A Tale of Two Summers

YAY! Summer! Not. Summer is far and away my least favorite season, but this one promised Pure Promise: a new(ish) house, a trip to Jamaica, a trip to California, and TWO visits from our cadet! What could be better? Well, as it happens...

Good Summer: A new house! Well, new to us. Definitely not our dream house, but we have discovered that our dream house doesn't exist. At least not in our price range.

More Good Summer: A visit from the cadet! Having him safe at home in his own little bed is reason enough worth living for, all by itself. But having him at home to lend some friendly muscle to toting that barge and lifting that bale, What could top that?!

More Good Summer yet: Our first trip to Jamaica, and all expenses paid! Jamaica absolutely lived up to every expectation. Waterfalls, beaches, open-air restaurants, humorous road signs, flowers in cascades of rainbows, good weather~complete with a summer storm~and friendly natives. But as much as we liked the "Jamaica" stamp in our passport, nothing measures up to the "America" stamp at the end of the trail. Well, to be perfectly honest, there is no "America" stamp, only a disappointing electronic swipe. But if there were an "America" stamp, it would definitely be the best.

And this is when the Promise fell apart.

Bad Summer: One day after we arrived back in the Land of the Free, our cadet showed up for his second visit. That is always cause for celebration, and so far so good. But one day after his arrival, one of our darling daughters got sick. Fine one day, deathly sick the next, with not an instant of warning.

For her: emergency room visits, tests, scans, labs, appointments with doctors of every specialty. Threats of lupus, Crone's disease, cancer, leukemia, kidney infections, and who-knows-what other unnamed horrors.

For me: grandma-ing in spades. Breakfasts and lunches, laundries, beds, toys, you-name-it, for four little almost-motherless kidlets. Keeping two houses going is not for sissies, and only the bare minimum got done at either place. My house, four months later, still looks like we moved in yesterday.

Thank God that the other grandmother, who lives in the area was able and willing to do the afternoon shift. There went eight weeks. And finally, armed with a freezer full of ready-to-eat meals and an accommodating husband, darling daughter was able to hold her own. Nothing heroic yet, but at least essential functions. So it was time for California for me.

Good summer: California! Sorta. I am NOT a fan of California, but my mom lives there, and my brother, who lives in Japan, was coming for a visit, so that is worthwhile anyplace. It was a trip to remember, dusting off old memories, and making new ones. We were kids again, visiting the house we lived in, playing in the house where we used to visit our cousins half a century ago, doing some touristy things, meeting the new neighbors, enjoying the 107-degree record-breaking heat that we thought we had left at home. Oh, no, scratch that last one. It goes under Bad Summer.

Bad summer: My little mother's health is failing. She can no longer get around without the help of a cane or a walker. Her beloved garden and outside birds now take up far more time than they used to, but...in a way, time is what she has now. Some things she simply can do no more. She gave up driving, leaving her at the mercy of whomever will take the time to take her the few places she needs to go. I am sandwiched between the realization of the mortality of my daughter on one side and of my mother on the other side.

At last home again, home again, to things precariously balanced, but ok for the moment. Nothing good happened at home while I was gone. My house still looked like we moved in yesterday, and my paperwork was piled sky-high. Neither of those has shown any significant improvement. But nothing terribly bad happened, either, and though my darling daughter has had another small relapse or two, she is overall very much better, a fact for which we are very thankful, even though we still don't know what ails her.

Just to top off the bad-ness of the summer, shortly after I came home my internet went on strike. Two weeks later, I am still internet-less, on begged and borrowed computer time, and really, no relief on the horizon that I can see. Trivial in the big scheme of things, I know, but how frustrated do I want to be. Technology is wonderful. When it works, but, alas.... And now I am ashamed to even include this little irritation in my bad summer, because the hits just kept on coming.

More Bad Summer: Two days later we had word that our little 3-year-old friend died suddenly. Her grandmother and I were homeschooling moms together about a hundred years ago, when our children were young. A lot of things can happen in 25 years, and what happened was that our children grew up and became parents themselves. This little girl suffered some major injuries at birth, and her life was severely compromised. She was blind, and at the age of 3 still did not sit up or even hold her own head up. We always knew that "someday" this would happen, but we had no way to know that it would be as simple and sudden, and shocking, as a cold when she was visiting her other grandmother in Florida with her family. I am once again acutely confronted with mortality in a place you don't usually find it.

