Retiring Life

It is amazing all of the things one can become involved in for the retired life. Today's Grandma really isn't going to be sitting in that rocking chair except for a quick break. Election Day brought a new job as Garfield County School Board member. With that there will be a lot of preparation to get up to speed and being able to do it well. I'm excited to find ways to improve education for the students of Garfield County. I'm also working with a group of people here in Boulder to set up an arts council. This will be fun to see how we can get the community involved in creating the council and then putting together great art events as well. I'm also trying to help the Escalante Heritage Center figure out how to raise a couple of million dollars for a new center that spotlights the Hole-in-the-Rock Expedition. Finally, I'm involved in the usual planning for the Boulder Heritage Festival for July, 2011. My personal goal for this year is to write more. That tends to be the thing that gets pushed back a bit more but I'm hoping with more alone time and the quiet of winter coming on that I will get at that goal better. We finished up another incredible creative writing conference last month and that should inspire me way into February.

So retirement is just right with getting to choose the things that I want to do but still having time to visit the kids and the grandkids. Travel is a little more reduced this year from last year, but that's ok too. I do love my life and living it in the most beautiful place in the world.

Telling Your Story

Saturday, we had Meg Brady, a Folk Arts teacher at the University of Utah whose job is collecting and teaching people how to collect stories through Hospice and the Huntsman Cancer Center. She presented the whys and the myths of reminiscing and telling your story. I have understood the one side to the importance of telling our story; so it doesn't go to the grave with you, so our children and grand children get to know what our lives were like, to share what it was like in "the olden days." I didn't understand until this presentation how important telling our story is for the storyteller. She said in England they pay to have people facilitate reminiscing in old folks homes because the residents are more sociable and more connected with the present. So remembering the past doesn't mean that we are living in the past. More importantly, she talked about how by talking about and writing about our past that we begin to see the patterns of our lives, that our lives and the incidents of our lives are not just random occurrences but that they are a part of a life pattern. That makes our lives have meaning and we may not even understand what that meaning was until we write or revisit the events at the end of our lives. We may begin to see the theme of our lives and better understand the importance of why we were here. I had an epiphany today, that this is probably what we have to do when we die. We go to the writing room and begin to write our memoirs. We have to get this done before we can go hang out with God and get on with the next part. So if you've written your own history and thoroughly evaluated your life, you are ready to move on, otherwise you will be hanging out in the writing room for some time first. Do you hear that Dad, Roberta, Aunt Margie, me?

As Mother's Day Continues to Change

The last Mother's Day for me was May, 1988. My Mother was consumed by the cancer that would take her from us in just a couple of weeks. I bought her red sweats that Mother's Day. They may have come from the children's dept. since they were so small to fit her shrinking body. We did have to cut out the waist because of her abdomen that was enlarged from effects of her cancer. She was struggling to eat anything and went from coherent to interacting with that world she was preparing to enter. We were still deluding ourselves with our talk of hope in beating cancer. She knew she wasn't winning the battle but she allowed our talk of hope. Her last words to me were "there's still so much I have to tell you." I will never know what those things might have been. She does present herself now in the most interesting and unusual ways if I choose to believe.

How do you continue to celebrate Mother's Day when your mother is gone? For me it has been a day of sadness, of remembering my loss, of calculating all the places that she is missing. I have gone through the motions, my own children deserve that but I'm sure they felt my sadness and loss as well. I have celebrated my mother-in-law and my stepmom but they have also been short changed by my sadness.

This year something has changed once again. I am selfishly spending this Mother's Day in Boulder, just Steve and I. I received the usual Mother's Day greetings and then I went to the yard to rake and feel the dirt on my hands. I have sat in the sun and let it warm me. I have washed clothes and then felt the breeze as I hang them on the line. I did prepare ahead of time to celebrate my daughter for Mother's Day. She is celebrating that first Mother's Day having chosen motherhood and even though the previous Mother's Days have been well worth celebrating, it was also bittersweet in the way that it changed her life before it was time. She is an wonderful mother and I celebrate her without even a twinge of the sadness except her Grandma Rae would have loved the new girl that possesses her name. I also celebrate my mother-in-law who now speaks directly to her twin sister, dead now for years. I honor the decision to move her to more care as the dementia over takes her. She is more at peace than she has been for some time. I still question the why of this disease and who it is for, what we are all suppose to gain. I celebrate my step mother for her love and kindness through the years. How she decided friendship with my mother was the right step, leading the way to friendship with my sister and I. I celebrate my sister for example of mothering and for always being there for me. She is the one who always understands exactly what this day and so many others feels like and means. I celebrate my Grandma Roundy for teaching me so well about being a grandma. I celebrate the incredible aunts I have, my Aunt Renon for her support at all the events of my life, for my King aunts for inspiring me to write, and read, and think. I celebrate cousins who are great mothers and raise children that are as interesting as they are. I celebrate friends who choose to be a part of my life and allow me to be a part of their lives as well. I celebrate my new daughter-in-law and look forward to many wonderful life events together. Happy Mother's Day to all the incredible women in my life. You have made me so much better than I would have been without you.

