Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Family’

Frivolity

Posted in books, Wedding, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 7, 2015| 1 Comment »

“What’s that term honey, the one you use when somebody tries to sue a doctor for no good reason and it gets thrown out of court?”

I was reading a local news article about a woman in the next county who was suing her ObGyn doctor for “coercing and threatening” her if she didn’t deliver her baby by Csection. The Mother had diabetes, and for one reason or another her doctor actually had her sign the consent form five years ago, and now she’s crying foul. Bad doctor, oh and BTW good baby and mommy were just fine after the surgery, so I wasn’t quite sure what this was all about, besides the 2 Million dollars.

“Frivolous, are you talking about a frivolous law suit?” Bob said. Indeed I was.

I usually never jump into the fray of a public forum, since I neither have the time or the energy to fight with true believers. But I was home sick, teetering on the edge of adding a snarky comment to the long list of online comments either praising said doctor or lambasting our entire health system by internet thugs who use pseudonyms for names so they can’t be traced. The lurid underbelly of social media, trolls living under an online bridge of anonymity. I wrote, I deleted,, I worried. Finally, I said:

“We live in litigious times. Certainly we deliver more babies by Csection than any other country in the world, but at the end of the day I believe most docs are recommending what is best for their patient.”

I only hooked one smirky, smiley comment.

“So American women just generally need Csections more than the rest of the population?”

I smiled. Should I tell her about Brazil? But before I had time to pick up the bait, the news posted that the jury had decided in the doctors favor, Not Guilty, after 20 minutes of deliberation. My faith in our justice system was temporarily restored as I put fingers to keyboard:

No we need to train American Doctors differently, transfer well patients to nurse midwives, and institute a board of docs and citizens to review lawsuits and throw out frivolous ones like they do in MA

Ps, my daughter was breech and a section was MY decision – as much as I wanted a natural birth, I didn’t want to risk the health of my baby

This lawsuit disturbed me because it assumed the woman could be coerced, was not in her right mind because she was in labor or something and all of MY feminist peeps, the type of women who believe we have the right to make our our own decisions about our own bodies were lining up behind her defense. Like HE MADE HER DO IT…She was of sound mind and maybe her body was trying to expel an alien at the time, still she could have put on the brakes and said, “NO, WAIT, I want another opinion.”

Childbirth is messy, it is a risk/benefit analysis. Some women go through days of labor only to have an emergency section to save their child, or even their own life. This was the Bride’s biggest nightmare last year, she was determined to have her baby boy VBAC, and she knew everything that could go wrong. My husband has seen women come into his hospital’s ER with a dead baby from a homebirth with a midwife who didn’t transfer them fast enough.

When you hire a dola, a midwife, or a doctor to assist you in delivering your child, you are entering into a sacred trust. When we won the right to vote in the early 20th Century, when science gave us birth control in the later part of that century, we women willingly gave up our status as arm candy and fertility goddess. We got tired standing up there on that pedestal for so long, all those corsets binding us into place. And now we have a woman in a pantsuit running for President. We should never be willing to be coerced or threatened by a man, boyfriend, husband, doctor, or lawyer ever again.

And the mom/plaintiff reduced her amount from 2M to $200,000 yesterday afternoon before having her case dismissed. Ask me again why our health system is so crazy. http://www.nbc29.com/story/30455784/update-augusta-co-jury-rules-in-favor-of-doctor-in-c-section-case

Here is our friendly little ghost, delivered by section three years ago because she was breech, just like her Mama!

IMG_3436

Read Full Post »

A Mom for All Seasons

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 3, 2015| 2 Comments »

I’ve been thinking about my foster mother lately, Nelly Bly. She was born in Scranton, PA, the only girl out of 18 boys! Yes youngsters, before the Duggers, poor women had large families simply because birth control was unheard of, and/or you happened to be Catholic. Nell’s parents had immigrated from Czechoslovakia, and I distinctly remember her crying when we watched Russian tanks roll into her ancestral home in 1968.

