Promises

I’ve been thinking about promises. . .

. . .  specifically the reprehensible kind.

If you make a promise and, upon reflection, realize that it’s not an honorable promise:  what is your responsibility then?  Keep it?  Regardless of it’s impact on others?

I’m not sure.

I’ve made some promises that I regretted.  Broken some that I shouldn’t have and some that needed breaking.  Had some broken that were made to me. 

Permit me some background on these thoughts. 

My mother painted a picture of the beautiful place where she placed her father’s ashes.  It meant enough to her that she memorialized it in color.  She pasted a detailed map on the back of exactly the vista where she consecrated him.  That says, to me, that the spot meant something for her.

The man to whom her husband entrusted everything they owned and her remains promised never to reveal where he interred her to our family.  Feels the definition of a reprehensible promise to me.  So, not only is that information lost to me.  It’s lost to my family forever.

Is that not the definition of reprehensible?

Grandpa's Spot

Dad's Touchstone

I sent my father a new Petoskey stone.   Some years ago I gave him one that someone I had helped gave to me.  He carried it in his pocket.  It was unpolished but Dad polished it, over time, just touching it. 


He recently lost it . . . I found him another. Mailing it made me think about my touchstone.  What brings me peace in the times when things are hardest?  


One of the best for me is his voice. It’s simply the sound of Dad’s voice.  Certainly, we disagree about many, many things.  It’s not what he says, more just the deep timbre and cadence of the way he talks. 


That voice has always been there and I followed it home. 


Once from the brink of blackness, that fuzzy edge where the world drops away.

Once from real blackness . . . . softly speaking to me in ICU.



Often, unknown to him, in the night when the aloneness reigns.


So, Dad has his new stone to polish, and as often as his fingers touch the stone to put it in his pocket, I will hear his voice in my head.

A Day at the Dog Park

We are not an experts but these are a few things that Dexter, Wilbur and I have learned:

• Dog park people are easy to know.  I think that's probably because there are subjects for conversation swirling around you all the time.
• The little dogs are not the safest to play with.
• You must not stand there oblivious while they play or you can be plowed over as if you've been hit by a truck.
• The dog park has no class system.  Your dog doesn't care who anyone is or whether the people like each other.
• Immediate clean up on aisle . . . everywhere. . . all the time!
• Please squirrels - stay away.  It can really, really ruin a good time if you get brave.
• A ball, thrown over the fence, can be a fun "team building" exercise.
• Wearing 3 sets of sweatpants and 2 sweaters with a coat that looks like a sofa and your hair slopped up on your head is the height of fashion!  
• Talented dogs are applauded at the dog park.

How can something disappear that quickly?

I've been looking for my glasses . . . all morning.  Finally put my contacts in - still no sign of them.  How can I have them one moment and they are ether the next?  

I've lost my keys, my ipod, my phone and a candy bar that I KNOW I bought last time I was in the store.  


One of my favorite books for awhile, as a child, was The Borrowers.  It had charming, tiny people who lived about the house and "borrowed" things that seemingly disappeared.  A button, a key, a thimble?  They've taken it to close a purse, use for a table or bed.  I loved the idea of making sense from the senseless.


I have been looking for one set of keys for about a month.  I know they are here . . . somewhere . . . mocking me.  They will be in the last place I look.  Just love that expression.  What kind of person will keep looking after they've found something?


I believe that the keys and the glasses have joined forces and are gaslighting me.  They chortle, they are amused at my befuddled searching.  


They should be joined by the fog that lives in the kitchen.  Sometimes I enter and it steals the very thing I planned to do right from my brain.

If I had known that the last time I saw you WAS the last time . . .

This is what you looked like the last time I saw you.  All blonde, blue-eyed, sweet faces.   I remember, so clearly, the day I met you.  The smiles in your eyes lit my heart.  You loved teaching me cards.  How you sat on the bed and watched me put on makeup and sat on my lap.

So fun, the time I first took you to the store.  Meghan wanted a toy.  It was an elephant but was really for dogs.  It said Milkbone on the side.  Taylor teased . . . I bought it for you anyway.

I remember the hard things too.  I’ll never forget the night Brandon had to stay home with me.  What I told you that night is still true. 

There is nothing you can do . . . ever . . . that will make me love you less.  No matter how much we disagree, no matter who says what to anyone, I promised each of you that I would love you all of my life.  I will.   If I never see you again, makes not the slightest bit of difference, I will always be here . . . loving you.

Thousands of memories.  Birthday cakes of purple, pink and red.  Sunday morning early cocoa and bacon! 

Flying kites, ice cream at Moo's, festivals and all the laughter.  Cookouts with friends, movies and holidays.

There is really no Christmas
for me without you . . .

When the power is off . . .

That’s when I’m the woman I admire.  When it’s cold and conditions are not ideal.  A storm that knocks down the lines brings out the very best in me.  That time in survival mode – makes me feel resilient. 

Reading by oil lamp.  I smile as I get out and light candles in every room.   Doing without the modern conveniences.  Challenges my creative use of the resources I have.

Figuring things out - making them work.  Repurposing and finding uses for seemingly useless things.  There is satisfaction in that.

Fifth house from the end of the line . . . very low priority for repair.


The furnace is gas but the switch is electric.  The gas stove works but the ignitor doesn't.  The well doesn't work - so fill the tub with water in a storm.  That allows flushing.  Must have flushing.


Extra blankets on the bed . . . like our coal furnace growing up my nose is cold but toes are toasty.  Reminds me of camping.

That kind of adversity brings out the pioneer spirit in me.  I imagine those folks who carried their belongings across the west in covered wagons.  Ten miles was a great day on the Oregon Trail.

Listening to the rain beat on the roof while the candles flicker  . . . ahhhh!!

Banned Books Week

It's hard to believe that we are still having this discussion.  Banning books – in this day and age – seems crazy to me.

When I was in 8^th grade I was called the principal’s office.  This didn’t happen often and my heartbeat “like sixty” all the way down to the office.  They handed me a list of books.  Don’t remember them all but I had read almost all of the books on the list.  They were books that were to be banned from our school library.  There was to be a district-wide forum – that day – I had been chosen to attend because our school librarian could think of no one else that he was certain had probably already read the listed books.

I don’t remember, now, the names of all the books on the list but Judy Bloom and several other well-loved authors were prominent.   Many of the listed books had been very provocative for me.  Provoked me to think, opened my mind, dream of possibilities.

So, I went to the forum, indignant and full of zeal.  Can’t imagine why adults think that young people are stupid.  They can discern ideas – find appropriate thoughts and behavior and sort it out for themselves.  My guess is that adults are often afraid that children who read will develop the ability to think for themselves.  How could anyone think that is a bad thing?

Can I just say, out loud, again - today, how much I love librarians in this country?  They have been holding the line for freedom, in a very real way, for years.  Standing up to Homeland Security and the closed minded.

Libraries have always been a comfort to me.  One of my top 5 favorite smells is the smell of books.  Love the smell of the pages and the way they feel on my fingers.  I love the smell of the “stacks” in the library, too! I spent 4^th through 12^th grade volunteering once a week at my hometown library.  Such a sanctuary.  I’ve often said that you can judge a town by its library.  Two of my favorites are South Bend, IN and Fargo, ND – go figure!!

I’ve gotten out of the habit of the library.  Probably a habit I should find again.  I felt such peace there . . . a place I always fit in.  Among ideas and stories and the people who love and appreciate them.