Weird Animals

So, here was my mantra:  two little boys, six little girls, three older girls, another adult.  I said it every fifteen minutes,  for three hours a day, over four days.  My job?  Don't lose anybody. 

I was a team leader along with a dozen other adults. Every team had about 12-13 people. Last year we had about five kids, which is entirely manageable for one adult. I couldn't do it with twelve kids, so it was a good thing Lea was helping me. We had a special-needs sweet little girl and her nanny came with her—so two adults. Our other two older kids were more like leaders, huge amount of help with the little kids. We came through it fine. But I was one busy leader.  (Suzie W,  I do not know how you do it.  You have my total regard.)

Little kids have a lot of needs.  One of our little boys was terrified to the point of silence, the first part of the week.  First of the week, he needed to sit beside me the whole time.  It just wasn't safe anyplace else.  He needed massive assurance, mainly that we weren't going to leave him someplace or put him at risk of being bullied.  Somewhere in there, he figured out he could sit on my lap and so he did, for a couple of days.  By the end of the week, he was able to make friends and play with the other kids.  

Then our other little guy just needed love and attention and somebody to talk to, somebody to love.

The kids needed help with their snacks, with their crafts. They couldn't go get a drink of water or go to the bathroom without me, that was due to the fact that we have homeless people in our building sometimes. We didn't know everybody.

It was easy for a child to wander off.  That happened with another group.  The original leader snapped to the fact that one of our boys wasn't where he was supposed to be.  Twenty minutes of pure panic and a big search later.  They found him—with another group.  He just found someplace safe and stayed put.  

So, these photos.  I brought my old Pentax in with me on automatic settings and turned the camera over to the kids.  They took all these photos.  Good, huh?

So, weird animals. That was our theme, and here's how it worked out. Everybody is a little weird in their own special way. Everybody needs love and acceptance, some fun, some music, a snack, and an adult to watch over them, somebody that thinks the kids are God's prize. The kids were utterly at home with that message.
Sweet.

Obi

Pets.  Our little loves.

I have a ragdoll, which is a kind of Siamese cat.  Huge kitties, they are, with three-point seal marks and the bluest eyes.  Obi is a shy guy.  A little cranky.

I got him at the Humane Society over five years now.  He is a pure blood and  his previous family couldn't keep him, they were moving.  When he first saw me, he crawled into my lap and hid his sweet face in the crook of my arm, more or less begging me to take him home with me.  After a week for some health issues, I did.

When I got him home, he did the perimeter search cats do, then he leapt into my lap, snuggled in as tight as he could get and sighed deeply, went to sleep for about an hour  Ragdolls do that.   You can tell when Obi is deeply content.  The sigh is the signal.

He was a kitty who didn't know kisses or long held hugs.  I think his previous family liked him well enough, but they sorta thought he was a cat.   He didn't expect that he might be family here.  He is.

He snuggles in every night, then slips off to sleep on the end of the bed.  He won't eat unless  I'm sitting beside his bowl.  This morning he crawled on board and purred up a storm.  Last week, he was not happy that I was away from home so much, so he climbed into my lap and stretched out his claws.  If I moved, I got the treatment.  It was enough that I stayed home and held him the whole time.

The little buggers have their ways.  

So, Walking

The purest pleasures are the simple ones.

A bite of dark chocolate.  The sweet kisses of children.  Long, sauntering walks.

About six weeks ago, I started walking seriously.  Two-to-four mile walks, two or three times a week.I was tuckered out, lots of times, given that it was tough to walk across big parking lots.  I could tell you that it was a new commitment to exercise and health.  But really I was having trouble with my car.

I live in a pretty little city, there are a lot of things I can get to via my feets.  At first, I was the teeniest bit resentful and more than a little tired, but as my fitness levels increased, which they do in a hurry when you walk that far that often, it increasingly became a pleasure. I think I can sustain this level of activity for a long time.

What have I seen out on my walks?  Five deer, down from the foothills, not two blocks away from our little wilderness.  Tons of flowers I couldn't name.  The turn of spring  into summer.   Storm clouds brewing on the horizons.  Now there's energy for you.  The renewing of parts of my neighborhood.  I live in one of the oldest, one still without sidewalks in places.  It's fun to see those older homes get a spiffy new look.  I think I am too.  Lots of puppies and kitties, who come by for pats.

