Blog Roots

“What was the point of writing a blog that nobody else could read?”

Weekly Photo Challenge: Fleeting

5 a.m., June 13, 2013, Baker Beach.  The moment suspended between yesterday and today, past and future, then and now,  known and unknown.  In its stillness, all things are possible.

fleet·ing:  /ˈflētiNG/ Adjective – Lasting for a very short time: “hoping to get a fleeting glimpse”.  Synonyms – transient – transitory – fugitive – ephemeral – passing

Weekly Photo Challenge: Fleeting

I will never write about addiction.

I will never write about addiction, even though I should. I do not visit its hard landscape easily.  I lived there once.  It consumed me.    The Addict dragged me to its jagged edge and left me there screaming as he plunged into its heart.   When I am forced to describe addiction to others, I use spare language.  I do not embellish.  There are no colors or smells or quirky characters we  met along the way.   There are nouns and verbs.  They are black and they are white.   This is very unusual for me.  When I am forced to remember addiction, however, it is vivid.  Like a slide show set too fast in HD.  Each lurid frame stands out, in Technicolor, then clicks to the next. 

Weekly Photo Challenge: The Sign Says

Everything is dangerous — and dangerously misspelled.

All dogs go to heaven. An ode to the very best of dogs.

“All dogs go to heaven.”  A friend told me this last night.  She is not a dog person, but I think she meant it.  Today I hope she is right.  In a few hours we will escort our big red friend of 14 years into the beyond.  His hour is near.  I listened to his deep breathing all night.  It was unhurried and content to meet what comes next, same as it ever was.

I tried to match both his breath and his contentment.  Now it is morning.  As the birds came alive in the canopy of trees outside our window, Ranger grew restless, drank water, and then emptied his bladder beside the bed.  My husband gently gathered him up and carried him outside.  He rests at  my side  while I write, on my grandmothers Persian rug which he prefers to the expensive pet boutique bed we bought for his old hips.  His breath is still even.   He is not suffering, but he has dropped dramatically since our last trip down the path to the lake Monday.  It was a routine walk for us.  No swim, but all the familiar steps and smells we’ve worn together over the 12 years we’ve lived in this ‘hood.  By yesterday he was weaving like a drunk.  It is his time, my husband called my office to warn me.

Ranger reflects the family who has grown up with him: big personality and big counter surfer.  Santa Claus brought him 13 Christmas Eves ago.  There no military dignity or great outdoors tradition behind the name “Ranger.”  We had young boys.  “Ranger” is simply and unfortunately short for “Power Ranger.”

There were always headlines with Ranger.  As recently as last month he got out one night during a family birthday.  In the chaos, we did not notice him missing until early the next morning.  Ranger spent the night trapped in a koi pond.  He had apparently tumbled in and patiently waited, up to his neck in green slime and fat carp, for us to rescue him.  His hips were too old to make the leap out.  A year ago on Memorial Day he took himself on a walk down to the lake where he was found by a runner who took him home.  We located him several hours later via the miracle of Craigslist, but not before he’d enjoyed a nice brunch and a sunbath on a deck with several young couples.  It was never a surprise when the phone rang and we heard a neighbor say,  “I just saw Ranger head down to Sandy’s pool AGAIN.”

For most of his life he was a lean 75 lb. package of muscle.  And he stood very tall and proud until the day he could not stand any more (yesterday).  It is not  sentimentality to say he had the good looks of a Hollywood leading man and those looks scarcely faded.  He was good natured to most, but very protective of us, especially of Betty, the small black lab who came home with us 5 years ago.   I have never had a better, more true running partner than Ranger.  A well meaning newly-graduated vet once advised me that it wasn’t fair to run so far and often with a dog as large as Ranger.  But Ranger didn’t think it was fair to leave him at home.  There were many miles along the lake; there were many more miles on sidewalks and roads.  But the  most memorable miles were in the winter in the shadow of Mt. Rainier.  After my shoulder surgery, when I had to miss the first half of a ski season, Mark and the boys would dump Ranger and me ten miles up a snowy Forest Service road before they left for the lifts.  Alone in the woods, seeing only the occasional kook living off the grid with his shotguns in a rusty trailer, Ranger and I would run our way back to the cabin.  The story of his first encounter with a mother elk is family legend.  It was a stand-off in the end, but Ranger came close to having his forehead branded by her hoof and never tried that again.

Having a dog like Ranger brought out the gentleness in our sons.  Those words sound like a cliche, but sometimes cliches work because they are true.  Ranger was a very accessible dog, though never an unconditional lover.  He was never a lap dog.  But our sons gave to him and he loved back.  He was their first freedom – at the end of a leash, he walked them around the block.  He was their first responsibility – at the end of the school day, he awaited.

Ranger is not perfect.  Unlike other dogs, for instance, he  is not unfailingly loyal.  When Betty was young they took off into the woods along the White River.  He quickly abandoned Betty, who could not keep up.  In fact, he left her baying pitifully in the middle of a patch of trees where I located her by her cries ten minutes later.  He came home sweaty and foul and deliriously happy with himself two hours after that.

