Category: family

family · gratitude · Life

TToT — January 18

Sally7 Comments
  1. The Moon — when I left the house a little after 5 AM Wednesday, I had to pause to take a picture of it. The corona, the clouds — all so lovely.

2. A quote from Art and Fear (by David Bayles and Ted Orland) —
“wanting to be understood is a basic need… The risk is fearsome; in making your real work you hand the audience the power to deny the understanding you seek; you hand them the power to say, ‘you’re not like us; you’re weird; you’re crazy.‘”
I have always thought that my biggest fear is failure. The authors are correct though. My biggest fear is not being understood and therefore not fitting in. This is the fear that mean girls target with their posse-mentality — and I’ve learned that mean girls exist at all ages.

3. Encouraging comments — this ties in with #2. I wrote a poem (Phoenix) which I hesitated to post because it’s …um… different. Okay, okay — it’s weird. It starts off with the word “phlying” and has some homophones thrown in. Also a backwards spelling of the word Phoenix which made sense to me as the Phoenix rising from the ashes. Well, the post sat there with no comment on the oddities. How polite, I thought. What a bomb, I thought. Until a little flurry of comments on phlying. So I’m thankful for Leslie Scoble, D. Avery, Sarah David, and crazy4yarn2. You encourage me.

4. A $5 tip — For the record, we don’t take tips at work other than workout tips because we’re a fitness facility. Yesterday, I helped a man with his membership. When we were done, he pulled out his wallet and put a five dollar bill on my desk.
“I can’t take that,” I said.
“I’m not taking it back,” he said.
We were at a stalemate. He told me a long story about how he likes to help people.
“Use that to help somebody else,” he said. “It’s five bucks. I’m not going to miss it and I’m not taking it back.”
Reluctantly, I put it in my drawer. Now I have to come up with a way to help somebody with five dollars — a fun challenge.

5. A new friend — I got together last night with a woman I met at a Christmas party. She is only in town occasionally, but when we first met, we had so much in common. Two introverted moms in the midst of changes in their lives. I’m glad it worked out that we could meet and talk again.

6. An old friend — I ran into one of my oldest friends (as in years I’ve known her) that I hadn’t seen in a long time. Thirty-five years ago, people used to confuse us for each other — and we have some great stories about that. So so so good to see her.

7. Another unpleasant situation that ended with an apology — Suffice it to say that I needed to speak with a member about an unkind thing she had done. In gathering information about our policies at the facility, another staff member said, “Oh, her. She’s terrible. We may have to kick her out.” Later, I ran into the woman in the hallway. This was our conversation:

Me: You’re just the person I was looking for!
Her: Really? What’s going on? What did I do now?
I recounted the situation to her.
Her: I am so sorry. Sometimes I speak without thinking. I didn’t mean to come across that way.
Me: It’s okay. I just wanted you to know how it DID come across.
Her: I’m really sorry. I will try not to do it again.

Sometimes people just need a chance. I’m willing to give her another one.

8. Fasting — I did a 24 hour fast and it’s amazing how good that feels for the body.

9. A message from my cousin letting me know that her father, my uncle, is “slowing down.” I will plan a trip to see him. I’d much rather get that message and have a chance to visit than what the message could have been.

10. Flowers — a member gave me flowers for my desk as a thank you. I LOVE fresh flowers.

family · Life · Writing

The Swans of Ballycastle

Sally3 Comments

I ordered some of the books people recommended after 12 Months to read 12 Books but none have arrived yet. Meanwhile, I found this book in a pile while cleaning and read through it yesterday.

It’s an Irish folktale about three children with a single dad. They live an idyllic life with him until he goes off to Dublin and comes home with a wicked stepmother. Some other stuff happens (magic) and they turn into swans. They paddle off to live on an island with other swans.

There’s more to the story, of course, but I got stuck on the wicked stepmother. I mean, take Cinderella — what if her stepmother wasn’t wicked, but was nurturing. What if Snow White’s stepmother didn’t feel threatened by Snow White’s beauty? What-ifs can take a story in a whole new direction, right?

Tune in tomorrow for the delightful stepmother edition of The Swans of Ballycastle.

family · Writing

Writer’s Blocks

Sally1 Comment

For Christmas I had asked for Writing Dice, dice with idea words written for inspiration. Prompts definitely help me write. My daughter went one step better and MADE me some (with the help of her husband’s 3D printer).