The Warsaw Pact invasion of August 20–21 caught Czechoslovakia and much of the Western world by surprise. In anticipation of the invasion, the Soviet Union had moved troops from the Soviet Union, along with limited numbers of troops from Hungary, Poland, East Germany and Bulgaria into place by announcing Warsaw Pact military exercises. When these forces did invade, they swiftly took control of Prague, other major cities, and communication and transportation links. Given the escalating U.S. involvement in the conflict in Vietnam as well as past U.S. pronouncements on non-intervention in the East Bloc, the Soviets guessed correctly that the United States would condemn the invasion but refrain from intervening.                                            https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/soviet-invasion-czechoslavkia

Like the Ukraine today, the Czech and Slovak people were leaning toward the West, instituting reform and banning censorship. Communist Russia put her big bear fist down and that was that. I wonder what Nell would have thought of the Velvet Revolution, when Czechoslovakia peacefully split into two states for purely political motives on Jan 1, 1993? She died when I was pregnant with the Bride, and we still thought a poet might be elected President.

Nell was a proud Slovak, but she didn’t like to cook. For special occasions however, she would prepare Halupkis ( pronounced ha-LOOP-keys). This is a mouth watering stuffed cabbage, simmered for hours on a big bed of sauerkraut. Nell’s father used to make his own sauerkraut in the basement in barrels, but she was happy to buy it pre-packaged. I like to imagine her as a child, picking a cabbage out of their garden, helping her mother grind the meat in the kitchen, and tenderly folding the leaves around the rice and meat mixture.

Maybe because she had so much responsibility in the kitchen, as the only girl in her family full of brothers, she loved modern day conveniences – or should I say “mid-century modern?” One of my favorite dinner nights was “Chinese.” I think it was La Choy, but in the ’50s you could find a box in the grocery store with everything you would need to make dinner. The original Hamburger Helper, only you didn’t need to cook anything, just warm it up!

I translated that to “Taco Night” in our house. I’d add the packet of Mexican seasonings to ground turkey, stand up the hard Old El Paso tacos and let the kids pile whatever they wanted on top, which usually meant lots of cheese. It’s almost wistfully tender to think back about the days when we didn’t need to know where our food came from, so long as it showed up on our table.

And today I admit, I will occasionally cave and whip up an organic Annie’s Mac and Cheese for the Love Bug. Am I willing to order one of those Blue Apron type dinners that would be delivered to me in the mail, with instructions on how to prepare all the fresh ingredients? NO.

Because grocery shopping is my God-given right. I want to smell and feel the fruit, and know when the salmon was delivered. But I understand that working women, and men, are still looking for time-saving ways to serve a meal to their family, even if it’s not two dozen people at the dinner table.

Maybe I’m thinking of my Mother because next year, Bob and I are planning to visit Prague. But today I’m heading to the ballot box in VA because I do believe in birth control and I don’t believe in censorship. And I want guns out of the hands of abusers, and the mentally ill. And I have to think that Nelly Bly would agree.

This is my cauliflower au gratin – made with sweetened condensed milk and goat cheese. Nell put canned milk in her coffee, so I always have it on hand!IMG_3401

Read Full Post »

Tales From the Crypt

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on October 31, 2015| 1 Comment »

Halloween this way comes. And I don’t know about you, but I can’t get enough of my Facebook friend’s grandchildren dressed up like little pumpkins, monsters and Olafs…and if you don’t know who he is, well he’s like Frosty the Snowman. Only he’d rather be sunbathing.

After years of buying mini-candies and waiting for some Trick or Treaters, we’ve given up hope. Our dirt driveway is too long and too far off the beaten path for children. I would usually stuff my face with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and call it a night. Admittedly, these delightful morsels are the best thing ever invented as a chocolate delivery system, which is exactly why I never buy them. You believe me, right?

When I was little, my Slovakian foster mom Nell would dress me up as a gypsy. I didn’t really know what that was, but I enjoyed putting on make-up and wearing jewelry. At some point, usually in Middle School, our children all rebel and want to design their own Halloween costume. This should make life easier for the parents, but actually it becomes much harder.

