Complicated

Families are complicated.  At least mine is.  Two things are absolutely true.  People make mistakes and people love each other anyway.  When Joanna and James separated I was plenty mad at him and never expected to have much of an ongoing relationship with him.  I also had many sweet memories of him and alot of history with him.,  Today James was at our house to bury Joanna's last childhood cat, Stripers.  Stripers was born in James' lap back when he and Joanna wre newly in love.  Many things have gone wrong and right since then, but there he was in our yard today, crying as he buried the cat who had been very much part of the family life he and Joanna built and lost.  I felt respect for James and Joanna both for being able to be sweet and helpful to each other at the time of the death of their beloved kitty.

Quiet House Friday Night

feels just right.  Even though I only worked two days this week they were intense days and I'm tired.  I'm thinking about comments people I respect made on my post about talking about politics and religion - also about some Facebook comments on political posts which were just contemptuous and not on the content.  I don't understand why people go personal and ugly on complex topics that really require much discussion and thought - important topics that really aren't personal but universal.  It just makes no sense to me.

I'm just off a great little writing retreat with Bob in our San Antonio condo.  he wrote alot.  I wrote some, made my minimal deadline at least, and rested some, knitted some, continued to read The Streetsweeper , which I continue to love. Being back at work today felt good, productive.  Tonigh at dinner Liam just slid out of his chair and disappeared after having eaten a little.  When I went to check on him a few minutes later he was sound asleep in his bed.  Tired, I guess.  His sweet innocent spirit is so trusting.  He can just go to sleep whenever he feels like it and trust that the rest of us will keep him safe.  I guess we all felt that way as babies - lost it somewhere along the way.  Terrifying phone calls can rupture the night.  Houses can catch fire. The person lying next to one can just stop breathing.  Liam doesn't know any of that and I'm glad he won't have to for a while yet, probably.

Fathers

When Bob and I married Joanna was in fifth grade and Ruth in second.  Their Daddy had been dead about three years. One of the many things I loved about Bob was that he wanted a family not just a wife, and the fact that I came with two little girls was clearly a positive for him.  Before we married I read that creating a blended family took at least three years.  But of course that was for ordinary people, not for uswith oour high intelligence and vast knowledge of personal interactions.  Boy was I wrong.  It took us more than three years, maybe closer to ten, to really become a real family, deeply connected at all points, every connection independently strong.  It was really hard.  I was protective of the girls and of decisions I had made about how to raise them and didn't listen well to Bob's ideas at times.  Joanna was fiercely attached to the memory of her beloved dead father.  Ruth felt guilty she didn't really remember her Daddy, and yet fely guilty too about really bonding with Bob because that seemed like a betrayal of her sister (and maybe her Daddy?).  Bob  tried and tried through all of this.  He took us on wonderful trips the girls remember with delight.  He took them out on Wednesday nights one on one for yeras, working on getting to know each of them and giving them special treats.  He took great care of them when they were sick. He defended them against me when I was unreasonable. And somewhere along the way  it took and we really did become a family.  i am so thankful.

Breaking the Rules

        I think it's odd and wrong that "they" (whoever they are) caution against talking about religion and politics.  I can understand not being allowed to ask someone when she last had sex or what size underwear she wears, or even how she feels about her son's learning disability or if she ever regrets having married her husband.  Privacy and personaly boundaries do make sense to me.  But religion and politics touch the whole, all of us.  They are communal, not individual matters.  We're allowed to talk about the weather, which surely affects us in a daily way, but over which we have no short term influenc. We're allowed to talk about celebrities, sports, movies, fashion, games, all sorts of diversions and entertainments.  We're allowed to talk about ideas and theories in the abstract, at least, to build handles with which to grab at life's challenges and maybe budge some of them.  We are allowed, to some extent to talk about individual relationships and family relationships.  Often we allow ourselves to gossip and complain.  But when it gets concrete and large scale, down to talking  about religion ) our relationship to any divine foce that may or may not exist) or politics  (finding ways to get along locazlly, nationally, internationally in ways that work), there is that injunction.  Don't talk about religion or politics.