Yet more of a Bad Summer: My daughter's precious mother-in-law, so selfless and generous all summer long with her time and her resources, has been diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer. All the more unbelievable because she was perfectly fine until only five days before, but since then, every day she is visibly worse than the day before.

What could possibly measure up to a summer that set out to be so promising? Well, as it turned out, maybe nothing. Maybe nothing at all. Maybe what trumps everything is the uneventful, everyday, ordinary day.

The Thing About Moms...

...is that once you are the mom, you are never not the mom.

It doesn't matter that your kidlets are grown up:

• C is a competent, capable SAHM with four little kidlets of her own;
• While I once patrolled the halls at night checking on all the kidlets sleeping safely in their little beds, now S, a police officer, is on the prowl out there making the world safe for me to sleep in;
• D, mom of two, is halfway acroxx the country in Kansas of all places, making the most of what comes and the least of what goes;
  
• And halfway acroxx the country in another direction, M is becoming a soldier who will have my back on another front.

That's it. They're all grown up. They are adults. They are all responsible, contributing citizens. And they are still my kidlets. I am still the mom. They still check in. We communicate. We visit, we txt, we email, we fb, we im, we talk on the phone.

And it was while I wandered around the house last night, talking on my cordless phone to one of the dd's, that I had my latest epiphany: Phones may have become cordless, but mothers never will.

This? Or That?

Outside of the de rigeur academics and military science and sports, the life of a West Point cadet is full of opportunity. To name a few of the bigger deals in his one year there so far: M has gotten a New York state and a national EMT certification; he has traveled to Israel as a guest of the IDF; he has debated (and won!) against Harvard and Yale and others of their ilk. He has had occasion to shake the hand of the president (Bush, not N/Obama); and he has marched in the presidential inaugural parade (alas, N/Obama's). He has learned how to hack computers; he has driven a tank, coordinating a platoon (Is that the right military technology?) of tanks and hummers. He has even dislocated a jaw (his) and broken a nose (also his), courtesy of the evil boxing class required of all male West Point cadets.

This year is shaping up to be equally fascinating. He is on the debate team again, as well as MUN (Is that a team?), both of which offer the possibility of a trip to Oxford. As in England. And he is running for Class President. Nothing else occurs to me at the moment, but the year is young...

Well, a few days ago he called with a dilemma: "I could easily major in English," he said, "or history, IR, language, comp sci, or geography, or management, or philosophy. I would love to branch infantry, aviation, finance, transpo, MP, or JAG. I would love to skip the Army, be a SEAL, or work in the CIA, or be a stay-at-home dad, or a teacher, or a cop, but at some point it all has to narrow down..." :-( And that's the thing. You have to choose. Each is different from the others; none is necessarily better, or worse, than the rest. They can each be done well, or they can be done ill. But they can't be done all.

So this whole conversation, like too many other things I get involved in, got me to thinking. One can know a lot about a few things, or a little about a lot of things. One can be a master of one thing, or perhaps two, or even three, but one cannot be a master of them all.

And that whole line of thinking sent me off on another wonder: Once upon a time, people used to graduate from the 8th grade knowing pretty much everything there was to know. Now people go to 12th grade, college, masters, and beyond, and still don't know anything much. The more we learn, the less we know, because every time we find an answer, it opens up another ? or two, or three. AAAGGGHHHH!!!!!

Every time we say *yes* to something, we say *no* to something else. But, we have to say yes to something. Otherwise, we say yes to nothing.

Life is full of possibilities. At least it starts out that way. But "possibilities" is all most of them ever are, because . . . well . . . because there just isn't enough *us* to go around, and as things go along, things change. The changes are subtle, though, so much so that they generally go unnoticed, until one day....!!! Just like that!

All of a sudden, life is full of improbabilities.