I hate to sound stereotypical, but let’s get real – the boys all want to be villains or zombies, and the girls say so long to the princess look and decide to be sexy starlets. Not all, but certainly you’ve seen gangs of pre-teens roaming your neighborhood dressed like Whitey Bulger and Taylor Swift? You can see I’m off by a few decades; the Bride would chose to be some version of Madonna, and the Rocker?

He could get creative. A pirate, a gangster, a zombie. Surprisingly, never a rock star.

But this is their chance to try out being a “bad boy.” Because once they hit high school, the road narrows and their destiny can get kidnapped by peer pressure and the need to belong. Boys learn to ignore their emotions, they are taught not to smile. In most public high schools they have two paths – the sports route or the party route. And the party route can be dangerous. Some can never recover from that road. They wind up dead at 27.

My Rock Star was voted “Most Changed” in high school, probably because he didn’t fit into a neat category for this preppy, suburban school. He went his own way, he stayed true to himself and played guitar at every dive on the Jersey Shore. He found other outliers to jam with and by the time he graduated from school, his original metal band, Hypon, was in high demand, and he was their business manager and website developer. I only offered them snacks in the garage.

Did I wish he’d play baseball and want to go into finance? Sure, but that’s not our job as parents. We have to sit back once our kids become teenagers and marvel at who they are becoming, and continue to nurture their dreams. Not ours. If we did our job right in those critical early years, we can pat ourselves on the back. The pirate, wizard and Star Wars character will morph into the leading man of their own unique story.

Read Full Post »

The Creative Impulse

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on October 20, 2015| 2 Comments »

While I was driving home from Isle of Palms, I put Bob in charge of playing podcasts. Like most things Bob, he had an opinion. He’s not one to listen to doom and gloom, and so I was prepared for an upbeat playlist. When I heard my favorite singer/songwriter, Sting, start to talk, well I just had to listen! It was the TED Radio Hour and the subject was “The Source of Creativity.” http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/351538855/the-source-of-creativity

If you live now, or have ever lived with a creative person, you know the drill. They are dreamers, they are never lonely, they find meaning in ordinary things. When the Rocker was little, his fingers were always moving, tapping out an inner beat. Once he held the guitar, it became a part of him and followed him everywhere. The music that was in his head finally had an outlet – it could flow.

Sting talked about taking risks, about not being afraid to fail, and how children are just naturally this way until growing up sucks that courage, the creative impulse, out of us. I remember seeing awards on a bulletin board in our elementary school, mostly for being “quiet,” mostly to girls, and I had a premonition. Would my son flourish here? He was always moving, he loved to make noise!

Early hours spent delivering milk with his father gave Sting the solitude to dream about a life outside of his working class English suburb. He spent decades making music, a most prolific artist, until he felt the music die within him. For two years he didn’t write another song. To get his creative drive back, he returned to his childhood, and wrote an opera. You have to listen to the podcast.

So we can all still tap into that reservoir of creativity. Elizabeth Gilbert likened it to a moving walkway in an airport – we trudge along pulling our baggage behind us, and every now and then a walkway appears and it becomes much easier to write. That analogy resonated with me. I always had a deadline, so I needed to sit myself down and sharpen my keyboard. But sometimes, time would stand still, and something else took over my fingers. As if the picture, the words were in my head and my ability to write them down was effortless…I didn’t worry about grammar, or spelling. My inner editor was turned off.

Which is interesting because when Dr Charles Limb, an otolaryngologist at Johns Hopkins who runs the Music Cognition Lab,  studied the brains of jazz musicians in an MRI scanner – yes, while they played a keyboard – he found that the self-expressive,  creative parts of the brain light up and are on fire only when the pre-frontal cortex, the self-monitoring, critical part of our brain shuts down. That ability to disconnect is what gave us Bach! So we all have to be willing to fail in order to create, which is exactly what Sting said…

When the Love Bug started to sing “Let it Go” at the beach, I immediately had to download the song so that I could learn the words (I know I’m a bit late on this one parents) and we could improvise a dance to the tune. Because there is nothing better than channeling your inner child to rev up the creative impulse. Nothing.

