Telling it just like you're here.

Oh, Mother. I miss you so....

I've been here in your house, staying with Daddy since the day you died.

This house we moved to thirty years ago when I was sixteen and you were younger than we children are now. You made it a home. Let me pick out curtains that Irene custom made, and we had our friends here for slumber parties and late night swimming. Remember that Jeffrey was Johnny Appleseed in his school play one of those first years, and he sang and looked so cute?

I don't even remember our writing this, do you? After freshman year of college?

Every room here, every nook, cranny and drawer, has you in it. A scarf you wore to a soccer game, or a news clipping from your service to UMW or Church Women United. We keep finding little squirreled away stashes of photographs in unexpected places from mismatched eras and your handwriting is on the backs with names and dates and sometimes captions like, "Not a very good picture of Laura." These things have kept us laughing and crying, both.

Dana and I, along with Laura, went through all your clothing. That was tough. We girls all took things of yours that we wanted and we'll be wearing them -- Dana most of all, as she was closest to your size. Jeffrey laundered and folded the clothing you most recently wore, and declined my help to fold. He has been wonderful, as you know. You raised a good boy into an excellent man, Mother.

And Dana gave a hilarious and moving eulogy at your service. Everyone laughed. Smiled. Remembered how fun you were. Eric says she captured that part of you perfectly.

Yesterday just about dark a floral delivery came from one of  Daddy's friends -- a beautiful white camelia in a basket filled with fruit. A LOT of fruit. The lady delivering the fruit told Jeff and me that you banked with her at First Tennessee for years, I remembered her face.... but that she'd been the florist owner the last year and a half, and knowing you, she overfilled the basket with good fruit for your family. She, like everyone, remembered you as gracious and always smiling. I think that's one of the words about you I have heard most often: gracious. And it's true, that was your way.

I like to think we're making you proud here. Daddy has been kind of amazing, really. Very gracious himself and kind. I keep thinking that you're just a breath away whispering, "You just be the best Joe you can be," and with your encouragement, he's doing just that. The children have been lovely and such a comfort. Every one of them adored you, and my boy told me he knows your spirit lives on inside of his heart. Audrey finds your photograph in one of your church directories and says, "THERE's my Diggy!" The big girls have been wonderful with the younger ones, and I'm glad they'll all help the new baby know you. He hasn't gotten here yet, but little Leo's arrival is imminent.

Mother, I'll admit, I have some unkind thoughts toward people. People who didn't come see you for their own reasons, or were even unkind and dishonest. But I know you, you'd have said, Love them anyway. So I've bitten my tongue, and tried to do as you would -- offered kindness and cried and fussed about it later.

It's hard though, Mother. Because you deserved the best. You didn't deserve the pain and suffering of the last few years. You were supposed to live into your nineties and go on that cruise with me and Dana and the grandkids, go to San Francisco and England and wherever else with Daddy.... I can't face the open years head on and know that you won't be there.

For now, I focus on today, and just the tiniest bit more. It's too hard to do otherwise. I miss you terribly.

Last night I was flipping through television channels and that Hallmark movie Matchmaker Santa was on; the movie that was playing on the television at the Courtyards the last day I saw you before you died a week later. I gasped. You were watching the movie with the other residents while Daddy snoozed on the couch beside you in your wheelchair when my boy and I kissed and hugged you, told you we loved you and that we'd see you soon.

I did not know the next time I'd see you you'd be dead and I'd be seeing your body all cold and stiff at the funeral home. They kept you there for me to see you before the cremation. And even though I knew it was your body, and that your spirit had gone on, I wanted to say goodbye. I left you with a fresh coat of Viva Glam on your lips and kissed you goodbye.

On Friday, I picked up your ashes, and your death certificate. I sat in my husband's car in the parking lot of the funeral home with you in a box beside me and sobbed. I didn't drive back across town until I'd worn myself out and settled into gentle tears. This grief is a real bear, Mother. It hurts so damned much.

We're all relieved, though. Relieved that you are no longer suffering. You never complained. And yet relied upon us for everything. I know that was, as you only said a few times, terrible. And then you'd apologize to us for your needing us. We'd have done anything for you. Any one of us.


And today, I'm going to leave this house and go home to Nashville to my husband and child. I'm going to rent a car and drive back across the plateau to do the next things that need doing and start a job at a new school, help my child make sense of this loss, crump up with my husband in our bed and try to sleep.

It's hard to go, though.... Hard to leave Daddy. Hard to part from this house, from you in every room, in every memory, including that we ultimately couldn't keep you here until the end, even though it broke our hearts.

I'll be back next week. For Thanksgiving. And the beginning of Advent comes just behind that -- your favorite season. I have yet to understand how we'll get through it without you.

But just for today, Mother, I'm going spend some time with Daddy and with my brother, your only son, and pack up and go home to my house for a few days. I am anxious about the drive. I pray for strength and for calm. For safety as I ferry myself from my loved ones here to those there. If you would, please whisper your encouragement. I need it today.

I love you, Mom.

Domestic revelations of a domestic revolutionary.

Should your bathroom smell strongly and inexplicably of pee even after you've swabbed it down repeatedly, check the shower curtain. Why? I couldn't say. Pee smell that misses the scrutiny of the husband with an unworking sniffer and a little boy who smells of dirt and sweat and dog and pencil lead? Could be the shower curtain. Washing it (in hot, with very little detergent, just like those cloth diapers years ago) could well do the trick.