       It really bothers me.  We have more control over religious and political decisions than we do over the weather, and they affect us at least as much.  Surely they are more important than any form of entertainment.Talking about ideas in the abstract and focusiing on personal relationships is good, vital, helpful, but I need a bigger context, an openness about talking about the whole deal, human to divine to human to human to earth to animal to earth to the divine - all around in the big circle of birth and death.,  I can learn from people who disagree with me as well as from people who agreee.  There are so many obvious problems in the physical and interpersonal world, We need all our minds, hearts, spirits, bodies focused on solutions.  We need to be able to talk to each other respectfully and openly on all topics

Food for thought

The real power of the majority is for their views to be so pervasive as to become invisible,
for those of us in the minority to not even realize when we're being wronged.



- Eric Scott

It was a hard work day, for no particular reason.  I got home to help KK pack up to go to San Antonio for the summer.  I already miss her. I really honor Joanna for the way she loves KK enough to be away from her so much of the time so the kid can pursue her dance training.  I talked to Joanna this evening and she's working too hard, too tired, trying so hard to make life work for her family.  So is Tray.  Things are getting better for them, but I wish it weren't so hard.  

Ruth baked and decorated a beautiful little wedding cake to celebrate her twelveth wedding anniversary with Chris and, after she had photographed it and we had each had a delicious piece, she left it for a minute and Bob's dog (yes I do realise I'm not claiming connection here) ate the whole thing.  Very frustrating.  I know animals follow their instincts, but he does know not to eat off the table!   Bad dog!

I seem to have the blues tonight.  Two good things, a storm blew in and gave us a little rain and broke the heat.  KK's grades and state test scores all came in the mail and she did quite well - a relief on the standardized tests because she's just dyslexic enough to still find the reading of long tests tedious and tiring and they happened the same week as a major dance performance.. 

Trying again, again

I don't know what's with me and blogging.  I have had plenty to say, more and less important, and I just haven't been saying it.  I keep restarting and flaking out again.  So I'm restarting again and know that doesn't guarantee anything. But I want to write down what I want to write down and at least I'm typing tonight instead of  coming to this site and staring at a blank screen.  That's something. 

Random facts:

KK went to New York and sang at Lincoln Center and rode the subway to the World Trade Center site and saw the musical Chicago on Broadway and came home glowing in a shirt that says, on a black and white city scape, "New York Loves Me/"

Chris and Ruth have been married twelve years.  i asked his advice on marriage tonight at dinner and he said "Listen to each other."  and "Assume the other person has good intentions toward  you, even when you are fighting."   Wise young man.

The crepe myrtles are still bright and beautiful and lush even though its getting hot at hasn't rained for a week or so.

The office is more or less back together but the building still feels sterile.  That makes me sad. 
I hope we can shift the vibe.

Kerry's been dead almost 26 years.  He would love this technology age.  The early computers fascinated him.  i wonder who he would be today.  I never will know, never can know.  I remember him with great tenderness and, come summer every year, some sadness. 

I love being married to Bob, who also loves technology and who has shown me a world of wildness and travel adventures, birds, and a deep conviction toward social justice. He also takes really good care of me.

Life is hard and life is good.

Rain

with thunder and lightening broke the stuffy heat this evening, but blocked the moon mostly and any chance of seeing meteors.  KK and Matt and  Bob I went to the Austin Smyphony  which performed with a choir tonight- heard Pslams in Latin and in Hebrew.  Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Pslams in H
ebrew was really beautiful to me.  There is a single boy's voice, representing the voice of the boy David who became king,  singing the Twenty third Pslam with just harp accompanyment against fierce men's voices singing about nation rising up against nation - very powerful with the yearning for oneness in the end.  I grew up on Bernstein - a cool coloring book about the intstruments of the orchestra with a record with him conducting in a pocket in the back cover.  I'm glad my parents exposed me to many of types of music early, even though I am  not musically talented.

Stilts and the Moon

I remember seeing stilts for the fiorst time in a book when I was pforbably four - red wooden painted stilts a boy was walking on - so tall!   I was impressed.  There was a pogo stick on the same page.  Anyway, there is a wonderful, calm, polite crew working on our office now -so different from last week.  They are taping and floating the ceilings and they work on STILTS.  I've never seen this substitute for ladders before and it thoroughly impresses me.  Their stilts are silvery metal, not painted red, and all seem to use them quite efficiently.

