Life's scars...

Relaxing on top... pre-fall, pre-scar

I don't like this hike, but keep returning... my scar attaches me to it...

With all the moss and so many trails that I hike looking like this, it's surprising that I don't have a roadmap of white-line scars on my legs

While resting during a hike yesterday, with my dirty and freshly scratched up legs stretched out in front of me, my eyes were drawn to the 4-inch scar on my right calf that seems to be pointing down to my foot... that would be the foot that slipped on a mossy rock while hiking and came down on a piece of sharp granite many years ago.  Now had that thin white line ended up on my forehead or cheek, the memory of how it came to be might not conjure up the smile that it did yesterday.  It's a gentle reminder of a fun day on Rooster Comb mountain, the same mountain by the way where  several years later, my daughter would be proposed to by my now son-in-law.  It's a hike I do not like, but for some reason, whenever I'm in the Adirondack mountains with my sister, Susan, we do it.  We were close to the bottom and in a shaded area where slippery mossy rocks are common when I fell.  My leg was a bit of a bloody mess and once back at the lodge where we were staying, Susan suggested that maybe I should go to the hospital for stitches.  I had no idea if there even was a hospital nearby, but even if there had been, I opted out and patched myself up with a lot of bandaids and Neosporin.  Had I gotten the suggested stitches, I'm sure there would be far less of a scar, if any, but honestly, I don't mind it a bit.  It feels like a badge of courage to me now and an ever present reminder of how much fun I have hiking with Susan.

Author Chris Cleave, in his book, "Little Bee", says,

 “A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”

Once again, I survived Rooster Comb Mountain.  


I love that spin on scars and have a whole lot of surviving going on on my body.  I've got an 8 inch "zipper" on my right side that shows that I survived the removal of my right kidney when I was 21.  I remember sitting in the doctor's  office with my Mom by my side when he told me that my kidney needed to be removed.  My response was, "What will the scar look like and will I still be able to wear a bikini?"  Seriously?  Not even a hint of how will this affect my life, my health, my overall well-being?  At age 21, I couldn't look beyond the scar and honestly, I was devastated.  Not with the loss of a key body part, but at the thought of a scar wrapping its way around my mid right torso.  The removal of the diseased kidney left me healthier than I was with it, by the way, and has not affected my lifestyle, health or general well-being whatsoever.  It did bring on a question or two back in my bikini  days, which like the scar on my leg, always brought on a smile - a smile because my 21-year old self has grown up and feels no shame in showing the necessary trail of the surgeon's scalpel.

The small scar duet, one just below my left brow and the other on the upper left side of my lip are easily forgotten until at a stop light on a sunny day and I catch my reflection in the rear view mirror, and then it's,   "Oh yea.... I remember you guys."  They found their way to my face during a car wreck with my best friend, Susie, in high school.  A car ran a stop sign and hit us from the side.  He wasn't going fast or it could have been a lot worse, but had I fastened my seat belt, it would have been a lot better as my face probably wouldn't have smashed into the windshield.  Lesson learned.  The hard way.  My biggest fear that time was not the scarring (this was 4 years before the kidney came out and my attention was in the immediate, not the future) but rather, my date's reaction when he picked me up for the Black Oak Arkansas concert later on that evening.  Looking back, I probably should have given him a head's up as he was certainly surprised by the sorry sight that greeted him at the door. My eye was black and puffy and freshly stitched and was nearly swollen shut and my lip, also freshly stitched was so swollen that my mouth wouldn't close all the way.  I'm surprised he still wanted to take me, let alone be seen with me and more surprised that my parents let me go!

On the same leg as the hiking incident scar is a much smaller scar that is positioned just below my knee and is a straight up and down, one inch long white line.  It is my knelt down on an exacto knife scar while wall papering my soon to be 2nd baby's room.  I was 8 months pregnant and although I should have had stitches,  I didn't feel I had time to go to the hospital to get them.  I was mid-way into the wallpapering project and it's not wise to pull a nesting mother from her project. So no stitches.  I mostly blame this round of bad judgement on the hormones.  I'm not sure where all of the braincells go when you're pregnant (the baby?), but there is definitely a period of misfiring and the closer to delivery time, at least in my case, the worse it seemed to get.  This scenario happened again when I was 8 months pregnant with my 3rd child and I sliced my palm open on a tin can lid, while trying to extract it out of the can.  That time I did get stitches... a lot of them... and without an ounce of fat on the palm of your hand, that's a painful experience that I hope never to go through again.  Then there was the whole situation of showing up in the ER, very pregnant, and trying to explain to the rushing around staff who had me in a wheelchair headed straight up to delivery,  to NOT take me to delivery but rather to the stitching up room of the ER.  That's my scar that I've been told by more than one person, messed up any future palm reading on that hand.  Well shoot.  I missed that opportunity as I've never had my palm read. The scar did add an extra branch to my life line, though, which could come in handy someday.