Should your husband and child come home from school to find you washing dishes and sweeping the floor in your underpants and a torso long sports bra, smile your best smile. Smile your best smile especially if this wasn't intended as a sexy saran wrap come-on, as you are a portly middle aged but reasonably attractive and good natured woman. Smile your best smile as you say to your husband, "Well, I guess you didn't expect to come in to find your wife in her underpants and a bra." Smile bigger when your husband adds, "And a necklace!" Place your open palmed hand over your chest as if saying "I swan!" just as you've seen your mother do for decades whenever she is tickled or moved or flirty with your father. You may wish to disclose that you are in such a state merely because not only did you burn the supper (aloo bhindi) you'd intended for take away for a friend  because you were on the phone with your brother and highly distracted, but you'd also spilled a considerable amount of aforesaid burned supper (laden with tumeric) onto your clothing and had actually intended to change but had again gotten distracted by the dirty floor needing attention.

And so it goes. If you are especially lucky, your sweet husband will take you out to supper by moving a few funds around and hold your hand across the table and then build a bonfire for your child and a friend upon coming home.

That kind of love.

I'm home sick this week. First with my boy, who had inflamed lungs and a stellar case of thick snot. And now I've got the parainfluenza. Cruelly, it mocks the flu, but isn't the real deal. Hardly seems a difference.

And so I'm home with my hair in a bad ponytail, wearing a Y tee shirt and a cardigan with yoga pants, drinking mug after mug of hot tea, emptying box after box of Kleenex tissue.

I've watched episode upon episode of The United States of Tara, streaming onto our new Christmas family present television through the new Christmas family present Wii on Netflix.

My boy is back at school in his standard school attire uniform, missing both top front teeth and looking more adorable than I can stand and I have the nicest damned husband in the world who brought me a steaming container of Tom Yum Goong last night.

And today, I'm crying trying to remember the last "normal" pre dementia conversation I had with my mother and there's so much of life, THIS Life, this sweet messy little one, that is good and right and I'm grateful. And yet, I miss my mother. Terribly. It's not fair.

I may be forty-five years old and a mother and a wife myself, a school teacher, a tax payer, a late night laundry doer. And still, I miss my very own mother. So badly.

I miss her able-bodied, well minded Mother self who taught me pretty much everything, including how to love her because I can't not even when there's something different to hold onto.

I know my brother and my sister, they know that kind of love, too. Our mom is the best mom. Our mom is magic.

Thank you, Mom. for giving us everything.

Our mom IS that kind of love.

Season of Light.

The days are long. The years are short.
Sunrise, sunset....


I spend most of my waking hours away from home, away from my child. Away from my mate, my dog, my family of origin.

Like so many others, I spend an awful lot of time in the car, criss crossing town between my child's school and my own, to and from home, and so on.

Evenings spent coming home like this:

Make these moments all the more precious:

After supper (take out pizza) we went into the yard to look for meteor showers. The city lights make it difficult to see them. We saw blinking planes, believing at first they were meteors, adjusted, watched, waited, foggy wisps of breath issuing from our mouths. Craning our necks back, upward starting into the vast sky.

"Space HAS no end," said our son when his father attempted to explain how to look into where you couldn't see the space anymore.

"Will the meteor rocks hit our house?" he asked.

"How can we see the meteors if the rocks break into something small as a grain or rice or sand, Dad?"



And then the tromp back into the house, the unplugging of the Christmas tree lights, the readying and cozying into flannel sheets, the Mister's voice reading aloud from the seventh book of the Harry Potter series.

I drifted off. Surrounded by the people I love, in the kind of moment we live for.


Light. Yes, it can be both wave and particle, but too, it can be:  Home. Hope. Hello.


Or even the road toward it.

That's what I hear.

I haven't written in ages. I am not terribly likely to start up a lot right now, either, but sitting here at Daddy's enormous screened desktop, I've just typed up a letter to my best friend, and because I can, I'm sharing it:



I got your message today. The boy and I were on the way to East Tennessee, but had stopped at the Dunkin Donuts in Cookeville to pee, get coffee, and get donuts.
I try not to talk on the phone when I drive. I'm so tired these days and my adult ADD makes multi-tasking effectively even harder, not to mention that cell phone talking and driving is rarely a good idea anyway.
We drove straight to Knoxville to the Tatarus gymnasium where Autumn was having her thirteenth birthday party, the first in her life that Mother could not attend. Mother and Daddy were at their house. Jeff and his family were there.
My mister was in Nashville at a job fair. I'd have been there too, but for not knowing about it soon enough to have registered.

Mother only had yet another test run at Vanderbilt on Thursday. They did not keep her.
Jeffrey drove Mother and Daddy over to Nashville from Oak Ridge in Dana's van. I literally saw them for a total of five minutes in the valet parking line, because by the time I'd raced there from school, they were done and headed home.
I can say unequivocally that Mother looked beautiful in her pink fleece pullover and her duck fuzz hair finally growing back a bit and her cornflower blue eyes sparkling. She rose from her wheel chair with the most amazing smile and reached out to hug me.
We won't know anything about the medical test for some days yet. Maybe Mother's spinal fluid is backed up.

