I love this blof post…I find myself in similiar situations…how many times have I projected my own frustration with myself onto others, usually at the expense of an innocent object? And then ya gotta own it!!!
So here is to all the innocent objects, the husband who gets the lickin’ and then to the realization that it is me again…have a smile at this honest dialog….T
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true love shows up everywhere.
Today I celebrate 22 years of marriage to The Man of My Dreams. Yes, my friend Elizabeth coined that phrase when I was dating him. I happily adopted it using it at first as a fun phrase to replace the worn out “boyfriend” or later “husband” when introducing him to friends. It stuck and through the hills and valleys and fog and thunderstorms of our lives together it remains the root of my feelings for him.
All true love has great ups and downs and in-betweens. Ours is no different. We’ve held each other through so much. He has loved my sons as his own. And we all held onto love as our daughter decided to emerge into the world 6 weeks early. We moved into our new home and merged as a family. Our youngest joined us 13 months later. Perfect.
Our life was baseball and herb gardens and swimming and school. New friends, coffee talks and walking. Block parties, puppies and birthday parties. Annual honeymoon trips to San Francisco, Monterey, and North Lake Tahoe and frequent “special dinners”, and hot dates kept passion and love growing solidly between us. We walked with friends going through cancer, saw others transferred out of town and one more health challenge for me. We were happily riding the rhythms of life.
In 1992, while having a skier’s breakfast at a café on the shore of North Lake Tahoe, (I was eating something new to me…muesli. YUM!) we sat watching big, fat flakes of snow float down from the sky.
Jim said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could wake up to this every day?”
Well of course I said yes…so the journey to a land of four seasons began. A year and a half later, we had sold our house and moved across the country to Montana. The world opened wide for all of us. New beginnings. Self employment, adapting to new lifestyle, finding new community and enjoying living where vacation is right out the front door. One year for our anniversary, Jim booked a private cabin on the overnight train to Seattle; we spent the day there and enjoyed another long train ride home. So romantic.
For our tenth anniversary, we invited our community of friends together around us in celebration of true love. I surprised Jim with bagpipes playing as I walked to meet him at the altar. We asked our friends to write their thoughts of love on handmade papers that I still read today. Knowing the children were in the loving capable care of dear friends, we hopped a train to Seattle, then a plane to Victoria for a long weekend. Romantic, wonderful, magical. More in love than ever.
The years since then have been full, too full sometimes, wrought with hard decisions, heart wrenching goodbyes and new opportunities. Landing in the Midwest nine years ago was a major hiccup for me. Jim has stayed the course through the laundry list of transitions since our arrival here. One never knows when looking back how things might have been. What if we could have stayed in Montana? I believe that our journeys stretch before us and we get to choose the turns and tools and transportation that take us to the destination. Like in the movie, Sliding Doors, the parallel journeys were completely different, and the destination was the same. We have had many moments we could stand and look and say, wow, we would have been right here anyway! And this journey was so much more fun!
Five years ago on our anniversary, we were climbing the waves of rocks in Zion National Park. Five days in the wilderness together completely out of life as usual gave us the needed time to renew and reconnect. Little did we know that the perfect storm was brewing, one that would test every level of our relationship.
Six weeks later we were waltzing with cancer. Diagnosis, research, decisions, how do we tell the kids? An amazing amount of support came forth from our community here and afar. Cancer was like a rough fingernail snagging the fabric of our relationship. Threads pulled up to be tied off, rewoven or cut out altogether. It was not pretty sometimes. And other times it was so tender, so strong, a tendril that lead us through the darkest of times and inspired celebration at the mileposts.
That August Jim took the children to visit his family in Houston. At that time I was having weekly chemo, so I stayed home. On the anniversary of the day we met, I lay hooked to my I. V. tree missing him. Down in Houston, with camera in hand, he drove all over the city to take photos of the place we met, our old house, and places we had fun. When they got home, he gifted me with a beautiful story book of photos and memories of our early years together. This beautiful creation touched me so. It added another thread to the underlying web of strength holding fast the tapestry of our relationship.
We worked through the depths of that year with help and love and dedication. Some shadows still linger. Part of true love is walking in the shadows together, having the courage to find the light, shining it brightly to reveal a new level of relationship. Five years out, we celebrate wellness.