With every one of my children's entry into the world, or pre-entry, I've earned a scar.  With my first born, it is a 6 inch scar in my lower abdomen where he made his entry into the world during an emergency C-section due to an rapidly lowering heartbeat.  Rather than being stitched up that time,  staples were used to close the incision.  I never thought twice about the scar and would have welcomed one on my face if that was what it took to bring him into the world safely.  I saved the staples in a box along with my hospital bracelet (and his) as it seemed important at the time. Now it seems kind of creepy to save the staples, but I still have them, which either says they still hold importance, or I need to do more cleaning and clearing out.   I remember having a friend who saved her tonsils in a glass jar filled with water after they were removed when she was 5 and I thought that was pretty cool as I only had a sore throat and some cards after my tonsils were removed for my take home gift.  I didn't want my kidney after it was removed (and am pretty sure that is against hospital policy now), but when they told me they had to take out a rib to get to the kidney, thoughts of making art or jewelry out of that rib made me wish they had saved it for me.  Today, the scar seems to be more than enough reminder to me, without needing to hold onto the rib, which is far creepier than an envelope of staples, right?

I survived.  And the relics of those survivals are etched all over my body - my personal badges of strength, courage and maybe stupidity for not going to the hospital on some of them...

I've often wondered what it would be like if rather than tucked away in the depths of our heart, if we wore our emotional scars side by side to our physical scars.  Would it illicit kinder behavior to those who we don't know but think we do when we see them yelling at their kid or throwing trash out of their car window or mistreating their animals?  If we saw the scars of all of their pain, would we act differently towards them?  Maybe it's best they are tucked away and held where only we can feel them.  The emotional wounds do heal in time, but no doubt, they leave scars in the wake of their fading pain and every once in a while, I will get the gentle or maybe not so gentle reminder of their presence.

We're all scarred, inside and out, but it's in those telling marks that lies our history, our bumps in the road, our accidental lessons in life, but we survived, and no doubt, with a story to tell.

Don't look down, don't think about it, you can do this...

Seriously.  Do NOT look down!

Thank goodness for the guardrails... although I doubt they'd stop a car from falling off the mountain, they offer a bit of security...

Oh geez... how'd I get here?

Rocky Mountain rapid pulse.

I am a bit of a white knuckled, turn off the radio so I can concentrate, don't really love this but will do it because I have to, kind of driver.  If he's still alive and if he could remember, I'm sure that my driver's ed teacher, Mr. Hankins, would agree with this.   Perhaps it was the afternoon when I was required to demonstrate my mastery of parallel parking on the busiest downtown street in the small town I grew up in,  that reinforced my apprehensions with being behind the wheel.  My unmastered skills landed me on the sidewalk, smack dab in front of the TG&Y store. Being in the driver's seat in the well-marked drivers ed car is embarrassing enough at that age, although I'm not sure why as it is a rite of passage for most, but having to get out of the car and trade seats with your teacher so he could maneuver the car off of the sidewalk and back onto the then getting busy street due to the side show, is not a feather in one's driving school cap.  I passed the written test with flying colors, but barely eked by on the driving section due to the parallel parking incident.  Today, many decades later,  I'm still more than happy to walk the necessary blocks to avoid the whole parallel parking fiasco.  A city girl, I am not.


I've had face a lot of my driving fears head on simply because it was my only choice, short of staying home, my fears of mountain driving trumping all.

Several years ago while in Santa Fe on a ski trip with the family, I had to face those fears straight on and I'm happy to say that I triumphed.  After suiting up in our ski gear,  driving up the mountain to the ski resort, my youngest, Emery, who was 6 at the time, decided that she was done with skiing and wanted no part of it, that day or ever.  Period.  End of story.  Given that Charlie had already promised to ski with the boys all day, that left me with the choice of staying in the lodge with Emery and waiting, or having a day in Santa Fe, which ultimately meant having to drive down the mountain, then back up again to pick up Charlie and the boys at the end of the day. With the options of drinking coffee all morning, which no doubt would roll into beer early afternoon due to frustration, or putting my big girl driving pants on and forge ahead with some mountain driving  I opted for the latter.  So here I am, the mom, the one in charge, the all knowing,  explaining to my 6 year-old as we inched our way down the mountain, that I was absolutely terrified and could she "talk or sing me through it"?  She seemed to know exactly what I was asking and chattered and sang and kept the distractions going, hairpin turn after hairpin turn, until we made our way to the bottom of the mountain, then repeated the performance on our way back up again.  Round two was a lot easier and I swear, when I stepped out of the car and onto the parking lot at Santa Fe Ski, I was just a little bit taller.