Mother is so confused about some things.
In the short time we've been together this evening, she has shown me hand towels that are for "all the people who do not have any and need them."
She told me about how Jeffrey has been pushing her around on a tuffet with wheels for the last week and a half. I asked if she meant her wheel chair. She said, no, but it would be more like a wheel chair if it had more things. It was, she said, a tuffet.
She's been riding it everywhere they go, she tells me.
Mother tells me she is annoyed at everyone telling her to wash her hands with hot water, and to tuck "the girl" into the bed with her, "she's so warm." Generally, I just smile and hug her and say OK, like I did when she showed me her "morning coffee spot" where she will have "three cups of coffee." Daddy tries to correct her, but I just roll with it, unless it's something that will harm her.
There was a very long (as there usually is) soliloquy about her dental floss and threader, a device for cleaning under her bridges.
There is often a lot, and I do mean a LOT, of talk about shit and shitting. There are other strangely off color topics that come up now and again, so atypical of Mother in her "right" mind.
Tonight, as I was dressing her in pajamas for bed, she told me, "everyone tries to touch them." I asked if she meant her breasts and if so, who did she mean. "Yes, my boobs. And everyone in the world, I mean."

And then, when I'm telling her about what I'm reading, a memoir called Resilience by the late Elisabeth Edwards and I could not recall her first name, Mother first called up Eleanor, knew it was wrong, and came up with Elisabeth. So there's that.
And her sly sense of humor. Such as this:

Me: Mother, I try to keep all your cousins and nieces and nephews up to date on you. I talk to your friends, too.
Mother: Well, that's good that you're doing it, because I've been so poor at keeping in touch with people.
Me: Oh, but Mother! You aren't responsible for that. I mean, YOU're the one that's sick.... right?
Mother: That's what I hear.


Watching my parents age, aging myself, watching my boy grow.... life is moving along.

When I was here at Mother and Daddy's two weeks ago, Olen and I stayed in my teenaged bedroom on the wall of which hangs a La Grone family portrait from 1970something.... Olen pointed out each of us family members one night, including me.
"I always know it is you. I judge by the face and how it's the same except for the wrinkles and scabs and bumps." Later, he confessed, "I regret and retract the scabs."
A) How humblingly hilarious. and B) What kind of six year old "regrets and retracts" anything, let alone scabs?


We're reading a lot, you know. The boy is reading the Dragon Breath series, the Bone series, and as of today when we picked up the first book, The 39 Clues series. As a family, we're on book five of the Harry Potter series. So essentially, my kid is reading many of the same things my sixth graders are into....

Me, I'm reading a lot of non fiction (as per usual) plus some fiction here and there, including of late, a string of Jennifer Weiner novels. I need to read things about sassy smart plus sized women who might be, but are not, me.


I am glad to have work, as ever. I overwork. And yet, I will need a new job for next year, most likely. More on that some other time.


Not sleeping much these days, how about you?
I am having honest to Goddess night sweats. That, along with the stresses of life, keep me tired.


I wasn't much into the idea of walking at our graduation. Eric, sweet man that he is, would do whatever he thought I wanted. But I could tell it's important to him. And to his dear folks, too. So ultimately, I just decided that we should do it.
I'm still not crazy about the idea. I'll miss my mother not being there in particular, and honestly, it feels anticlimactic since I've been working as a fulltime teacher all year, and actually completed my graduation months ago, even though there wasn't a ceremony.
Presenting my electronic portfolio to an audience was sort of all I needed to feel done. But knowing that people I really love want this? Well, hell, I can put on a cap and gown and be part of the pomp and circumstance.


I wish we talked more. I wish we saw each other more. I wish I wrote more. As to each of those, time is at a premium, but also, to be frank, I can just be shitty company. And there's the matter of not typing a whole lot -- I spilled water on my laptop keys months ago, and messed the keyboard up. I use an external keyboard for it now, and that's kind of a pain. I fortunately have a work issue iPad, but it's not easy to type long on...

I'll do better.


Sometimes, I just want to stare out the window, or sleep when dreams are good. Or cry in the bathtub. Or get lost in doing laundry.


I've been a less than good friend, but I am fairly pleased with the kind of wife, mother and daughter I've been being, so while there's a lot of room for improvement, I know it's not all a wash.


You know my mother loves you, right? And so do I.


Let's make a phone date. There are so many things I want to ask and hear answers to..... The above is about all I've got on me and mine. I weary of the story. Give me some fresh news.


Love and love and more love.....

Further reflection on Twenty Twelve.

Very simple New Year resolution: NO more talking on the cell phone while driving. 


Otherly, goal like: monthly projects and plans (No spend (other than necessities) January and no fast food January -- seemingly redundant, but important to keep at bay that six year old's call for fast food in the car and mama's giving in because of poor planning on my part.) 


As per my friend Kelly Manchego Crase, I am focusing on what I'm not going to do this year: I am not going to talk on the cell phone while driving, I am not going to be a poor steward of money and time, I am not going to give in to instant gratification. Playing my friend Julie Helm Clark's Pollyanna game, I am going to focus on what I DO have and AM and what's going RIGHT this year. 

Like this: I am thankful for a ready smile and a body that moves mostly like I want and need it to and for its ability to provide comfort to my loved ones with hugs and snuggles and a lap and a strong back. 

As an overarching annual goal, I endeavor to pay greater respect and attention *throughout the year* to my role as my family's spiritual leader. 

A prayer of Thanksgiving.

Thankful for a rich if imperfect marriage. For a beautiful funny intelligent and delightful child. For my siblings so dear to my heart. Our father for his generosity and tenderness, our mother for her inspiration and courage and boundless love. Thankful for my nieces three, so precious. For the perfectly perfect in laws who I love more than I imagined possible. For friends both far and near, without whom this journey would be lonely and less colorful. For the best dog companion a woman could ask for. For sweet potatoes and good teeth and a job. For doctors and nurses and other caregivers, and especially for the ones helping Mother fight and grow stronger. For God, from whom all blessings flow. Amen.