We are in our house for one year this anniversary. And it brings the reality of empty nesting home to roost. We have seen four wonderful children blossom into fantastic adults. My wish for them is to follow their hearts, to do what they love and be happy, to think outside the box and trust their inner guidance, and to learn from the lessons of their parents. I am so proud of each of them and I miss them so much! I ask myself, what traditions do we cultivate to keep our family connected?
Is an empty nest really empty? I think I would rather call it a LOVE NEST. Empty nest sounds devoid of joy and purpose. This phase of life brings lots of new emotions and new energy to play with. We get to create a new life together. We have never been a couple without children. So what does that look like for us? Where will this path lead? What stokes the fires at this time in our lives? How do we care for each other without parenting each other? Jim has surprised me with expressing interest in how we feather our nest. It makes me ask, how have I changed? How has our idea of relationship changed? All new territory!
Jim has been holding the kite string to my kite all of these years. To his quiet and steady demeanor, I think I provide great entertainment value. On the surface, opposites that keep things interesting for one another. Within, soul mates that share common threads of truth, beauty, adventure, loyalty, community and love. We are compliments. True love. It is organic and living and flourishing. Passing the test of time.
Trailmates...
Today I am organizing the basement…listening to Christmas music because it always makes me happy.
After clearing the garden and laundry spaces, and rearranging the dregs of lumber left from a tear down project, I moved to the tool area.
When I was growing up, my Daddy had lots and lots of tools. He was a mechanic, woodworker, and metal worker. I grew up thinking all men knew all this stuff. He would let us use his tools when we were out in the garage with him. We got to sand furniture, hammer nails and saw wood. He had every hand tool imaginable…and power tools and the beloved table saw.
Daddy passed and years later when Mom sold the house…I sat in the garage and sorted four sets of basic hand tools and placed them in four tool boxes. I wanted my children to be able to have a part of their grandfather. Two of our children never met him. Only heard about how he could do anything and that I cherished the tools he used to build my dresser and rebuild the engine in my first car.
Now I discover that sometime over the years, the four toolboxes are askew. Somewhere in time, the well thought out tool selection in each box has been rearranged…one has electric cords, one all the saws, etc. It figures, about the time I am ready to let them go to gthe children..they are a mess! So here I am on a stool with toolboxes, trays, crates and tools all strewn about to be sorted. Memories triggered by the smell of old tool…I tear up thinking about all the things Daddy designed, built and fixed out in his garage. After he died, the tools became like an extension of him that was tangible.
His treasured table saw is safely in the hands of a dear friend…somewhere in the last cross country move, two boxes of power tools went amiss. The day I realized this, my world blurred. I do not know why even as I write these words, tears flow down my cheeks. They are just things…and yet those tools were so much a part of who he was, his passion and vocation, his bliss and his nature. His creative instruments every bit the same as a pianist’s piano.
Today I sit amid his crescent wrenches, hammers, screw drivers (phillips and flathead) his awls, furniture clamps, c-clamps soldering gun and planing tool, his punches, allen wrenches and pliers, his files and saws and very dated safety glasses. I treasure the dremel tool that predates Martha by decades and the smoothing tool he used when he and the guys poured the concrete driveway in front of the house.
I feel grateful to be able to pick up the same hammer I used when I was a young girl to bang a nail into a block of wood. It feels good to have these reminders of my childhood and of the times I was at my Daddy’s side out in the garage.
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In honor...
Running behind to get to the cemetery, we passed the shiny silver truck with “COFFEE” emblazoned on the back end of the tank. I find myself grinning as the memory flashes.
“Where is the coffee?!”
Cabinets clanging, house slippers shooshing across the kitchen floor and grumblings…I watched as my Aunt rummaged through her cabinets.
My aunt shuffled around some more and I giggled. Everyone always joked about my aunt and her morning coffee. Or the way she was without it…exaggerated really, but she was more of a morning person after her coffee.
In my child’s mind I wondered, how could someone lose that big red can?