A similar request was made of my right seated passenger while on the long and if memory serves me correctly, in the sky bridge to Coronado Island, south of San Diego.  Barely into the drive, my fear of driving over bridges overcame my rational side and my poor sister, Robin,  had to talk me through the process all the way to the other side of the bridge.  The memory comes up every time I'm on a bridge with her, but fortunately, my fears, although still present, have waned quite a bit.  Still, I don't think she enjoys riding right seat while I drive her across bridges.  Memories shape us, whether they're no longer accurate or not.  Sorry about that, Robin.  If I could have pulled over a switched seats with you, I certainly would have.

Fast forward several years and once again, I find myself on roads that have my pulse speeding... mountain roads in Rocky Mountain National Park.  Mountain roads I of course expected while driving through the park, but being on a narrow shelf roads that had me feeling like I was driving in the sky, was totally unexpected.  I'm a flatlander who has spent most of my life in Kansas.  I don't think of these kind of driving scenarios.  Thankfully, there was very little traffic and I could hug the mountain side, often putting me in the wrong lane, while keeping careful watch out for oncoming traffic.

"Don't look down, don't think about it, you can do this..."

With no one in my right seat, I had to take on the process of "talking her down" routine to myself by myself...

 I returned home a different route, avoiding the shelf roads all together, but with a smile on my face for having done it.  Even after having done this multiple times now since I started spending so much time in Colorado, it is still a big dang deal for me that adds another layer to my driving badge of courage each and every time.

Last week I drove to Aspen to see a friend of mine and thinking I was so tech smart and clever, I simply put her Aspen address into my phone and drove, not giving a second thought to the route Google Maps would choose for me.  In my car with good music, a full cup of coffee in the holder and nothing but blue skies ahead, it was simply perfect... until the roads got tighter and narrower and the hairpin turns began.  I thought it would be for just a short bit, then back onto easy, straight, no hairpin roads, until I saw the sign....

"INDEPENDENCE PASS"

Seriously?  The Pass I hear people talk about and most of them not in a "cool, let's drive Independence Pass to Aspen" kind of way.  Again, I pulled myself up to the steering wheel as close as I could get (no idea about this, but it seems to make me drive better), turned off the radio so I could concentrate and started "talking myself down"....

"Don't look down, don't think about it, you can do this...."

And I did.  When I arrived at my friend's house and my first comment out of the car was in regards to the white knuckled drive, she said,

"Oh Laurie, that's a PASSENGER drive!  You don't drive that!  It's too scary!  You let someone else drive it, while you're the passenger."

Again, I think I may have been just a tad bit taller when I pulled my shaking limbs from the car.  It would appear that I am now a somewhat experienced, albeit not liking it, mountain shelf driver, who will do it if she has to, but has learned the hard way to find an alternate route rather than simply let Google Maps make the decision, because Google Maps does not know me, otherwise they'd probably suggest I look into the bus schedule.  I took a different route home.

I will never be the one to quickly say "Me!!" when the question as to who is going to drive is thrown out, nor will I ever purposely put myself in a driving situation that raises my pulse, unless I have to and although those "have to's" are coming more and more often during my times in the mountains, I still don't enjoy them. 

I realized that I may have passed this driving fear trait onto my daughter the first time I had her out on a parking lot the size of a football field, with nary a car in sight, and she began to maneuver her way behind the wheel for the first time.

"Why are you slowing down so much, Emery?"

"Because, I'm about to crash into that light pole!"

That would be the light pole that was a dot on the horizon, barely visible it was so far away.  Bless her heart; she's the recipient of yet another one of my traits that has worked its way down to her via genetics, the good with the bad, and she lives in Colorado of all places.  Unlike her fearful behind the wheel mom, who put her time in on the flat roads of Kansas at her age, she will conquer this fear with a lot more speed than I did because she's will be thrown into the deep driving end of the pool on a far more regular basis than I was.  Bless her heart even more.  I have not doubt that just like her mom when the knuckles turn white and the radio goes off to concentrate, she'll begin to talk, sing or mumble her way around every mountain pass until the comfort sets in.

"Don't look down, don't think about it, you can do this..."

Or maybe she'll geographically personalize the mantra and go old school Colorado and sing John Denver.  Whatever works.

Growing brave at the rate of 3/4 of an inch a month.

6 months work... to here...

Yep.  I have silver hair.  Gasp.

Not quite as dramatic from that back...but it's in there!

Although I would hardly call myself brave, I do have a taste for adventure and seem to be able to find my way to it, whether looking or not, but what has many people making mention of my "bravery" has nothing to do with anything that would raise my pulse or the hair on the back of my neck. I have been called brave not for anything I've done, but rather for something I've neglected to do for the past 8 months.  I quit dying my hair and just as predicted, the tiny white line at my part has been growing into a large swath since last October.  Eight months in and I'm rocking a skunk do.  I'm flattered, surprised and somewhat amazed by people's response to my "brave act."  Is what I'm doing really all that brave?  I'm not sure, but I am surprised.  Who knew?  It wasn't  a solo hike to the top of a 14,000 foot mountain or having to give a speech in class during my freshman year of college with hands shaking so much I had to set my notes down as they were becoming a distraction to myself and the class or anything to do with me and small airplanes and singing out loud to calm my nerves on my first few solo flights.  Nope.  None of that.  It was letting my hair go silver that has me earning my bravery badge.  (I do, by the way, call it silver as that sounds "younger" than gray... so maybe I'm not really all that brave after all...).