The Proof Is In The Pudding

Is this an empty-nested world or what? I suppose technically so, since M left over a year ago, but what with the frequent presence of the Blue-Eyed Boy, and then having D and the two little girls living with us for a few months, it was easy to disabuse ourselves of the notion.

Well, the Blue-Eyed Boy has started school :-( so we do not see him as frequently as we used to; and D and the girls have long gone to Kansas, to be seen only on very special occasions. So "home alone" is now pretty much the norm around here.

Some things stubbornly remain the same: the grass still grows just as fast, dust collects just the same, the cars still need the same amount of washing. But other things relentlessly emphasize the empty nest:

• There is no more sleeping with one eye open waiting for the squeak of the door that announces the last kidlet's return home for the night;
• Laundry, once done at the rate of 2-3 loads every day, is now done 2-3x a week;
• Cooking has dropped from 2+ times a day down to once every day or two;
• Even dishwashing, the once-upon-a-time, 3x-a-day dreaded chore now happens maybe once a day.

But the other day something happened that well and truly struck home, reinforcing once-and-for-all, that the empty nest is official. It was a simple thing, really, as turning points often are, recognizable only in retrospect. It happened like this:

The other day, somewhat desperately wondering "What's for dinner?" I decided to make an omelet. My mother taught me growing up to keep two dozen eggs on duty at all times, and this I have done faithfully for the last 30+ years, though over the past year, it has pretty much gone to one dozen. Well, this particular evening, I reached for the one lonely dozen in the refrigerator only to notice the *expiration date* of August 6th. Hm... only three weeks out of date.

And that's when it hit me: We not only don't need two dozen eggs on hand, one dozen is even too much. I have always pitied those blue-haired little old ladies in the grocery store buying their little six-packs of eggs to stock their little kitchens. And now . . . NOOOOOOO . . . I am just like them!!!! Well, not quite. I don't have blue hair. But other than that . . . I am, sadly, too much like one of them.

Eggs . . . or the lack thereof . . . an apt measure, indeed, of an empty nest.

Another Good Day

I was all set for a night of tossing and turning, but surprisingly enough, I slept soundly last night after propping my foot up on a pillow. My ankle hurt quite alot, enough for even me to consider the ER, but the specter of BB1's recent marathon in that pestilential hellhole reinforced my natural inclination to allow my fearfully-and-wonderfully-made body the opportunity to heal itself. So I had gone to bed last night, barely entertaining the possibility that I might make a trip to the ER this morning, and I was ready to get ready when my Man got up dark and early to head to work. Imagine my everlasting amazement when I got out of bed and did not crash to the floor on my bad ankle!

It was still sore and painful, and I couldn't really walk, but, no swelling or bruising, and compared to crawling around last night, it was a miraculous recovery indeed. I was positively giddy that we had elected to stay home, saving ourselves probably $500 and getting a restful night in the bargain.

Today I am profoundly excited about being able to get around all by myself. I don't remember ever feeling pain like I felt yesterday, and I have never been so invalidated.

"Would you get me a drink?" "Would you climb up in the closet and dig out the Epsom salts?" "Would you reach my nightgown off the hook?" "Would you warm up that leftover soup for dinner?" "Would you lock the door, close the window, answer the phone, turn on the light, bring my book, fill in the blank?" It disturbs me mightily to be waited on at all, never mind so completely.

I am a good patient, if you consider my outward behavior. I demand nothing, and I ask, ever apologetically, only what I absolutely cannot manage on my own. I have certainly waited on endless multitudes in my day, so why does it bother me so much to be on the other end? I have never understood people who enjoy being the center of every attention, but I believe there's something here on a deeper level. True confession time: as much as I hate to say it, I think there is an issue of pride at work. In my case, anyway. There is something humbling about being at the mercy of someone else...something God is still having to try to teach me. Poor Guy.

So, am I ready to take the lesson...? I want to. I would hope so. My head gets it. But, alas, I know me. My spirit is basically rebellious and independent. Rebellion and independence...Good servants. Bad masters.

I still can't actually walk. There's a whole lotta limping and hobbling going on, but I am ever so thankful that today I can do whatever I want/need, even if it takes me a little bit longer. It is, as they say today, "all good." It really is!