Here is our talented artist, finally allowed to give her baby brother a bottle, and thinking of her next project!

IMG_5514

Read Full Post »

La Familia

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on October 18, 2015| 4 Comments »

Last night I met a stranger at a wedding. In the midst of glamor and cocktails,

We stood our ground and spoke profoundly about our journey.

Maura arrived at this spot, beneath the mountains via a sandy beach.

Still it wasn’t the sand that held us captive here.

It was our heritage, our ancestors from Ireland. She wanted to go back,

That longing was our introduction, so I told her about Deirdre;

Who runs a hostel on Achill Island, and Deirdre’s beautiful, old Mother

Who once taught Irish – the real Gaelic tongue – to schoolchildren

And their black and white working sheepdog howling at the TV,

Eating leftovers from the table, who must be gone now.

Maura’s two girls were Irish dancers, but without the wigs.

Caitly I must bring you there, to meet our family, your family,

To be surrounded by the warm and loving cousins

My Great Grandfather left behind in County Mayo “God Help Us”

When he was 19 years old in 1854 with four pounds sterling.

Can he see where we are now? Are the fields of Ceide missing his bones?

Last night Maura became a friend, and we hold a small piece

Of each other always in our hearts     IMG_3384

This is the poem I’m submitting to the Library of Congress’ Juan Felipe Herrera’s Poet Laureate project La Casa de Colores! You can enter too, just write about your Familia:

Theme for Oct. 15-Nov. 14, 2015
“Migrants: Portraits and Friendships”
Every inch of this land is woven with migrant trails. These are pathways from family to family, country to country, and most of all heart to heart. For this month, find a trail and travel through it to a new dream. What do you see in your travels? And how do you make friends along the way? Describe for me in the language of poetry—migrate into new words, use new landscapes of images.

Read Full Post »

They Say It’s My Birthday

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on September 28, 2015| 2 Comments »

“We’re gonna have a good time!” Even though it’s not a “special” birthday, marking a decade or anything, it’s nice to know I’ve made it through another year on the mountain. As Bob would always say, “It’s better than the alternative,” meaning I could have had a funeral. Nothing like an ER doctor to put things into perspective.

According to Native American culture, I was born during the Duck Fly Moon. And last night, unfortunately, we missed seeing the total eclipse of the moon in VA due to a stack of clouds. Amazing pictures have been scrolling across my Facebook feed, along with birthday greetings from friends near and far. Sometimes I just shake my head at political commentary, or shrug about people sharing TMI, but sometimes you just gotta love social media!

Today we plan on going to the movies to see Robert DeNiro and Anne Hathaway in “The Intern.” People are raving about it, even my brother, Dr Jim, told us it’s a good take on aging. He said when some HR person asks DeNiro, the new intern, where he sees himself in ten years, and the answer is, “You mean when I’m 80?” his expression is priceless.

We could use a good laugh. And to be honest, I don’t see myself on this mountain for another ten years. I reluctantly moved South to be closer to the Bride, but she’s working on her career in Nashville while the Groom’s interviewing all over the country. Who knows where they will settle; and the Rocker and Ms Cait? I’m pretty sure they will be West Coasters for the foreseeable future. It’s time Bob really thought about retirement, and it’s time we thought about our Golden Years.

When we are no longer driving, I’d like to live in a walkable neighborhood. We know only too well how circumstances can change. And as much as I’ve enjoyed the serenity and the views from my aviary, I know we have another move left in us. But for today, I’ll eat some cake and think about all that tomorrow.

Sunset on the Porch

Sunset on the Porch

Read Full Post »

Football on the Brain

Posted in books, Wedding, tagged , , , , , , on September 23, 2015| 2 Comments »

Bet you thought I was going to write about the Pope? Nope. Don’t get me wrong or anything, but once a lapsed Catholic, always a bit of a doubter. Humility was driven into us in Catholic school, and you know who you are my fellow Sacred Heart peeps. It’s nice to see a Pope who practices the Catechism we were taught in the 1950s.