My monthly routine of sitting in a salon for a good hour and a half while my roots are painstakingly colored, followed by a wait time for the chemicals to do their work, is something I've been doing since I was 40 years old.  Every.  Single.  Month.  Which adds up to almost twenty years....twenty long years in the chair getting my roots painted to match the rest of my hair.  The only exceptions would be the times when I traveled for periods of time longer than a month, when creative cover ups and do it yourself kits would come into play, allowing me to buy a few weeks time before heading back into the salon for damage control.  Once, while on an extended stay in Lima, Perú, I closed myself in a tiny shared bathroom and sat on the toilet while impatiently waiting for the 20 minutes to pass, at which time I could stand under the tiny drizzle of cool water and rinse the dye out of my newly covered roots.  This was no easy feat, especially given that it was a bathroom shared by many.  I'm not sure why, but I couldn't quite bring myself to fess up as to what was taking me so long in there and that it had nothing to do with traveler's stomach.  I'm not sure which bothers me more today... the memory of my clandestine cover up in the small bathroom or the fact that I shrouded myself in such secrecy.  I went in with gray roots and came out with dark roots.  Seriously.  I wasn't fooling anyone.

While at my 20 year high school reunion, 20 plus years ago,
OK, I've got to pause a minute here... it's been over 20 years SINCE my 20 year high school reunion???  Holy cow.  Time flies, but hair grows slow.

Anyway, while at said reunion, one of my former male classmates made the comment to me that he was surprised that so many of the men were graying yet hardly any of the women were.  I looked at him in utter amazement and asked him if he really didn't know that with the exception of  the few lucky ones whose hair just simply wasn't going to go gray, most of the women in the room were dying their hair.  He looked confused and possibly disappointed and I realized then that I may have just let the proverbial dyed cat out of the bag.  It really is a secret that's held within the sisterhood of women  who have passed their 40th birthday, otherwise, when going to the salon for my monthly procedure, I would have called it what it was, which was getting my roots dyed, rather than what I wanted people to think, which was getting my hair cut.  It's like pulling up the dress to show everyone that your core strength has an assistant that's helping with the flat stomach... an assistant called spanx. Coming clean, fessing up and going a la natural is a heck of a lot easier than having to fake your way through and like my hair stylist, Bill, says that when you go with your natural color, it ALWAYS will match your skin tone.  The gene pool color swatches were already in the works before you were even born and he's right.  They do match because nature always gets it right, even if it wasn't exactly what  you had planned on.

 I'm finding myself stalking women at the grocery store who have the color of hair that I think I'm going to end up with,  simply for a visual aide for what my hair might end up like.  Sometimes I get too close and they'll turn around and I swear they give me the tiniest nod of encouragement when they see what I'm growing on the top of my head.  OK, maybe I optimistically made that part up and they're simply wondering who the creep is that has followed them from the produce aisle to the canned goods, but still, I've got to think there's solidarity within the group for all of us who have let go of the covering up. 

I've gotten mostly positive comments from friends and family, especially my sister, Robin, who went before me, but have had a handful of people commenting with the predictable, 

"Aren't you afraid it's going to age you???" 

I started getting gray hairs at age 35 and became a regular to the chair at age 40.  If this ages me back to 40, well, bring it on!  But seriously, put your glasses on.  The hair cannot take full responsibility for the aging component.  My face holds a road map of experiences in its lines and wrinkles, each and every one of them earned, although not all of them loved.

I've had dark hair for most of my almost 60 years (I went through a bald-headed Eisenhower look the first 6 months of my life),  so to begin to go light, is a pretty dang big deal - big enough that maybe it is an act of hair bravery.  This process still gives me a moment of having to catch my breath when I glance into the rear view mirror while driving and see nothing but silver and wonder who the hell is driving my car.  Exposed.  Vulnerable.  Real.  It's the real part that's giving me the nudge to stay with the game.  I wrote a blog post a while back about skiing naked, or at least feeling naked in a vulnerability sense.  This whole ordeal has me feeling slightly unclothed and a little bit stared at, but also kind of proud at the same time.  The slightly unclothed feeling has me texting my girl for confirmation that YES, it IS the right thing.  Thank you, Emery.

Besides the huge savings of time and money, the simple act of leaving the hair dye off the hair has become far more of a freeing gesture than I anticipated.  I'm claiming my age and the side effects that go along with the number, both good and according to some cultural norms, maybe not so good.  That being said,   I have of course reserved my right to a full reversal if the results aren't what I anticipated, but am doubtful it will come to that, especially after the time I have invested. Unfortunately, for impatient me, this is not a TAH DUH I decided to go silver moment, but rather, is an arduously slow process and even though my hair does grow fast compared to the average, there are times I swear it is growing back into my scalp and will this project ever come to fruition?