I loved visiting my Aunt. At this time, she lived in a high rise apartment. We loved it. We had to take an elevator up to her apartment, that was so cool. My brothers and I were suburban kids. Ranch home, yard with a big oak tree, carport, and swing-set in the chain link fenced back yard. To visit someone who lived in a skyscraper (to our young eyes) was, well, 
enviable by everyone one of our friends!
We rode up and down the elevator, stopping at every floor. We swam at the square pool, and drank iced tea sitting in lounge chairs. Her apartment was always on the chilly side, central air conditioning I think. I recall her apartment being modern, with carpet and stuff. Yeah, this was how I wanted to be…when I got tired of raising horses in Kentucky that is. Was I planting the idea of city mouse, country mouse even then?
Back to the coffee, or lack thereof.
My aunt worked as a secretary for a major railroad. She dressed up really fancy and always had pretty fingernails and earrings and pantyhose on. I remember those things and I remember her smoking and carrying herself with confidence. And she was single! I did not know any other single, grown up women. You know, women my mom’s age or older that did not have husbands. Except for my aunt who was a nun. She of course was not married to a real man, she was married to Jesus. I often wondered if Jesus was married to every nun. Hmmm…in the mind of a young girl that never really made sense.
Anyway, my single aunt. She had a car and nice clothes and laughed a lot. She was independent and boisterous. She gave advice, strongly, invited or not. Passionately loved her family. She was always right. And she stood firmly for her convictions. Fiercely loyal. And full of humor and teasing. She was eternally 29. She had a boyfriend sometimes. And lots of friends and social times. A professional who took care of herself and was confident and deeply spiritual. She told you what she thought and let you know if you had green in your teeth of something hanging out where it should not be.(who can say belt/sanitary napkin?)
And…she was a little cranky in the morning before her coffee. This was funny for me, her actions and the pink tape holding her stylish coiffure in place. I privately swore I would never drink the stuff if it meant being that way without it. (I held out until I was 25)
I do not remember how long my Aunt lived in that high rise apartment. Just that in looking back through my adult eyes, she was the first real example of a strong woman, whole unto herself. Goddess Diana. Maybe she wanted a partner, I do not know. It just seemed that she was just fine without a man. A great piece of the archetype puzzle modeled so well for a young girl just beginning to explore the path to womanhood.
Today in church, the scent of incense strong about me, I prayed in gratitude and in celebration of a life well lived. I remember we had our challenges as I grew into a young woman and I know that was partly because we mirrored for each other those strong traits I try to model for my daughter. And partly because she and I just flat disagreed sometimes!
Standing under the tent, listening to the Priest say burial prayers, I wonder if my aunt will be laughing down at me when I shuffle around in my slippers and robe, tending to that part of my daily ritual common to hers…
Coffee.
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Message from the rabbit in my backyard…well back-story first. Today my oracle card reading suggested a message from a wild creature could be forthcoming. Yay, I thought. Always up for guidance, especially from the natural world.
I looked up over my cup of coffee as a rabbit dashed in a diagonal straight line across the lawn to the hedgerow at the back of our yard. Hmmm…Are you my messenger?
I sat back and watched as he inched his way carefully across the brushy hedge to settle into the grass and leaves. He turned his twitching nose into the sun. His ears constantly moving, gathering the dog barks, lawn mowers and squirrel fussing…on garde so to speak and looking calm all the same. Suddenly and loudly a dog bark rang close. The rabbit turned slowly in place and carefully stepped into the gap in the hedge…taking refuge in the shadows.
The whole scenario seemed so mundane, and I know that the most profound messages can come from the most ordinary of happenings. I took up my pen and journaled the incident. I even drew a little sketch of the rabbit and a diagram of the path he took.
“Rabbit runs in a straight line across the yard…”
Then I asked…What is the message from the rabbit? And I listened and I began to write…
The message from the rabbit:
“Get busy! Take a chance! There is cover if you need it. The voices will always be barking around you! So you do what you need to do when you need to. Get out of the shadows, because you are safe!
From the edge it is scary, but you see the perspective I (the rabbit) cannot…the dog that barked was no real threat. How often have you not tried, or given up because of a perceived threat?
Hop to it!”
Wow, I thought as I wrote, “thank you bunny!” in my journal.
And today I take it from the rabbit…
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“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust
Instead of pining for what is not available to me right now, I can look at what is available through an adventurer’s lens.
