Chicago - Mishawaka - Kendallville - Fort Wayne - Columbia City

On the road again... as Willie would say. Thursday I drove away from Minneapolis and left my all grown up baby girl Zilla there.  I cried.  Then I drove to Chicago to drop in on the Wabash Kid and the Greek Goddess - if I could find the address where they lived and if they still lived there and were home.  I had lost their phone number years ago -- somehow.  I think it had been maybe 10 years since I had seen them.  I know their youngest child was very small then and he is 13 now.  The GG is maybe 3 years older than me and he is 9 years older.  Both look GREAT, but wowie zowie having a kid when you are a woman in your 40s or a man in your 50s sends shivers up and down my spine.  My Zilla is 22 and I am tired from raising her and getting her on her way in the world.  I can't imagine having another 10 years until my parenting responsibilities step down a notch. 

So... long story longer... I remembered the name of the street they lived on and the block and the exit I used to take to get to their house.  I put that info into my smart phone GPS Navigator thingy and drove there.  I couldn't remember the exact house number so I drove up and down the block a couple times until I thought I recognized the house.  Then I parked and walked up to the house and rang the bell.  After a couple minutes the Wabash Kid came to the door.  The first spark of wide eyed recognition and broad grin of happiness to see me spread across his face erased any worry I had about showing up unannounced.  I was so relieved to find them healthy and happy.  His music, recording, and painting that WB shared with me allowed me to know a friend with more depth and intimacy than I did many years ago.  That connection touched my heart.  We talked until after midnight and much of the next morning and on through lunch.  Conversation covered the gamut of family, friends, health, art, reading/speculative fiction, creativity, economics, politics and philosophy/religion.  

Wish I could have spent more time with the Greek Goddess but her schedule precluded very much interaction... and what did I expect given I dropped in out of the blue?  Usually I spend much more time with her.  This visit was still so good.  WB and I both seemed to synch.  No awkward silences.  There are not many people  who can pick up a friendship after 10 years of silence,  But sometimes I swear there are connections between people that extend beyond time and space.  I'm in awe of mystery of life from this interaction.  Did he need it?  Did I?  I don't know.  But my somewhat difficult to extinguish mystical nature is happy that this trip that is filled with the sadness of distance from my daughter and what will be the first trip to my parent's grave site since my mother's funeral has also allowed me the comfort of shared connection with old friends.

After Chicago, I visited - with some advance notice, but not much - I stopped for a quick evening visit, some good Vietnamese food, and Scrabble®/Words with Friends® and a tour of the home they just purchased last fall.  It has only been a year plus a few weeks since I had seen them, so there wasn't as much catching up to do and our talk centered on more pragmatic concerns.  Education, the field within which they both work, our grandchildren, mutual friends, and some talk of my writing, and word games filled our visit... along with some needed sound and restful sleep.   Then early afternoonish today, I headed out on Indiana 20 to State Road 9 to Highway 6 and Kendallville where I met up, at a local restaurant, with a girl friend  I had not seen since High School Graduation.  Again it was so good to see yet another friend and find out that though life may not have been perfect for any of us, that she was doing extremely well considering the adversity she has encountered in life and recent economic challenges that so many of us have encountered since 2008. 

Tomorrow is a family day.  Breakfast with my oldest brother's wife, and then an afternoon visit with the youngest of my brothers who still has 9 years on me.  From what I can deduce from a distance, neither of them are doing very well.  I will also visit the graves of two of my brothers and my parents.  I think it could be a difficult day tomorrow in some respects. 

Graduate Growing Pains

I didn't succeed with Nablopomo this month, but I did succeed with doing an absolute ton of stuff.  But it has not been enough for everyone around me.  Expectations placed on mothers are sometimes huge and unrealistic ones. Sometimes mothers do not live up to expectations both realistic and unrealistic.  Moms are humans. 