And what happened was.....

My job at Eakin was not renewed after last year. The funding was reallocated.

I went to school all summer semester long with four classes three days a week back to back to back to back, April to August. I sold Thirty One. I kept kids. We swam. Played a lot of Uno and read Harry Potter and listened to Percy Jackson stories on audio disk.  I wrote a honking ton of papers and did bulletin boards and projects and lesson plans and hunted for a job.

We made a very quick run to Michigan for the Fourth of July. I wrote scripts and taught multi age / multi cultural Sunday School. I felt God being in the presence of children. In holding my husband's hand. In preparing meals for my family.

After a rough Spring semester, my husband needed a break. He worked a couple days a week at the record and comics shop and didn't get his contract renewed at the middle school. We decided it was in his best interest to student teach and go a more traditional route.

Our boy became a spectacular reader and grew many inches. He refused to sleep in his own bed for many many months because of a bad incident at school in the Spring. We're actually still working through it.

My brother and his wife and their baby moved from Boston to Oak Ridge, and moved in with my folks.

My sister's family thrived, even though Dana had a boot for months on her foot and kidney stones. They got a new van, stayed in their beautiful home and Dana began her sixteenth year teaching gifted middle schoolers at the same locale.

Our mother's health rapidly declined. We had noticed it for months. Worried, fretted, made late night phone calls. We googled and asked each other questions. Made observations. She called me up sometimes telling me that her memory was going. In the early summer, she admitted to my brother, which he then told to us girls (through tears) that Mother couldn't remember what went on the breakfast table in the mornings.

Daddy seemed unmoored.

Mother kept falling. Nearly into the creek. Onto the potato bin during the blessing before supper. On the steps. Over her feet. Into the bushes. She had a little black-out incident in the swimming pool.

School started again. I kept looking for a job. We spent all our student loan money on tuition and rent and new shoes for  the boy and car repairs and gasoline to run back and forth across the plateau for me to see family. To figure things out with Mother. To print off resumes and jump through hoops and dream about moving closer to the folks if only the right job materialized.

It did not.

What happened was: Mother had a grand mal seizure in her bedroom on September the eleventh. Daddy and my brother found her. By the next evening, she'd already been in three ambulances and was checking into her third hospital, Vanderbilt this time, in MY city. ICU.

I was offered a job, and declined it, going into the red with our bank account but needing to be with Mother to see what was going on.

The short story is that she had a brain tumor. Had had it awhile. (It'd been missed in a scan a year before.) Hydrocephalus had made her forgetful and unbalanced and it had made her seize. The night before they went into her head with endoscopic instruments, I made a pot of chicken and dumplings and took it to the ICU. My mother, my father, my sister, my brother and I all ate the dumplings together and gathered around Mother to say a prayer. It was Communion, in the truest sense.

That may have been the first time in twenty plus years it'd been just us having a meal together: no boyfriends, husbands, grandbabies, others.

Well, God was there.

In the wee early morning, I had my car valet parked and went up to Mother's room. She was awake and I laid down in the bed with her and we held hands and listened to each other breathe and reminded each other of funny and tender and outrageous things. She reminded me that in life-- and in the event of her death -- her wish for each of us, her children, was this, these three things on which we could base THE WAY WE LIVED:

Love fully. Forgive, forgive, forgive. And: stay true to the Spirit of your Christian core. 

She made sure to express that my core might differ from someone else's and that Christian was based in Christ, not in political garble or evangelical smack downs. She's good that way, my Mother.



After the surgery, everything got messy. Bad. Painful.

For her. For us.

I turned down another job.

My brother tried to juggle his new job and still new baby with being in Nashville so much. Daddy fought with each of his children. We fought with him.

Mother talked a blue streak in word salad and had a hard time orienting to time and place for awhile. Some days we were in Afghanistan, fighting a war. Some days we were in Virginia; it was 1992. Or 1970, somewhere else. In England. In Knoxville. The nurse was the church secretary and her husband was coming to pick her up.

My child turned six. On his birthday, even though he was afraid of Mother's catheter bag and the PIC line in her hand, he and I had a picnic lunch in the ICU with hand picked fancy cupcakes and little plastic dishes of ice cream.

My husband and I were so tired. We'd fight. I'd cry. He'd hold me. I'd promise him we'd make it okay somehow. We'd get more rest. We'd finish school. I'd get a job. He'd finish student teaching.


The day Mother left Vanderbilt on a stretcher being pushed by the EMTs, she waved like the queen to everyone on the way out. I hear the nurses are still using my phrase, "Cover up your pocketbook!"

When the ambulance pulled away, I felt as though my heart had just been pulled from my body and I couldn't get enough air. I didn't know what to do.


I took a job.

I teach sixth grade reading at an urban middle school. It's an incredibly challenging gig, and I work way too many hours a week, up very very early in the morning, staying at school into dark.

I go to school and will graduate in mere weeks. On off weekends, I drive east to see Mother. I help with math homework and shuttle my child to martial arts and birthday parties and make sure his Cub Scout tasks are complete. My house is in constant disarray. We eat a lot of sandwiches. I don't see friends. There is no time. At night, I reach across my six year old and hold my husband's hand and tell him how much I love him.

Last night I said, "I miss you." He said, "I miss you, too, Babe." We know we'll make it back to each other.


