So What's Next?

Emma and her great-grandfather met for the first time a couple of weeks ago and it was a great moment for both of them. Her great-grandpa’s face registered pure joy as he held her on his lap and touched her tiny fingers.

Wiggly tongues made them both laugh!

She returned a sweet smile as her unblinking wide eyes gazed at his face as if she were searching for some deep connection.  It is a curious way she greets new people.   It makes me wonder just what a 5 month old brain is capable of thinking….

They are lucky to have had this encounter and I hope she has the opportunity to know him as she grows up.  I knew my great-grandmother until she died at the age of 96 when I was 12 years old.

I remember being in awe of someone who had grown up in a time of horses and carriages, ice boxes and crank telephones that connected to the Operator.  She lived just a short block away and I would visit often once I was able to make the trip alone.

I would sit by her side and softly touch the incredibly thin, pliable skin on the back of her hand.  It would stand up for a few seconds if you pinched it gently and every vein could be seen through its transparency.

When the news of the first manned space trip to the moon was announced she gave into the 20^th century and asked for a TV set so she could see the event.  At 12, I shared her wonder at the sight of Neil Armstrong’s booted foot stepping onto the moon’s cratered surface.

Seeing that event through her unbelieving eyes helped me appreciate it more.  That was an image that challenged both our imaginations.

I don’t know that Emma will be able to know her great-grandparent as long so I am recording many of his stories and videotaping bits of his life for all my grandchildren to share.

Through that process I’ve realized that a big part of our job as parents and grandparents is to give our kids and grandkids an understanding of what has come before.  My own children grew up far away from our families and never had the opportunity to know either of their grandmothers.    They don’t have the same sense of family background and foundation that I do.

The most wonderful part of these last three summers with my Dad has been the chance to listen to many, many stories of life in the mid 1900’s, to hear about the accomplishments and failures of my ancestors and to gain an understanding of who I am and why I have the traits and talents that I do.

My next winter-time project will be to gather the pictures and stories of our family in one place.   A friend recently showed me an IPhoto book he created in honor of his father that is a perfect way to create a permanent record that future generations will value.  He intermingled short text boxes of family information and stories with a collection of photos he solicited from siblings and cousins.

The templates to create a hard-covered coffee-table type book like his are available from Apple for Mac users and also sites such as Kodak Gallery for PC folks.

Or you can visit a local craft shop to hop on the scrapbooking craze and create an artistic keepsake for your family.   There are classes to help the less artistic folks and an amazing variety of “stuff” (I can’t describe it any other way) to create pages.  Once completed, you could photograph the pages to have a digital image of your history also.

“Oh, that’s what I’m looking for!” the voice said.  Although we were in front of a rack full of shoes on sale for the holiday, the woman speaking was pointing down at the shoes I was wearing.  I laughed and agreed that I love my NAOT sandals and actually own two pairs of the same shoe in different colors.

Turns out we both have long, very skinny feet with no instep and agreed on how hard it is to find sandals  that:

a) fit comfortably,     b) stay on,   c) look good (shoes are so ugly now!) and  d) last forever.  (I’ve re-soled mine.)

I told her where she could find them as her friend joined us. Their names were Ruth Ann and Gina and I don’t remember how the next bit of the conversation went, but we discovered that two of us are doing some sewing again.  After she gave me a tip for where to buy patterns at a discount, I told her about a new fabric shop I had found in the area.

That led to the discovery that we all live 5 miles apart even though we were about 25 miles away from home.   It was an easy, comfortable conversation and we were laughing it up and just enjoying ourselves and I noticed other women nearby listening in, smiling and nodding. Continue Reading »

Wow – It is soooooo easy to check out of life and just do nothing!  It quickly becomes a whole new set of habits that are not necessarily good.

On the last day of April, I boarded a plane to Nashville to visit with old friends and attend a wedding.  It was the first trip back to my old stomping grounds in two years and I was excited.

As I finished going through security I tucked my thin, black travel wallet into my jacket pocket instead of putting it back into my purse which was inside my briefcase for it’s ride through the scanner. (This whole thing is TSA’s fault !)

