Tag: Blogging

What? August is Half Over?!

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It’s more than half over – this month of August. I can already tell that it’s not light as early as it used to be. Summer is doing what it always does, going away.

But it’s been perfect this week, enough sun, enough rain, enough cool work weather. I love being up north.

– Hiked at Hunt Hill Audubon Camp. Such a beautiful 2.8 mile trek around lakes and forest. The blackberries are huge this summer and we had to grab a few off the bushes we went past.

Just one of the lakes we skirted.

– Worked on my first book project. I’m not reading this time, I’m writing. It is ready for editing. It’s about my journey with Dennis, through our years with Lewy Body Dementia.

– Connected with family over a breakfast at my condo, and with friends for breakfast at a restaurant. Breakfast is my major meal of the day. Why not share it with precious people?

– Thought and planned for the trip coming up in September.

– Got in a war with the deer and rabbits over possession of my flower garden

Garden beauty draws predators, and it’s not just because they’re hungry. There’s plenty to eat this time of year.

– Made some noticeable advances in my Spanish language learning

– Spent time with Mom and her brother, my Uncle Wendell. It’s good to have someone in my life who’s older than me, and there are fewer of those people around.

– Spent a lot of time watching videos of this munchkin.

Gwennie, my favorite video personality

– Gratitude time, walking the wetlands and counting the deer that cross my path. They are either not afraid of me, or I’m invisible now.

Two littles with spots and three adults. They knew they had me outnumbered and didn’t care what I would do.

Lastly, I spent hours trying to regain access to my blog website this week. Not sure how he did it, but Ryan Bruels got me back in possession, and I’m grateful for that. It’s not just physical journals that can suddenly become nonfunctional. There’s that web thing and all the entities behind it…

When 2024 Got Soaked

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It was an unfortunate accident, unless you believe that there are no real accidents, just things we didn’t know would happen. There’s a difference.

I had filled my watering cans at the kitchen sink and set them on the counter. I intended to mix in some plant fertilizer before watering my brood. But for a couple of hours I turned my mind to something else and when I came again to the counter, I noticed that it was wet. Very wet. One of the cans evidently has a small leak. The counter would have been much wetter had it not been for my day planner, which soaked up all it could on every single page. It was dripping, heavy and sodden.

My day planner is not only my reminder of things to come, it is my memory of everything past. Most every day I record happenings and feelings, questions and observations, knowing that I can look back and say “on that day I did something, there it is.” Seven months of memory now is smeared, faded, crinkled and very sad looking.

I have many years of this same planner. I like its style, the amount of space it allows, and its size that fits easily in my purse – not too big, not too small. It goes with me almost everywhere I go. It is one of the first things I look at in the morning, and one of the last things I check at night. It’s a bit precious to me, and I’ve been known to get despondent when I can’t locate it and think it’s lost.

So, I’ve done what any resourceful writer would probably do, I ordered another one. If I can get the pages apart and they are still readable, I will copy every single word into the new one. I don’t care how long it takes.

Until the new one comes, I will have to write somewhere. I guess it will be here. This spot on the internet started out as a journal, a place to think in print. Writing is therapy, you know. It’s my way of checking in on myself to see how I’m handling the mundane, the trivial, the disappointments, frustrations, and mysteries of my own little life. For a while, it will be pretty mild, unimpressive, probably nothing quotable or wise, just life. However it is, it will get written. I have needed to do it in a more consistent, disciplined way, and now I will.

Maybe this soaked planner is just the result of an accident. But, if I decide to respond to it by writing more, making it a catalyst, using it to change a pattern, make a new habit, well then, it seems to me it’s more than just an accident. It could have been planned, only not by me.

That’s today’s story and I’m sticking to it.

It’s never going to close again.

Set Me Free

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This year has brought a lot of new situations into my life. And, of course, changes have come with them. I have had to change many things, especially the expectations I have about myself, my work, and my purpose. It’s been a bit of a free fall. When I first started feeling restless, unmotivated, stuck, apprehensive, and frustrated, those adjectives were just on the edges of life. In the center there was always a lot of routine activity. There were distractions of all kinds. There were people to help, events to attend, all of it pointing to getting back to being my former self.  Until things got quiet.

I think it was easy to divide life into before and after the death of my husband, and to think that I would get back to being my usual self, whoever that was.  Now that some time has passed, I’m starting to view it differently. My life is more like an ever changing timeline. Dennis’s death was a significant event on the timeline, that is true, but there were other events as well, and change came with each of them. 

