Tag: family

A to Z Blogging Challenge · family

Family Feud

Sally6 Comments

This is my own A-to-Z Challenge for the month of June — likes and dislikes. If you want to join me, just add a comment naming something you like and something you don’t like that begin with the letter F.

I love my family. I may have already mentioned that half a zillion times.

I like them.

I love them.

I think they’re amazing.

I’m proud of them.

I love spending time with them.

Since the wedding, a number of people have stopped at the front desk and asked to see photographs. I have a few on my phone, but my favorite one is this:

Those are all my children! Aren’t they wonderful?!

I was showing this photo to a woman who comes in to swim every day and she called her husband over to see it. “Look!” she said, “These are all Sally’s children!”

He shook his head. “I can’t believe it. Eight of them!”

“Look at this photo,” she said again. “That’s a great family!”

He looked at me and shook his head again. “I just can’t wrap my mind around it. You gave birth to all those children?”

I smiled and nodded. “Having those kids was the most fun thing ever,” I said. Then added — “well, maybe not the giving-birth part, but raising eight children was fun. We played games together, read together, ate together nearly every night. It was a lot of work, but it was all good.”

He just shook his head a third time. “I don’t know,” he said.

But I do. I KNOW every minute was worth it.

Lest you think that every minute was perfect, let me assure it was not.

There was one time that two boys were playing medieval times and one almost jousted the other’s eye out.

And there was the time when one boy almost removed another one’s ear in a freak accident. (Same two boys incidentally.)

There was the time I came home of a shopping trip to find a little boy scooching along a thin bit of roof to get BACK to the open window he had come out of.

Oh — and that time we came home from a dinner out to find a boy with a broken arm.

We’ve had stitches and a knocked out tooth. Also, chicken pox, ear infections, strep throat, and stomach bugs upon stomach bugs. One round of stomach bugs was just after I had come home from the hospital with a new baby. Fun times.

At the end of the day we are family.

And yet we also feud. The middle child in me wants us all to get along. If I homeschooled my children with purpose, though, it was that they be able the think for themselves.

And they do.

Because of that, they cover not a linear spectrum, but a three-dimensional one. They are eight unique points in a universe, not lined up in a row at all, but all over the map. Some are very conservative, while others are very liberal. Some attend church every Sunday, while others search and question all of that. Some own guns. Some hate guns. Some hunt. Some are vegetarian. I could go on.

We gathered for a family wedding back in May. We laughed together, ate together, and celebrated together. We were family, not feud — and I really liked that.

Scottish Gaelic:
Tha gaol agam air mo theaghlach. I love my family.
Cha toil leam sabaid. I do not like fighting.

How about you? What do you like that begins with F? What do you dislike?

A to Z Blogging Challenge · family

B things

Sally19 Comments

This is my own A-to-Z Challenge for the month of June — likes and dislikes. If you want to join me, just add a comment of something you like that begins with the letter B and something you don’t like.

“What’s something I like that begins with B?” I asked Mary.

“Biscotti,” she said immediately. Ooh, I do like biscotti.

“Books,” she said.

“Bosnia.”

“Blue.”

Does this girl know me or what?

“Bugs,” she said.

“I don’t like bugs,” I replied.

“But you need a ‘don’t like,’ don’t you?” she said.

That was the problem. I had had an idea for a post, but when I sat down to write it, my words went off in a direction and I was stuck with a “don’t like” that I hadn’t expected. Sometimes that happens.

But I really do like biscotti, books, Bosnia (one of my best trips ever), and the color blue.

If you want to read what I don’t like, you’ll have to suffer through the next part. Please forgive the TMI.

I am not a shopper. Other than my frequent trips to the grocery store and occasional trips to Target, I really don’t spend much time shopping.

When my oldest daughter set the date for her wedding, my co-workers asked to take me shopping — dress shopping to be precise.

“Um… no,” I said.

“It’ll be fun,” they said.

“No,” I said.

“We’ll make a day of it,” they said.

“Really — no,” I said.

So I went shopping with my daughters. It was a painful experience — leafing through racks of frou-frouey dresses, trying on a few here and there. No, no, no. They all belonged on some other woman, not me. My daughters were great. They were encouraging and kind, but no. We all needed to face the fact that I was not a dress shopper.

In the end I bought some fabric and a pattern and sent them to a dear friend. She had helped me out of this very pinch once before by making a dress for me that I wore to two sons’ weddings.

My friend and I messaged back and forth. She sent me a mock-up of the bodice to make sure it would fit. Finally, about two weeks before the wedding, she mailed the package.

I waited.