Today, this was my roll:

Prayer Joyful Limerick Sibling

Dear God, unto You I now pray
Though skies are cloudy and gray
Give a smile to my heart
’cause that’s a good start
For this to be a great day!

With one sister, three brothers I’m blessed
(I can’t tell you which one is best)
One’s deceased — and that’s sad —
Also – mom and dad –
So the estate now must be addressed

family · fiction · Life · poetry

Udder Questions

Sally7 Comments

“Just hold out the grass on the palm of your hand,” Mom said, demonstrating the open palm to Iain.

Timidly he did it, taking baby steps forward until the heifer snuffled her warm wet snout onto his hand, licking the grass off. He laughed at the sensation: the smooth snout, the strong rough tongue.

“I grew up next to a dairy farm,” Mom said. “It’s where that housing development is now.”

“You were so lucky,” Iain said. “Why do we have to live in a city?”

“Your father has a good job there,” his mother replied.

“Are they [tipping his head toward the heifers] really where we get our milk?” he asked.

“Yup,” she replied.

“But I don’t see the thing they squeeze to get the milk out,” he said.

“These are heifers,” she explained, “young cows that haven’t had their own calf yet. They don’t have full udders until after they calve.”

He puzzled on it and bent his head sideways to try to look underneath. Sure enough, there were teats but no udder.

“Where’s the dad?” he asked. “We learned at school about babies. It takes a mom and a dad, right?”

“Bulls are dangerous,” she explained. “They use AI.”

“ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?!?” he said incredulously. “Like aliens??”

She laughed. “No! Artificial insemination.”

“What’s that?” he asked. “How does it work?”

She gulped and reddened. “A picture would be easier,” she said.

Back home, she looked up the following picture on her computer.

“Ewwww!” he said.

This is my submission for the Unicorn Challenge. Just write no more than 250 words based on the photo prompt.

Several years ago, I wrote a poem about growing up next to a dairy farm and the experience we had when our pet heifer wandered over. Here’s the poem:

When my parents bought the farm
(literally)
Pa Jackson was over the hill
(euphemistically and literally)

He milked the cows by hand
While the barn cats tumbled in the hay
(euphemistically and literally)
I watched with wide eyes
(the milking, not the euphemistic tumbling)

The Jacksons had a bull
To do the job of the artificial inseminator
And when our pet heifer,
Sock-it-to-me-Sunshine,
Wandered over
To get to know the Jacksons’ cows
(literally)
The bull also got to know her
(euphemistically)

Then, our heifer
Was in the family way
(euphemistically)
She was loaded on a truck
And sent to a home
For unwed cows

The next summer
The Jackson’s cows
Were also loaded onto trucks
And sent to auction
Because Pa Jackson was
Extremely
Over the hill
(euphemistically)

A few years later
We read in the newspaper
That he had bought the farm.
(euphemistically)

And here’s the pet heifer with one of my brothers.

Earliest Memories · family · poetry

One fish, two fish

Sally21 Comments

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be–
I had a Mother who read to me.

~~ Strickland Gillilan

My mother read to me.
She read and read and read.
She taught me to read, maybe so I would stop the pestering.
One memory, small but big, was a time I asked her to read One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish
For the 729th time
And she sighed, like she didn’t really want to read it, but she did.
I loved this book.
It wasn’t the intricate plot.
It was rhyming words, silliness, and a mother who read it to me over and over.

One fish
Two fish
Red fish
Blue fish

Love to look (fish)
In a book (fish)

Love to read (fish)
“MORE!” I plead (fish)

Snuggle, snuggle next to Mom
Dr. Seuss? He is the BOMB!

Reading ’til my eyes grow bleary
Marguerite Henry, Beverly Cleary
Jim Kjelgaard, H. A. Rey
I think I could read books all day

Late at night, late at night
I get out my big flashlight
Hiding underneath bedsheets
I wander down literary streets

Mixed Up Files,
Desert isles,
Big Red, Misty
Bring me smiles

It all began with
One fish, two fish
My love for reading
Grew and grew (fish)

The W3 prompt this week is to base your piece, a mix of prose and poem, on a childhood memory. I remember my mom reading to me.

