19 posts tagged “family”
I adore the music of Sara Groves.
I don't generally care much for Christian rock -- I hear so much more divinity in traditional choral music -- but I can never get enough of Sara Groves. Her music is richly haunting, and her lyrics deceptively simple, many-layered. She so richly expresses things I need to hear; and almost every song of hers makes me think. Hard.
Tuesday afternoon I was thinking of this song from her "All Right Here" album:
"You Cannot Lose My Love"
You will lose your baby teeth
At times you'll lose your faith in me
You will lose a lot of things
But you cannot lose my love
You may lose your appetite
Your guiding sense of wrong and right
You may lose your will to fight
But you cannot lose my love
You will lose your confidence
In times of trial your common sense
You may lose your innocence
But you cannot lose my love
Many things can be misplaced
Your very memories be erased
No matter what the time or space
You cannot lose my love
You cannot lose
You cannot lose
You cannot lose my love
***
That last stanza made me cry the first time I heard it. My husband's grandmother had died not long before, after a long period of progressively worsening dementia. My own grandfather was dying, and following a similar course. It was very hard for me to watch the diminishment of these beloved people, especially as my own small children were doing the exact opposite. Every day my son became a tiny bit more capable, and every day my grandfather became a tiny bit less.
Dementia is sort of horrifying and terrifying to witness. After all, what am I -- the "I" that thinks these things -- if not a being capable of rational thought? What am I if not my own unique collection of memories and experiences? And if those memories disappear, if my intellect disappears, what will be left of me? I know dementia is not catching, and yet, I have always found it extremely disquieting, if only because it is a reminder of our own fragility and impermanence.
Then I heard this song.
When it came to the part about how, "Your very memories be erased, but you cannot lose my love" this expressed so strongly to me how the essential person-hood -- the soul -- of my grandfather was separate from his intellect and his rapidly vanishing memories, and how there was still something precious there. Something God loved. Something I could love. And I cried, hearing it; but it was a good kind of cry.
In a smaller way, at various times, I have lost many of the other things mentioned in this song -- lost and in some cases, regained. So I find this song comforting, as a reminder of the one thing, of all things, that I cannot lose.
***
Tuesday afternoon this song came to me in a new way.
(This was why that vote of confidence from Precious Princess later in the evening was doubly precious.)
Had a difficult phone call from Eldest Son's principal. Heart sinking, feeling defeated, not knowing what to do or how to approach the kid, how to solve this particular problem and how to steer him away from repeating it.
Unlike me, I prayed. I do not have a strong instinct to pray -- wasn't raised with it -- and it is not usually my first reaction when things get tough. But this time, rather than let my mind race about like a frantic hamster on a wheel, getting nowhere except exhausted, I decided to pray.
Song lyrics came into my head, together with their melodies.
First came, "Love one another, love one another, love one another... as I have loved you."
Then came the song above, the Sara Groves song.
This time I knew that it was not only a comforting reminder to me, but a directive as well.
I had to find a way to reach my son, to impress upon him the seriousness of the incident, to help him think of a way to make amends, to help him decide for himself that it was wrong and he shouldn't do it again, help him take ownership of his misbehavior... and yet, and yet, avoid making him feel bereft of my love.
Make him feel that no matter what else he loses -- in this case, his temper and his impulse control -- he cannot lose my love.
Ranting and raving was going to do more harm than good.
He's a stubborn mule, that kid; the harder you pull, the harder he digs in his heels.
I needed to not give him a reason to dig in his heels on this.
I think I managed it. By the time everyone went to bed, I was pretty sure he had taken ownership of the problem, taken it seriously, taken a step toward making amends... and still believed I loved him.
No matter what the time or space, he cannot lose my love.
Is it bad to drive when your eyes can't stay focused?
I only ask because twice now within the past 2 weeks, I've found myself driving along a freeway, desperately trying to keep my eyes tracking together and focusing on the cars and road in front of me.
(Anybody else have that thing where your eyes want to go off in two different directions when you're trying not to fall asleep? Used to happen to me all the time in college lectures. Sort of like when you're taking notes as you're falling asleep, and while you're doing it you're utterly secure in the knowledge that you're grasping all the really important points, only when you go to read your notes later, they trail off first into gibberish, and then into chicken-scratch??? Really embarrassing on those occasions when I was sitting in the front row...)
My grandfather used to make a habit of falling asleep while driving.
It's, or it was, while he was alive, sort of a standing family joke. He never killed himself or anyone else (I don't think) while falling asleep while driving, so he sort of enjoyed the luck of fools and madmen. He and all of his passengers, who sometimes included his four children. Who all survived to become my father and aunts (or Pumpkinshell & Jamoker's mother and aunts and uncle). So that's what makes it sort of a joke instead of a tragedy. You have to laugh or else you'd cry. (Meaning utterly no disrespect, of course, to anyone who has suffered such a tragedy.)
So anyway I'm wondering if that could be hereditary, and if so, does it mean I'm getting old? Or just that I'm not getting enough sleep? Or just that I should stay off the road??
G'night.
At the Big Lake. Our favorite Lake Michigan beach, Meinert Park Beach.
It's in the middle of nowhere, it's never crowded, it doesn't have "issues" with E.Coli counts (b/c nowhere near a major river outlet or city), there are potties (though they're locked up in October), it's entirely covered in sugar sand, has dunes to climb, and a river runs through it. Well, a little stream actually, but that's enough to bring variety to the beach experience.
Plus, the fun of it is, it's a small enough stream that a family with shovels can change its course as it wanders across the sand. Another family did, on Saturday -- much to Eldest Son's chagrin. We spent Sunday trying to change it back, without success. Oh well. It'll undoubtedly be different when we go back at Thanksgiving. Its entry to Lake Michigan is always in a different spot, every time we go.