Getting right to the freedom part, I made a decision this week that started this whole chain of thought. Here is what happened. 

 I like to call myself a writer, but who am I kidding if I don’t write? For over ten years now I have managed to do a blogging challenge, the April A to Z.  At first I filled the 26 days of the month with random posts. Later I started picking themes because it was easier and more interesting. The last couple of years I’ve struggled to find new themes that sparked creativity, but still managed come up with something. Last year I did character sketches, based on real people I’ve known but fictionalized. This year I thought I might work on putting those people in plots. I told myself that doing this challenge was important to me and made me a better writer.

I got a few stories done, and then I hit a wall.  Nothing was coming together. I was avoiding writing any way I could, and feeling ashamed about it at the same time. I felt like I had to do it, because I had done it for so many years. This self imposed mandate was sucking all the fun out of my days. So I set myself free. What a relief. 

I don’t have to join the challenge. I don’t have to follow a theme. I can forget about the alphabet if I want to. I don’t even have to write anything this coming month at all. It feels pretty good to rebel against some kinds of restrictions. So much so, that I’ve been looking around for other things that I don’t need to do, things that I have bound myself to that might be up for re-evaluation. 

What will my summer be like if I don’t put in a garden? What will my files look like if I clean out some of the trivia? Is it time to let go of my high school and college cheerleading letters? How will it change my relationship with my mom if I’m more of a friend and less of a caregiver?  How might it feel if life is simpler, less burdened?

This thought train has just started to pick up steam. At this stage in my life there are compelling reasons to think about lightening the load, letting go of things, and throwing off chains. Of finding new freedom.  

And what things would God have me do with the new freedoms that have come my way?

What have you been freed from recently? Join the conversation – I would love to hear your thoughts. 

Still have them, but their days are numbered. Go team, go!

Small, Useful Fire: #3

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A series of memories around a fascinating subject – fire

Two days of hiking in the rain, with temps in the 30’s, just above freezing. We had spent the previous night in a small shelter with 20 other hikers and about that many mice, so there hadn’t been much actual sleep. We were tired, and tired of being cold.

We crawled into camp in the last few minutes of daylight. Tents were going up. I could hear people thinking how nice it would be to sit around a nice, blazing campfire for a while. Some kind trail angel had left large pieces of dry wood in the shelter and it had been arranged in the fire pit, There were obvious signs of attempts to get it burning, but there had been no success. Now it was getting damp.

You can’t hold a match to a large piece of wood and set it on fire. It’s too big of a jump. You must start small, with kindling, and add progressively larger pieces of fuel until the heat load is enough to start the burn in the large piece. It’s a simple principle. But there is a major deficit when any available kindling has been rained on for two days.

I admit to being prideful when it comes to starting fires – one of my many faults. That was part of why I decided I would have a fire that night. The other reason was that I knew people could die of hypothermia and I didn’t want to be one of them. I was hoping this potential blaze would feel my affinity for fire and respond.

Looking in sheltered places, I did locate some less damp sticks and leaves and took my stash to the fire pit. My hope was that a small flame would dry out more of the kindling, if I could keep it alive. It takes getting close and intimate, and it takes patience. I knelt and started tending “the baby”. That’s exactly what it is, a baby fire. It must be given another leaf, another twig, another blast of oxygen, and never allowed to die.

No one wanted to help with this and some probably thought I was crazy to waste time trying to burn wet wood. I was too cold to do anything else. My daughter was setting up our tent, leaving me free to be crazy. I put my face close to the flame and blew gently until I had no more breath, then turned and got a gulp of fresh air, over and over. The dampness was creating a lot of smoke, but that gave me hope that things were drying out a little.

The end of this story is, of course, that the fire progressed as I had hoped. As the larger pieces of dry wood caught and turned into a healthy blaze. It was lovely and it was regarded as near miraculous, which added to my pride, but I knew. It was no miracle but rather persistence, motivated by need. We all enjoyed getting warm again before getting in our sleeping bags for the night.

And my personal attraction to a small, useful fire grew. An intriguing, mysterious gift is what it is… just sayin’.

Small, Useful Fire: #2

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A series of memories around a fascinating subject – fire.