Mother got stronger at Patricia Neal doing rehabilitative therapies. She still has some double vision and some confusion. She thought Thanksgiving was this week, she told me on the phone last night. She'd been expecting me to arrive and assigning different ones different jobs like pie baking and such.

She has cancer.


My beautiful amazing Mother has brain cancer.


Already, she has been through it, nearly having lost her life to a fluke virus that invaded her heart back in the nineties.

And now this.


I'm angry.

And sad.

And a fighter. I am the cheer team captain of Team Happy Club.



Sometime during the time of the ICU and the worst of all the days, I came home one night with this revelation to my husband. You know what? I asked --- It's my MOTHER that's the extraordinary one. Daddy's so brilliant with his photographic memory and his charm and the ability to suck all the air out of the room because he's just who he is. But it's my mother who is extraordinary. She's not just the glue. She's IT.


Thankfully, we children have a lot of her in us. I see it in my brother's tender ministrations to her (and his frustration, too,) and in my sister, with her no-nonsense To DOs and her absolute refusal to believe anything bad is going to happen. To mother, or to any of us. I see it in my own need to do SOMETHING, even though I am here and she is now at home....


I set up a meal train and update folks on Facebook. We talk on the phone. I cry in private. A lot. I pray. A lot. I try really hard to love fully. To forgive, forgive, forgive. And to stay true to the Spirit of my Christian core.


A lot of the time I'm bungling things. I forget stuff because I'm tired and over extended and nowhere near the extraordinary woman my mother is.

I'm working on it.

Packing for a visit to Diggy & Papa.

Our Spring Break begins tomorrow, after a snow make-up day. The Mister and the Dog and the Cats will hold the homefront down while the Boy and I head to Diggy & Papa's for a couple days. I asked the Boy to pack for himself by putting the things he wants to take on my bed.

Right now, there is a pile which includes:

one giant pencil
one giant pen
Star Wars, Return of the Jedi on VHS tape
Star Wars, a book reading, on DVD
one disc from a set of Three Stooges DVDs
one Fantastic Four comic book
Bob, the wig, which we'll return to our friend Jo Hunter
a lanyard holding a passel of Silly Bands
a pinstriped gray wool newsboy cap
an American flag
a blow up National Geographic beach ball type globe toy
Irish, the Roomba
and a number of Star Wars action figures

Justice for Henry.

Please read about Henry Granju, his life, his death, and the lack of justice in his case. His mother Katie is blogging the full story as she knows it, and she is actively seeking media coverage. Please contact her if you are able to help in that regard.

Henry was Katie's and Chris' child. Stepchild of two additional loving parental figures. Brother, cousin, nephew, grandchild and friend to many. He could be my child. Or yours.

Love over judgement.

Whew.

This is the painting our son reached out to touch today at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts when I grabbed and pulled back his hands just in time.

Jason and Medea by Gustave Moreau (1865)

You can most certainly see the appeal to touch by a five year old boy, can't you?


While he didn't last through the complete exhibit of The Birth of Impressionism (oh, we'll go back! Can you IMAGINE seeing Whistler's Mother in person? Or Manet's Woman With Fans?!!) we were there long enough to examine and admire and discuss an enormous painting of Sarpedon, the slain son of Zeus. So cool, says the boy. Death. Blood. Angels. Battle. Gods. Awesome. "My favorite," he says.

Mornings.

Snacktime at Diggy's, over the holidays.

Having all the boy's standard school attire at last in one dresser upstairs in his room has proven a boon, and has removed the necessity of choosing clothing for the morning box. (Instead, the morning box contains the backpack, coat, mittens, hat, and any other items like library books or toys that need to be taken for the day or returned to someone / somewhere.) My big kiddo is doing a great job of dressing for the school day, with a choice from each drawer, no help needed. SSA trousers (in khaki, navy or black,) a collared shirt (solid color,) and often a sweater or fleece pullover on top (also solid covered.)

I must say: I love the whole SSA program. It simplifies the shopping and readying process greatly, and evens the playing field for children from all strata and income levels. Additionally, there's the frugal and environmentally / economically friendly exchange program. The kids look pulled together and have a sense of appropriate (as in, no heinies hanging out or Juicy wording on the booty) style for school, yet are given room to add a personal bling to add one's own flava. My boy often adds a headband, a necklace, newsboy cap, bracelets or rings.

The new parka from Diggy is grand, as are the specially commissioned hand-knit mittens in camouflage colors -- these most especially appreciated when the temperature is in the twenties and the back deck and stairs are coated with ice -- something which, asidely, prompted the Mister to put a "travel ban" on me, his oft falling wife.

This morning, the Mister prepared to take the boy to school  by walking the dog and warming up the car, while I packed lunches and prepared breakfast, sorting this and that for my own work day and carpool duties at school day's end.



"What would you like for breakfast, son? Cheerios with bananas and milk or yogurt, OR a breakfast burrito with eggs, salsa and cheese in a tortilla?" I asked my boy as he dressed for the day.

"Actually, I'd like Pancake Pantry," said my boy.

"Good one, but not a choice today, pal."

"What did you say my choices were again?"

Once more through the choices, and the boy suggests, "How about eggs and toast?"

"Done," I tell him, and scramble up a half dozen, make oven toast, and sautee up spinach and onions to add to my own breakfast.



Despite effort, father and son still leave late for school. (Last minute readying by the Mister, forgotten precious Lego piece by the boy, prompting one last trip inside from the car....)

I enter my own eats and water intake on livestrong.com -- a simple calorie counting tool I like for its ease and accountability. Move on to other tasks.