So, slowly but surely, I'm transitioning into one more layer of authenticity at the rate of 3/4 of an inch per month.  This I know because I've stood at my bathroom mirror with a tape measure in one hand,  an outstretched lock in the other and a calculator doing its magic.  I've invested 8 months in this project and probably have another 8 months of two-toned hair before all is said and done and silver.  Call it what you want, but if calling it brave makes this whole process more exciting and please oh please a tad bit faster, than so be it....  I'm a two-toned brave girl.

A big ole thanks to Bill Harding, my supportive, encouraging, wise, and has done this before, stylist.  You got me over the transitional hump.

To be continued...

Knitting love.

There was usually a cat tucked in there somewhere...

Although it's been over 50 years since my grandma taught me how to knit, I can still feel her presence every time I pick up my needles.  I'm right back on her scratchy, bumpy couch, tucked in tightly under her arm while she'd guide me through the process of moving the yarn from one red plastic needle to the other.  It was magic to me; long pieces of yarn growing into something I could hold in my hands and maybe even wear on my head.  Grandma was left-handed and I was right-handed so the whole learning process was backwards and terribly confusing until I gave up on trying to learn right-handed from a left-handed teacher and simply learned the way my Grandma taught me.  Left-handed. 

Last year I wrote a blog post about hands and how they are the keepers of so much of our history.   Knitting is the ultimate in hand thinking.  In their callouses, scars and imperfections lie the very rich history of creating,  which only becomes richer with experience.   Grandma's arthritic fingers moved my young hands through a process that has become refined over many years with a lot of trial and error with things I've created and am very proud of and a host of projects that went the other direction and are still shoved into the back of the closet waiting for me to fix them.

It wasn't always cool to be a knitter and the patterns available were proof as most of the end products were nothing you'd ever want to wear.  Thankfully, it has become hip and yarn stores and pattern choices are much more readily available.  Much to my surprise, there is a knit in public day in April, or KIP for those in the know, a knitting awareness week in October and a national knitting night in November as well as societies for right handed knitters, left handed knitters and a day set aside for those who love yarn.  Yea, I know... and no, I'm not a member, of any, but you've got to love a serious knitter.

My knitting skills started off with long strips that were made into headbands and graduated over the years to a constant stream of sweaters for my babies and toddlers.  After sitting out for several years, when I did pick up my needles again in my late twenties, I re-taught myself to knit right handed, which was much easier and far less complicated when trying to follow right handed instructions.

It has always been nurturing for me and maybe that's because of who taught me more than what she taught me.  Seriously, I would have learned algebra at age 8 if it meant getting to be squished together on a scratchy couch with my grandma leading the lesson.  Although the hopeful outcome of a wearable woolen is what gets me to the yarn store in the first place, it truly is more of a process than product situation for me.  I've ended up with a lot of almost finished projects that were either way off on size or simply didn't end up to be the project I had in my mind.  The only exception were the many baby and kid sweaters I knitted, which always ended up being the right size, at one point or another because my kids did grow and if it started out too small, there was a younger one waiting in the wings.  When my oldest was 4 or 5 he asked me when he could stop wearing the sweaters I knitted and start wearing sweatshirts like all the other kids.  And that was the end of that.  All energies then went to the daughter, who hung in there a long time with my hand knitted sweaters for her.

Everyone who knits has a story and usually those stories are about projects, both the success and the failures.  Sadly, my story is one about how my own knitting caused me tremendous public embarrassment and taught me the lesson on the importance of keeping your knitting supplies, ie yarn, a bit more organized. I know when you drag toilet paper on your shoe when you come out of a bathroom it's called a tile comet, but what's it called when you unknowingly drag yarn from a knitting project from your car, all the way down the sidewalk, about 3 feet high, unknowingly setting up a makeshift boundary line that's not crossable?  And to add to the fun,  there was a sidewalk sale going on so cautious shoppers were mindful of the boundary that I unknowingly put into place while I went into a bakery to get a sandwich. Of course I, also, was being respectful of the "roped off area" as I returned to my car, until I realized it was coming from my car...and this was no short piece of yarn.  Unfortunately, the yarn boundary ran the better part of the south side of Corinth shopping center.  I'm a messy knitter who learned her lesson through embarrassment.  

This meditative movement of slipping stitches made of yarn from one needle to another, hopefully yielding something wearable, is far more about the history that connected me to it in the first place than anything else and that was my Grandma, and the many hours spent next to her learning.  I didn't care if what we were knitting was wearable or not as in my 8 year-old eyes, we were knitting love.  Plain and simple.

Getting the "ready" part of leaving the nest right... for everyone.