Today

M has been home for a week today. Well, sorta. Last night, and the night before, he spent at C's, so it was like the old folks' home here once again. Well, it would have been had not M's friend, Ko, dropped in with Oreo cookies and Blue Bell ice cream. The night before that he spent at Ko's, and tonight S is on the schedule.

A short trip to visit Little Granny in the nursing home in Kerrville is on the agenda today. I may or may not go with him, depending on if he gets a better offer. I will be perfectly happy to go with him. And I will be perfectly happy to stay home.

D and the little girls will be here from Kansas this weekend, just to be sure they get a glimpse of M before he is off to Israel on his first step into the world of International Travel; Monday the plan is for a mini family reunion/group birthday party. There just isn't enough M to go around, and we have to share.

Now the early morning sun is coming up. The windows are open, the birds are singing, and my Man is off to work. Summer is coming on, with the same dreadful anticipation as always, but right now...it's the perfect springtime day in central Texas.

Kinds of People

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way." ~C. S. Lewis

I hope someday to be one of the former; I have certainly had more than enough opportunity, but I fear I am probably still too much one of the latter. A myriad of situations and circumstances have surfaced around here lately, a great many of them not at all to my liking, and what to do?

One thing I can always do, and sometimes the only thing I can do, is to pray. Prayer calls on the Lord, the only One ultimately, Who can do anything about, well...anything. It might be my most under-rated resource, calling on trust and faith to take the place of worrying. That is hard. But there is only so much I can do, and I suppose that it would behoove me to stick to that and leave the worrying to God. But often that is hard, too.

So...Which one am I? I wish I knew...

The End of an Era

Provided, of course, that they pass, the plebes at West Point had their last class as plebes today. Tomorrow begin the TEE's, "Term End Exams" by the Army's fondness for acronyms, commonly known in the civilian world as "finals." And just like that, M and his classmates will be through 1/4 of their career as West Point cadets.

Impossible! Well, it sure seems that way. It is the tritest and tiredest of cliches to say that time flies, but, as cliches are wont to be, oh, how true. Actually, if there were something faster than flying, that is what time would do...At least from my point of view. M suggests that the year went a lot faster for me than it did for him. ;-)

I've been remembering and reminiscing with myself about this time last year. The countdown chain, which once draped around three sides of the room and ended in a puddle of colored paper links on the floor in the corner, was down to barely stretching along one wall, and we were frantically trying to keep up.

Admission papers, medical forms, shot records, parking passes, reporting instructions, bus schedules, packing lists, hotel reservations, plane tickets, rental car information, google maps, snacks for the airplane, a ride to the airport.... Did I forget anything? Maybe not, because everything went smoothly. Well, there were a few quirks and glitches along the way, but overall the trip was uneventful, and when it was over, we were all present and accounted for.

I remember, and thank God for, the hot and heavy e-traffic on the candidate-net where the newbie parents were huddled together in a fog, and friendly moderators had the answer to every question. Now we are seasoned veterans of a year of plebe-net, where a whole day can actually go by without an emergency or even an inquiry or comment.

So now it's someone else's turn. Right now, there are approximately 1,300 cadet candidates all over the country stressing out about things that we are now taking in stride. And if there are that many cadet candidates out there, there are twice that many parents ~ and more, in this age of step families when pairents no longer necessarily come in pairs ~ freaking out about turning their children over to Uncle Sam and their own personal Trail of Tears that will follow.

By this time, all of us, plebes and parents, have come to terms with some of the basic changes in our lives. We have become resigned to the fact that USMA now has first claim on them. Our plebes remain our kidlets, but we have been relieved of responsibility and authority. Oddly, I have a bittersweet feeling about the whole thing.

The bitter part is easy: no more M coming home every night; he will still come to visit, but the time of him actually living at home is getting shorter and shorter. Already his shouldabeen three-week leave of this summer has been abbreviated to four days, and we wouldn't even have that if not for the kindness and generosity of an airline employee who graciously offered M a buddy pass for the trip home.