Pushing My Limits

Each of us has our areas that are our strengths. I know that I can plan and organize. Few things are too overwhelming in this area unless they come too many at one time then that can overwhelm but in a different way. I know I can accomplish the task, I just have to figure out how to be super organized. I also know how to interact with others, especially in an individual, personal way. Even with hard problems, this is usually more satisfying than challenging. For me, my strengths are head and emotional connections but I have never felt very secure in the physical part of me. I always have wondered if this would have been different for me if I would have been a teenager during a time when girls sports were available like they are today. I was a tall teenager and I think I would have had athletic skill but there wasn't girls sports during my high school time. Girls could be cheerleaders or on the drill team. I did love dance, but never felt secure in that are either. So I spent the next 30+ years developing my head. I can pull off smart beyond my actual ability and I have confidence in this area of head. So what do you do when the man you love not only has the strength of head but also confidence in the physical. He wants to hike, walk through the backwoods, carry a pack across desert canyons. He does go to some beautiful places and I do enjoy time with him, so I decide to try "pushing my limits."

We planned this hike for quite sometime. We even found the other couple to trade cars at each side of the river. We would start in Harris Wash on the west side of the Escalante River. They would start in Silver Falls on the east side of the river. We would hike the 16+ miles across, meeting in the middle. We started putting together the things we would need to take for this over night hike. I overthink every possible scenario, therefore, planning too many clothes for me to pack in my backpack, too much food for two days. I'm nervous for days before. I plan and plan because that is my strength. I don't know my body well enough to know if I will be able to meet the task. I don't know if it gets too hard if I will be able to find what I need to finish. The middle of a sandstone canyon without water and a two hour drive to the nearest town, is not the place you want to find out you don't quite have it. My husband can compensate a bit, slow down, move some of my load to his, but he can't carry me back to the car and he sure doesn't want to hear me cry outloud, the whining is almost more than he can take. The beauty of the places we go and the enjoyment of going together, forces me to take on the challenge. I go, scared to death. I go in search of the limits of this body that would have been so much easier to test 30 years ago. I go to prove to myself that I can do this too. And it is always incredibly beautiful and it is time well spent with the man that I love. And I will go again because I have that thing that helps women forget what having that first baby was like and then we have another. And I will put too much stuff in the backpack, and I will cause my stomach to gurgle with nerves, and I will plan with every possible solution at least for the problems I have planned for, and I will find out the boundaries of this 50+ body. And maybe I will love this body even more than I did when it was young and firm.

Quilts

I'm thinking about quilts today since I'm working with Sheree on trying to put together a video presentation about quilts that will be shown at both the Escalante Heritage Day and the Boulder Heritage Festival. I have collected some pictures of old quilts and taken a lot of pictures of the process of putting together a quilt that I did for my son's wedding. I also have my sister and her husband busy tying one of the quilts they did this winter. The quilt picture I have posted was the camp quilt that I received from my Grandma Roundy for my wedding. I love this quilt because it is so much of the time period it was created. If you looked at it, you would know I was married in the seventies because all the pieces are made of polyester. If you knew my Uncle Claron during that time, you would recognize many of the shirts Aunt Ruby made for him. It is tied with a crowfoot stitch and my Grandpa said that it was so warm you could just put it in the room with you. This tradition of giving a quilt for a marriage is long standing in my family. I'm not much of a quilter (yet) but I still feel compelled to get the quilt done for the wedding. A camp quilt is easier since it doesn't have to be perfect. When babies are born, that's also the time of the quilt. My sister just finished 6 or 7 baby quilts for Haiti children. Her husband is great at the tying. I have one picture of him that says "Real Men Quilt." I love that because he is a real man that has no qualms about quilting. I haven't done baby quilts but I usually crochet around flannel blankets. My grandma made beautiful quilts. I have a beautiful tricot quilt she made and also a pieced quilt that she made for my wedding in addition to the camp quilt. My step mom also gave me one of Grandma's old pieced quilts that I dearly love. The hardest part with quilts is that they are too beautiful to use so they end up in a cedar chest waiting for the next generation to own them. I think I might put them out and enjoy them if I didn't have dogs. Maybe after the dogs are gone, I will enjoy my quilts. I also have a quilt that my Grandma King made that was on my Mom's twin bed when she was growing up. That is an interesting quilt. I always loved quilts my Aunt Ann made for graduations, weddings, and babies. Her quilts were useful and get used. Every quilt has it's own story, I'm sure. Maybe I'll start working on those quilt stories. I'm thinking we will have the quilt display on Friday of the Festival and the Saddles on Saturday, both are so impressive. And then let the stories begin. Tell me your quilt story.