How do animals know instinctively who will love them and who will not?  Some other kind of brain is at work.  It's a good one.



I'm getting rid of clothes.  The ones that are sliding off my shoulders and sagging around my butt.  That's fun.

I must be prepping for a new kind of life.  One with better health and new projects and responsibilities.

Fine with me.

A Big Change in Plans

So, I have this church family.

We're all just a little odd, remarkably OK with me.  That just tells me that we're authentic people, true to the selves God gave us, true to the realities of our lives.  Lots of laughter, good food, big fun.  All of it together.  Tim calls it "food, fellowship, and fun."  It's taken us lots of places we'd never get on our own, one of those is the Ironman Half Marathon. 

Which is what we were up to this weekend.  Our buddy Rick moved to our pretty little city almost nine years ago.  It was in the middle of the recession and jobs in his area of expertise, main frame computers,  were virtually non-existent.  There was one left, in Idaho, and he grabbed it right up.  

But he was bored out of his mind, having left his family in the Portland/Vancouver area.  Already a runner, he decided to try for Marathons and Half-marathons.  We were just getting to be friends at that point and we showed up for his first Boise Half-marathon.  That one was tough, but it was the first of many.

A few years ago, he got to go back home, but he always had a fondness for the Boise event.  So he and his wife Suzie came to town.  We were getting together for lots of race activities and backyard picnics.  

My cousin Julie and I went to the first party.  Here's what you have to know about Julie.  She can be a stubborn soul,  and there are only four people who can easily coax her past her stubbornness and her shyness into a party mood.  My brother, and these three guys, are the only ones who can readily get her to new places and to try new things.  They have been so good to her over the years and been at the core of lots of fun events, among them a hug every single weekend in church.  They dote over her, make things possible for her, include her in every invitation.  She loves them as I do, and she goes.

Mainly, we all played with baby, Bear, Tim and Julie's new little one.

Rick was looking forward to seven hours of active, competitive action.  We held our breath.

So the race.  Rick had a good swim, and was fifteen miles into the bike ride. The rules stipulate that the cyclists have to be a ways apart, maybe four feet, from each other.  But there was this one rider who was not following the rules.  She hit Rick's rear wheel, which pitched him over the handle bars.  He broke his shoulder and fractured his hip in two places.  She did not stop, did not acknowledge her part in the accident.  She did not help.  

Here's where I'm fuzzy on the details.  I don't know if the first aid people scooped him up and got him into an ambulance to St. Al's.  Rick had his phone, called Suzie.  Or if Tim, Suzie, and the other Julie picked him up and got him help.  None-the-less, he did wind up at Al's, and they did all the appropriate tests and got him patched up enough to get him home to Vancouver, where another orthopedic doc will follow his care.  Tim and Julie, Cheryl and Larry all did yeoman duty in taking care of Rick and Suzie both, with uncommon kindness and purpose, and with all the love there is.  Pastor Duane, also a runner, said some sweet prayers for his safe recovery, too.

Yesterday, they made it home.  

He'll be OK, at some point, will be itching to get back into his training soon enough, wants to come back for a few days in July.   We'll be watching over him pretty darn close and playing our hearts out with Baby Bear.

The Last Two Weeks, Big Emotions, Big Assignments

I asked Jan at Conari Press if she was still interested in seeing another book from me.  She was, so it was a big day to send it all off to her.  There are so many emotions engendered when you send a book off:  some level of uncertainty; some level of confidence.  Then the big question, always a good one in my case, Will other people see the worth and work that I've put forth and lived?  We'll see.  It's good to be this far along.  We wait.

Turns out, I can't live without a book going.  I took four days off,  we're talking restless hee-bee jee-bees here,  started another.  This one is about a pistol-packing mama and a librarian.  Good, huh? 