The sweet part is harder. What is there that's sweet about the end of our family life? Well...mainly that it is as it should be. No matter that we might not like or want it, there is rightness in kidlets growing up and leaving home. This past year, we have all learned a lot about ourselves and about each other. And of course, memories.

After next week, M and the Class of 2012 will be rising yuks, going on to bigger things, and the misery of Beast Barracks will fall to the hapless candidates of 2013. So here's a toast to the end of plebedom, with a hope and a prayer for the new yuks. ;-) Only 36 months to go!

What a difference a year makes.

Back to Business

The world conspires to keep me running ragged with NOTHING to show for it. My life has been deadline-driven for the last...how long...with the next/last one coming right up: TEA Party Day. Am I ready? I am not. The dining room is overrun with piles of papers and receipts and calendars, planners, work orders, and proposals. I am feverishly trying to sort it all out before the taxman cometh. Hmmm...exactly one week to go, and things don't look promising.

I miss writing, but my brain is too full to think. All sorts of things are running around in it. So many that I can barely sort them out. So I don't. Instead, I escape. You know what they say ~ When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Well, I'm going as fast as I can! Not that it's getting me anywhere.

Facebook is always good for an easy escape. Lots of fun and not much thinking required. AGH! How I look down on those lessers forever in escape mode. Now I am one of them. :-/ Well...what goes around comes around, and the time has come.

It's officially late and getting later by the minute. It might even be tomorrow.

So. Back to business? I hope so, soon. Right after garden club, a tax day TEA party, politics as usual, Dave Ramsey's Town Hall for Hope, helping C and De move their household, the annual Cherokee fish fry... Yep, by next month I should be able to start minding my own business. Unless, of course, someone/thing else is lying in wait.

Stay tuned.

Profound Statements

1. In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress.

-- John Adams


2. If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.

-- Mark Twain

3. Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself.

-- Mark Twain

4. I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle ..

-- Winston Churchill

5. A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

-- George Bernard Shaw

6. A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.

-- G. Gordon Liddy

7. Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

-- James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)

8. Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.

-- Douglas Casey, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University

9. Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

-- P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian

10. Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

-- Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850)

11. Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

-- Ronald Reagan (1986)

12. I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

-- Will Rogers

13. If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free!

-- P.J. O'Rourke

14. In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.

-- Voltaire (1764)

15. Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you!

-- Pericles (430 B.C.)

16. No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.

-- Mark Twain (1866)

17. Talk is cheap...except when Congress does it.

-- Anonymous

18. The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.

-- Ronald Reagan

19. The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.

-- Winston Churchill

20. The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.

-- Mark Twain

21. The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.

-- Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

22. There is no distinctly native American criminal class...save Congress.

-- Mark Twain

23. What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.

-- Edward Langley, Artist (1928-1995)

24. A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.

-- Thomas Jefferson

A Juneuary Day, Sausage and Vegetable Linguini, and Good Cookies

I love those few-and-far-between stay-at-home days. They are oh-so-rare in the busy running of a life with no margin...!

We have been in winter's icy hand the last week or so...well, the Texas version, anyway...but today it took a break and we had a perfect spring day. June in January. It was a bit windy, no big deal for this Azore-raised girl, and a generally lovely day, even if one's tastes run to autumn.

D is here, along with the little girls, which always makes the most mundane the most exciting, as in "By myself it I would manage to get this done in 30 minutes, but with your help I can do it in three hours!" Cooking for instance. We did a lot of it today, crockpots, stovetop, and oven, all of which kept the kitchen nice and warm. A little too warm at times for this Juneuary day.
~~~~~~~
For lunch we had one of our all-time favorites, Sausage and Vegetable Linguini:

l lb. sausage, sliced
5 bell peppers, cut into strips
1 3-oz can of black olives, sliced
1 small bag of frozen peas
4-5 carrots, peeled and sliced
1 8-oz pkg linguini
1 c. Italian salad dressing
pinch of garlic
pinch of oregano

Cook pasta in one pot. In another pan saute sausage and veggies. Mix everything together. Serve hot or cold.

That's how the recipe reads. As usual, we change whatever we want. Fewer bell peppers, leave out the peas, more olives, spaghetti instead of linguini (are they really any different?!), whatever looks right that day.

Plain and simple, and GOOD! Eat it now, eat it later, hot, cold, part of a meal, or all by itself...YUM-YES!!!
~~~~~
And a recipe from my sorely missed bff Jo, Good Cookies:

2 chocolate cake mixes
1 brownie mix
3 eggs
3/4 c. oil
3/4 c. water
lots of options: chocolate chips, peppermint chips, crushed peppermint candy...