Those two trees were a major fixture in the backyard. At one time, before we moved there, they even had a border of heavy timbers defining the area around them, because it was hard to mow around their roots. I especially like trees, at least most all of them, so it was hard when some kind of beetle infested them and they began to die. I clearly remember the day when my landscaping friend and his brother came over to cut them down, carefully, one piece at time, until there were only stumps.

The mound, covered with ferns, but the stumps are in there.

I don’t like stumps nearly as much as I like trees, although I have done some interesting things with them. These stumps were not the interesting kind at all. It was an easy decision to get rid of them, but not so easy to figure out how. Although they had been cut very short, they had multiple exposed roots and the mound on which they sat seemed impenetrable. There are people who would have hired a stump grinder or a backhoe and the stumps would have been torn out in a hour. But, I have never been a big machinery person, and I am patient. A small, useful fire would be just the thing…

And so it began. Numerous campfires were built on the mound and the stumps got smaller. It wasn’t quick, because they were stumps at least eighteen inches in diameter, and our campfires were always extinguished within an hour or two.

Then came the day that I decided to clean the file drawers. Years worth of bank statements, old tax returns, outdated warranties and instructions for things we no longer owned, and more – it all had to be destroyed and paying to have it shredded was not an option. It was not an option because I like to burn things (things that should be burned).

I sat by the stumps, feeding the fire for hours, shifting my position to keep out of the smoke. By evening all the paper was gone but the mound still glowed with heat. I did not want to douse it with water but for safety’s sake, I did. Smoke billowed out. The flames disappeared.

Smoke rises from one of the outlying roots, still burning.

The next morning, I saw a small trail of smoke, rising from the mound. It looked like a small volcano. The ground was still warm too, and I realized that fire had been slowly advancing underground, along the roots, during the night. The mound was collapsing. I couldn’t have been happier.

Fire underground. Who would have thought of its usefulness?

This story also reminded me of the underground fires in Centralia, PA. We drove through the area and saw wisps of smoke rising randomly over the landscape. The coal mind there has been on fire for over 60 years. That fire has turned Centralia into a ghost town. As fires go, it is neither small or useful.

A to Z Challenge: Xander, Yancy and Zeke

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Character sketches that are fictional, but based on real people like you and me.

They were born two years apart, giving a hierarchy of sorts but also giving them enough in common to make good playmates out of them. It would be wrong to say that there was no competition between them, but as brothers go, they were more inclined to stick up for each other and get along. They grew up on a farm in Wisconsin, which as it turned out, was a pretty good place to grow up.

Xander was the oldest. On his own for his first two years, he may have acquired more of an independent spirit. Also being the first son, he got to do many things first, before the others. Sometimes this was a privilege, but other times it felt more like a restriction. When you are the first to be taught to drive a tractor it is pretty heady stuff, until you have to drive that tractor making hay while others are playing. As a child, Xander was an endless well of grandiose ideas. His aspiration at the age of eight was to ride his bike down the road with three ice cream cones in each hand. That took imagination.

Yancy and Zeke were sometimes thought to be twins. They shared a spot in the family behind their older brother and spent a lot of time together. Zeke grew faster than Yancy, and almost surpassed him in size. They both had sandy brown crew cuts, which would bleach out to near blonde in the summer. The sandy part was not just descriptive of color. One of their favorite pastimes was playing in the soft sand of the driveway, throwing it up in the air and letting it fall on their heads. The layer of sand on their scalps was thick enough for Mom to scratch off at bath time.

All three boys were often dressed alike since it was easiest to buy, or make, the same shirt in three sizes. Getting them dressed up for church was always like a circus act. One would get finished up, but before the second one was half done, the first one would spill something on his pants or decide to take shoes off. Given enough time, the miracle would occur and all three would make it into the car mostly dressed.

These three young boys were a force in the neighborhood, and at school for years. Bike riders, lawn mowers, basketball players, and friends to young and old. But as they developed their unique interests, their paths were tending to take very different directions. What would they do to maintain their sense of family closeness and their unity as brothers? Would it take something intentional, and what would that something be?

A to Z Challenge: Wesley

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Character sketches that are fictional but based on real people, like you and me.

Wesley was 90 years old. Some people would have said he had no business being on a tractor, much less on a tractor, with other people, showing them how to drive it. But this was the Wesley who collected old farm machinery and got it running, the Wesley who was caregiver for his somewhat older wife who had Parkinson’s, the Wesley who cut and burned wood to heat the house, the Wesley who was used to being as healthy as a horse. They were having a great time on the tractor until he fell off.