Now, if only I could find my phone charger....

2010 in random photographs.

In the Middle.

The boy's school has a talent show coming up at the end of the month. "It's a secret," he tells me. "What I'm going to do for the show, I mean."

I tell him that there's a form to fill out, so I might need to know, at which point he tells me, "I'm going to run around in a circle. With my hands on the ground. Jerrod can do it, too."

Whether this entertaining feat of daring do will be done to music or not remains to be seen.

++++

I've done it. Hired a babysitter for the first time ever. She's coming to keep the boy (notice he's not so much being called Ziggy anymore? He's really The Boy now) this weekend, the morning of the my and the Mister's first day back at school this semester. She was recommended to me by the sitter of a good friend, and she'll be taking the boy to a friend's house that afternoon where the mama of that household will take her son and mine and another pal from their kindergarten class to the Build a Bear Workshop in celebration of her son's sixth birthday. There will be pizza and maybe ice cream after. My boy is thrilled. A babysitter of his very own, and a party at Build a Bear with two of his best friends all in one day!!

++++


The boy and I returned fr0m Diggy and Papa's two afternoons ago. We'd spent Christmas there with the Mister, come home a few days, then returned without the Mister for New Year's in order to visit with my brother and his wife, and their beautiful baby girl. All was well. Then home. And I got the tummy bug. Knocking me out of starting my job yesterday (as science lab teacher at the boy's school.)

The good news? I am down three pounds as of the beginning of the year. With many more to go; a subject I'm sure to address more publicly (here) at some point. Suffice to say that I am keeping up with it all privately, and am deriving inspiration from far and yon.

++++


Seriously. I have the best friends ever. At church, in my neighborhood, from jobs, at school, from previous lives.

To wit: the gift card that arrived here in the nick of time, from "St. Nick" -- did I mention that previous? Some dear lovely friend (I have guesses as to who!) has done this on a few occasions when things have been particularly tight. Actually, this type of kindness has been offered up to our family on a handful of occasions. Amazing!

Having stated my health goals to a small clatch of folks in a very naked way, I've received a remarkable rush of encouragement, 'atta girl's and offers to meet up at the Y and for dinners and elsewhere. I've received emails and photographs and recipes and tips and workout routines. And such love and support that I am bolstered and emboldened.

I also came home from Diggy and Papa's to find a box of wonderful hats and a scarf, all from my dear friend Annie, who I've not seen since we became friends in Seattle a decade ago. We're both married now, and older. She's done a very impressive job of keeping us in contact, and this latest delivery of hats in support of my hair loss is completely typical of her loving kindness and thoughtful behavior.

I do, in fact, find myself surrounded by such thoughtful folks. How fortunate is that?!

++++



Big Time Rush plays in the car often, and prompts the response from the backseat, "Don't look at me, Mama. I'm practicing my secret moves."

++++



Home sick for a couple days, I've not bathed today, as is ordinarily true. After bathing the boy earlier this evening, post school pick up and our walk around the neighborhood with the dog before daylight's end, I really yearned for my own bath.

Drying him off, he smelled so fresh like Buzz Lightyear shampoo and Dr. Bronner's Eucalyptus. So I asked, "Do I stink?"

And the boy crawled up in my lap and got close to my neck and took in a big whiff, then announced quite seriously, "You smell kind of in the middle. That means sort of bad, but also sort of good."


Like life itself. Right smack dab in the middle.

Four fights. In which we come out OK.

Mama vs Pasta Serving Bowl

Pasta Serving Bowl: 1, Mama: 0  -- Sadly, during dish washing with a boy and a dog in the mix in our small kitchen, the bowl slid from the dish rack on the counter and broke beyond repair. A wedding present from some of the Mister's old friends from Chicago, we'd loved this serving dish and I'd oft used it for pastas and salads and fruit on our family table, as well as toted it full of goodness to friends who'd had babies and potlucks here and there. Its last use, in fact, was to carry a lemon pea spaghetti salad to a gathering on Friday.


Mister vs Brita pitcher

Brita pitcher: 1, Mister: 0  -- This particular Brita pitcher predates the Mister's existence in my life. They don't even make this exact version anymore. So while he was most sorry that he'd bumped it from the counter, I felt sure it was in part due to its overcrowded nature (the counter) and frankly, the pitcher had served me a long long time. The cracked pitcher went the way of the recycling bin, and a gift certificate from an unknown friend (this continues to happen for us when times get tough; how grateful we are!) helped me procure a replacement right away.



Boy vs Bob Books

Boy: 4, Bob Books: 0

As the boy's hunger for the written word has grown, we've played spelling games in the car, written letters and short words on his back, played with flashcards, shared reading duties with favorite Dr. Seuss and other easy readers. His perfectionistic streak has, up to now, made diving in a less than fully exciting prospect, no matter how very much he loves books, stories, and knowledge itself. His language acquisition and verbal capacity has always been at rapid fire pace -- his first words came at six months ("NiNi" for both Mama and for breastmilk, both, as well as "monkey" at the zoo; his first sentence at nine months old, a telling demand, "Give me that!" which referred to a Pippi Longstocking doll, and went right along with his sassy full on passionate nature.) It'd been a good while since we'd used the earliest Bob Books, so last night I pulled out a small stack and handed them to the boy in the livingroom. As I finished up a grant on my laptop and the Mister watched Monday Night Football on low volume, the boy snuggled up between us and read all four books out loud, from start to finish, noting that he was working hard on new words and was feeling very proud of himself. As were we. Proud of him, that is. Today, he'll get an altogether new stack.