And waited.

I messaged her that it hadn’t come. She went to the post office. The tracking number was dead. I pictured my package falling off the conveyor belt of a vast postal facility and getting kicked into some dim corner. Dead.

The wedding was in three days.

This meant another round of dreaded dress-shopping. This time I found one.

But here’s the very worst part of the whole ordeal. Because of the neckline of the dress I found, I had to go bra shopping.

I HATE bra shopping — and that’s my B.

And that’s enough said about THAT.

My new dress matched my daughters perfectly.

 In Scottish Gaelic: Is toil leam biscotti, leabhraichean, Bosnia, agus gorm. Cha toil leam ceannach airson fo-aodach.

How about you? What do you like that begins with B? What do you dislike?

family · Life

Children: the Gift I Didn’t Know I Needed

Sally11 Comments

This weekend I was getting some things ready for a bridal shower for my oldest daughter and came across a notebook in which I had written this quote: “This is often the way God loves us: with gifts we thought we didn’t need, which transform us into people we don’t necessarily want to be.” ~~ William Willimon

I looked up the source of the quote and read through the whole article which you can find here: From a God We Hardly Knew. In short, it is a Christmas message about Isaiah 9:6 — “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given” — in which Willimon makes the point that Ahaz, in the original context, was looking for an army and instead God promised a child.

A bridal shower and Mother’s Day seem appropriate days for me to think about my children. I heard from all eight this weekend. Plus all three daughters-in-law. I am rich indeed.

And I never could have imagined this.

Ever.

There was a point in time when I had been told that I wouldn’t have children without using fertility drugs.

Okay, I thought, a family is not in my future.

One of my favorite professors in college had encouraged me more than once to pursue medical school. “I don’t usually do this,” she had said. “I’m usually trying to dissuade students who think they want to be doctors.”

But I got married two weeks after graduating college. I supported my husband while he finished his schooling and began his first job. Once he was settled in, I began thinking about medical school and figuring out which classes I still needed — Calculus and Organic Chemistry. I contacted the nearest university to find out how to enroll.

Then I found out I was pregnant.

When you’re in high school, the guidance counselor never suggests motherhood as a career track. When you’re in college, the career office doesn’t suggest it either. Honestly, it wasn’t even a blip on my life radar.

Yet here I am today to tell you that being a mother — a full-time stay-at-home mother, who decorated funny-looking birthday cakes and washed-dried-and-folded mountains of laundry, who read the same books over and over until I could “read” them with my eyes closed, who played road-sign spelling games to entertain on long road trips and refused to get an entertainment system in our minivan because I WAS the entertainment system, who shopped at yard sales and thrift stores and sorted through bags of hand-me-down clothing because living on one income isn’t easy — being a mother was, and IS, the absolute best thing in the whole world.

Children are the gift I didn’t know I needed.

In addition to all the dandelion bouquets and crayon artwork, I received from them the very best lessons in patience, kindness, forgiveness, generosity, understanding, perseverance, creativity, humor — and that list could go on and on.

There’s a part of me that feels like I need to apologize. I know that not everyone has this opportunity. Not everyone can have children. Not everyone can afford to stay home. Life happens in different ways to each of us.

But I’m not going to apologize. I’m simply going to be grateful.

From the bridal shower
Blogging Challenge · family · Life

Abundance

Sally5 Comments

Dear Kim,

I want to use this letter to tell you about some of the abundance in my life. In your most recent message to me, you asked me about my girls. Talk about abundance! I’m so proud of each one of them.

My oldest daughter has her master’s degree in nursing. She works for an organization that cares for low-income elderly, trying to keep them living independently. Her career path was inspired by both my parents. The other day, one of the other kids said something about Helen pursuing law school. That may have been just idle conversation and have absolutely no substance to it — or maybe it’s true. I could see her doing that — arguing on behalf of people who cannot. She’s strong, strong-minded, and compassionate.

And she’s getting married — to a kind, compassionate man who knows how to handle someone who is strong and strong-minded. I’m so very happy for her.

My middle daughter just finished her first semester at an all-women’s college in Virginia. I was driving her to Syracuse yesterday to catch her flight back to Roanoke when she got a text from the airlines that one of her flights was canceled. She had gotten an email the day before from the school that a water main had burst in one of the residence halls. We had been watchingbracing for news that they would go remote because of COVID but that didn’t happen. Last night, though, she heard that in-person classes are being postponed for a week. In my heart, I rejoiced. I LOVE having her home.

She has blossomed so much at school. During the fall semester, she would call or text things like, “Guess what I learned today?!” and it made me so happy. My father would have been thrilled to see someone so excited about learning. Heck, I was excited about her excitement.

