With many happy returns...

This week's view from the porch is pretty amazing.
I've gone to three birthday parties in the past 10 days. I don't think that's ever happened before.
One was a pizza party at a local restaurant hosted by the man with the birthday who turned 58 and whom I have always had a secret crush since I first met him years ago. More than two years ago, he had a stroke and we did not know if he would even make it. The stroke impaired him in many ways and communication is one of them. With great focus and determination, he ordered the meal for the entire table and was a perfect host in every way. What a celebration of life and of the immense work he has done to be up and out of his wheelchair and to regain everything he can. He's just super and I am proud to know him.
I went to a 50th birthday party this week and it was classy, relaxed, and the way to celebrate 50 years. It was fun to go to a party, talk with friends I haven't had a chance to really catch up with for awhile and feel like a grown up instead of just a parent.
And then last night, I went to a celebration of women. My dear friend has a birthday today and we celebrated the last day of her 70th year and the women in her life during this past year. I was very honored to be invited and as she predicted, the energy in the room was strong and evident. Eight women with roots from all over the world now living in Grinnell. Educators, nurses, social workers, musician, artists, clergy, mothers and about-to-be a mother, grandmothers, writers, sisters, lovers, and friends - and only nine of us around the table. The wisdom of generations of women. We enjoyed wine, music, baseball and an incredible meal that felt like Christmas...
Life is good, as they say.
Today I am reflecting on these three gatherings, the people, the energy, and the moments. It is the last possible day to get pumpkins, carve them and have them ready for the trick or treaters tonight.Nothing like waiting until the last moment...  We'll be baking and carving, listening to the Iowa game on the radio, and making a home.

Things to Come

The view from the porch today is a nice one - crunchy bronze leaves surround the mums in the front garden. Deep russet, burnt orange, bright gold. We had our first hard frost this week at my house and the mums have taken on richer hues. The grass is beautifully green and vibrant. I'll get the boy to cut the grass one more time this weekend, bagging up the leaves into mulch as he goes.

Last night I went to the varsity football game, the last home game of the season. It was kind of an orientation for me as I have lived here for six years and this is the first high school game I've attended. The 8th grade band played with the high school marching band and I recognize that this is a sign of things to come. Next year, the boy will be a high school freshman and we'll go between middle school activities for the girl and high school activities for the boy. So I went and had fun, learned the school song ending chant and had a good time with friends.

I was very flattered this week to be asked to take on an important leadership role at church. I really, really want to do it and think I could make a positive contribution. But the coming years with my kids at home are going to fly by, filled with concerts and games and life. There's a whole congregation of people who can step into that role and also make their own positive contribution. But only I can be Mom to my kids.

When October Goes

I'm resurrecting an entry originally posted October 28, 2009. The sentiment is just as true today. October continues to be a time of transition for me. As of today, I am legally divorced and single. October focuses me on family, home, and life's journey. Good thing I love this month...

Johnny Mercer said it well, "I should be over it now, I know. It doesn't matter much how old I grow. I hate to see October go."

I think the colors this year have been more vivid than I have remembered in many years. Maybe I always think that, but there are just some unusually spectacular looking trees out there. And they've just started to go past their peak. It's such a short time to really enjoy them.

To indulge my melancholy a little more before I shut it off, it isn't lost on me that the year is quickly coming to an end. Once Halloween is through, it is a sprint to New Year's Day, or so it seems.

It's been an interesting week. I witnessed a wedding of two lovers in middle age. A love that has not aged in 20 years, but rather has deepened and strengthened. Wonderful, affirming, and worshipful.

I also learned that a good friend has cancer. Again.

Two very different events in the space of a few days.

It fits with my melancholy mood, my realization that the Octobers are coming a little faster each year. I am reminded this week that life is precious and precarious. What dreams do I need to let go? What dreams do I need to pursue? What new twists does life have in store? What do I need to do to continue to live my life intentionally and with purpose? What do I need to do for my children as they grow before my eyes?

What do I need to do before it's too late?

Okay, enough melancholy.

What I need to do is enjoy life, with all its twists and surprises, joys and sorrows, and all the wonderful, amazing people I know and love. And to let them know how much they mean to me.

What we really need to do before it's too late, is to fully live our lives.