Anyway, today is the highest and holiest day of the Jewish Year, Yom Kippur. It’s a day to ask our family and friends for forgiveness, and to cover all bases, we ask God to forgive even those things we may have forgotten to ask him/her about! It’s also a fast day – meaning Jews everywhere are starving! It’s the one day in the year a Jewish mother won’t ask you, “Did you eat?” This must be where Lent came from, and even Ramadan – give up something good to eat and all your sins will be forgiven.

I’ve been cooking up a storm since returning home. Bob lost a few pounds while recovering from his Cervical Spine surgery in NY, so I feel it’s my God-given right to make dessert these days. Dressed in a Darth Vader neck brace/collar, Bob has spent a few hours watching football lately, both college and professional, and of course I’ve come along for the ride – cause I’m a ride or die girl!

And even though watching football makes me feel like I’m back at the Roman Coliseum watching, “Gladiators (who) were generally slaves, condemned criminals or prisoners of war,” I could appreciate the choreography of a good first down. Nurses would walk into Bob’s room and offer up some banter about the team on the screen – football was that equal opportunity conversation starter. “Did you see Brady walk on?” Or “I’m from Pittsburgh you know,” one nurse told me after I said I was a New England Patriots fan. Whoops.

Still every time I’d hear that distinct sound of helmet meeting helmet, I’d cringe. We’ve known what repeated tackles can do to the brain for years now, research and science has finally won out over owners and NFL managers. One guy got booted off the field for head-butting an opponent. Repetitive Head Trauma, so many concussions over the years, and still we watch these giant men crash into each other. Is it really good sport, or are we kidding ourselves?

When the Rocker and Ms Cait flew out on the red eye from LA to visit Bob during his hospitalization, we learned that our son had worked on the sound design for Will Smith’s new movie trailer, Concussion. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-concussion-movie-nfl-20150903-story.html

NFL games are the only programs that regularly deliver the kind of big ratings that were once taken for granted by broadcast television. Nearly all of those viewers watch the games and their commercials live in an age when delayed playback of shows is common. As a result, the NFL was able to demand $5 billion a year in rights fees from its television partners in the pact that runs through 2021.

God forgive us for watching so much football. And please point our new baby grandson toward soccer!    IMG_3227

Read Full Post »

Spaghetti Western

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on August 13, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Granted I’ve been alive a long time now, and for some reason, I never knew what the term spaghetti western means. Is it a bunch of movies made in Sicily? Does it refer to cowboys who will only eat pasta? Is it a genre or just a passing fad?

Turns out spaghetti westerns are a sub-genre of movies about the wild wild west, mostly filmed in Spain with Italian directors in the 1960s and 70s. Here are its most common characteristics according to Urban Dictionary:

1. Level of Violence (Usually more than American made westerns).
2. The Music (Often scored by Ennio Morriconne and Bruno Nicolai).
3. Sound Effects (Particulary the gun and horse sounds are different from the ones used in American made westerns).
4. Religious imagery, symbols and names.
5. Filmed in Almeria Spain.
6. Italian and Spanish names in the credits (It is highly likely the director will be named Sergio).
7. Out of sync dubbing (Even the Italian versions are dubbed).
8. Stereotypes (Mexicans as theives, women as whores).
9. A shitload of alternate titles.
10. Banned in several countries.
11. Often they star Franco Nero, Lee Van Cleef, Tomas Milian, Klaus Kinski, Luigi Pistili, Mario Brega and other spaghetti regulars.

It should be noted here, that as a girl I remember distinctly running out of Dover, NJ’s Baker Theatre to throw up on the street during the chariot race in Ben Hur. And it was the gruesome depiction of dying horses that did it for me, and we all know this was long before they started running “No animals were hurt during the filming of this movie” credits. Between that, and my big brother, Dr Jim, scaring the life out of me by taking me to horror movies at the fancy Community Theatre, where we had to wear our little white gloves, it’s a wonder I ever went to another movie again.