Boy vs Neti Pot

Boy: 0, Neti Pot 1

The cough and snuffly nose that lingers is keeping all of us awake. We're running humidifiers, serving up steamy cups of tea, blowing, blowing, blowing. But this morning I asked the boy about trying out the neti pot. I myself love it. LOVE it. He agreed to try, and was fine at first, but double clutched (as the Mister might say) then sputtered and turned and snot went flying and neti pot water poured on the floor. Yes, there were tears. And tissue. And the passionate declaration, "I hate the neti pot. Can I never ever do it again?"

Snow larder, part 2.0

Two days out of school-- Monday and Tuesday. A half day yesterday, to accommodate the anticipated ice storm. Alas, the front moved Easterly fast. My family in the eastern part of the state are homebound today due to dangerous icy roads and low temps (that means my sister is not teaching today, and her girls are getting a jump on their winter break and are home with her today.) Here, I woke to rain and strangely balmy weather. When I walked into the darkened living room at 5:30 this morning to plug in the tree lights and fire up the Amish fireplace, I realized rather quickly that the latter was unnecessary.



I made coffee, put on a pot of cocoa, and cooked up bloody monster eyes (egg in a nest with a drizzle of ketchup) for breakfast. Readied a bag of outgrown standard school attire (SSA) to pass on to Ziggy's teacher for children in class, and tucked our wonderful gifted teacher's gift into a bag. We had a talk about not sharing hats or coats as the first case of lice has been confirmed in Ziggy's class, and it's only a matter of time before we may experience this, too. Then sent my boy off in his pirate jammies for pajama day at school, where his elementary school librarian will be reading Polar Express to the kindergarten children. It's a half day. I'll pick the boy up early, then he and I both have teeth cleanings. His will be his first, as our beloved dentist and hygienist have previously thought he didn't really need it until age 5.

This evening we'll have a friend's child over for supper and maybe a movie or a game or two of Bingo, as the child's parents have a holiday party to attend. Ziggy loves having friends here, and is pleased that we'll have another friend's child with us tomorrow, and yet another friend's child with us on Saturday afternoon. We've also offered to have a schoolmate attend church with us on Sunday, so we shall see....

In the meantime, I am doing a little meal planning.

In recent weeks, I instigated a mealshare with my girlfriend Erin. She and I both have three person families: two adults and young primary school aged boys. We feed our families well rounded omnivore type diets, enjoy cooking, and live within a mile of one another. Thus far, it's served as an inspiration to break my uncharacteristic non-cooking rut, and a desire to be creative, using what I have. She shares a meal with us on Mondays, I do Tuesdays. Another bonus to having a "meal in the bank" as it were, and to extending our flavors and styles of meals, is seeing one another even if only for a few minutes a couple times a week.

My snow larder list earlier this week has been much commented upon, not so much here, but in real life. I suppose I should clarify that the list is one of options and making one or two choices eliminates other choices because ingredients will get used up.

So far this week, I have prepared eggs and toast (with help from Ziggy,) bloody monster eyes, and tuna melts, and we have eaten from
Erin's rice and spicy beans. Additionally I have prepared a pot of pinto beans with CSA porkchops, along with cornbread, and a supper of taco soup and homemade macaroni and cheese. Both of these meals have been shared with friends, one for my friend Kate's family during the time their young son was in the hospital (he has been effectively treated and is now home!) and the other for the aforementioned mealshare with Erin's family.

Presently, I have some beautiful CSA leg quarters pulled from the freezer and thawed, ready to make into something. I believe I'll be trying out my friend Nibal's baked garlic chicken, something she calls a typical middle eastern dish, with the trinity of typical spices cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice. Yet I have no allspice.

I may borrow some, or have to do without.

What have you been feeding YOUR family?

Snow larder.

Yesterday we went to church, dropped a meal to a friend who'd just had a baby, picked up one of Ziggy's classmates, then headed to a birthday party way on the west side of town for another classmate.

By the time we arrived home, well after three, this is what it looked like.

Rain had turned to snow, and began to accumulate. Temperatures, like in many other places around the country, dropped steadily. In the late afternoon the Mister's work holiday party as well as our Sunday Night Group were canceled for the evening. By nightfall, Metro Nashville Public Schools and most of the daycares, preschools and private institutions in the metro area has been called off for today. Accidents abounded.

I tucked Ziggy into our bed, leaving his open for a friend who was to fly in late last night from a business trip, believing that if his flight wasn't canceled, he might have an easier time getting to our home from the airport rather than making his way out to his own, quite a bit further away, but holding the heart lure of his beloved wife, newborn son and two young preschool aged sons.

Near one in the morning, I woke. Made sure the the faucets were dripping. Assured myself that the cats were in, and the dog was settled. Then began to take stock.

On an index card, I wrote the meal choices I can make over the next few days or a week, if I'm very careful to ration a few staples. I did not make it down into the basement last night to inventory the deep freeze, though I do know it contains a whole turkey, a few whole chickens, a pork roast, select vegetables, pasties from a shop in my husband's hometown, and a few other bits and bobs.