Mix everything together. This will be STIFF! You may want to get the he-man in your life to stir it up for you. Drop on the cookie sheet and bake at 350 till done (you're on your own for how long). You can refrigerate or freeze some of the dough for later, or, if you are cooking for the Army, as we were today, go ahead and cook the whole thing.

This isn't exactly a healthy recipe, but it makes a TON, and they are tasty, if you don't eat too many. You will have enough to pack up a box for the cadets at West Point, take to the neighbors, share with a friend, and still have some left for the little girls to smear all over their faces (and possibly other places). Nothing shabby about that!

Brain Overflow

• If they scheme with you, they will scheme against you.
• Forget what's right. People only care about what is convenient at the time, or whatever gets something for them.
• I love America. I love that America was conceived by godly men.
• I still believe in the "Silent Majority."
• Lose the "get out the vote" mentality. If people aren't motivated enough to inform themselves and vote on their own, they don't deserve to vote. And they certainly don't deserve the right to mess up my life, because:
  
• Airheads are easily enticed by lies and false promises, and:
• Forget the heck out of tomorrow; shallow minds can't even see past the moment.
• Colleges in general are bastions of liberal non-thinking.
• TANSTAAFL.
• It is the "young voters" the media is always catering to that are out of touch with reality, especially the ones of today who have grown up in lala land with the idea that life should be "fair." As if it could.
• The governments are ordained by God, not necessarily for our comfort.
  
• And how is it that the ignorant are so cocksure about everything, while the intelligent are full of doubts?

Faith keeps a close eye on the facts, and it is time to put our faith to practice.

Fresh October

Fresh October brings the pheasant;
Then to gather nuts is pleasant.

I remember this poem by Sara Coleridge not from my childhood, but from my kidlets' childhood/s. It was in a book of nursery rhymes that I read all the way through. Many, many, many times. In fact, with a 13-year difference between my first child and my last, I was probably reading the book continually for, oh...18 years or so.

Anyway, this poem is a winner! It goes through every month of the year and evokes all sorts of memories, or at least imaginings, of living with nature in the seasons ~ my favorite way to live ;-)

Oh-so-sadly, that book was one of the casualties of the floods last year, so the poem was only in my head. I couldn't quite remember every detail, and it finally occurred to me to google it last night. I found many listings for it, but alas, every one of them said "Brown October..." Brown October? I could have sworn it was "Fresh October," but page after page came up brown. Am I going crazy/er? Or is it another case of the reality not measuring up to the memory?

This morning I had an epiphany to google by the October verse instead of the January verse, which is what I did last night, and whaddya know... Right there it was: "Fresh October." Vindication!!!

It happens that brown is one of my favorite colors, but for October, for Fall, I much prefer "Fresh!"

Once You're the Mom...

..you're never not the mom. You sign up for life, to have your heart taken out, trodden on and broken by the very objects of your heart's affection. I was reminded of this once more last night when I got an unexpected phone call from S while cooking dinner:

"Mom, I'm ok. I don't know if it will be on the news tonight, but just in case, I thought I'd call and let you know before you see it there." And then he proceeded with the story of the woman who turned left in front of him and HIT him. I asked him if she stopped, and he said, "Yeah, my motorcycle was under her car." AAAGGGGHHH!!!!

Questions, questions, questions... "ARE YOU OK?" "Where are you now?" "What happened???" "Why did she hit you?" "Did she get a ticket?"

Answers... "My back hurts," "I'm at work writing up the report, going to go home after this," "She didn't see me," "She didn't want to be leftover," "Yeah, they gave her a bunch of tickets."

So.

• He has a three-day weekend to recover and get right back out there on that motorcycle, which he loves, and the rest of us aren't so crazy about. Men and their toys...

