Thanksgiving 9- Generations

 I am thankful for generations, behind me and ahead of me. I love that things as simple as putting bay leaf in stew which started before me will continue after me. I teach my grand children the names of wild flowers as my grandmpther taught me. I see and expression in a grandson's eyes and for a moment am looking into the face of his long dead grandfather. And it's not just blood. I see KK learning from Bob to make and keep calenders. Right this minute Liam is waiting in his room for me to play "little people" with him, very much along the lines that I played it as a girl. I am thankful for generations and also for physical proximity to the generations which follow me.

Thanksgiving 8- Sleep

I am thankful for sleep. it still feels magical to go to bed tired and fuzzheaded and wake clea, fresh, and confident. No matter how well I understand the physiology of sleep and rest, the overnight restoration still seems like a miracle. I am thankful for sleep.

Thanksgiving 7 - Knitting

Thanksgiving 7- I am thankful for knitting.  I love the predictability of it, the ability to choose color, texture, design and produce something with reasonable reliability which at least remotely resembles the intended result.  When I am overstimulated, overtired, anxious, and so much in life is out of my control, I can pick up my needles and knit, purl, knit, purl and lose my anxiety in the rythm of it.  I am thankful for having a portable way of calming myself which actually produces objects of beauty and warmth.  I am thankful for knitting.

Thanksgiving 6 - Community

Tonight I am thankful for community.  I've been part of some good ones.  Tonight I'm sitting with a happy group who has worked hard for the election of a President who we felt would best govern our country.  I'm hearing the laughter of tired happy people who didn't know each other three months ago and have worked hard together, building respect and friendships, some of which will last.  I've been part of some other  great communities, some which created, some which mourned, some which explored , some which studied.. We humans, even introverts like me, have a tendency to connect when we have troubles, joys, or work to do.  I love that about us.  I am thankful for community. 

Thanksgiving 5- American Democracy

Thanksgiving 5 - I am thankful for American democracy, imperfect as it is. Bob and I have been working hard for our candidate, and that has put us in touch with so many people, those who agree with us and those who don't. Despite the hype about negativity in politics, I've been talking to so many people who take their vote and their responsibility seriously, who study the issues, who care. I feel energized and more patriotic than I have in decades. Whoever is elected President. I am thankful for American democracy.

Thanksgiving 4 - My beloved dead

    Today, in Catholic  (and Episcopal and  I think other Christian)  tradition, is All Souls Day, the day the beloved dead are honored and named in mass.  I am thankful today for all my beloved dead, those who were central to my life and those whose large lives shadowed and shaped mine.  So much of what I've learned was taught by those no longer living. (And yes Mort, Real is still better than perfect.)  I think  of Jim who was a gentle date for a shy sophomore and who sang Old Man River  with a voice as deep as yearning and who died of a bee sting while mowing his lawn - poof - just gone.  I remember my grandparents, especially Anna, who knew hardship and loss upon loss and who offered only love.  I think of the martyred heroes of many causes, of the song about "Abraham, Martin, John, and Bobby" Of course I remember Kerry, and am so thankful for first love, the commitment of young marriage and the joy of building our family together.  I still see our girls through your eyes sometimes, love, or think I do, and my own eyes fill with tears.  I think of Ruth's baby Mira, who died unborn and whose textures I never  knew.  And my own parents who shaped my life, who welcomed and taught me.  And of course Heidi, beloved sister and friend, most recent among my own beloved dead.  Your brand of courage was different than mine - and wore a radiant smile in the hardest times.  All of you and so many more (Mary Ellen, John, Paul, Lou,  Mary, Dolly, Diane) taught and touched me and I miss you all .  I am thankful for my beloved dead. 

Thanksgiving Three

 I am thankful for a life that spans centuries. Not only am I thankful for having lived in good health into my sixties, but especially for the timing of my life regarding change in the world. I remember standing in my mothers "modern"with my grandmother, who walked behind a horse drawn wagon as much as a hundred miles when her family moved from tenant farm to tenant farm. Cool...

in the air conditioning, we placed plates in the dishwasher, had just taken clothes out of the electric drier, and of course could stay up late because of electric lights. We could check on family members quickly with the telephone and didn't need to worry about having enough ice in the summer. Our world was full of "modern conveniences" and I remember saying to her that I just couldn't imagine how there could be more big changes in our way of life like those that had come about im her life time. Man was I wrong! I find it disturbing at time to have a clearly twentieth century mind in the twenty first century, but I like being along for an amazing ride. I am thankful for a life that spans centuries.