On the bright side, Dr Jim and I spent some great Saturday afternoons at the Baker watching 007 double features! This helped me develop a certain taste in films, long before censors or a rating system developed for parents. I hated violence, which meant I missed lots of the great Vietnam films, but thought sex was totally normal and fine. Bob and I have been called “outlier” parents before, and this may be one of the reasons. The Rocker’s friends knew I’d sneak them into “R” rated films anytime.

Come to think of it, going to the movies was one of the many “action and adventure” dates I’d plan with my son. I dressed him up like a little Ninja Turtle for the premier of that movie, much to his bigger sister’s chagrin. When he was thirteen, I picked him up from his one camp experience in PA, and we stopped to see the first Men in Black movie on our way home! Long before that, I’d catch him working with his best bud Alex for hours in our garage on a stop-action film with their tiny Star Wars action figures. Alex later became the drummer in his first band.

Cut to today. Since moving out to the Left Coast, my son has been determined to score music for the film industry, while flying back and forth to NJ to fulfill his commitment to his band of brothers. And this week, he and his collaborators at Ignition Creative in LA have released the trailer for Tarantino’s eighth movie, “Hateful Eight,” in the style of a spaghetti western. I’m guessing the horses were treated well. http://variety.com/2015/film/news/hateful-eight-trailer-quentin-tarantino-1201568499/

Sometimes the universe just aligns.

Twelve years old and his big sister goes to college

Twelve years old and his big sister goes to college

Read Full Post »

Bad Girls

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 11, 2015| Leave a Comment »

While watching part of the GOP debate, I started to feel like that Angry character in the movie Inside Out. The one with fiery hair and a voice like Lewis Black. In the continual news coverage of Trump’s performance, I thought something is missing. Now we hear Hillary calling it out, the unbelievably, unimaginable gall of Rubio to tell us all that his Catholic faith informs his public policy – ie sorry no abortions ladies, life begins at conception, oh and btw, that he would make no exceptions for rape or incest.

And so we see again, ten men discussing womens’ private parts. But as Elizabeth (yes we’re on a first name basis) said, did they fall down and hit their heads and wake up in the 1950s? Because I lived through those years, when young women were butchered in backyard alleys, when they were sent away in shame to deliver a baby and hand it over for adoption, when they were rendered infertile and sometimes died. When women had no voice at all, none. Some women did the “good” thing and married the guy at 17, if he was amenable.

Today, young women are supposedly given condoms in school at a certain age and told how to use them. Of course this is all according to a state-sanctioned sex-ed/health curriculum, that varies from California to New York. Some states prefer to teach about waiting for marriage. But, girls can walk into a drug store and buy a Plan B pill if the condom failed…in fact, they still could walk into a Planned Parenthood clinic and get a shot a patch or a pill to prevent conception. But not if these ten men on stage have their way, clinics will cease to exist for reproductive health care – in other words, it’s the poor, the marginalized, the girls who could never in a million years talk to their parents about sex, these are the girls who will suffer.

Then this morning I read this: “Letter to Our Daughters: Do Not Be Good.”  The author, Megan Bergman, is writing about becoming a teenager to her pre-school daughters: http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/letter-to-my-daughters-do-not-be-good/

You are entitled to the Dark Poetry Stage, and although it’s going to hurt like hell when you push me away, it’s necessary. (I hope I’m there to be pushed, and return doggedly.) I’m raising you to be independent beings, not fleshy basement-dwellers who play video games and pound energy drinks while the sunny world goes by. Or girls who try to appease my ego by being conventionally “good” and who then have to forge a secret rebellion. No! Rebel in the open.

I want you out in the world getting the good stuff. I want sun on your skin and banned books in your backpack, and when I’m old and diapered I want you to walk into my house, turn down the George Michael songs, and tell me about all the incredible discoveries you’ve made about the planet and yourself. I want you to tell me about your mistakes, heartbreaks, dreams, and plans. Those things are your engine. In my life, failure has been a much better engine than success. Artistic and personal.

George Michael doesn’t do it for me, maybe the Stones? My generation of women wrote the Book “Our Bodies Ourselves” because if we can’t control our body, how can we take control of our own lives?  We don’t need to cover our hair, we can dye it blue. We can go to a movie like Trainwreck and celebrate our badasses.