• It's gotta stink that you have to write up your own accident report, but actually maybe we should just be thankful that he can, and at least he gets to go home early.

• I just bet she didn't see him. People that see motorcycle cops generally slow waaaay down below the speed limit, guilty consciences hard at work.

• Yellow light accelerators never want to be leftover (All sorts of troubles come up when yellow light accelerators meet green light anticipators.).

• And about those tickets...well, lady, sorry about your luck.

You might think that once they grew up and out of your house, they might grow out of your heart as well, but let me disabuse you of that notion. It isn't bad enough that they go and join the police force. Nope, then they have to join the motorcycle brigade. But you have to "let" them, because if you don't, they will do it anyway.

And your heart...well, tuck it back in and hope for the best. It's all we can do when all we really want is to give our kidlets roots, but we have to give them wings.

And it is especially bad when Kid's dream = Mom's nightmare.

Almost Autumn

Summer doesn't fool me. I know it'll stick around waaaay past time for it to go, like a naughty kid that will do anything to stall around and postpone bedtime just a l-i-t-t-l-e bit longer. But, sooner or later, the inevitable always happens and it will have to go. I can wait. Having survived another round of summer's worst, I can afford to be a gracious winner.

Now, blessed with the ever-so-faintest hint of cool autumn ahead in the air, I may actually sleep under the covers tonight. Well, at least under the sheet...

YES!!!! It is Almost Autumn...and I am ready!

See You in September!

August is breathing its very last. The hottest, awful-lest part of the year is past, and the very best is at hand.

September! September has everything to recommend it. It's the month of my birthday, so there is that. But even better: it's the month that begins FALL! My hands-down, no-contest, totally favorite time of the year, fall is as good as it ever gets. Nothing else even comes close. Well, Heaven maybe, but still.

I love the crisp snap in the air, the blue, blue sky, the smell of wood smoke, crinkly leaves crackling underfoot, the colors of the leaves. Even in Texas. But fall isn't only a feast for the physical senses. It is a gala for the emotions.

Fall makes me homesick for someplace I have never been. It is the time of harvest and plenty. The intense work of the year is finished, and now it's time to slow down and savor. Fall is the time to gather in and reflect and take stock. It is the hint and the promise of home-centered life to come, when the world takes a break . . . or so it was before we determined to change the order of nature with our techno-superiority. Aaaahh....to live by the seasons....

There is still plenty of summer to come in this part of the world, and I wouldn't even mention it, except, well...I am as always, ecstatic that the calendar of summer is joining history. Its days are numbered, even in Texas, and it will eventually have to cede to the better season...

Autumn...absolutely worth living for.

The Empty-Nested Truth

Just in case I don't have time to read the whole newspaper, I make sure to read my favorite page first.... the comics. And one of my favorite comics ~ often funny, often poignant ~ is Arlo and Janis.

In case you don't know Arlo and Janis, they are a couple whose son, Gene, grew up, as kidlets are wont to do, right before our eyes. Last year Gene went off to college, and like all good kidlets, came home for the summer. Well, summer vacation is over, and it's time for Gene to go back to college, prompting this from Arlo:

"I thought when Gene went away to school, we'd get our lives back. In reality, those lives, those people, were long gone. If anything, we got our lives back when he came home this summer."

And that is the truth. Looks like I'm never gonna get my life back.

Simple/Things

I love things. Big things, little things, novel things, obscure things, old things, new things, borrowed things, blue things...I loved them all. And somewhere in my muddled mind, "loving" equated with "having," until the day I was enlightened in a little backwater town in nowhere Texas.

We don't ordinarily stop when passing through these little towns unless we need gas, but whyever, this quaint little antique "General Store" caught our attention enough and we actually went in, only to be instantly overwhelmed with treasure upon treasure. This one and that one and the one over there~beautiful, perfectly splendid things.

Just look at this one here! If only I could have this thing, I could, I would... and here dawned the epiphany: I could and would have to pay for it, cram it into the overloaded car or arrange (and pay) to have it delivered, find a place to put it in the house, dust it, polish it, pay to insure it, move it to clean around/under, keep the kidlets away from it... Losing its luster by the minute...