Poetry and Dreams

In this last week, the dreams are battering me, one after another, each strong and filled with potential meaning. As the dreams come, so do the poems. Arriving one after another. So since all my writing is coming in poetry, it probably should appear here as well. (brand new hot off the press)

Boulder Love Poem

This place has always held me,
from the cradle of sandstone to each rock,
each curve on the road, to the tops of towering ledges.
They have witnessed those who came before me,
each generation linking one to another
to culminate in me.
At fourteen, I was drunk with this place.
Overwhelmed by all it possessed,
maybe it was that time of life when I could not control
the effect or I may have chosen
not to ignore it. I was madly in love,
the passion of place consumed me like a fire,
threatening to destroy me with intensity.
I was released from the hold just a little
when I found the one who would become my husband,
sharing my desire between place and man.
I learned moderation of this place,
small doses, a weekend, a week,
creeping up to three weeks and a month.
I would once again be dragged back
to the edge of desire, to sit on a sandstone peak,
wade in Calf Creek or allow the sun
to hike across my body while I leaned on a rock
at the edge of Grass Lake.
As I ride my fifties, I am embolden,
for the children are raised and a retirement check
arrives each month. I have lived a good life.
I return bravely to sleep night after night
on the banks of Boulder Creek.
I invite the beautiful of snow on Maggie’s Ledge,
to burn my eyes. My legs carry me
to each entrance of the Escalante River.
I embrace Upper Falls as winter breaks to spring,
allowing myself to fall so deeply in love
that I should be afraid. I will never escape
something this beautiful.

Next Generation of Mothers

Tonight my only daughter returns to work after having her own little daughter just 3 months ago. I'm so glad she had the three months with her daughter. Her last child was born before she was ready and pushed her to adulthood. This tiny girl came when she wanted her most and was ready with a marriage, health insurance, and a means to support her. Even in this time of preparation, the day comes when Mom returns to work. I remember going back to work when she was just almost 6 months old. I had enjoyed my time with her but I had also made her unwilling to drink from a bottle so I would race to the sitter's house down the street from the school I worked at and feed her at lunch. She also moved to cereals and other foods sooner so she could get through the day. We had a glorious time after school, sitting in the rocker and reconnecting with a little nursing time. I went back to work sooner with my son, but the sitter was his Dad, so that felt like a good time for them. I still raced to where ever he was for the next several months to have a quick feed during the lunch hour. He was so easy because he could eat both sides in a matter of minutes and send me back to work.

My son-in-law has duty tonight with his tiny daughter who is spending her first night without her mom. It will be good for both of them to learn how to meet each others needs. But I know that tonight my daughter is fretting on the 3rd floor of the Medical Center. Wishing she was home with her daughter and wondering if she still knows how to be the nurse those patients on the 3rd floor need. On the news tonight, they talked about the scientific research on the benefits of breastfeeding for 6 months but yet even in the best of circumstances, 3 months is what mom and baby get. In this time of health care debate, I wish we were further along the debate to be talking about getting at least those 6 months that they are finding to be so critical. I hope my daughter can find a way to keep the breastfeeding going beyond this go back to work time. I hope that we can become a nation that can adapt to what we find is most important for babies and for helping mom's to make it work. Good luck my daughter and kisses to Dad and baby tonight!!