My youngest daughter also finished her first semester at college — a straight A student, but she’s not going back. Instead she’s going to pursue dental hygiene. It’s an interest she has had for a long time. Maybe I didn’t encourage it enough in recent years because the thought of working in people’s mouths all day was so YUCK! It’s the right path for her, though.

Today she came to visit me at work. “What a beautiful girl!” my co-worker remarked — and she is. Absolutely lovely.

I realize as I write this that abundance may have been a better word to describe my sons since I have five of them. But I’ll save that for tomorrow when the word is generosity. I have a generosity of sons. God’s generosity.

I also have an abundance of blessing — three daughters.

Love,

Sally

Blogging Challenge · dementia

Goals, objectives, strategies, outputs, and outcomes

Sally4 Comments

~~ ONLY ONE GOAL ~~

The other night at dinner one of my children was talking about his goals. My daughter-in-law asked, “Are you talking about goals, objectives, strategies, outputs, or outcomes? They’re all different, you know.”

I messaged her this morning to ask her to list them again and then I started looking up the differences.

Most of the websites that define the terms are about grant-writing — which makes sense because Emily writes grants for her job.

I read through several websites. As best I can figure out,

  • a Goal is broad and general. It defines purpose.
  • Objectives are specific and concrete. They move you toward your goal.
  • your Strategy is the approach you take
  • your Output is the actual result of your work
  • your Outcome are the changes that were wrought as a result of whatever it is you’re doing

I smiled and nodded as I read. I understood, but the hard part is application.

So I decided to tackle just one goal à la Emily the grant writer.

GOAL — to keep my father home.

The top story in today’s newspaper cemented that: 

This happened in the nursing home where my mother had been. I get a pit in my stomach when I read these stories.

I know that not everyone can care for their family member at home for a number of reasons. To those of you who cannot, I give this advice: Be present. On a regular basis, be there. Talk to the staff. Talk to the other residents. Look through your family member’s closet and dresser to make sure things are there, clean, and belong to your family member.

My goal, though, is to keep my father home.

OBJECTIVE — Live in the same house with him.

STRATEGY — Move to Cooperstown. I know many people move their parent(s) in with them, but, for a number of reasons, this wasn’t the best option for us. I moved here in 2015 with my two youngest daughters and we hoped that my husband would soon join us.

This house had become the repository for many family members. In order for us to live here, we had to clear stuff out.

And we did.

But there’s still a long way to go.

OUTPUT —We’re here and my father is here.

We’ve reclaimed rooms in the house so the kids have space that is theirs. I’ve slowly whittled away at stuff that has accumulated here. Two loveseats went to the curb a few weeks ago and were quickly taken. I’m making headway with the boxes of papers. We still have more to go, but we’re moving in the right direction.

After being a frequent flyer at the Emergency Room for chest pain, my father’s doctor and I came up with a strategy. She told me to 1) Sit him in his recliner with his feet up. 2) Check his blood pressure. 3)DON’T take him to the ER for at least 2 hours unless his numbers look bad. The first few times were rough — he was very insistent that he needed to go, but with his BP, pulse, and O2 all normal, I told him that we needed to wait. Each time whatever it was passed and he went back to bed. We’re making progress.

OUTCOME —My father is still home. It’s not so much a change as standing our ground.

I think that’s an accomplishment. It’s not easy. It’s hard on everyone, but as the doctor we saw today said, “I would do anything for this man.”

My father is that kind of person. Having lived a generous life, he should be able to reap some of what he has sown.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · About My Dad

B is for Boxing, Baseball, and Burl Ives

Sally8 Comments

I have the feeling that my father was more the scrapbooker than my mother.

From his childhood, he had albums with photos mounted using photo corners onto black paper and funny captions written in white. My mother simply kept memorabilia stashed in a drawer or box — a mish-mash of notes, photos, and newspaper clippings. I follow my mother’s ways.

No matter who actually compiled it, we have a huge scrapbook that follows my mother and father’s relationship from first dates to wedding to first child to internship appointment in Cooperstown. My father pulls it out from time to time and leafs through it. The scrapbook has fallen apart and been put back together so many times, though, that it’s no longer in the right order.

“What was I thinking?!” my father said while looking through the scrapbook recently. “I took your mother to a boxing match!”

Sure enough, he took her to several boxing matches. I’ve never understood the sport of boxing. It’s so barbaric — putting two guys in a ring and having them punch each other until one is unconscious.

He also took her to the Ice Follies. I think he redeemed himself with that one.