Do I really want to have this thing? Do I really want this thing to have me? Nope. Not so much. We walked around the store a bit longer, greatly enjoying every little thing, and then we left. Unburdened. My life and my thinking changed in the moment when I realized that I can thoroughly enjoy a thing without having the responsibility of owning it.

Now, many years later, I still love things. Only now...I love them freely.

Solar Eclipse

There is something Not. Quite. Right. about watching a total solar eclipse in the total dark of night.

In another world, I would have had accomplices, willing or unwilling, but in the empty-nested world of today, I was on my own, at 5:30 am, with a small group of people stumbling our way through the dark into the planetarium where we were gathering to witness a total eclipse of the sun. In China. Well, it was this "morning" here. I don't know what day it was over there.

Just inside the door we came upon a table laden with donuts and coffee. A very nice surprise, which I virtuously passed up on my way into the auditorium where things were already underway. The live feed from some obscure plain in China, hosted by a leftover hippie with a long pony tail hanging halfway down his back, featured a Who's Who of helio-science guys holding forth on sunspots and solar activity, totality and prominences and coronas along with other solar mysteries in a(n) heroic effort to educate the Man in the Auditorium enough to view the upcoming spectacle with some modicum of intelligence. It seems that a total solar eclipse occurs in any given place only once every 325 years (Can that be right?), but this part of the country lags woefully behind, our last total solar eclipse having occurred back in 1500-something.

While waiting for the moon to make its move, the Head Hippie enthusiastically described the scene: as far as the eye could see, hordes of people clustered around telescopes all over the plain, a "chill" descending as the temperature began to drop ~ all the way down to 90 degrees! And then, clouds rolled in to cover up the sun....

AAAAGGGGHHHHHH!!!! The story of my life! I can't even begin to know the times over the last many years I dragged my kidlets out of bed or kept them up half the night to witness some wonder of astronomical events, only to have the clouds take over. Comets, eclipses, meteor showers, and the very top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art technology...clouds trump them all. Even all the way over in China, there's no escape.

Anyway. The Hippie called on a helio-guy to entertain the crowd. I'm not sure exactly what kind of connections he had, but he stepped up and said, "I think the clouds will start to clear up in about 30 seconds," and just like that, with a monumental cheer from the crowd, they did! Just in time, too. The clouds stood aside, the moon took center stage to obliterate the sun, and the sky went dark. For the next 11 minutes, it was nighttime in midday China, complete with a 360-degree sunset.

We sat mesmerized for the duration, and then it was time to take on the day. As we filed out of the auditorium, we were invited once again to a breakfast of coffee and donuts and given a couple of reminders:

• If you have a parking ticket when you get out to your car, bring it to the desk and we will take care of it. A parking ticket?! Oh, yeah, I forgot. This is CTC where "Off'cer ____, CTC P'lice D'prtment" is relentlessly on duty and never passes up an opportunity to exert his authority.
• Next total solar eclipse coming up on April 8, 2024, right here along the 190 corridor!!!!
  

The next wave of helio-watchers will be here from the world over to study and take notes, so I'm marking my calendar. I still have time to buy up some land to rent out for telescopes and tents and porta-potties, and maybe, just maybe, the clouds will stay home that day.

See you here!!!

Contentment

Are we somehow something less than we should be if we like our lives the way they are? It certainly seems that way, according to the general consensus, but not according to the apostle Paul, who learned to be content "whatever state he was in." Is there some kind of universal standard for contentment? One might think so, based on how many people are dissatisfied with lives that aren't even their own.

Last night as I talked to my friend, she commented on how content she was with her imperfect life, yet how unhappy her mother was with it, and we wondered...Why should her mother care about all the quirks and glitches in her life if she was happy with it herself? Does contentment make her some kind of underachiever? Not ambitious enough? Not that she is problem-free, but contentment, cliche as it may be, is a choice, and perhaps it is more an indicator of maturity than of ambition or the lack thereof.

My friend is happy in her home. She is happy in her life as a wife and a mother and a grandmother. A gardener and a crafter, a teacher of her children, a hospitable friend. And what might be better contentment than family life at home?