Of course, things like this are not planned or practiced, they just happen. And they happen rather quickly. The people who have accidents like this probably can’t even tell you how the event happened because they are too busy watching their lives flash before them in an instant. Wesley thought he remembered how this fall came about – he was standing beside his granddaughter, who was driving, and as he leaned forward to pull a lever, he lost his balance and down he went.

Down he went between those huge big wheels on the back of the tractor. Even the thought of it is scary. Wesley, however, was a man of faith and calmly accepted the gift of getting to live another year. He tucked and rolled, appearing from under the tractor, completely intact and not at all run over. His shaken family members who got to watch him, insisted on taking him to the local hospital to get checked out. He did have a broken collar bone from landing on it too hard. He was a bit sore the next day.

He did a lot of downplaying the whole thing. He was a man of few words anyway. Whereas some people would have bragged and made sure everyone knew about their close call, Wesley was more worried that someone might actually tell his wife. She had no love for old tractors and would not have understood the desire to ride on one. Fortunately, she was not among the watchers as this went down. No one gave her any details.

There comes a time when even the most capable elders start to worry about their ability to keep themselves and others safe. Wesley is completely prepared to give this issue some serious thought when he gets older.

A to Z Challenge: Valerie

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Being in a choir was not the usual thing for Val, although she did sing pretty well. This particular choir was quite a large group. They were practicing a moderately difficult program to be performed over the course of a week at a conference. There were singers from all over the world who had come for the music and for the fellowship. They were a faith based group, which made it possible for Val to feel a small degree of comfortable, but that wasn’t saying she was all the way there by any means.

She was standing in the alto section without being sure that was where she belonged. It was better than trying for notes up in the stratosphere. She was standing near another singer who didn’t seem as timid and unsure as she was. She decided they should become friends, and set about making it happen. She was good at that job even though she came across as being the quiet type at first. It just took her a while to get warmed up.

Valerie, who preferred to be called Val, was a Virginia girl with a slight southern twang to her speech. Like everyone else, her family had its share of dysfunction, but it was still a supportive, intact family. Val had finished high school and her first year at university when she met her friend in choir. They found out they shared a high love for adventure. Val also had a dry wit and a sense of humor that drew friends. She looked at life with an expectation of fun, and who wouldn’t want to be around that?

After singing in each other’s ears for a week the conference ended. They went their separate ways, but their friendship started its long distance phase. Letters went back and forth frequently. There’s something about the safety of writing to someone far away and not having to deal with judgment, for at least as long as it takes for a return letter – they became very well acquainted with each other’s personal lives. They were both writers, who actually preferred the written word as a means of working out their everyday angst. Their bond deepened.

Val was working on her degree in elementary education which left her somewhat free in the summer. Her friend had children who were old enough to be self-sufficient. So it came about that in the summer of 1996 her friend, Louise, invited her to do a trip out west with her. They would meet at Louise’s home in Florida and travel to Colorado in Louise’s aging Dodge van, camping as they went. Val went for it.

Patterning themselves after the duo of “Thelma and Louise” of Hollywood fame (well, except for the illegal parts, which make up most of the movie, oh, and the ending…) they set off to have an adventure. They had a great time traveling the Florida panhandle the first day. Safely reaching the campground Louise had lined up for the first night was their first triumph. They managed to set up their tent, have a walk on the beach and survived their first camp meal out of a can. It was the next day they were excited about and spent some time discussing. Neither of them had been to the city they were coming to next, and they had a list of what had to be seen and done.

“Thelma and Louise” in New Orleans, yeah, it had a good ring to it. Let the adventure begin…

A to Z Challenge: Uriah

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Character sketches that are fictional but based on real people, like you and me.

He couldn’t figure out why his mother had named him Uriah. It was a perfectly good biblical name, she explained. It even meant “God’s light”. But why did she have to name him after a guy too dense to figure out why he was being sacrificed in battle – unwilling to think that the king could have been fooling around with his wife. Early on he adopted the nickname of Ri. Maybe people would assume he was a Ryan.

He had been a busy kid, grown into a busy man. He liked being busy. It was more interesting than being idle. It was true, he had become more balanced, mainly due to his wife’s influence, but it still drove him crazy to sit and endure small talk. He would start to fidget and then excuse himself to leave and get something done.

There were ample excuses. He was always involved in three or four projects of his own, in addition to his role as mayor of his small town, his own business, and his family. Oh yes, and there was the church board, his elderly mother’s estate which he kept track of, and the condo association and property that he managed. He was always surprising people with his newest idea to improve, clean up, organize.