A hockey game — the Bruins v. Red Wings. This was on his birthday, so maybe my mother got those tickets as a birthday present for him.

And a baseball game — the Red Sox v Tigers. 60c each for bleacher seats (he saved the stubs), and my father faithfully kept score in the program. Final score 8 – 5, Boston.

My father always loved folk music. He told me once that he used to treat himself occasionally on payday to the newest Burl Ives record, purchasing it at a little record store somewhere near the hospital. We still have a lot of those records.

So I was delightfully surprised when I was looking through the scrapbook and saw that he and my mother had gone to see Paint Your Wagon at the Shubert Theater in Boston — starring none other that Burl Ives. I’ll bet he sang “Wandering’ Star” a lot better than Lee Marvin.

I try to remember what Bud and I did for our first dates. We didn’t go to boxing matches or any other sporting events. We went for walks. We went to an auction. We went to church. We went to the movie “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and had to wait in line to get into the theater. We went to the drive-in and locked ourselves out of the car.

But we didn’t keep a scrapbook to tell the story for future generations.

I’m thankful my parents did.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · dreams · family

2018 Blogging from A to Z: About My Dad

Sally7 Comments

Tomorrow the A to Z Blogging Challenge starts. I missed the deadline for the Theme Reveal and I’m pretty sure I signed up twice. It makes me wonder how this year’s challenge will go.

Writing has been such a struggle lately. I can’t seem to find a chunk of time to write. Writing, or, for that matter, doing anything “in dribs and drabs,” as my mother used to say, is a challenge. It takes time to get into the right mindset and find the right words. For me, an interruption comes and I’ve been sent back to Monopoly/Writing Jail without collecting $200 or 200 words or anything.

Recently I had this horrible dream:

I was walking in a field with my family — my husband, my children, my siblings, and my father. The field grew swampy, and we were talking about how it hadn’t always been that way and how we planted corn on it in the past. The path was narrow and my father stepped too close to the swamp. As he fell in, the swamp became a deep hole full of water and I jumped in to save him. He was sinking so I swam beneath him to get his head to the surface so he could breathe. As I pushed him up to the surface, I felt myself running out of air. While underwater, I could see some family members sitting to rest, but they hadn’t noticed him falling in. No one was coming to rescue us. I couldn’t call for help because I was underwater. My father couldn’t call for help because he can’t think clearly. I realized that I needed air and I needed to get help, but to do that, I would have to let go of my father. I used all my strength to heave him up and then pushed myself toward the surface for a breath. He slid past me, like dead weight, and I grabbed his hands. Instead of reaching the surface, I went down, down, down into darkness.

Then I woke up. It was an awful dream. I don’t need a Joseph to interpret it, but it served as a warning.

To misquote an African proverb: It takes a family to care for the elderly.

I’m so thankful that I DO have a strong and supportive family. My brothers, my sister, my children, my husband all pitch in.

The other night, when my father fell around midnight, Karl was right there ready to help. He drove us to the hospital and then stayed with my father so I could go home and get a little sleep before I went to work at 5 AM. (My father ended up with stitches in his forehead and staples in his scalp. Everything else seems to be okay.) I know Karl wouldn’t let me drown.

Helen is taking days off from work to stay with my father so Bud and I can get away for a mini-vacation. She did the same thing back in January. She’s not going to let us drown.

And I need to make sure I ask for help BEFORE I’m underwater. (Lifesaving 101)

But back to the A to Z Challenge. I decided to adopt this theme: About My Dad.

Writing about who he was will help me with who he is.

Plus, he’s one of my favorite people in the whole world. I think you’ll like him, too.

Dad and Jim, summer 1968

I just have to make sure I carve out those chunks of time for writing.

family

When Boys Become Men

Sally4 Comments

The other day I worked a few hours in the mid-day so that the full-time staff could attend a meeting together. Karl was heading into the gym anyway to work out so I grabbed a ride with him. I made arrangements with “Fred” to pick me up, which turned out to be a good thing since I had forgotten my phone.

When I finished work I headed to the front door to wait for my ride. A number of welcoming couches sit in the lobby with a good view of the circle where cars pick up and drop off people. I thought about sitting — I tend to stand and pace when I lifeguard — but a man was sitting on one of the couches and I didn’t feel like making small talk so I stood at the door.

I stood.

And waited.

And watched.

Fred must have forgotten me, I figured. Fifteen minutes had passed and there was no sign of him. Sometimes he gets involved in his reading and loses track of the time. Really, don’t we all do that when we’re in the midst of a good book?