The flight was on time and I enjoyed conversation with the two other “mature” women on either side of me.  We landed a little early; I collected my bag and went outside to meet my friend Kathleen.  As I waited for her to arrive from the cell phone lot, I thought about my wallet and went to put it away properly.

You know what’s coming…..I put my hand in the jacket pocket and found it empty.  My instinct was absolutely positive that it had slipped out of the slash-type pocket on the plane and fallen between the two seats.  As K pulled up to the curb, I told her to take my suitcase and go around again while I ran back to the gate.

I twirled around quickly and as I stepped off the curb I felt a POP in my right knee and almost fell to the ground in pain.  One side of my brain screamed “OMG I’ve broken something”  while the other insisted that I had to “go get the wallet” so I hopped back into the terminal trying to ignore the injury.

Fortunately, the Southwest lost baggage office was right inside the door, so I ducked in there and asked the attendant to call up to Gate 4 to see if they had found my wallet.   They said no, but I insisted that it was just a small credit card case and that it was probably lodged between the seats.

She ordered me to sit down and took off running up the escalator and returned less than 10 minutes later with my wallet in hand.  With the kind of human warmth that only Southerners can emote, she grinned and said, “Honey, I had to crawl on my belly to get this out from under the seats!”    We exchanged one of those good old Nashville hugs and she helped me limp out to the car.

K and I ate lunch at a favorite neighborhood haunt and then I had to admit that I needed medical attention so we drove to the ER.  Four hours later I had a stabilizing splint on my right leg, a prescription for Percoset and a suspicion that I might not make it to the wedding which was 40 miles away the next afternoon.

As it turned out, that was the weekend of the horrendous rains and flooding in Nashville and none of us went anywhere (although the bride and groom did get married!)   I spent the next three days on the couch watching one disaster after another occur in Middle Tennessee .  The rainstorms and tornados wouldn’t let up for two entire days.

My heart broke along with everyone else’s as we watched Mother Nature remind us that she holds all the cards after all.    My hurt knee was a minor injury compared to thousands of people losing their homes and the billions of dollars of damage to almost all of the major Nashville icons.

Thanks to the wonderful inefficiency of our medical system, it took 10 more days to determine that I had torn the cartilage in my knee, and two full weeks after the incident I had arthroscopic surgery to repair it.

Meanwhile I was becoming quite content to sit or lay around the house.  I’ve never had an injury that forced me into almost a month of inactivity – it’s really easy to sink into a state of do-nothingness!   I couldn’t sit at my desk and when I tried to type on my laptop on top of the splint it wobbled and made my leg hurt.

The voice in my head said, “ hey, this is a great excuse to not work!”  I actually started two of these blog posts but never got around to finishing them.  I just checked out of my work life even though one of the advantages of my self-employed work is that I didn’t have to.

So now I’m trying to get back into my old routine but it’s really hard.  I quickly got used to reading fun fiction and listening to NPR talk shows all day not to mention having other people do the grocery shopping and put great food in front of me!

Although I think it’s good for us to take a break occasionally, it’s also a little scary to realize just how fast life can change and in my case, how easily I mastered the art of laziness.

That’s the first line of advice from Diana Trout in her wonderful book called Journal Spilling.   I bought it a couple of weeks back out of curiosity about this whole process of  Art Journaling that everyone’s buzzing about.  I just mentioned it in my latest newsletter, but I want to explain it more and show you the picture of my first one.

I believe in the power of journaling.  I’ve done it many times especially when things were not going well in my life and I needed to vent my bad feelings, anger or confusion to someone who wouldn’t talk back.   That’s part of the beauty of the process – you can say whatever comes into your mind.  No grammar or spelling rules and no illusions of literary value.

But for many people, writing in a journal feels risky.   What if someone else finds it?   What do you do with them 5 years later after the crisis has passed?

The process of art journaling can be an answer.  Besides just being fun to do, it allows you to write in a way that is still valuable to you but that no one else will be able to decipher. Continue Reading »