The moon was huge tonight - supposed to be even bigger tomorrow night.  I'm in a happy mood after a busy week, happy to have arranged reclaimed bookshelves to allow more book space in my office, happy to have so many of the ones I love safe and together in one home, happy KK is finishing up a great Freshman year in high school, happy that tomorrow Bob and I celebrate our anniversary.  We'll have to take advantage of that big moon.

May baskets

Did any of the rest of you put them on your neighbors porches full of garden flowers when you were little?  I remember making the conical baskets out of construction paper, decorating them carefully, filling them and leaving them so happily.  I did it with my girls too, but the custom seems to have fallen by the wayside.  maybe next year with Liam.  There are several families withyoung kids on our street now, a regeneration of the neighborhood,  I thinkit's time for that kind of old sweet custom.

Crepe myrtles

are barely beginning to bloom.  I saw the first hint of color yesterday, brighter today.  They come on fast here as spring turns to summer and last at least into July.  The first summer I spent in Austin the courtyard below my window was brilliant with crepe myrtles, burgandy and pink.  They are summer's flower for me still.

Calm at the office today - still torn apart of course, but no problems, no new chaos, good conversations with friends.

I heard someone call my grandchildren's generation "natives" regarding electronic technology, and it's true.  It amazes me to see KK sitting on her bed whipping out Power Point slides for a presentation on jazz dance, so much access to pictures and information so fast on the web, and though she is not particularly tech savy for her age, she gets it done and with a naturalness that eludes me still.

Remarkably Calm in Chaos

describes my mood all day. The ceiling removers left a terrible mess. We had to put our offices back together from a really scrambled state. At least they didn't break anything. There is tons of work left to do to make the offices look finished and we were without power for a good bit of the day because the building's power supply was being moved from one wire to another. I fretted about what I would find in the office (and usually I don't fret these days) but I was so glad nothing was broken that I stayed calm and did my work, did my best to comfort friends who were more stressed out by the craziness. Even at home I'm staying calm and so is KK as she wades through the large mass of end of school year homework and show and test preparation. We're getting there. The thing that upsets me the most about the ceiling removal is the lack of honesty on the part of the company that did the work - giving us completely erroneous instructions about how much we needed to do to move our stuff and protect our offices, and about things like whether they would put the lights back in. The particular mistakes they made will be fixed, but I feel a little less positive about and safe in the world seeing such dishonesty and poor workmanship being practiced. On the bright side, Liam, who speaks estraordinarily well for three, does still have some cute combined words. My current favorite is "perjellium" for "petrolium jelly". I'm increasingly respectful of the way Bob spends his retirement. Today he worked on setting up a library at the refugee education center where he volunteers and tomorrow he'll be at the parents' dance guild meeting for KK's school. In between he's entering data for the Obama campaign, working out steadily at the gym, caring for Liam parts of three days each week, and reading lots of high quality books. I still love my work, especially now as our office transition is clearly past the midpoint, but Bob does make retirement look good.

Re-entry

I had a great day with Liam, playing with knights on the floor, putting away laundry, fixing dinner, all the ordinary kinds of things that have always given me pleasure. I remember being the kid in that dyad wiht my Grandma Anna, doing all the ordinary things with great attention to detail and shared joy. I hope Liam remembers these days with me in the same way, or if he doesn't remember, has a feeling laid down of pleasure in the ordinary. I'm freaked out about going back to work tomorrow and trying to put my office back together after the popcorn ceiling removal, which apparently caused much more disruption than expected. I'm not even sure we'll have power. KK is pretty amazing right now - so vulnerable and so full of possibilities. I see her afraid every day about challenges in dance and school, trying to balance her happiness in her relationship with her boyfriend with her commitment to keep doing hard things well. Right now she has a lot going on with end of year testing and one last dance show - a couple of choir shows before new York, but she doesn't seem nervous about those. There's something different about her these days, a new reaching for maturity I think, a sense that she needs to grasp more responsibility right now, afraid or not.