I walked back to the pool and called the landline at the house. No one answered, so I left a message, and walked back out to wait some more.

My feet were tired. I wanted to sit, but that darn man was still sitting in the lobby, his back to me, engrossed in a book. I sighed and decided to chance the small talk.

When I rounded the couch, I realized that the man was Fred!

How can a mother not recognize her own son?

One minute a little boy’s eyes are twinkling with mischief. His hair is tousled or buzzed right off. His t-shirts reveal what he had for lunch that day — or dinner the night before. His knees are covered with Buzz Lightyear bandaids. His feet are bare.

And the next minute, he’s six foot something, with hair cut by a stylist and clothes carefully coordinated for the activities of the day.

My whole family was together this past weekend. The kids all went into the sports center to play squash and swim. One of the ladies at the front desk stopped me on Monday.

“I saw some of your boys at the gym this weekend,” she said.

“They were all at the gym,” I told her.

“Even Sam?” she asked. She knows he lives thousands of miles away.

“Yes, even Sam,” I replied.

I pulled out my phone to show her a picture I had taken while everyone was together.

“Oh, my,” she said as I identified each of my children. “They’re all so grown up!”

Back row: Philip, Amanda, Sam, Donna, me, Bud
Middle row: Helen, Laurel, Owen, Emily
Middle row .5: Henry
Front row: Mary, Karl, “Fred”

Yes, they are.

Boys become men.

Girls become women.

Family remains family — and grows.

I am so blessed.

 

 

family · Uncategorized

October Gratitude

Sally1 Comment

On October 29, I am grateful for these — collected over the course of the month.

  1. Harvest time
  2. A few stalks left behind
  3. Airports
  4. A full-circle rainbow seen from above
  5. Tennessee sunrise
  6. A quiet place to stay
  7. That bald-headed guy resting his arm on the chair (below)
  8. The woman in the middle in the greenish shirt (above) (Her eyes always sparkle.)
  9. Dining with friends
  10. A new book
  11. An afternoon walking around a mall with a friend (sorry, no picture)
  12. The Dalek I saw there
  13. A bald eagle sighting
  14. A new job
  15. Chipmunks in the house (only the tail visible here)
  16. Mice trapped in an empty can and released into the wild
  17. Beautiful sunsets
  18. A girl to take the picture for me while I drive (rearview mirror)
  19. Late autumn colors
  20. The way the afternoon sun hits the hills
  21. Concentric spiky circles
  22. Apples
  23. Pears
  24. Hallmark movies
  25. Family humor
  26. A funny sign
  27. A visit from my grandson (the walker isn’t his)
  28. My father and my grandson playing together
  29. A military funeral (no photo, but a memory I’ll hold onto)

How has your October been?

 

family · poetry

Rain

Sally5 Comments

I’m beginning to anticipate
What his response might be —
My mother blamed “the others”
For things we didn’t see,
But my father’s not a blamer
So, when he can’t explain
“It fell down from the sky,” he says,
Like some mysterious rain.

I crawled around the other day
With flashlight in my hand.
Half his hearing aid was missing
And I tried to understand
How these darn things fall apart so much
Half in one room, half another
I would have blamed “the others”
Had I been my mother.

Then Laurel called me from the kitchen
“Wha-T?” I said, but I
Emphasized the “T” too much —
And I can tell you why —
I was getting irritated
At the time that it had cost
Looking for a hearing aid
Half of which was lost.

“Grampa wants you,” she said timidly
And so I went to see
What it was he wanted now
From irritated me
“I found it!” he was saying.
I was surprised at what I saw
The missing piece of hearing aid
Resting in his paw.

“Where’d you find it?” I demanded.
I knew I should happy
But, you know, I wanted answers
And he’d better make them snappy.
“Can you fix it?” he was asking —
Not answering my question
It’s a skill he has in conversation –
Changing the direction

But I was dogged — “Where’d you find it?”
“It fell out of the sky,”
He said, as if that answer
Would satisfy my cry.
He told me again yesterday
When I asked about a pin
He had fastened to his sweatshirt
And I asked where it had been —

Apparently the sky inside
Varies precipitation.
Outside I see it raining rain
Inside, to my frustration,
It yields an odd assortment
Of hearing aids and stuff
That I couldn’t have imagined.
I should be thankful; it’s enough —

The lost hearing aid was found
I’m not still crawling on the ground

Rain

For Peter:

Perhaps another explanation is that a wolverine
Creeps into the house at night, stealthily, unseen
And hides my father’s hearing aids
Tapes them to the ceiling
Whence they fall on Dad, while I am searching, kneeling.