Because being good isn’t all it’s cracked up to be: when it limits our choices; when it keeps us subservient; when it cancels our dreams.

We don’t have to take typing in school and end up in a Mad Men office anymore. We may even get equal pay for equal work soon! I went to Catholic school AND camp. I was taught to be good above all else. And believe me, throwing off those shackles felt amazing. Rubio and his ilk would like to put those chains back on, but he doesn’t know that young women today will never allow that to happen. After years of being dressed in a beanie and uniform, I allowed the Bride to wear whatever she wanted to school. It was the late 80s, think Dirty Dancing, and she was killing it!

Note to my daughter – remember your grandmother was a Flapper, remember this when the Love Bug turns 11, it’s a magical age.  Cute Kids

Read Full Post »

A Midsummer Morning

Posted in books, Wedding, tagged , , , , , on July 31, 2015| 2 Comments »

Ms Bean has treed a couple of wild turkeys just to start this morning off right! In other news, a brand new Costco store has opened up on Route 29, near Stonehenge (my pet name for a “new” shopping center in the area). It was supposed to be an upscale shopping experience, and I was hoping for a Nordstrom/or Macy’s/or Bloomies, but Costco will just have to do. All good progressives, I’ve learned, prefer this to Sam’s Club. I’ll most likely steer clear of the place this weekend, besides, do I really need a five year supply of chili powder?

If Bob were not working, we might take in The Albemarle County Fair! Some big rain and thunderstorms have moved through our hills and taken out our modem…again…and left us with some refreshingly cool air for these parts. Today is the first day of The Fair and it’s nearby, on the grounds of Ashlawn Highland, President Monroe’s beautiful estate. But going to something like this, alone, just doesn’t make sense. Meeting an 18th Century furniture maker, exploring the livestock tent, and watching handspinners in the peacock yard would be infinitely more fun with a partner in crime. Someone needs to share your fried dough, right?  http://albemarlecountyfair.com

But tomorrow night I am going to a vineyard in Madison County to celebrate the life of a dear friend and neighbor, Bill Greer. We met Bill and his lovely wife DeeDee at another fair, a Fiber Festival at Ashlawn right after we moved here from NJ. They had a tent for their alpacas, and DeeDee sold some of the softest, finest yarn I’ve ever had the pleasure to knit. alpaca scarfFBBob’s arm was in a sling after shoulder surgery, which got the conversational ball rolling. Then we found out, quite by accident, that we had just bought our land less than two miles up the road from their Rivanna River Alpaca Farm.

After a long building stage, and an exhausting two day move, they had us over for dinner with the Bride and Groom. That night on their deck was perfect. We were both Yankees, they had moved here from Chicago. And we fell into a friendship that wasn’t forced or contrived. I immediately felt like I could tell DeeDee anything, like we had known each other in another life. Once you get to be an empty-nester, making new friends, the kind who know where the spoons are in your kitchen, doesn’t come easy. I’d join a knitting group in DeeDee’s studio, and bring visiting children over to see new alpaca babies. I even toyed with getting some alpacas, or goats, or chickens!

Like us, DeeDee and Bill had one of those second chance love affairs. They’d been married before, and were really newlyweds when we met, blending a large family of adult children all over the world. I’ll always remember Bill sitting out on our deck, just gazing at the sunset over the Blue Ridge mountains, telling us we had the best view. Bob would maintain that Bill’s access to the river was even better. And his face, when he saw his wife, was like a kid at Christmastime. I wish I could channel DeeDee’s zest for life, her energy is contagious, and her compassion is a thing of beauty. I know she’ll be fine, but I also know this kind of loss is a palpably heavy weight.

Bill was only 68 when he passed away this past March, much too soon. I’m hoping Bob can leave the hospital early, for DeeDee, and for me. We will always remember his glad hug, his smile of recognition when a joke hits home, and his absolute devotion to DeeDee. She lost a prince of a man, and he will be sorely missed.  http://www.mcdonoughvoice.com/article/20150330/NEWS/150339921

Bob and Bill

Bob and Bill

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »