Family Matters

In a jam? There they am.
Feeling grief? They're the relief.
Having fun? They share the sun.

Family matters in a life filled with uncertainty, grief, and the world's indifference. Standing in the broad onslaught of "slings and arrows" you are never solely alone. Making plans and forays into the future with family at your back -- works.

And isn't it grand.

Going to Costa Rica for a wedding, family accompanies.
Traveling across the USA for Janice's birthday, there they come.
Opening the Inn at Mukilteo for a few days, family fills the rooms.
Ride your bike for 300 miles with your grandpa and family smiles on the accomplishment.

Family matters with health, transportation, travel, entertainment. Family fills the nooks and crannies, carries us a little farther down the road, smiles or grimaces at our indiscretions, stands by our bedside when needed, brings camp chairs when needed, posts pictures of baby animals when needed, looks the other way when needed.

Our family. Family strung across miles and states and countries and oceans, yet connected by those blood ties too strong, too invisible, too mystical to articulate intelligently. The differences and personalities resemble a basket of fruit. Some are sweet, some tart, some prickly, (I'm not saying who is who) but thinking about how we all got here awakens the divine thought processes.  I'll get back to you on the God-and-bananas metaphor. Sometimes I dig a trench too deep.

Still I am thinking about this Family Blog for and about family. Our family. Who is going where, when. Who is up to what, why. How is their health, dogs, cars, quilting, running, biking. Taking an emotional temperature of happiness, contentment. Thinking about family matters: how they matter and what matters they are up to fills my cup this morning.

I had a Sons Dinner on Sunday, and there was this gaggle of bright, smiling boys with Stephanie and friends and a hearty Ham Chowder on a bright sunshiny day doing nothing but being family. And eating. I would fix soup on the one day in January that Seattle hit 70 degrees.

Christian built a model with Connor. Ian was teased unmercifully due to his trip to Arizona during all the Super Bowl hoopla. Stephanie ate candy hearts and teased Ian. Roger and Carol talked real estate, homeowners associations and teased Ian some more. Ian explained to no-one-listening that he had had his reservations for months. Christian said he could probably scalp his hotel room but would have to give up his iron. Christian told us all what NERF stood for. I forget now. Non Expanding __?__ Foam, did you know that? Family, nothing much and everything, a paradox worthy of Hawkins.

And I know your family is the same.

I know the Seattle football family is out in force. What I don't know is why all the most die-hard fans I know are women. I know people going out and buying new big screen TVs for the big event. I know I will get sucked into the vortex before it is over. I can feel it tugging. I have been asked one too many times if I was buying a Seahawks t-shirt. The answer is no, even though I know the names of three players. I told you I was getting sucked in. Ian's friend Nila, Carol's daughter, Katie, Mary's daughter Lisa all post something on FB every day. I don't know what the Las Vegas odds are, but I am eighteen percent invested. My fear, as you always have for family, isn't for me, but how sad everyone I know will be if the Seahawks lose.

Family, nothing extraordinary and everything.

On a side note: Family "Culture"

Sign of the Times: Word of the Year Is...
...culture, which has been given the honor because it was the most looked-up word in 2014 at Merriam-Webster.com.
While look-ups of "culture" typically spike when students go back to school around Labor Day, this past year, look-ups of the word extended well beyond that period.
"The term conveys a kind of academic attention to systematic behavior and allows us to identify and isolate an idea, issue or group: we speak of a 'culture of transparency'' or 'consumer culture,'" wrote the dictionary's editors when they announced the choice.
Culture can be either very broad, as in "celebrity culture" or "winning culture," or very specific, as in "test-prep culture" or "marching band culture."
"This year, the use of the word culture to define ideas in this way has moved from the classroom syllabus to the conversation at large, appearing in headlines and analyses across a wide swath of topics," say the Merriam-Webster editors.
The top 10 words of the year and their meaning:
1. Culture: the beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place or time
2. Nostalgia: pleasure and sadness that is caused by remembering something from the past and wishing that you could experience it again
3. Insidious: causing harm in a way that is gradual or not easily noticed
4. Legacy: something (such as property or money) that is received from someone who has died
5. Feminism: the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities
6. Je ne sais quoi: a pleasant quality that is hard to describe. In French the phrase" je ne sais quoi" means literally "I know not what."
7. Innovation: a new idea, device or method
8. Surreptitious: done in a secret way
9. Autonomy: the state of existing or acting separately from others; independence

10. Morbidity: the rate at which a disease occurs in a group of individuals

Change is in the Air

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank what ever Gods maybe,
For my unconquerable soul.