Daughters are human too, but sometimes they are scary monsters.  Zilla got her nickname with good reason.  This past week has been a roller coaster of ups and downs.  Her last semester of college was this past week.  She attended the more intimate School of Science Graduation where the graduates actually walk across the stage while a saying they have chosen is projected on the stage's backdrop and hands are shaken and recognition given.  It was good.  She had a bit of a melt down when we were where we were told to go after the ceremony and not where she thought we would be, but we all survived, met up, and her sister, father and I are all very proud. 

Did I mention her sister who lives in NYC along with hubby and twin 1 year old daughters are all in Southern Arizona for the Holidays? 

Zilla has always easily been wound up and at times has difficulty disengaging and the stress of finals, the details and expenses of graduation, coupled with her understandable anxiety about completing applications for graduate school in in the next few weeks, and about moving across the country and away from nearby family shortly after the New Year is taking its toll on her.  The graduation party at our house was a success... both the early part with our friends and those folks with small children, and the later part that was more raucous and composed mainly of her friends were pleasant and appropriately celebratory for the people to whom they were tailored.  

Still I am the target of my baby's scorn more often than not in the past week as not everything is unfolding as smoothly nor exactly in the manner she envisioned and she feels the need to affix as much blame as possible to me.  I actually understand this.  It doesn't mean that I accept the blame nor tolerate the scorn, but I understand why we are so touchy about everything.  My therapist once reminded me that often it is easier to leave a place or person when there is some anger reinforcing the necessity of the separation. 

I'm proud of my baby.  This is a difficult time because we are close, stress is high, and it makes us both sad to think of being so far away from each other.  We will get through it and it is instructional to learn that being close can make for more stress at times of transition than families that are not as close and just going through the motions required of a formal occasion. 

Photos and Family History

Spent the day sorting through stuff in order to have a garage sale within a few days, and helping my husband organize the content of some boxes he brought back from being in storage in the state where he grew up.  He passed through there when he came back from sabbatical on the East Coast. 

My family is weird, but his family background is truly unusual.  The snapshots we found today included baby and childhood photographs that I hadn't ever seen, and that he thought no longer existed. I was so glad that my daughter and her step-sister will have a more complete history of his family.  Portrait photos to go with names, and houses and cars give a context that really fills out understanding of a time and place.   There were semi risque pics of his mom taken by his father.  They were very free-thinking people when it came to sexuality but they were arch conservatives when it came to politics and social issues.   His dad was an extremely fine gunsmith.   There were letters and documents in the boxes too. National Rifle Association memberships and awards, shooting club patches, and hints at Hubby's Dad's first marriage provided links that tied the photos and documents together.  There are more dates to help us fill out a timeline that has always been fuzzy.

I went online and re-upped for ancestry.com and began searching.  My husband always thought that he was a bastard... but that isn't really true.  His parents did marry, a bit late perhaps by societal standards, but I found out when and where they married.  I haven't found out much about his dad's first marriage.  If there had been children I think I would have found the records from birth announcements in the newspapers.

When I was growing up my family always recited lineages as though they were litanies.  It is odd to now be able to build those same sort of lineages for my husband's family even though both parents had been gone for ages by the time we married.

Personal history, family history, and the flavor of community are so difficult to capture after the fact.  I'm glad we can write it down for the kids now while we still have control of most of our faculties. 

Discovering the Truth About Christmas Treats

I miss the taste of the sweet treats of the season.  I was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes in May of this year, so this is the first Christmas season without sugar.    Sigh.

I'm lucky though, I can control the disease with diet and exercise and Metformin.  I don't have to do the daily blood tests.

I've learned to stop and appreciate the beauty of the treats under glass in bakeries, to breathe in and delight in the memories and emotions that rich scents of cinnamon, almond, clove, fruit evokes.  This lack has made me appreciate the real treats when I find them.  It is almost like a game.  I ask myself,  " If I could freely eat a few, select sweet treats, would this be one of them?" 

To my surprise, I find myself usually answering,  "No." 