SCN_0276
Peter, Mom, and me
family

Chickens

Sally7 Comments

Egg. The answer is egg.

I was 8 or 9, maybe even 10, when I went off to 4-H camp. There I took an embryology class.

I remember walking into the dim classroom in the old building at the camp. An incubator on a table held several dozen eggs. A few had the cracks started where the chick was starting to peck its way out.

When I stop and think about it now, eggs are a pretty marvelous invention. The hen and the rooster do their thing and a fertilized egg is laid. In that egg is everything a chick needs to grow for the next 3 weeks. The egg just has to be kept warm. Mammals are so much more taxing on their mothers, right?

Anyway, I was at 4-H camp where day after day we watched the miracle of chicks hatching. They would emerge kind of wet and sticky, but their little feathers would quickly fluff out. They would run around their little enclosure peeping and looking very cute.

At the end of the week, the 4-H leaders asked if anyone wanted to take chicks home. We had an unused chicken coop on the property, so I called my dad on the big green rotary dial phone in the camp office and asked if I could bring home some chickens.

He thought I said “a” chicken, so he said I could.

When I arrived home with 19 little chicks, he was quite surprised — but he got to work on the chicken coop, cleaning it out and fixing the fenced-in run behind it.

It turned out they were Polish chickens, black with a white topknot of feathers. It also turned out that of those 19 chicks, 13 were roosters.

Me — with a chicken on my head and a cast on my arm. Typical.

I hauled water up to the chicken coop every day, and scattered chicken feed in their pen. I learned what a pecking order is in real life, not middle school. The six hens started to lay and I collected the eggs.

One Sunday afternoon, my parents took me to town to watch a movie at one movie theater in town. This was a rare treat, and I didn’t stop to question why.

However, when I got home the roosters were gone. Well, kind of gone. Let’s just say that they became chicken soups over that winter.

I experienced the full circle of life with those chickens.

My father then took up the hobby and raised chickens for many years.

But the egg — at 4-H camp — definitely came first.

This is in response to Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: Chicken or Egg

family · poetry

Bruce the Spruce

Sally4 Comments

I asked myself, Is it possible to write a rhyming poem in stream-of-consciousness?

Hmm… First I chose a structure: a Cethramtu Rannaigechta Moire, an Irish poetic form that requires 3 syllable lines in quatrains. The second and fourth lines rhyme.

Then I opened a tab in Rhymezone and typed in “spruce” — the Stream-of-Consciousness Saturday prompt for this week.

Here goes:

Christmas tree
Little spruce
I hereby
Name you “Bruce”

Quite a name
For a tree
Many folks
Would agree

Bruce the Spruce
Tall and green
Sparkling lights
Lovely scene

You may come
See my tree
Or this pic


Or these three –

family · Life

Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp

Sally10 Comments

Strawberry-rhubarb crisp for breakfast.

I can easily rationalize it. There’s oatmeal in the topping, fruit (strawberries) as a mainstay, and rhubarb — whatever food category that fits into — in there too. Surely it’s healthy, right?

The truth is my appetite has been off. My whole everything has been off. When my son’s girlfriend made peanut butter blossoms — those peanut butter cookies with a Hershey’s kiss pressed in the top — I politely declined. Oh, I eventually ate a few, trust me — later. They are hard to resist. But I didn’t woof down six at a time which I might have done had things been different.

Last weekend, or maybe it was last Friday, I started feeling achy. My back hurt. I thought I had slept on it wrong. It was my left scapula, and it was weird. Not the ordinary I-slept-on-something-wrong feeling.

Before the crack of dawn on Tuesday morning, I left for a flight to Roanoke. I was picking up one of my daughters from school. As I was getting dressed, I noticed a small rash just below my left breast. That’s weird, I thought.

Got to Roanoke. Got the rental car. Got together with my daughter, but I was exhausted. I left her mid-afternoon to go nap in my hotel room. The rash had grown, too, and was itchy-painful.

Maybe you can see where I’m going with this.

It was either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning that it hit me that I had shingles. No, I hadn’t gotten the vaccine.

I contacted my primary care provider, but, as it turns out, they can’t do a tele-health visit with me if I’m out of state at the time. Ridiculous, right?