Back from a good birding day

Yesterday was really pretty perfect - sweet time with Bob and the wind blowing and the sun shining but not too brightly in my eyes - the sunscreen working. The birds were out and I've finally gotten a system of using both glasses and binoculars that gives me better views than I've ever gotten - coloring patterns Bob has long described that have and books picture are suddenly THERE on the actual birds. WOW! Pretty birds yesterday were indigo bunting and rose breasted grosbek, also two amazing reddish egrets, one in white phase and one reddish. The white one had all it's breeding plumage on and both gave us great views. Anybody who birds the Corpus area, try Indian Point. The shorebirds especially were numerous, close, and not skittish. We listened to Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad in the car -beautifully crafted as everything Atwood writes and also darker than I feel about human nature. I love the idea of different character's takes on classic stories (midrash in the secular world) and found the focus on the shift from matriarchal to patriarchal cultures fascinating, but the character of Penelope was such a martyr with such an edge that it bothered me. She could kind of laugh at herself, which redeemed her some. Bob liked her better than I did. I love that we can enjoy and discuss books together. This one is short - about three hours on audiobook, so good for a car trip. Today I expect to spend time with KK out in the little house while she does homework. She had fun yesterday at the poos with three teen aged boys including her boyfriend. She didn't get sunburned either. She does not melt when I can't see her. Definitely a Jewish moter stereotype here at times when it comes to things like sunburn. Supposedly the popcorn has been scraped off my ceiling at work and the office is intact. i'm still a little nervous about that. I took everything off the walls and packed up my crystals, statues, fetishes and such on Friday, hopefully safely. The crew hired to remove the popcorn came roaring in before I finished my last session on Friday, planning to work all night - loud and fast and a little scary. I hope they didn't break anything. I did sign another three year lease on the office on Friday. That part feels good.

Fresh start

I did calm down last night and ended up having some good quiet time in the little house with KK while she studied and I played computer games. Then Ruth and I had a fascinating conversation based on the book Quiet which is a research based and really interesting recent work about the nature of introversion and the contributions of introverts to society. Twentieth century America really put high value on extroversion - the loud, charismatic, quick deciding, alpha, life of the party kind, and confused introversion with shyness, poor social skills, anxiety, all kinds of things it's not. One of the characteristics the book claims belong to introverts is the tendency to be easily stimulated and overstimulated by the environment. That is surely me, and surely what happened yesterday. Those of you who keep reading here will probably be reading more about this book. This morning is softly cool before a warm afternoon. Bob and I are leaving for the coast right after work for a quick day of birding the end oof spring migration. KK will be going to the pool with friends tomorrow while we are gone and, with my morning freshness, it is easier to accept that she can put on her own sunscreen. "I'm almost sixteen." she reminded me, "I can put on my own sunscreen." And she's right. I think I'm overprotective about sun issues and this little redhead because I got such bad sunburns as a young girl before real sunblock was invented.

Hard Day

It was a hard hard work day - always running late, running after myself, forgetting, chasing, got me home irritable and overstimualted, not quite able to stay balanced and kind with the family I love. I wish I were less anxious, less high strung, easier. I usually make up for my natural intensity with extra self management, but when I let the bottom fall out it really falls out. I sent myself to my room while the others are at the table, trying to gather. I guess I put myself in time out. Living with a three year old is good. Liam doesn't really lose it very often, but when he does I think he feels just like I do tonight and the result isn't all that different. There's something comforting in the universiality of emotion - something I remember from being around children.

Beginning again

I haven't been keeping this blog, haven't been writing the patterns of my days and nights during a spring that has been full of change and challenge. My office building, which is the home of so much of myself, is still undergoing remodel and the group of friends with whom I've long worked is rebalancing, roles and rooms shifting. It's thrown me way off, all this change - not tragic, not even bad. It's just been too hard to write about. I'm sticking a foot back into this blog. I want to dive in. I want to promise posts every day and quotes and poems and wisdom and insights. I know I'm not so good at keeping promises lately, especially to myself. So what I can say is I made this post. I'm sticking my foor back in. I hope to be at least knee deep by the end of the week.

I'm thoughtful tonight - thinking that the ordinary days are holy days - glad for my ordinary days, wanting to make each one holy. I enjoyed this last round of holidays. They are special too. I'm just ready now for ordinary day by day special as the light returns and hte days lengthen. Winter will get colder, but I am happy to know that the cycle is already building toward spring.

Home from our runaway - late after dinner out with Joanna. I loved being out in the air and the sun and even a little rain. Texas has a little salt lake I didn't even know about where you can sometimes see thousands of sand hill cranes and snow geese, hundreds of long billed curlews. We found the lake - off the beaten track, but not at sunset when we would have seen the birds come back in. We plan to go back for that later this winter. i think I am ready for new beginnings now.

Peace,
Victoria