Thanksgiving 2 - since it is the second day of November and I want to keep the pattern. I am thankful for erasers (As in perfection is impossible. That's why pencils have erasers.) I am thankful for the paraphrase, second and upteenth chances, the benefit of the doubt, a little leeway, forgiveness, each new day dawning. Given human imperfection, I am thankful for every option we have to start over, try again, keep on keeping on. I am thankful for erasers.

November first - beginning of gratitude month posts

Thanksgiving One - I've been noticing the Thanksgiving posts beginning to show up on Facebook and I have been neglecting this blog terribly.  I don't like neglecting the blog and daily gratitude posts seem like a possible way to jump start, but not simple.  I want to join that flow of conscious gratitude.  I've done gratitude lists so many times they almost seem trite, and yet being thankful is never trite.  I find myself a little stuck about how to proceed. So many blessings, so many good people in my life, so many resources, so many moments of beauty, learning, unexpected delight, such a great safety net. And I laugh at myself  for over thinking and list my first blessing - I am thankful for my own cognitive complexity. Though I can think myself into a corner and have plenty of times, I can also think myself out and can enjoy many facets  and aspects of the world of the world. I'm thankful for seeing through my own eyes, filtering through my own mind, being myself in this world.

Thanksgiving 26

I know this is an odd one, but I am thankful for grief. This is one of those days when i've heard of several deaths, either just occured or soon to occur. Love is so intense, and loss so painful. I belief grief is the normal developmental process through which our losses first become real to us and then become less central to our lives. It is a wave form, like being in the ocean in a hurricaine at first, swamped by giant wave after giant wave, with no recourse except to be washed through. In time the ocean camms down, bu the occasional big wave still hits. I don't believe that without grief I never would have accepted Kerry's death or found a way to thrive without him. i am thankful for grief.

Eleventh

Eleventh anniversary of September 11 attack  - hard to believe.  Time passes really fast at my age.  Zachary wasn't even conceived that day, or just barely - and he's ten, jas lived only in a post 9-11 world.

Tonight I rediscovered a woman I went to graduate school with.  We were in her home for an Obama phone bank.  I remember her wedding.  She's still married to the guy she married that day.  It's amazing how much older we all are, and also how much she seems like she was then - efficient, effective, outgoing, together, upbeat.    She has a lovely home with a beautiful pond full of fish out back.  She remembers me too.  I wonder if I seem as natural extension of the young woman in her memory as she seems of the young woman in mine.

Long work day. Good work day.  It is still mild for the end of August.  Last year was so hot and the wildfires out toward Bastrop were about to start burning.  Now the forrest they burned is beginning to come back.  Not the houses.  I'm thinkng about what comes back and what doesn't. what is destroyed for good and what can't be.  I'd like to think human  relationships can always be restored, but experience shows me that too often they are not. Health cannot always be restored.  Nor youth. Trust can be restored but it takes both work and willingness to accept the change created by the work. Order can be restored almost always.  Peace of mind can be restored.

I've missed a day, and that's alright, just don't want to miss too many, want to build the pattern back.  Yesterday morning, in preparation for the High holy Days, Liam and Ruth marched into my bedroom blowing trumpet and shofar to wake me from any late summer drowsiness.  I love this tradition of thinking about becoming more awake each year as the seasons turn.  What do I want to be more awake to this season?  Mostly kindness, and patience in myself - calm in face of deadlines and schedules - more tenderness to those with whom I live and less need for reassurance..

One more day and I want to post here again, though I don't have great things to post.  Only habit builds habit, and I want , as I wrote last night, to restore this blog, not to lose it.  I can write tonight that we have had rain two days in a row and the temperature probably won't reach 100 this week.  Maybe it won't get that hot again this year.  Or maybe it will.  there is definitely a sense of summer ending.  School starts here in a week and the teachers are already back.  All of my grandchildren have school supplies and most of their school clothes.  Liam and Drea are both going to preschool this year, first time for him and starting up again after summer break for her.  Both seem excited.  I bought several fun little school dresses for Drea at Savers, my favorite second hand store, and Liam chose himself several plaid shord sleeved button front shirts at the same store.  That style seems to be his trademark. He dresses like his Daddy, which makes for some great pictures both mental and photographic.  Life is good in our house tonight.  Ruth is working on photographs she took at a bridal shoot today (not a wedding but just phtos of the bride)  This is especially cool because the bride was one of Chris' students his first year teaching in the high school in Jourdonton, a small town south of San Antonio.  She kept up with Chris, and now is teaching in Round Rock, just north of here, and about to marry.  Continuity like that feels good to me.  Bob is out at the kitchen table printing out English language materials for the refugee program wiht which he volunteers.  Liam is sleeping and Chris is reading.  This time next week KK will be back in her little house, probably NOT sleeping since school will start the next day.   