Invictus is a great beginning for change. "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."

~ or ~

On a lighter side:

"If you ever start taking things too seriously, just remember that we are talking monkeys on an organic spaceship flying through the universe." Joe Rogan. Thanks Michala Connelly, I needed that.

~ or ~

Do I need look any farther than the Seahawks win on Sunday: As you all know I'm not much of a Seahawks fan or any other sport team for that matter, but, and this is a BIG BUT: When I left work Sunday the security guards were clustered around some device listening-watching the game and I asked, "So, how are they doing?" The gloomy answer was "We are behind, but the game isn't over yet."

I drove twenty-six miles home, got out of my car as a neighbor was walking by and she said,"We won." How that happened in twenty-six miles I will never understand but the lesson learned; "It isn't how you start, it is how you finish."

Change is in the air, turning over a new leaf, true blue, true North. How many metaphors apply to when we are ready to head a new direction, even if we don't know what that direction is.

I am ready for a change. I am not scientific, mathematical, mechanical, or computer literate. I can't dig ditches or fly a plane. I actually don't fit the world very well, kind of like rocks in a jello mold. I want a nice quiet sedentary job in some back room that pays a semi-living wage with health benefits, no parking expense, and an itty bitty commute. There has to be a place for me in all this expanding universe. I want to re-purpose me, a job fit for a grandmother's body that dribbles, leaks, aches and creaks and is just a little befuddled some of the time. Any ideas?

"We should all be able to sit down to God's banquet."
Movie Jimmy P.

The problem with job hunting is it's hard work, kind of like having a second job. When my computer crashed my resume crashed with it, so I'm trying to build another one that WON'T get me hired at another call center.

And I dither. It is hard to leave the comfort zone of the current rhythm of my days. It's hard to minimize my CSR skills and beef up my other skills, which are few and far between. It's hard to phrase, in hire-able language, how different and not-normal I am and still expect to get hired somewhere. It's hard to document a love of turtles, tolerance, patience, listening ability and that I am funny, smart, creative and appreciate smashed trombones. Writing fun tests for potential family members doesn't fit any matrix no matter how good I am at it.

I'll start to write down some statistics about myself and find myself remembering the day I drove down Highway 99 with Jabba The Hutt in the car behind me. I swear. There was the bald head, the huge slopping shoulders, the massive body filling out every square inch of the driver's seat, the complete disregard for my life as he smugly punched the car to within nano-seconds away. I escaped, but barely.

I'll start to compose an impressive list of accomplishments and fall asleep. I'll start to list my employment history and decide I need to rearrange my candles, now. I don't know about you, but I call that dithering. Yep, it is hard to leave this comfort zone for a new adventure, a new path, a new road to the future. Or as my friend Lynn once told me it's like pulling a slug off a rock.

Dithering: Son's dinner coming up. Ian is going to Tuscon soon. I'll watch Connor play basketball this evening. Mary and I are having dinner tomorrow. I had some Ivar's ice cream. It's cold today. I had a goofy dream about Bam Bam Kam Chancellor; Jerry, Jean and I were hosting him on a driving tour of Oklahoma and took him to one of our favorite tiny restaurants in a tiny Oklahoma town. Word got out and people started coming in asking for his autograph and asking us, "Do you really know him." If there is a metaphor in there I'm not sure what it is, except, maybe, I saw a film of him jumping over the heads of the other team, so maybe it is a metaphor for "go for it." I can live with that.

Another favorite Seahawks comment from FB. "Hey Aaron, I'll spot you 16 points, throw 4 interceptions, and only play the last 3 minutes." I don't know who Aaron is or what an interception is, but I understood this anyway. It's not how you start, it's how you finish.

Good bye vacation time, hello new adventure.

I am the captain of my soul.

Hope Springs Eternal

I figured it was Shakespeare who said that, but I was wrong. It was Alexander Pope. Don't know much about Mr Pope but according to Wikipedia he is the third most quoted writer in The Oxford Book of Quotations after Shakespeare and Tennyson, of course. Heady company. However I don't want to talk about Pope, I want to talk about hope.

Last week I tossed off a line about about a Chilean miner trapped in a mine collapse who said if he got out alive he wanted to go to Graceland. I tossed that line off last week and didn't realize the importance and power of that stance. Here that man was, a mostly uneducated miner, trapped deep underground, talking about what he wanted to do when he got out. Where was his despair? How could he have the courage to hope for such an impossible dream.  How did he conjure up the joy of looking forward?

Many spiritual teachings reins us in. Be mindful of the present. Be present. I usually try to live in the present, but not that dude, he was far and away. Hopes, plans, dreams, all are ahead of us, and all seem to drag us towards the future. Hopes for love, for health, for a peaceful death, hopes for a child's future happiness, it seems hope takes courage and a firm belief in the future.

I know Jerry always has plans out in front of him. Jerry told me once it helped keep his life from spinning away too fast. A lot of the family are anticipating a Costa Rica wedding and making plans. I know Cathy and Kenny have cruise plans. Don't they always? Otherwise I don't know much about the family beliefs. Does hope spring eternal in your life? I just learned a life lesson at a time I thought most life lessons were done and over with.

What a hopeful thought.

Then I thought about perspective;

I know cops are under a lot of fire lately, but every encounter I've ever had was fair. Whether getting a ticket, a warning, or help, it was always fair, even the time I made an illegal u-turn in front of a cop due to an unknown location and being late and being flustered, he smiled me on my way.

I finally saw the multi-millionaire owner of Online Shoes the other day and felt like a minion. He just smiled and walked through our new downtown location. He did nothing, but I still felt like the distance between us was so great I was a minion. I have a new perspective on those funny yellow characters Connor had me draw and color properly -- repeatedly.

My downtown parking has gone from $15.86 to $17.06 a day. My hike to work is farther up the hill. I found the new smoking area. I love the twenty foot height of windows and ceiling, and we are a bit more cramped, however, I'm still grateful for a job and health insurance. And vacations! I'm going to see Janice and Art in February. Plans for the future sure feel good.

I know I have night time driving blindness, that diminished capability of the aging. What I didn't know until driving to breakfast with Claire the other day was when it is half foggy with glaring sunshine my capability was diminished in the daytime also. I had to squint and fumble along and ease out carefully.

After I washed my car and cleaned weeks of highway rain smears off my windshield my visibility improved. Day and night.

Speaking of fog, it was low slung the other morning, mostly hovering over Possession Sound, but Mt Rainier was towering, visible, gleaming, and extraordinarily beautiful. What a beautiful perspective.

I don't know much about sports except everyone is happy for the Seahawks.  Connor is now six years old and playing basketball, well playing basketball in the loosest meaning of the word. He can run the court with the best of them and duck when the ball is headed his way.

Julia, I have been reading about birds in my new local paper. A lot. Owls, geese, swans, eagles, the New Years Day Audubon Bird Count, the drunk-zebra-finches-who-can't-sing study, sick coastal birds and no one knows why, then I saw Mike Noland's photograph of a wake of buzzards. I'm not a birder, but I think it is time you came back for a visit. I know you have birds in Arkansas but I think the Pacific Northwest birds are calling your name. Tell Tal I promise not to drive down the wrong side of the road. Did you count birds on New Years Day?

Sufi perspective via my friend Lynn: "The leader is the one who listened, watched for signs, was attentive to the inner world." I liked that because it feels akin to me, and this one also; "Those who have gone home before us and those who remain and keep the fires burning." Sufi wisdom, Sufi perspective.

And from the book Life after Life by Jill McCorkle; "Unpack your heart, get rid of the things you no longer need."

But have the courage to keep hope alive. Hope springs eternal.

Good Morning 2015

Auld lang syne?
Day of the dead?

Or so it seems. Claire and I were having breakfast and she mentioned that the milestone of her mother's passing in a few days would be fifty years, and since I had just written about my mother's passing thirty years ago in a blog, our minds drifted to others we knew and loved. Claire lost a sister and a brother in six weeks this fall. We talked of Dale and Aunt Anita passing this year.

Then we continued to drift to Lonnie and Little Lonnie's deaths along with Fred and Karen Crittenden, James, disasters both natural and man made, recent history and past. Ferries, planes, guns. Yes, we teared up, but we also laughed as we dredged up one dead body after another. She remembered reading about a dam break that took away a mining town. I remembered the flash flood at Tompson Canyon that flooded the camping ground and killed so many. The Oso mudslide. It seemed a fitting goodbye to 2014.