If the tempting item is in a bag, I remind myself it is not fresh.  And fresh, straight from the oven, still gooey and steaming is the only way to eat most treats such as cookies.  I walked down the isle in overstock and remainder grocery I go to at least once a month, a store that saves my budget and me from despair, with all the baking goods to get a great deal on cans of evaporated milk, and walked right past the boxes of brownie and cake mixes with their ingredient lists of over 15 items including preservatives and fillers and multiple forms of second class sweeteners. No problem.  If I were to indulge, it would and indulgence with something homemade with love and real true ingredients.  In the grocery near my home, I walk in and the sweet smell is overpowering.  It is cloying in its overabundance, and there is something missing.  The scent of spices, butter, nutmeats and simmering fruit is absent.  There is just the smell of white flour and sugar.  This, too, I can forgo.

The piles of candy everywhere brighten with red, white, and gold wrappings.  But I can decorate with strings of popcorn and cranberries and shiny baubles;  I don't need gold boxes of chocolates,  and bowls of red and green candies.

I am pretty sure I can figure out how to make a fruit cake that is filled with the heady richness of freshly ground spices, healthy fruit and nuts and a tiny bit of honey and just enough Stevia to add some sweetness without bitterness so as delight guests and allow my own indulgence once or twice.  I am sorting through my recipes and looking for recipes I can modify so as to be able to make plates of treats to give away without exposing myself to dangerous temptation.  Many recipes I remember from my childhood were simple ones that I can adapt to use a sweetener that is natural, and with a lower glycemic index than the "white death" soaked cookies we too often think of as "Christmas cookies."  Chocolate (dyed green) and white (dyed red) cookie doughs rolled into flat sheets then layered and rolled and sliced to make pinwheel cookies were always on my mother's Christmas sideboard.  She also made almond flavored butter cookies shaped into tiny crescents with a clove stuck in each one.  Regular plain and simple cookies can be decorated with chopped fruits, nuts such as almonds that can be tinted into festive colors.   I will include clementines on the trays, and nuts, just like they did in the days of the Nutcracker. 

I will make Christmas trays of goodies for family and friends, and if so moved to do so, I may sample one bite from each type on different days, and I will allow myself to roll the tastes around, over my tongue, savor the real, true sweetness of home made delicacies without artificial anything while sharing the Holidays with the real, true sweet things in life: my family and friends.

Happy Birthday Grand Daughters!

Sharing something from my amazingly adept at poetic endeavors son-in-law to the Grandbabies on their first birthday, which always and forever happens to be today.

- on yr first birthday
by Aaron Balkan

One of you lives for red meat. One of you favors cheese of the goat.
I know who.

I remember the football hold. I remember the little
sour faces you made when the bottle was too cold.
Sorry about that. I remember three out of five of the S’s:
Swaddling, Shushing and Swinging. I remember how we used to
swing each of you, pendulum-like, toward each other, and how,
instead of slamming into your sis in mid air,
you both cackled: G with her chuckle gone berserk,
J, who certainly doesn’t require aviating the air via her father’s arms to go berserk,
going bezerk.

Let me tell you something about Michigan. Yes it’s where
so and so happened. The record shall reflect. But it’s also
where you first took to water. Josie, you were running wind sprints across the shallow;
Georgia, you liked to saddle up a floating sugar maple branch
and stare at it, pick it up, hold it to the light, chew. You both appreciated
the taste of pond water, the fetid-
er the better! I have a picture of that summer. There’s a thunderstorm going on outside
a picture window. Georgia you’re standing on a couch, your hands
pressed to the glass. You are smiling, but your mouth is wide open,
so it’s like you’re both smiling and trying to swallow the landscape. Josie,
you are sitting on the floor staring at Georgia. You, too, have your mouth agape.
It appears you want to swallow your sister.

Here’s what happened:
I went to see Dylan.
He played This Wheel’s on Fire
for his opening number. The next night
you were born.

 

Here they are trough diving. Bean is stealing Josie's fallen fruit from the bib trough. 

  Happy Birthday Darlings!  I love you.