When October Goes

September Friday Night

The view from the porch has a little extra light from TT Cranny Field over at Grinnell High School. It's a September Friday night and that means football.
Many thanks to my dear stepdad Phil who taught me how to understand the game and how to enjoy watching it. With a 13 year old son who's life is about football right now, it helps a lot. Thanks, Phil.
Nights like this remind me of the other Tigers, the Red Oak Tigers. Friday nights with friends at what we now call Russ Benda Field and heading for chili at the Elks after the game ended.
I actually prefer to listen to sports on the radio. KGRN on Fridays and WHO on Saturdays.
There's a chill in the air and it is a night for hot food and a cold beer.
Go Tigers!

Busted open

Living with eyes and heart wide open is a wonderful goal. It sounds so encouraging to experience all that life has to offer.
Truth is, it takes a lot of courage to live that way.
If you are an adult and it isn't a challenge for you to live with your heart wide open, then your heart probably hasn't been broken open. I think we start off that way as children and then little by little we begin to develop the shell around the heart because we have experienced heartbreak, disappointment, hatred, jealousy...We develop coping mechanisms, healthy and unhealthy, to take the edge off or make us numb.
It takes risk to experience all that love is for us. Every time we open ourselves to experience life again, we take a risk.
Would it be easier to simply our close hearts to prevent us from the pain? Sure. But it also prevents us from feeling the amazing joy and love that life has to offer as well.

Stanton, Nyman, Bethesda, Clarinda...

An interesting thing happened last weekend that is worthy of note...

I am getting to spend some time with two of my four parents alone these days. One weekend every month or so while the kids visit their dad, I spend a Saturday evening and night with my dad and stepmom. It has been ages since this happened, really, if at all.

Dad has treated us to Saturday dinner out somewhere around Red Oak, Iowa. We leave the house about 5 and listen to "A Prairie Home Companion" on the radio as we reach our dinner destination. Last week, the destination was The Ice House in Clarinda. We had a great meal and conversation, just the three of us. We finish our meal and get back in the car in time to listen to the monologue as we take the long way home.

Last week, Dad drove us through the grounds, still beautifully kept, at what is now known as the Clarinda Treatment Complex. Formerly a state institution for persons with mental illness. Back in the day, it could have been a private college campus. The views are pastoral and lovely as we head north out of town.

The area is familiar and we drive along the farms and rolling hills. A recent hailstorm has destroyed many acres of corn and beans - late season storms that strip the leaves and beat down the corn as if a truck had driven around the field.

South of Stanton, west to Bethesda, north to Nyman...this is the place where my great-grandparents settled when they immigrated from Sweden. The farms and communities they established more than 125 years ago. Earlier, Dad and I looked at a gift I had received from my dad's older sister. It was my great-grandmother Nora Olson Linquist's autograph book. Signed in beautiful pen and ink script by teachers and friends with equally stalwart Swedish names, sweet poems of remembrance, and the date. 1889 is the earliest year penned.

Driving those roads, I thought that those folks today would likely be able to find their way around. Many farms are still there, the churches are still there, the roads are paved and not dirt or gravel.

We then had a moment of serendipity. Remember my last post? About paying attention to those moments when things seem to conveniently converge? The last song played on "A Prairie Home Companion" that night was a hymn that is deeply cherished by this Swedish-American community in Montgomery and Page Counties of Iowa, and I have written about it before.

"Children of the Heavenly Father" is a tender and lovely cradle song, a lullaby of God as the Father and we as his children....safely gathered, protected, cared for and loved beyond measure. We hear this lovely hymn on one occasion and it will bring tears to the eyes of the most stoic Swede. It is typically played at funerals. We grow up hearing it first at our grandparents' funerals as we are children and at every funeral after. It's the song that we dread and adore at the same time. I've never quite been able to sing it all the way through and I marvel at those who are asked to sing it at a funeral.

This rendition was a lovely duet and they sang all the verses, including the first verse in Swedish as it is done these days. The music and the place seemed to come together in one of those Fellowship of Saints moments when I was reminded of the presence of all those people with me. It was an ideal soundtrack for this late summer drive through the land of our roots.

Life is amazing. Go through it with your eyes and heart wide open.