Many people are busy because of their desire to advance themselves, but undergirding Uriah’s constant motion was his generosity. He almost never met a person he didn’t want to help, if they needed it. He was aware of his own abundant blessings and felt that he should be distributing his energy, his time and his wealth wherever his faith directed. As a result, God was always dropping something or someone in his path for him to consider.

And then, unexpectedly, his wife got sick and died. It was a devastating, unthinkable blow. For a while it was even more necessary to keep busy. He tore through the house, every drawer, cupboard and closet to make sure he knew what was there and that it all had a purpose – for him, now that he was alone. And then a gradual apathy settled in. The urgency was gone and he was looking, not for energy, but for motivation.

He didn’t need money. His business almost ran itself. His two children were out of the house. He had not been in this stage of life before, and had not imagined being in it by himself. It called for some deep introspection and he decided to give himself some time. Time for others to speak into his life, and most certainly for God to direct him.

But as so often happens, God directs people according to their personalities and the talents they already have. Uriah was at the church for a meeting one night when childcare was being provided for couples with children. The girls managing the nursery decided to take the children outside to play. The small play yard, fenced and lighted, had an unusual structure with a slide built in it. It was a ship, representing Noah’s ark. One of the girls noticed that the chain had been cut on the locked gate. Someone had moved into the ark and set up housekeeping.

Homelessness was on the rise in Uriah’s small town and this was not the first time it had affected the church. But this time the situation was going to land on Uriah’s plate. God needed to act through an energetic, generous person. Uriah was about to become busy again. Very busy.

A to Z Challenge: Todd

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This character sketch is not fictional. Todd was real and although I have trouble remembering some of the details, this is my best recollection.

It feels right to use his real name. Todd is no longer with us. He left far too early. Everyone at the service was aware of that reality, and the church was full. This is only part of his story, but it’s the part I know best.

I first saw Todd in our backyard, at night, in the back row of people gathered around a small bonfire. He was part of the youth group that was re-enacting the experience of the persecuted church. They had come, one or two at a time, being very quiet and trying not to attract attention. It was my first witness of Todd’s faith and his willingness to express it. He was not the average young person there.

My husband started talking with Todd that night, and he started appearing at our home. He was a football player in a high school nearby, but was also a serious enough student to want to do well academically. My husband had taught math and sciences and Todd wanted help from time to time. He would appear after practice, around supper time, but wouldn’t come to eat. It took a few years until he felt comfortable going into the refrigerator or joining us at the table. He was extremely polite and unassuming. Gradually he began to feel more like one of the family.

There were quite a few people who saw a promising character in Todd. His high school coach, youth leaders, families like ours and friends. He wanted to overcome a troubled background, and he was doing it.

Todd did well in school and was something of a celebrity at graduation time. He was accepted at a state university, recruited to play football and declared a double major in social work and criminal justice. On breaks and in the summer he would come back to the hometown and work, stopping in to see us (or to do laundry). Like any young person going to college, he needed money and other kinds of support. My husband and I felt almost like proud parents when Todd graduated college and invited us to the ceremony.

Todd and another friend (Carroll) stopped by for dinner. A normal sized man fit neatly under Todd’s arm. He was quite a presence.

After his team won the national college football championship Todd played NFL football for the Titans and the Packers but was plagued with injuries. He finally left the sports scene and came back to our hometown. He had a heart for youth programs, coaching and motivational speaking. He desperately wanted to be a role model for young men.

As I think over our time with Todd, what I see that he was trying to find was family structure. He was looking for a father and a family, a place where he belonged that didn’t depend on his physical or academic skills. He loved being able to come to us whether he was expected or invited. He would sit and talk with my husband for hours into the night. When his back was against the wall financially he wanted someone to care enough to help. He wanted a place to leave his “stuff” in between jobs and residences. He wanted a safe place to come when he was sad or disappointed. He wanted someone to listen to his news when it was good and be glad with him, and someone to listen when it wasn’t good.

Todd didn’t tell us he wasn’t feeling well. I don’t think he was aware of how serious a problem he was experiencing. He was found dead in his apartment at the age of 35. We weren’t blood relatives and had no access to results of the autopsy, but to our knowledge it was not drug related. That would not have been in his nature. God gave us a lot to think about through our relationship with Todd, and we are grateful for the time he was in our life.