A couple of projects that take the heart:  After the first of the year, we joined some small groups at church; our job was to create projects that served our larger community and complete them.  So we did.  Some of our groups hosted a Bingo night at the VA, complete with prizes.  Another group visited Chrysalis, more about who they are in a minute, and provided Sunday night dinners for them.  My group worked with two other groups.  We've been involved with building Habitat houses for a couple of years and a family, Mom and Dad and four kids, from the Congo were shortly to move into theirs, one we helped with.  We thought about providing a kitchen shower for the family.  One of the other groups was mostly men and they wanted to provide tools.  Then a family was moving from one home to another and donated several pieces of living room furniture.  We gathered up all of that,  And last Saturday, we took four trucks loads of goods out to them.  Things like rakes and hammers, pancake pans and soup kettles, a living room couch.  Wonderful morning.  We will have saved them about a thousand bucks and took a step toward moving their house to a home.  Put six white chairs on their front porch.  Instant community.  Wanna do that again.





Now Chrysalis.  That's a group of homes in our community that provide help and assistance to women newly out of prison,  most often women with substance abuse issues.  There is no tougher road.  Their treatment program based on Christian values and teaching, which incorporates absolute truth-telling, discipline and direction,  learning who you are in God, getting a grip, besides the  psychological and social learning and support, and the science of addiction and what it requires to set yourself free.  There are lots of women who do not make it; the consequences are dire.  One gal burned out her liver before the age of 30.   But there are a few sterling gals who do, and they are making their way into our congregation.  They make up two rows in our more raucous services.  They have been embraced at our church and we are getting to know them.  Viv wanted to know what I wanted to do.   I thought about it for a weekend and decided I could come and do a home-cooked meal, teach some basic cooking skills, empower those gals so that they could learn how to provide healthy food for themselves.  I have a theory for everything, which is the way my writer's mind works and here's this one:  if you had an addictive process going on in our life, and you were hungry, lonely, lost, that would be bad juju and you would be more likely to be out finding the things that weren't good for you.  Men who would use you sexually.  Drugs and alcohol.  Breaking the law.  Finding money from those sources.  Tough.   
But if you had some power over your own life, could provide food and the other things you needed in this life through your own efforts, you might stand a better chance.  I could teach them about good food and how to make it.  My friend, Jeanette, wants to help too.  She's one of the best cooks I know; she's an ardent vegetarian and her food is a salute to great health.    Viv and I were thinking that more women might want to help.  Let me know.  I'm going to do it quarterly, I'm thinking, so there's lots of room for help.  Think about it: a whole cadre of mamas at the ready.  Men too, I'm hoping.



And last, Rick and Suzie are in town.  He's running this weekend in a big race, about seven hours of biking, swimming, and running.  There are some friends who are beyond fit, but Rick might be the bes and he's in his early 60s.  Impressive, impressive, impressive.  We had dinner with them last night in Tim and Julie's back yard along with my cousin Julie, Cheryl and Larry, and baby Bear, the new puppy.   Way fun.

A Night Outside with Pears

One of my writing groups gathered together Thursday night outside at Ellie and Roger's house, for a whole bunch of reasons—to see their new fireplace, to relish their backyard—one with swallows, fresh mint, poppies, to write a little bit, and to catch up on our lives.

We are women in our 60s, 70s, and, soon, 80s.  We're still as active as ever.  We've been together for over 30 years.  We've found our various passions and those have been expressed in books, stories, essays, poetry.  So many publishing credits over that  length of time, still more to come.

That self-expression gene is buried deep within us.  We are ever so kind now, brilliant on some days and in some ways, genuine as salt.  Lots of us are grandmoms, some of us are widows, some of us are caregivers.  We always have a pen in hand and a tablet in our pocket.

In our last meeting, we decided that the magnificent dinners we used to prepare and share, were no longer necessary, except for special occasions—defined as when everybody wants one.  However, nobody has to do that anymore.  It seems to be fine, and freed up some marvelous cooks from those robust expectations.   We can do nothing at all, if we chose; we can do those massive celebrations, if we want; or we could settle for a simple, luscious dessert.  Maybe some cookies.   Or a ripe pear.