Yesterday,  on the heels of Mother's Day,  a young bird in my garden gave me the gentle reminder that we all need our mother and as mothers, we all need to be needed.  It's that simple.

I was in my garden when I noticed a small bird perched on a rock, looking up at me without the least bit of fear or trepidation.   Even when I moved in closer, he still didn't flinch.  I stood there for several minutes, speaking softly to him and then it happened.  He got tall, or as tall as a bird only a few inches tall can be, ruffled his feathers and hovered for a few seconds before landing right back down on the rock where he started.  At a time of in life when so many of my friends, as well as myself, are faced with an emptying nest,  or getting used to the already empty nest, my only thought while watching this struggling bird was that it's not only the mom that the exit is hard on.    It appeared that this little fella's independent streak got the best of him before he was ready and off he went without all of the proper tools he needed to fly.  I followed him around my garden for a bit, as he hovered and landed from plant to plant.  There was a lot of bird chatter going on in my yard and I was hoping that some of it was from the frantic mother,  calling him back with a little bit of that scared, wait till you get home, in her call.  I lost him in the bushes so don't know what happened to him, but have come up with my own version of the story where the mama bird rescues the baby and he returns home for a few more flying lessons before exiting again.  And everyone is happy.

I was reminded of a Mother's Day several years ago when I was newly divorced and still in the process of finding my footing, while trying to get used to a new house and a new neighborhood.  I had a tree right outside the kitchen window and my first spring there I realized that I was sharing my piece of real estate with a lovely family of cardinals.  I have since learned that cardinals mate for life and once they find the right spot, aren't inclined to fly off in search of a bigger or better tree, so I always feel lucky when they decide to nest in my yard.

Emery and I and anyone who happened to be at our house at that time of the year, spent a lot of time crouched below the kitchen window, quietly watching the soon to be growing family in our backyard tree.  We watched patiently, and ever so quietly, as the mama bird sat in her nest.  As one who adored Horton Hatches the Egg as a child, this was very cool for me to watch and thank goodness it didn't end with an elephant having to come in and take over while said bird jetted off to Miami.

The day eventually came and the eggs were hatched and Emery and I both got to watch the dad leave the nest, bring back the worms, give them to the mother who then, and just like the pictures, would feed the babies.  It became our pastime, our television our daily wonder.

We watched as both the mom and dad would teach the baby birds to fly, starting by moving from one branch to another close branch in the tree then eventually, as their skills and courage were honed, making their flights to the neighboring tree, always with quick returns.   This went on for several days, while the parents seemed to be calling out directions to their newly aloft babies. Ironically, on the graduation day of one of Emery's friends who was a year older than her, the 3 baby birds flew the nest, and this time left for other trees not so close to home base. The timing was impeccable.  As I was thinking about my own soon to be emptied out nest and on the heels of Mother's Day, we both watched from crouched positions at the kitchen window,  with a real life, front row view of the "leaving the nest" cliche that is spoke of so often.  After becoming so involved with watching this small family grow, I think we were both surprised at how emotional it was to finally see the little birds go.  Still riding on the warmth of what we had witnessed, we returned home after the graduation to see that all of the birds had returned to the nest.  Maybe they weren't quite ready after all.  If you believe it's possible to see a bird smile, I think we both saw a slight grin on that mama bird's face that night (is it called a face?) when her babies returned to the nest.  Maybe she wasn't ready either.

I swear, there's a coalition of birds out there who are trying to tell me something.  The birds, the nest, the leaving and the returning seems to be something that comes into view for me on a regular basis and for sure at this time of year when so many of us are thinking about mothering and mothers and the feel of our grip on our little ones as they begin to fly.  The book I made for my friend, Marta, reminded me of this, yet again, with one of her paintings of a bird (representing her youngest child) returning to the nest after his initial "exit."  Next to the painting is the quote, "otra vez,"  which means "again"  in Spanish.  Simple, yet understood.  One of the edits Marta made during our book-making process was to have me put that word in all capital letters.  I understood.

There are the birds that leave when they're not quite ready and will flutter and hover and fall until they decide to return to their opened-winged mothers,  then there are the birds that simply don't want to leave, just yet, and need a bit of maternal nudging.

In raising our children, we give them roots and we give them wings and it's the wings part that most of us who are mothers struggle with.  It is also the part that connects us all,  whether we have feathers or not.

Perfect imperfection and other maternal goals.... Happy Mother's Day, 2015.

My everything.  And then some...

Mother's Day, 1992

I was asked the other day by my cousin's daughter, who is in her 3rd trimester of pregnancy, if I knew how long the umbilical cord was.  I didn't know. But really, I did, but didn't want to tell her.  The umbilical cord is as long as it needs to be, and although the physical cord is birthed with the baby, the emotional cord connects you and your child forever and ever.  Mine once stretched all the way to the highlands of Peru, when I learned that my non-Spanish speaking, traveling alone daughter, had found herself on a bus in the middle of nowhere, with a flat tire, a steep drop off and more than one person asking if she was alone.  Alone as in, can I help you???  Or alone as in, I can take advantage of you.  And of course night was approaching. Thankfully,  I got word of this AFTER the fact and not during and although she ended up being safe, I felt the ache from the stretched umbilical cord for a long time afterwards. That same invisible cord has found its way to Chicago multiple times when my son Grant lived there and has great muscle memory for Portland, where my oldest son Thomas and my daughter-in-law Brooke live. 

