Monday, September 7, 2009
Merging Blogs
Feeling a bit fragmented, I've decided to integrate my three blogs into one. I'll be posting Second Blooming on my other blog, Story Spirit Seed. I hope you'll consider subscribing to that blog. It's the same me, same ideas--and some others you wouldn't find here. I'm hoping to be able to post at least once a week--and to offer a more interactive space for us to share our thoughts and ideas about the second half of this wonderful life!
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Three weeks late...
I am posting this three weeks after it happened. I hope you’ll forgive the choppy copy and missing details. I want to keep it in the flow of events so my historical record is in order.
July 20
Monday
Beth arrives to stay with us.
Switching from obsessive spiraling negativity to gratitude is lurching; like suddenly stopping a falling elevator just before it hits the ground.
Diner: Cheeseburger with fries. Yum.
Harry Potter movie
July 21
Tuesday
Nyack with Beth and Katie who wander and eat at various restaurants while I rewrite last week’s angel column, which has been returned again—and put final touches on this week’s column, due at end of day.
Drive Katie to five-hour class.
Great fun playing cards with Max and Beth.
At 9, beth asks, “Who’s picking up Katie?”
July 22
Wed
Driving to the Lodge which Beth and Emily have secured three rooms as a gift to my family. On the way, we stop at Starbucks in Suffern. A few bites of Katie’s pasta salad
Iced tea
Emily! At Starbucks in New Paltz where I get a feta spinach wrap.
Lovely place. Beautiful rooms. We hike to the cliffs where Max spots a bright orange salamander. Francesca picks it up and cradles it in her hands. Photos are snapped. It’s returned to the damp, leafy forest bottom where it scampers away, a slash of color.
We kick a rubber ball around the lawn.
Dinner:
Lovely dinner for six at Italian restaurant where they make their own pasta. I gulp as my kids order the most expensive things on the menu (after I’ve privately asked them not to) and as we all agree on the 30 dollar bottle of wine.
I pick up the check feeling both generous and devastated by my gesture—we absolutely do not have enough money to do things like this! But I do it because I insist on believing and acting as if we can live our lives the way that we want to.
Back at the hotel we play that game where you try and guess what words mean… balderdash, I think it’s called. As we’re having a ball, I keep slipping out of the moment to wonder: Why can’t we have fun like this without beth and Emily? What would it take? And then to despair that, really, with the kids both in college now, it’s too late. That opportunity has passed.
July 23
Thursday
530 am
Hot tea with 2 creamers while waiting for continental breakfast to be served. The night manager, who has informed me that it is much too early for breakfast, sweeps his broom right over my feet as if I am not there. When he signs out at 6am, two teenage girls arrive and slowly but surely they set up the food. As they work, I am so hungry that I drink two creamers.
710
2 hard boiled eggs, hot tea with two creamers
Lunch in town with Beth and Emily and Katie
July 24
Friday
I drive Max and Francesca to Kennedy airport at 5:30 am.
I arrive at work in Englewood Cliffs at 715
July 20
Monday
Beth arrives to stay with us.
Switching from obsessive spiraling negativity to gratitude is lurching; like suddenly stopping a falling elevator just before it hits the ground.
Diner: Cheeseburger with fries. Yum.
Harry Potter movie
July 21
Tuesday
Nyack with Beth and Katie who wander and eat at various restaurants while I rewrite last week’s angel column, which has been returned again—and put final touches on this week’s column, due at end of day.
Drive Katie to five-hour class.
Great fun playing cards with Max and Beth.
At 9, beth asks, “Who’s picking up Katie?”
July 22
Wed
Driving to the Lodge which Beth and Emily have secured three rooms as a gift to my family. On the way, we stop at Starbucks in Suffern. A few bites of Katie’s pasta salad
Iced tea
Emily! At Starbucks in New Paltz where I get a feta spinach wrap.
Lovely place. Beautiful rooms. We hike to the cliffs where Max spots a bright orange salamander. Francesca picks it up and cradles it in her hands. Photos are snapped. It’s returned to the damp, leafy forest bottom where it scampers away, a slash of color.
We kick a rubber ball around the lawn.
Dinner:
Lovely dinner for six at Italian restaurant where they make their own pasta. I gulp as my kids order the most expensive things on the menu (after I’ve privately asked them not to) and as we all agree on the 30 dollar bottle of wine.
I pick up the check feeling both generous and devastated by my gesture—we absolutely do not have enough money to do things like this! But I do it because I insist on believing and acting as if we can live our lives the way that we want to.
Back at the hotel we play that game where you try and guess what words mean… balderdash, I think it’s called. As we’re having a ball, I keep slipping out of the moment to wonder: Why can’t we have fun like this without beth and Emily? What would it take? And then to despair that, really, with the kids both in college now, it’s too late. That opportunity has passed.
July 23
Thursday
530 am
Hot tea with 2 creamers while waiting for continental breakfast to be served. The night manager, who has informed me that it is much too early for breakfast, sweeps his broom right over my feet as if I am not there. When he signs out at 6am, two teenage girls arrive and slowly but surely they set up the food. As they work, I am so hungry that I drink two creamers.
710
2 hard boiled eggs, hot tea with two creamers
Lunch in town with Beth and Emily and Katie
July 24
Friday
I drive Max and Francesca to Kennedy airport at 5:30 am.
I arrive at work in Englewood Cliffs at 715
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
So grateful...
That Matthew's mom will be okay. What an incredibly strong woman. Two weeks in a neck brace, fractured vertebrae, laughing. (Well, now she's laughing.) What a beautiful family--every single day, all day, one of her three daughters is with her, advocating with hospital staff, feeding and bathing her. So touching.
That my Dad loves his nursing home. I've never been happier, he told me last time I visited.
For my beautiful children, my husband who keeps loving and supporting me. How blessed I have been.
For my work, which keeps me inspired, day after day after day.
For this body, that breathes and senses and feels. That still looks good naked! That has carried me along my twisting path for almost 52 years.
For my sisters, each a blessing.
For coconut sesame oatmeal with unsweetened organic soymilk.
For iced tea.
For you, reading this. Thank you.
That my Dad loves his nursing home. I've never been happier, he told me last time I visited.
For my beautiful children, my husband who keeps loving and supporting me. How blessed I have been.
For my work, which keeps me inspired, day after day after day.
For this body, that breathes and senses and feels. That still looks good naked! That has carried me along my twisting path for almost 52 years.
For my sisters, each a blessing.
For coconut sesame oatmeal with unsweetened organic soymilk.
For iced tea.
For you, reading this. Thank you.
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