We celebrated Judy's essay, that won a major literary prize,  in my part of the state, along with some money.  We've never written for money, (well,  I have, but it wasn't this luscious kind of writing) but I  admit, it's plenty welcome, ever so sweet when it comes.  Judy's story, which I had heard parts of a while ago, is so clear and clean now.  It reads like sparkling water over old stones.   It's about a long hike in a high mountain dessert in Australia, one that leads to a startling find, one that never happens any more.

If there is a thing about writing at our age that completely wonderful, it's this:  we've gotten to be simpler, quicker-to-the-point writers.  That saves us a whole big bunch of literary gyrations, travels down rabbit holes, back tracks, and miswhacks.  You have no idea what a big blessing that is.

We're better.

We wrote a little while about things that are incomplete or unfinished, that might not ever be.  I got this line:  Love stutters to a stop, parks until Tuesday, when the storm blows over.

So, Ellie's dessert:  a baked pear, so simple and so spectacular.  Some of my favorite cooking.

Baked Pears

Buy 4-6 pears, (one for each person you are serving) round,  big-bellied fruits, red pears this,  4-5 days before the party. Let them ripen in a south-facing window.  How do you tell when a pear is ripe?  When the peeling comes free without difficulty and the juice runs down your fingers.

On the day you want to serve these jewels, peel the pears just before you stick them in the  oven. Put them in a baking dish.  Mash together butter, honey, an honest vanilla,  lemon juice, a pinch of salt, cinnamon.  . . or cardamom and ginger. . .  Dab that over the fruits.

Bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees.  Put each pear in a bowl and top with the juice/sauce that forms at the bottom of the pan, and top with Greek honey yogurt.  Your favorite kind.  

This would not be the moment to worry about calories.

Moms

I didn't get to be a Mom.  I needed to make that decision in my 20s; my Dad had muscular dystrophy, as well as a beloved aunt.  The medical tests, done by the MD Society, indicated that I was a carrier.
I would only have an MD child if I married somebody with that genetic glitch.  But it had happened in my family. It's an awful, difficult disease, and I watched my Dad struggle with it his whole life.  He'd been gorgeous, young, vital, beyond strong, generous of heart, great of skill, and the disease took all of that from him.  His only complaint?  He wished "those old docs would find something for his bad back."  Me too.  But the disease would die out in my family, for generations to come, if I had no children.  I don't understand the biology- genetics very well, but it turns out the disease is passed through fathers to daughters.  The sons catch a break on this one.  It was not a difficult decision, and I haven't looked back.

My own Mom, kind and loving beyond measure, died when I was seventeen and my brother was thirteen.  So you can see that I might approach Mother's Day with some amount of ruefulness.

Still.

There is great mystery surrounding the art of mothering.  It's at the center of my religion's story, the mysterious Mary.  It turns young, self-centered women into the tender, loving, engaging mothers of young children, and it does it with the strength of a biological imperative.   It fosters the need for  learning and education, for medical care and medical science, for religion, it runs an economy, and sculpts a history.  The politics are profound.  Everything matters as young women take on the daunting task of raising a baby, herding elementary kids, holding their breaths as the kids plough into adolescence full force.

It goes by in a whoosh, in a breath.

The kids in my family, my niece and nephew, were and are kids who are entirely doted upon, adored, needed, applauded.  My sister-in-law Maggie is a wonderful mom, my brother a singular Dad, exactly the man you want raising those two rambunctious kids.  I got to be an auntie, and that goes on.  Mackenzie is trying for her first job, in a state that is 49th in the economic recovery, and she's an artist to boot.  I'm hoping that what we send her props her up, gives her courage, helps her find her footing and a life worth having.  Scottie is studying automotive engineering, builds itty-bitty sports cars, so he's gold.  We're still doting.  That never gets old.

There are little kids whom I adore.  The lovely Lily and Lea are two kids who will put us through our paces.   Issie and Aubs, two fiesty little girls, still want me to play with them in the backyard. And then there's Charlie, who went on a mission trip to Mexico to help build a house with this family, and is learning how to play the piano.  He's really good with both  pianos and hammers.  Their moms and their grandmoms are some of our favorite people.  We love them and support them as best we know how.

I think you do get to have a choice on whether you are parenting material, or  not. Not everybody is, for all kinds of reasons.   But you do get to love the kids that are given to you to love.

That'd be the great, good thing.