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My Prosperity Pencil and paper, why this instead of my computer?
“I can’t write!” I whined to my husband.
“All of the technological tools in my possession are disconnected for one reason or another….”
and wah wah wah….
He calmly asked, “Did you forget to bring your pen and paper?”
Geez…no…but I had it all planned…writing beautiful essays on my tiny laptop that would be toggled to fancy Droid phone giving me the capability to upload photos and essays directly to blog. The cosmos has other plans…my only tether to the internet is the tinier than tiny keypad on my fancy droid phone…
hmmmm..the loons are laughing at me from somewhere on the lake stretched like a mirror before me.
With that I have been posting daily touchstones on my facebook page. And writing each morning in my plain and very un-fancy, green, college ruled spiral notebook. Another thing I did not have time to procure for this trip- The Journal. Had to get over that too!
I journal most every day…just not usually sitting in the Montana sunshine overlooking a real lake, being buzzed by hummingbirds wondering what the heck I am doing so close to their feeder.
Somewhere I got the idea that journaling was not real writing. So untrue…it is the oldest method of memoir…with a little spit and polish, or not, a daily account of life experience is an honest and real way to share the journey… through cancer, through heartache, through bliss, through the mundane or extravagant, through life.
If I am open and very honest, in every memoir I have experienced, from essays to poetry to yes, even country western songs to 450 page books, I find bits of wisdom that open a new perspective for some part of my own life.
So that is why I write! Maybe the view from my place on the wheel will open another to a new perspective as they journal/journey their daily life…
Not sure how I got to my purpose for writing from my Prosperity Pencil and not going to question it…just going to explore some more with said pencil and paper.
In forty eight hours I will be on the road to Montana..the closest thing I have experienced as my Soul Place. Unbelievably, I have lived in the midwest longer than I lived in MT. Why do I pine so?
It took more years than I will say to heal the wounding of moving from a place that was truly home. I have watched as those I love most have processed the move. Transition is heartwrenching, cleansing, adventuresome, and a fast track through a maturation process. And while the gifts are buried in shadow at first, they slowly emerge. And truthfully, I am still looking for the gifts in some of the darker recesses of my soul.
I know now that while the move was gut wrenching and heartbreaking on many levels..leaving our sons behind, leaving friends old and new, leaving a lifestyle and place of heartstopping beauty…there were many things I needed to shift. For me the only way to do that was to be removed from the comfort and familiarity of my life, forcing an assemblage point shift across the board. Body, mind, spirit and self. At forty I had reached a gateway, a chance to revision my life path, and I had more questions than answers. Had I remained in the comfort of my status quo, I would have grabbed a big paddle and turned up the river of Denial. Instead I got to go through one of the hardest changes in my life, through which I have grown and matured and found peace.
And in true Cosmic style, that journey has equipped me with the tools and experience to navigate the challenges that have sprung up since. It has been hard to embrace the journey rather than outcome and I find I do that more easily now….sometimes. I do my best to acknowledge the journey may only be about the journey and that is where magic lies.
Today I celebrate a chance to go to Montana and refill my well…be with our children…and connect with the unique magnificence nature provides there. I love Montana, and would have never been able to realize the connection so intimately had I never left.
Steinbeck said it best…
“I am in love with Montana…for other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love, and it is difficult to analyze love when you are in it.”
What a gift. A slow morning. The birds are singing and the cicadas buzzing. My gardens are soaking up a much needed drink. The thunderstorms skirted us last night, while the cool dry air settled in.
Cool is relative. Here in the Midwest, August cool means ten percent less humidity and five degrees less temperature. It means at nine a.m., I am sitting in the shade of the grand old elm in our backyard and not sweating. It means I can spend more time with the gardens, staking runaway green bean vines and reinforcing tomato cages leaning under the weight of shiny green fruits. It means I can breathe and think and relax. It means that just for now, time can stand still, while waves of cicada song fill the air, like an orchestra, gathering intensity and slowly ebbing to a dull drone…but for a moment before the crescendo….
And…it means I could sit and let my words wander for paragraphs, recounting the wonders of Gaia... and it means my breakfast is now cold…ahhhh…so grateful for this gift of a slow morning.
