they just need an intervention - they are literally taking over.

I do grow pretty things as well. Jack and I looked at some wooden rectangular planters that were pricey, pricey so he built me his own version.  They line the back sidewalk and are over flowing with flowers - geraniums, impatiens, periwinkles, salvia, all manner of trailing vines.  In the front, mixed in with day lilies are giant zinnias, cactus zinnias, cosmos, amaranth, lantana, nasturtiums,  and pentas.  The dahlia bed is sharing space with butterfly weed and yarrow and unidentified things I dug up at my grandmother's.   Jack's passion fruit vine is covered in flowers that smell exotic and enticing, and he has seed trays full of tiny cacti and succulents,


I have a few more weeks of green therapy but August first is looming.  Positively looming.  Until it gets here, you will probably find me in the green things.