My snow larder meal option list looks like this:

Pintos & tortillas or cornbread
Roasted winter squash with pasta and sage, cream and asiago
Black bean and sweet potato enchiladas with spinach
Taco Soup
Potato-corn chowder
Pancakes
Pasta with boiled eggs and vegetables
French toast
Chicken & dumplings
Chicken Tetrazzini
Rice and beans (black, pinto or kidney)
Lentil stew, or dal with or homemade naan
Deviled eggs
Fritata
Omelettes
Biscuits
Vegetable soup
Mackerel patties

The milk is the main item needing some rationing. We've also got plenty of peanut butter and apple butter and bread and oodles of good farm eggs. We've got Cheerios and baking supplies for Mexican Wedding Cookies and Cracker Toffee and Banana bread.

Plenty of coffee and tea and nuts and tuna in cans. A bit of cheese and plenty of cornmeal.

We're set.

How about you?

Stylin'.

 

Yesterday morning the boy was taking an awfully long time readying for school. I snuck my camera through a cracked bathroom door and this is what I found: one five year old super stylin' kindergartener, dressed in spirit shirt and cords & jazzy lanyard / yo yo / Silly Band necklace, and a whole lotta hair product going into the faux hawk. 

If it's like this already, I can not even anticipate the teen years.

But oh, my! Isn't he delicious?

Of Ceramic Donkeys and Gratitude.

This past Sunday, the Second Sunday of Advent, Ziggy carried a ceramic donkey through the sanctuary to place it with the creche by the altar table. His friend carried a shepherd. They were so proud and careful, soberly coming down the aisle as the handbells chimed from the balconies surrounding us.

Ziggy then tucked into the pew beside us, and proceeded to do a sight word search in the bulletin insert through the service, choosing to remain with us to "work" and to take communion rather than exiting for the children's worship hour. This does not, of course, mitigate the fact that he lay beneath the pew in front of us on the floor, or that in a loud stage whisper he called to his adult prayer friend who was kneeling at the altar after taking communion. Church with our boy is always a spirited experience, his father's jaw clenching, me smiling at other parents with other young wildlings in nearby pews.


I wept through the service.

Members of the Homeplace community, a home for developmentally disabled adults, played a significant role in the morning's worship. Ruby, who helps in the three year old Sunday School class and therefore has been known to us since first we began to attend Belmont, was both baptised and received as a member of the congregation in an official capacity. It was so incredibly moving and beautiful. I am thankful to Sarah, a lovely high school senior who sat with her parents in front of us, for providing me with a much needed tissue to dawb at my eyes and runny nose. Hamilton read scripture about John the Baptist and both tickled and delighted me with his pauses to be sure we were all listening, and that he was taking his role very seriously.

Our worship leaders were so loving and sensitive and patient. None more so than the remarkable Lanecia, she of the beautiful countenance and face, with a hipster twist. Watching her walk Ruby through serving communion was a wondrous thing. 

Too, I wept, because my husband and I had had words that morning, and because Ziggy threw things at me as I drove to church through the snow flurries, the last straw that caused me to pull off the road and have a bit of a come apart. And because I was feeling sick and congested and raspy in earnest. And remorseful that my come apart had frightened my child, albeit momentarily.

When evening came, I took him to the craft night at the church's community center. "Can you just drop me off, please?" he asked.

###

I've had the crud for days, though I seem-- at last-- about to round the corner. My voice is still a scratchy rasp, though the congestion is greatly diminished. I think that my family may be glad of my inability to speak much or well.

So what to do? Neti pot. Drink water. Extra rest. Walk with the dog, have sex with my husband (both boost the immune system.)

And for tonight's supper: sweet potato chicken soup with garlic and dill (yum!!) and a pan of Almost Zona's Drop Biscuits.

###

We're on a spending freeze. Being between jobs and at the end of the year has killed our budget dead. I'll start working for pay again next month, and there'll be student loan money, too. Thank goodness.

###

I hung the stockings on the banister. "We don't have a fireplace! How will Santa get in?" Ziggy wants to know.

###

I've yet to write our year end letter, and wonder if I'll really get it done this year. I give myself permission to let it be if I choose....

###

Another reason for the aforementioned spending freeze is the fact that my debit card has been compromised by someone who has made bogus purchases. Which leads to the cancellation of the card, a filed dispute and a few weeks to get things cleared up and the monies refunded to our account.

If it's not an essential purchase, we shall not be making it. If I haven't already purchased it, if I can't make it or borrow it or trade for it, or somehow pull it together from things already in stock, I won't be getting it for you for Christmas. Or your birthday. Or whatever.

Every once in a bit, it's not bad to simplify. To cut the fat. And to recognize that we have what we need, and much of what we want. And in comparison to much of the world, we are very wealthy indeed.

###

I have completed my first full semester as a graduate student. Yay, me! Classes attended, projects churned out and turned in. Graded, all but one.

###

I am thankful. For all of the above.

I pray for patience. For the willingness to forgive where forgiveness is sought. Including that of self. For the presence of mind and body and heart to be with those I love as fully as possible. To lean into now. To be grateful for blessings both small and large.

I am thankful, not just this Thursday, but always.

Annual letter work up.

I'm helping my mother cull and insert the edits into the long standing annual La Grone family Christmas letter. Some of us are more particular than others about which photographs and descriptions and activities are included. You know how this goes.


Too, I'm reviewing my own last year's letter which was loooooooooooong. And preparing a shortie from the Nashville Babcocks for this year.

I asked Ziggy to help me write it, telling him I'd come up with topics and he could tell me anything about them that he wanted, but beyond School: "It's great. No. Awesome. I'm in kindergarten," and The Flood: "Our old house flooded and it was bad and made really gross mold that made us sick," he is uninterested.
"Write it yourself," he tells me.

So I'm left on my own to chronicle our year.

Do YOU do an annual letter or list of some sort?