Rabbi Monty made a call for poems to share at high holiday services, which got me reading through this blog looking for, and finding a few, poems.  I've been letting this blog languish, but I don't want to let it die.  Reading back to when I started it in 2005 feels good.  I want there to still be words here seven years from now.   I  want to be alive then, but who know.  I want to be writing as long as I'm alive.  It is storming out - a good thing in the summer.  Summer is almost over.  next week this timekk will be back to start her sophomore year.  Today has been odd, off kilter, maybe because of the storms.  We saw a bad accident on the road in an earlier rain storm.  A donut truck hit a biciclyst and firetrucks came to the rescue.  It was scary to see.  I hope the cyclist lived.  We were on the way to swim with Liam in Annalyn's indoor pool.  It was so amazing to watch him really swim, put his head willingly under the water again and again, kick, and reach and pull with his arms.  That part of the day was not unsettled, just very happy.  

Peaceful

is how I feel tonight, at the exact time of Kerry's death anniversary.  All the angst i felt earlier in the week just peeled away.  I don't entirely understand how or why.  Tonight there was a memorial service at synagogue for a woman of great standing in the community, one who was clearly adored by and adored her husband of many years.  They were loved and she is mourned by many old friends in the community.  Seeint that sweet connection in a time of death was good for me, healing.  Everyone has losses.  Sometimes I think I feel most connected to other people through the universiality of loss. 

Death Anniversaries

are wierd.  I remember as a kid resenting that my mother always remembered her parents' death dates and got sad and wanted me to be sad too.  I missed my grandparents with a kind of gentle low level sadness, but I just didn't see the point in keeping track of death dates.  Remembering birthdays was hard enough.  Then my first husband, Kerry, died on July 7 when I was thirty five - almost thirty years ago.  And now I understand.  Everything about the beginning of July, the fireworks, the feel of the air, the colors of the few remaining wildflowers, the angle of the afternoon sun, remind my body of the week the bottom fell out of life as I understood it. Some years the feeling is mild, just a little melancholy I barely notice.  Some years, and this year is one of them, it packs a wallop.  The remembered pain, reverberating pain, of my first central loss has nothing to do with my happiness in my current marriage (which is great).  I feel sad for the young man who never got to be an older man, who never got to see the fine women the little girls he adored have become.  But mostly I think by now, it isn't even about him. This time of year reminds me that life as I know it can blow up again at any moment, and probably will.  I'd rather not think about that much.  

Moving the woodpile

Getting older is odd.  I moved a wood pile today - a big woodpile full of boards, some short and some maybe fifteen feet long.  They were heavy and it was not Texas hot, but warm all the same.  I got burrs in my hair and scratched up my hands and i was probably buch slower than my daughter would have been.  My body is tired tonight.  I am very happy to be in my bed in an airconditioned house with my lap top.  I know moving that wood pile was harder for me than it would have been ten years ago, but I moved a wood pile today.  I realize how lucky I am to be sixty one and alive and still able to move a wood pile and have people around with whom to work on projects we all care about.

Oh, there was treasure in the woodpile, a pair of gorgeous king snakes, each looking like a jeweled rope about four feet long.  I learned from Chris that femail king shakes have thicker bodies and narrower tails than males.  We definitely had one of each shape.  they were slightly different in coloration too, both with much glossy black, but he with a pattern more golden to apricot and she more golden to violet - such pretty snakes both of them.  We wished for a big aquarium for a minute, but it seems better to let them be wild.  I was pleased that Liam seemed to understand that snakes like these are beautiful to look at, not scary if Daddy says they aren't venemous, but to be respected as wild and not bothered or touched.

And on a funny (now) note, it is much easier to get burrs in your hair than I ever would have thought.  I had hundreds all over my body, head, and clothes at one point this afternoon.  It is also easier to get them out of long hair than I ever imagined.  If you ever have a mane full of burrs, don't panic and use an absurd amount of conditioner and a good brush.

Illogical reisistance to sleep

I don't want to go to bed and it's almost four in the morning.  I start work at nine and I have a long day.  This is more than slightly nuts.  At first I thought I was just enjoying a quiet house to get some writing done, but then I realized that I don't want to go to sleep because my sister in law heidi is having a Beta knife procedure to remove brain tumors tomorrow.  Odds are she will do fine.  I'm not even worrying exactly, but I think I have this "thing" that if I don't go to sleep the next day won't come and if it won't come nothing bad can happen.  DUh!!!!!!  THe only thing that will happen if I don't go to bed is that I'll be tired and do less of a good job tomorrow.  So good night.