And forward we marched; Claire had heard on NPR about a book about the Chilean miners that survived.  I don't remember the name of the book. I do remember one of the miners was an Elvis fan and if he got out alive he said he was visiting Graceland. He did and did. I think I want to read that book about how they survived and the rescue efforts when the whole world was watching.

The "goodbye 2014" posts on Facebook were about equal; "God, I'm glad that year is over" to "What an amazing year." My friend Lynn was in the "amazing year" column. So the last day of the year, the last song, the last dance, the last kiss goodbye is done. The sweet nostalgia that comes at the end of a party, a reunion, a year is just that, sweet nostalgia.

There were cruises, deaths, divorce, my company sold to a Canadian, one flooded house, and some perfect Connor moments, some perfect Son's dinners. I didn't get smarter or younger, but I did survive with a smile on my face. I still walk up the hill to work. I still read, watch movies, cook dinners, have friends and family over for holidays. Roger's friend Dennis joined us for Christmas. He was so much fun, he joined in like he had been coming to family Christmas dinners for years. He ate like a logger. I thought, like a bachelor he doesn't get homemade food much. Then he ate some more. Now to be fair it was a perfectly fine meal, but not outstanding, there was a crispy edge or two that shouldn't have been there. All my family liked the shoes they picked out for their Christmas gift.

The past is the past and the human spirit moves forward. Lovely eventful year full of scares, dares, and derring-do, or at least a cruise or two. Not sure I did much derring-do. I cooked okra in Jeff's Dutch oven over an open campfire. I lightened up books, boxes, stuff, square feet, recipes. Company came and went. The rolling cruise circus rolled by.

Gifts of the year big and small kept piling up. Verla and Earl bought me dinner. Jerry and Jane a plane ticket. Jean and her two quarts of blood. Mary Lee's homemade tarter sauce. Highlights and lows. Good and bad. The Seahawk's Super Bowl win, the crazy parade, the crazy cold. Where did I read we had eight feet of rain last year? Customer's good, bad and ugly. Ugg boots. Christian's girlfriend/s. How could I forget the two tons of luggage Roger hauled to the ship in the back of his pick-up truck, and back home again. Cathy's stay at the Ketchikan health spa. There is a new baby orca in the Puget Sound, J-50, born to the J-pod, the J-tribe. Everyone belongs somewhere. My cream cheese cookies turned out perfect for Mary's New Year's Day do, book club do.

My year in review looks pretty good, simple, but good. I entered the year with good family and good friends and I left it with good family and good friends intact. Kathleen moved away, Claire is moving, my company is moving across the street until the new owner finds a new permanent location. We can't escape change, but we control our attitude towards that change.

Good-bye old and hello new. I'll watch Connor grow some more.

When Roger and I took Connor to Chrisitan's working-man-shop we were all surprised and taken aback by Connor's behavior. It was the most polite tour you could imagine. He kept repeating, "No, thank you."

Going down in the oil change pit was okay, going up on the car lift wasn't. "No, thank you."
Cutting pipe with a blow torch was okay, cutting pipe with a metal saw wasn't. "No, thank you."
Wearing earplugs and safety goggles was okay, wearing a welding helmet wasn't. "No, thank you."
A magnet bowl was okay. Nuts and bolts were okay. Crawling under a car was okay. Pushing the button to raise the car wasn't. "No, thank you."

Looking at tools, lifting tools, handling tools, pretend fighting with tools was okay, anything noisy, screeching, belching fire, was not okay. If he said it once he said it eighty-five times, "No, thank you."

Seeing Christian was more than okay, and playing with Lego's with Christian in the safety of the office was perfect. To quote my friend Mary, my most amazing gifts are my three sons and the amazing life and family they have brought me.

Two Ian stories:

Ian had given some doll and tattoo jewelry stuff to a friend and when she came over to pick it up, Ian had bought pizza, salad, breadsticks and had it all laid out for our consumption. When my friend said she would have to go online to get some information about tattoo jewelry, Ian handed her a print-out and said, I've already done that.

She looked at me and asked, "Is this what it is like to live with Ian?'

My answer to the world is "Yes, it is."

Story two:

I had to leave work sick one day and a friend texted me later to see if there was anything she could do. I said no, Ian was extremely attentive and all my needs were taken care of.  She asked, "Do you rent him?"

No, I answered, I don't rent him I just brag shamelessly.

I'm going to visit Janice for her birthday, like Jerry said, "The day will come when we won't be able." Luckily for me, for 2015, that day isn't here yet.

2014 wasn't a bad year.