There were a whole lot of other things that I could have shared with this soon to be mom, but she will learn these things on her own, and with her child as her teacher.  She'll learn that all those things she vowed she'd never do as a mom,  she will do.  Multiple times.  I was determined to give my kids the healthiest food I could and convinced my oldest for quite some time that rice cakes were cookies and green beans were snacks - the good kind of snacks that you asked for before they were even offered.  But the day came when I strayed and popcorn became a vegetable, ice cream covered us in the dairy requirements and more than once I tried to make a meal out of condiments.  Some days simply didn't have the hours I needed to get out the serving dishes and have something to put in them.  Or maybe I was just tired.  Yeah.  I think that was the reason.

With hands on hips, I told my kids I would not be the mom who ran stuff up to the school that they had forgotten.  Period.  End of story.  Don't even ask.  The first time my oldest  called me during his freshman year of high school to tell me he had forgotten his soccer uniform and it was game day, I couldn't get in my car fast enough to bail him out.  He had, after all, given me almost 9 years of no asking so just this once, right?  On about the 4th trip to the school office, with my usual accessory of a soccer uniform under my arm, the attendance clerk told me that as long as I continued to bring his forgotten items to him, he would never learn.  I responded with a "Oh I know... I'm not a mom that does that...normally.... but these are emergency exceptions."  I'm totally that Mom and it would appear I'm a lying mom as well.  If said son had forgotten something he needed in his class in law school IN PORTLAND, OREGON, I would have had the car headed west before he had finished with his plea, but he never asked.  

Preconceived notions of perfection in child rearing take a back seat to reality and as a mom with experience, I can say that the crucial decision of whether to go by the books or by the seat of the pants is usually made on the fly when there is no other option but by the seat of the pants.  Tired also plays into the decision making process and with 3 under age 4, that's my defense, and I'm sticking to it.

I had to remind at least one of my kids to stop telling me that such and suches mom makes a fresh from the oven home made treat for after school snacks each and every day and lays it out buffet style for the kids to enjoy after school.  Seriously?  Well I'm never going to do that.  The next week, I stocked up on muffin mixes and tried my damnedest to be that mom.  I failed.  My straight from the box and into the oven muffins were not what I was about and my kids saw right through my poorly pieced together mom of the year facade.  What was my normal was putting my school-aged kids in the car at eleven o'clock at night and heading to the store for licorice or skittles or day old donuts because we were watching a movie and the popcorn wasn't cutting it.  Oh yes, and I was usually in my slippers because when you make a fast get away, shoes are the last thing you think of.  THAT is who I am.   The same mom,  who showed up in her slippers at the grocery store used to fold herself into a small closet with her then preschool-aged sons and have sleepovers because it was an adventure.  She was also the mom that asked for a roto tiller for Mother's Day one year, much to the dismay and disappointment of her 5 year-old daughter, who desperately wanted her to want make up for Mother's Day.

I thought that gathered around the hearth, all squishy and smiley and in coordinating colors while we created the memories of a lifetime, was what it was all about, in part because the articles in the magazines said so.  More than once, post holiday, I would silently scold myself, insisting that I'd get it right the next time, when in reality, I couldn't have been more right and the memories and traditions were made whether I was armed with a cookie cutter and a glue stick or not.  Who gathers around a hearth anyway?  In keeping with the importance of tradition, whether mine or the magazine's, I decided when the kids were little to let them choose what their birthday celebration would look like, including the restaurant choice.  My middle child, Grant, at age 3, decided that eating at home was better than any restaurant, and chose his favorite foods for his birthday celebration menu...cantaloupe and hot dogs.   He also insisted on all of us "dressing for dinner, " which for the all the boys meant blazers (no ties required) and for Emery and I, dresses.  He wore a pair of too short, too tight, red plaid pants, water shoes, a green muscle shirt and of course the required navy blue blazer.  It was perfectly imperfect, right down to the mismatched paper plates.  Of course at the time, I wondered if I should have over-ridden the menu choice, but now I realize that giving the one celebrating the birthday total control, was and still is, the right thing to do.  We did stay with the traditional over-iced, white sheet cake from the grocery store though.

That seat of the pants mothering that sometimes comes out of a box and sometimes doesn't wear shoes or adhere to a schedule, is something I see very clearly today in each one of my children even though none are mothers, or fathers for that matter.   I could not be prouder as a mom for that.  When you can look at your kids and say to yourself, 'hey, I recognize that person because it's me!'... well, it doesn't get any better than that, unless of course it's the negative stuff and in that case, look away. They may have a leg up on me when it comes to food preparation (no boxed muffins in their cupboards), but the thread of salt of the earth with a little bit of crazy and a whole lot of love has connected us all.

