Remembering

Remember in Webster's, means to be mindful of, to think of again, to keep in mind for attention.  Member means being part of a whole.  Therefore, when we remember someone, we are inviting them back into the whole-into the group, and they are once again with us; the relationship is transformed, but they are indeed re-membered among us.

So it is in this spirit, I invite you to remember your loved ones. May we feel their love and presence and they ours.

Yesterday was the two year anniversary of my mother's passing. And Monday, January 26th was the birthdays of my grandmother and my cousin, so I have been keenly in a remembrance frame of mind.  The "great trees" I have known, loved, and lost include my father, my mother, my grandmothers, Junior, Jack and Jackie, Peasely and Ike, Leo, Emma, Suzy, Mike, Watu, Betty, Laurie, Chuck and Viv...I REMEMBER them.

Into Winter

Saturday was a relatively temperate day for January and in light of the cold snap we've been in, but the wind was blowing pretty good. I snowshoed from Heather's mother's house to her grandmother's. It was beautiful. I saw deer and rabbit tracks and a muskrat house, birds (robins of all things) and went through three mini climates: field, forest, and tundra (looked and felt like anyway).  Coming up to the farm the fantasy was altered a bit by the pungency of silage and manure, but still I WAS HAPPY!  Now get out there and enjoy yourselves...winter only lasts a short while.

S-N-O-W

Home is where...?

HOME.  When you read that word, what were the images or sounds or other words that popped into your head? Was is it a physical location? A spirit of place?  Ancestral?  The dying, it seems often reference "home" as their childhood homes and their families of origin.  Dementia patients as well eventually arrive at this stop on the time travel train wending through their plaque-addled brains.  Even Frank Sinatra misses the  biscuits his mother made when she was able, in his sappy, but never fails to bring tears to my eyes Christmas diddy.  Considering (if we're lucky) we live at home only a quarter of our lives or less, the power and the sacredness of this connection is herculean.  I am more keenly aware of this as my home from my youth is now someone else's and the bulk of the people that populated it are dead AND I have become a co- creator of  myth and family lore for my daughter.  I hope the vagaries of memory and time treat us well.

A number of firsts

As you can see from the photos Maisie is growing and learning and having fun (we hope). 

She is standing and walking under her own power most of the time, she went sledding for the first time at Auntie Annette and Mary's with the sled they got her for her birthday, and she had her first official run in with THE LAW.

Not so great expectations

At work the other day, we had a service of remembrance for staff with the focus on willingness...to enter the suffering, the event horizon of life and death and how this, personally and professionally, has affected us this past year. The sharing came around to confessions of insecurity about what we had to offer people in the throes of end- of- life situations and also about not knowing the outcome of our interactions.  There also was shared understanding about "being in free fall "  and lowering expectations or seeing  "gifts" in simpler terms.  I've been thinking about this a lot.  There are many things that bestow heartbreaking pleasure: this photo of winter trees and the antiqued nature of the print because that reminds me of lampshades made with prints of scenes from the Adirondacks which remind me of my family who are all passed now; the feel of cold, cold water in my mouth and down my throat when I am thirsty; the smell of spearmint lip balm which reminds me of basketball games in high school(beats me why) and of my father bringing home mints from a vending machine at GE; the full moon shadow cast on the blue snow from the skeleton of a sunflower in our backyard tonight...it seems the world is overflowing with a bounty of meaning and corporeal pleasures.  The trick is to allow ourselves the joy of these things knowing that at any time they may be gone from us or we from them forever.  Reminds me of a line from Mary Oliver's poem In Blackwater Woods, ...To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, let it go.

I also have been thinking a lot about relationship and presence with others. And compassion, and civility, and respect. More on this later as it coalecses.

ONE Year old

January 1 was Maisie's first birthday.  We tried to avoid an actual birthday party by having a holiday open house/birthday celebration. I think we singlehandedly jump started the retail economy in Maine...the kid got quite a haul.  We had 51 people here including us.  The carousel horses on her cake (one of four by the way) were from my first birthday cake (45 years ago).  I wished so badly that my mother had been here, perhaps she was, but you know what I mean.  As Maisie gets older, I miss my folks more and more. The whole thing was a little too much for the birthday girl who had to take a short siesta before the cake. She had never had chocolate cake and probably won't again anytime soon as she was doing backflips and squealing hysterically late into the night.

All in all, it was  great day with good food, good friends, and a wonderful way to ring in the New Year.  Thank you to all who celebrated with us.