Initially, shingles was (were?) just annoying. “I don’t have time for this,” I said more than once to more than one person. I mean, it’s the holidays. Sheesh.

But, by Thursday, I felt like excrement. You know what I mean, right? I did a tele-health appointment, was prescribed an antiviral, and stayed in my room all day. Mostly.

The next day, same thing.

My appetite has been way off with this.

Last night, my son’s girlfriend was making strawberry-rhubarb crisp. “Do you want some?” they both asked.

I politely declined. I didn’t like strawberry-rhubarb crisp on a good day. My mom used to make it and it was not my favorite.

However, this morning when I went down for coffee, there was the baked crisp on the counter. I could see the oatmeal in the topping. Breakfast food, for sure.

I dished out a small bowl, and it was, literally, just what the doctor ordered. (She’s a doctor.)

It was so good that I went back for more.

Maybe rhubarb has healing qualities.

One can always hope, right?

family · Life

Life-Change

Sally10 Comments

Some years ago — more years than I care to say — my life changed forever on this date. My first child was born.

Some people embark on careers, starting their first job in a profession they have studied long and hard for. They can look back a lifetime later with satisfaction at their accomplishments and accolades.

Me? I fell into a life.

It involved minimal sleep for some periods, cleaning up bodily fluids and/or solids that gushed forth out of bodies in ways I never imagined.

It involved laundry — mountains and mountains of laundry — think Adirondacks in the form of onesies, and t-shirts, and grass-stained pants, and little Osh-Kosh overalls, and socks, many of which lost their life partner in the depths of the dryer, only to find new partners who looked slightly different.

It involved reading the same books over and over and over, and making up voices for the characters, and then forgetting the voice and being corrected by a small child — “Wait — I thought that was Toad talking, not Frog.”

It involved kissing boo-boos, and seeing that mother’s kisses really do have magical healing power. It also involved band-aids and ice packs and doctor’s visits and bearing witness to stitches and casts, when mother’s kisses couldn’t heal alone. It involved Chicken Pox — because that was thing then — and strep throat and maladies without names and bedside throw-up buckets and vast amounts of kleenex.

It involved baking cookies. Lots and lots of cookies — some for family consumption and some to sell to help with special purchases. Our first computer — a Gateway 2000 — was purchased with cookie money.

I daresay that there are times I miss the respectability of a “real” profession — but I would never exchange it for any of this past lifetime.

When I held my oldest son for the first time and studied his face, I had no idea what I was in for. I marveled that little person had been inside my body just a short time before — but I had no idea what a gift he was to me.

My oldest daughter is now expecting her first child (my 5th grandchild). I keep thinking what life-changing treat she is in for.

family · poetry

Ichibon – Our First Cat

Sally12 Comments

“Can I have a little kitty?” I asked my dad one day.
My mother put me up to it; she knew what he would say.
When I had first asked her, she said, “You need to ask your dad.”
The thought of having NO kitten made me rather sad –
So in my simple six-year-old heart, I began to pray.

When I first saw those kittens, much to my dismay,
The lady said to ask my mom and I knew I must obey
So I asked my mom with every ounce of sweetness that I had —
Can I have a little kitty?

My father loved to tell this tale. I can hear him now portray
How this funny freckled blonde-haired girl stole his heart away
With such a simple question — and he would often add
“How could I say no to that?” Yes, he would be a cad
To deny his own dear daughter the joy that came with one “Okay”
Can I have a little kitty?

The cat’s name was Ichibon. We lived on an army base at the time, and the family with the kittens had recently returned from a stint in Japan. Ichibon means #1 in Japanese, and she was allegedly the first kitten born in the litter.

Ichibon was first in a long long string of cats in my life. Today, I have an obese cat who doesn’t understand that he’s supposed to be a working cat and taking care of the mice in this house — but that’s probably a poem for another day.

This is response to the W3 prompt this week:

Write a rondeau inspired by a childhood memory

  • 15 lines long;
  • Three stanzas:
    • a quintet (five-line stanza);
    • a quatrain (four-line stanza);
    • and a sestet (six-line stanza);
  • Rhyme scheme: aabba aabR aabbaR.
  • Refrain: L9 and L15
    • The refrain (R) is short;
    • The refrain (R) consists of a phrase taken from L1;
  • All the other lines are longer than R and share the same metrical length.