Emery wrote a Mother's Day essay for me when she was in middle school and it has hung on my closet wall ever since.  I can't step foot into my closet without re-reading at least one line of it and the line that keeps coming into my field of vision is this:

"My mom is kind of like an old pair of socks, warm and cozy yet worn and tough."

Well there you go.  To all the seasoned moms, the new moms and the moms to be, cozy, worn and tough beats homemade muffins spread out buffet style any day, or at least it does for me.  Happy, happy day of YOU!  We're all mothers to someone, whether we know it or not, and that someone is very grateful, and not just on Mother's Day.

Then...

And now...

Trees and birds with a healthy side of patience and understanding...

I finished the making the book for my friend from Ecuador yesterday.  Well almost and not quite.  Upon what I thought was the  completion, I ordered just one copy to check for mistakes then took it over for Marta to check it as well before ordering the 12 books that she wanted.  I was very pleased with the end result but given the history thus far on the project, knew not to relax just yet, a hunch that was totally correct.

Marta was standing at her front window waiting for me when I arrived, a gesture that I've become quite fond of, and has me on my punctual toes each time I visit.  Her living room looked like she was expecting company as she had moved all of her kitchen chairs into the room, and each chair held one of her original paintings as well as stacked, and paper clipped papers of text.  There was a system here and I knew not to question although I was somewhat  surprised as I had already reassured her multiple times that I had the paintings and the text pages in the proper order.  I thought we had already jumped that hurdle.

Inhale.  Exhale.  Patience.  Or paciencia, in Español.

She loved my "sample" hard copy book, much to my delight, yet still walked around the living room checking my page order with the stacks of paper on each chair.   She did find a couple of small mistakes, errors in her spelling on some of the Spanish text and I agreed that I would keep the book with the mistakes as my own, would make the necessary corrections then would order the 12 books she wanted.  She wanted to pay me right then and there,  but I insisted we wait until she had all 12 books in her hands and was pleased with them. We agreed to meet for lunch once she received the books and she could pay me then.  So last week, as agreed, we met at a neighborhood restaurant that she liked that ironically happened to be French and enjoyed  the lovely French cuisine while conversing in Spanish the entire time.   The language section of my brain, opened up then got confused, as I was "merci-ing"  in the middle of a totally Spanish conversation.  I felt very European.

That was last week.  Since then, my friend has found things in the book she wants to change, which means another order and unfortunately, a big expense for her.  I tried to talk her out of it as the books are not cheap, but she insists that they be perfect and said she will only publish one book in her lifetime and this was it so it just had to be perfect.  She apologized for having pushed me to get them done so quickly but said she was nervous she wouldn't make it to her 80th birthday, a comment that I have argued more than once with her.  When the book was finished she told me she was relieved and will not worry about dying before December.  I don't know how to say "stop over thinking the dying stuff" in Spanish but gave her a smile that communicated my thoughts and she smiled back.  I'm starting to understand her humor and she mine.

That was a few weeks ago and the same process of ordering, proofreading, correcting and re-ordering has now happened, twice.  Last week, I think we finally reached a point where we're both satisfied, but my fingers remain crossed and my breath held.

This has been far more of an ordeal than I ever thought it would be when I signed on, but it has been about so much more than a book of paintings and text.  Last week I spent 2 hours conversing in Spanish with my new friend and felt so comfortable with it that at one point I actually forgot that I was slogging through a language that wasn't my mother tongue.  

As I was driving home from that last visit,  I realized that the many trips to her house to do and re-do were far less about the book that we were jointly creating and far more about the friendship that was developing.  I think about Marta and I smile.  It's been a synchronistic connection that I think we both needed and the timing was impeccable.

The book, by the way, is a lovely story which showcases Marta's love for her children as well as her love for trees.  She represents each of her 6 children as golondrinas, a bird that is common to Ecuador, who one by one leave the nest and find their tree to begin their lives as adults.  Many different trees are represented, including a saguaro cactus, which represents her son who lives in Arizona.  One of the paintings shows one of the birds returning to the mother with the text "trata otra vez" (he tried again).  I was that kid.  I get it.  No doubt her children will be very touched by the paintings and the story that accompanies them, especially given that they haven't yet learned that she know how to paint! 

Sometimes getting to the prize at the end of the proverbial tunnel isn't what you thought it would be.  I've got a new book to add to my growing collection of books I've made, but the gain here is not in the pages of that book but rather was the added gift of an unexpected friendship. There is always a purpose behind our chance meetings with people and some of those  relationships continue as they are needed in one way or another, while others fall away.  I'm hopeful that the friendship I've found with Marta will continue far beyond the pages of a book.