The Big Lake. I grew up swimming in it, often at this very beach, jumping in its waves, sailing on it, absolutely loving it. I could never get enough.
For you non-Midwesterners out there -- You look to the north and you look to the south, and as far as the eye can see, it's sandy beach stretching away from you. You can look across the blue water to the horizon without seeing land.
And yet, how can you tell it's not the ocean? Because you can. The most recent beach I visited before this was at the ocean, and somehow you can tell.
The size of the waves, the feel of the water, the color of the water -- the little curl of turquoise you see just before the wave breaks -- it's different. No foam, no tide, no hissing sizzle as the wide waves fan out over the strand . No salt to wash off, afterwards. Your feet squeak in the clean dry sand in a way that just sounds different from walking in salt-water sand.
Had a fabulous time at the Mother-Son Magical Evening, and so did my date.
He is sweet enough to be looking forward to the day when Littlest Brother is old enough to come with us. Isn't that awesome?
Also, couldn't have asked for a better weekend over at The Cottage; the weather was unbelievable.
Spent too many hours at The Big Lake and let my poor kids get sunburned.
(BAD Mom! BAD!)
Pictures to follow, some other time. I'm just too tired.
Tonight I'll be taking Eldest Son to our local Rec Center's "Mother-Son Magical Evening."
We went last year and he absolutely loved it.
50 or 60 little boys and their associated moms, pizza and pop, and a real live magician; what's not to love?
Most of his magic tricks started or ended with something gross -- snotty Kleenexes and the like. This, of course, thrilled the boys.
Eldest Son's been looking forward to this for weeks.
Then bright and early tomorrow morning, we're heading over to The Cottage, to take my grandma's boat out of the water for her.
So, no blogging from me for the next few days.
Cheers!
Bowl of Cherries!
More scenes from vacation:
(By the way, for those who aren't family members, that's not their dad, that's their uncle, my brother Tom.)
(Just so I don't give you an unrealistic view of our recent vacation, bear in mind that I did NOT photograph the tantrums, the fights, the whining, the sleep deprivation, the almost-drowning, the bug bites, etc. <<== All of those refer to the kids, by the way. The adults were pretty well-behaved! ;-) )
New camera, new camera!! Took me a while to install the download software on my computer, etc. Also, we were on vacation with (believe it or not) limited internet access.
Scenes from the first 4th of July weekend, at The Cottage:
But in a good way.
I mean the grandparents are back from Florida!!
Oh joy!!!!
And they've just taken ALL the kids away for the entire day!!!
Oh joy and rapture!!!!!
I would feel guilty about being so happy to be away from my kids, except...
When I can't respond to them in any other way than hostility, I know I need a break.
I need a break from my regular job, and, unlike my Darling Husband, I don't GET a break from my regular job on weekends.
You know, my job, which starts at 6:30 in the morning, whenever the first one wakes up, and ends about 9:30 at night when the last one gets, and stays, in bed? That job. Hm. 15-hour days. And on call all night. And no weekends off. Hm.
If I worked that way for my former corporate job, I wouldn't feel the least bit guilty for taking a little "comp time" here and there.
I felt like I HAD to blog about this or my brain would explode!!!!
In fact it has felt like it was exploding continually for the past 18 hours or so, in a constant slo-mo replay loop.
THEN I checked my email this morning and had an invitation to check out my friend's totally awesome blogspot blog.
And THAT brought my brain-explosion crisis to a sudden halt.
Reading this friend's blog and being reminded of what her life has been like for the past couple years, was a total, and totally needed, perspective-changer for me.
This woman is a former marathon-runner, mother of 2, and works part-time running a non-profit foundation. And, she is now an 18-month stage-3 melanoma survivor. She just recently joined our church's Moms' Bible Study, when she was finishing her year of treatment.
Her melanoma was discovered when her youngest child was 5 weeks old. She endured a really unpleasant drug regimen for a year after that. She is finally, finally starting to feel like her old self after almost 2 years of body-weirdness, first pregnancy and then cancer treatment. A friend of hers has invited her to run in the Boston Marathon this spring, a lifelong dream of hers -- the friend is a fellow cancer survivor and has some "free" entrance numbers reserved for cancer survivors; they don't have to run the regular qualifying races beforehand that everybody else does. She's debating doing this, because it's only a couple of months away, and right now she's *ONLY* running 5 miles a day... so she's not sure she could train up to it in time.
(She's *ONLY* running 5 miles a day.)
(What's MY excuse???)
So thinking about all that, my little thing I was freaking out about really does seem like no big deal. So I'm not even going to go into it. As Dear Hubby said last night, comforting me in my neurosis, "It's not life-threatening."
Yah. A little perspective goes a long way.
Happy 14th Anniversary To Me! (And Darling Hubby!)
Happy 14th Anniversary To Me! (And Darling Hubby!)
etc.
Know what I'm going to be doing this evening?
Heh.
Going to a meeting at our church regarding the installation of a children's playstructure on our church grounds. I have MANY STRONG opinions about what should and should not be included in a children's playstructure, so I figured I'd better be on the committee, rather than grousing about it for years to come afterwards, if it had some of the things that annoy me.
Well, so that's what being married 14 years will do for ya: The actual day of the anniversary is no big deal.
Fear not, we WILL be doing something special to celebrate, just not right now. We are planning to go to a completely awesome concert, one that isn't scheduled to take place until March.
We did at least give each other cards this morning.
Happy 14th Anniversary to Us!
Happy 14th Anniversary to Us.