In addition to disappearing whenever he wanted to, did I mention that he never met a garbage can he didn’t fall in love with – or couldn’t open?  Or that Mark claims he was never truly housebroken? Or that I am actually allergic to dogs, even Ranger?  Or that one year during Christmas dinner he ate a lot of the new Legos and we were never sure whether he passed them all  through his digestive tract or not because during that holiday season we were too busy and mostly  too grossed out to check?

 Maybe all those miles on trails and road created a bond between me and the old boy – or more likely because I was the only reliable food source.  In recent years, once everyone was in for the night, he slept close by my side of the bed, always trotting downstairs beside me and reporting to the espresso machine in the morning, but sleeping protectively beside me if I wasn’t the first to rise.  One of his most endearing qualities developed when the boys became teenagers with later-night social lives.  He would lie on the landing where he could he could hear the sound of their cars rolling home and see all of our bedroom doors.  Once everyone was tucked in bed, he would sink into his place on the floor beside me.

We once had a dog named Nakiska, who went chasing rainbows over a swollen waterfall one Easter morning in the North Cascades.  We never saw him again.  “He was the best of dogs, he was the worst of dogs.  G#damn ‘im, g#bless him,” Mark exclaimed over and over in our grief.  We won’t say that about Ranger.  About Ranger we  can only say that in our lives filled with dogs, he has  been the very best..

the 20 minute post

It is the best time of the day to write. Inside the house heaves rhythmically with sleeping pets and people and its own 90-year-old creaks and cracks. The coffee is strong and black. The screen is white and bright. Outside the street sleeps and the lake licks the beach. At this hour time is suspended.

It is the end of another dramatic week for the world. Trust and innocence suffered new blows. Here, we stood vigil with good people everywhere and held our breath and hearts as we watched it unfold on too many screens at once, it seemed. Meanwhile, in the inner circle of our daily lives, it was business as usual: crowded and hurried and scattered. But this week, next to all of those other screens, “business as usual” took on a sweeter meaning.

Last week I wrote my personal menu of excuses not to write. By Saturday, to kickstart my posts, I came up with the idea of the 20 minute post. 1, 2, 3 …20, POST. That was 7 days ago! And still no post! Certainly I have 20 minutes before lunch packing, law practicing, and life scrambling to spill a corner of my heart onto the keyboard?

It is kind of like taking a deep breath before starting the day. And I just did it. Well, I just did it in 37 minutes, including the time it took to heat up the espresso machine + let the dogs out. 🙂

these things i ♥

friendships that last a life time  (even if they are new)

motherhood

pie

the Gulf Coast of Alabama

a July birthday

5000+ years of yoga teachers

thank you notes

black coffee

good grammar

men who love their wives

laundry dried outside

lunch

the sun

powder days

grandmothers

pineapple

the architecture of the olive tree

cities

most birds

all teenagers

front porches

Canadian roots

lacrosse

my children’s stories and dreams

running

words

in-laws

the sound the back door makes

self performance review: blogging

 December is a very hot month where I have worked for the past 20 Decembers.  While on the outside, winds, rains, and several months of chilly darkness blow into town, inside it is an overheated  pressure cooker.  The reasons why are unimportant (and idiosyncratic to the cult of personalities we call our firm).  Let’s just say that last December internal temperatures escalated even further when one of my partners ripped a page out of a business school text and suggested we should add performance reviews of ourselves to the mix.  The exercise was just as sweaty as we had feared.  However, after I finished, I had to admit – the self study had done me some good.  So recently I applied the same scrutiny to my blogging to uncover why I am so surprisingly horrible at it!   Nine posts since fall 2011 !?!  I am particularly embarrassed to admit that in one of my first posts I  even bragged:

I was born to blog.  Some  might say I have been blogging since long before “Al Gore Invented the Internet.”  Harriet the Spy was my childhood heroine.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_the_Spy  Yes, I was the one in the hoody, hunched over the notebook chronicling the late  1960s and the 1970s in Upstate New York and Ontario.  My family rolled eyes, cringed and made paranoid comments in stage whispers.  The compulsion continued and I have innumerable volumes tucked away in locked trunks and sealed envelopes on my property in An Unnamed West Coast City.

https://momdeguerre.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/if-a-mother-cries-out-in-cyberspace-does-it-make-a-sound/ I  blog in my head constantly, but seldom unleash the text onto the keyboard.  Why?  I am opinionated, nosy, and surrounded by people doing meaningful, kooky, sensitive, and absurd things – often all at the same time.  In other words, I live in a land deep in rich material.  So why don’t I write?  Why don’t I write HERE?  On WordPress ??  What are my excuses?  Thanks to my self review, I now know.

1. No time.  Like nearly every other  citizen of the  modern world, I am very busy and “important.”  I do not have time for this self-indulgence (even if it would improve my mental health)! 
2. WordPress is too confusing.  I believe this, but because I am so busy and “important,” I have not had time to find a good alternative.
3. Perfection is the enemy of the good.  This one is probably self-explanatory.  In me, the condition can be acute.  It usually affects structure, language choice, and message.  I probably do not need to mention that I also hate typo’s and misspellings, especially my own.   Interestingly, I do a lot of writing in my everyday professional life and turn out a good work product without letting the pursuit of meaningless perfection rule my days.
4. No theme!  This one is important.  I love other people’s blogs and follow them.  I read about writing.  I read about blogging.  One of the first rules about the latter is to have a theme.  My head is like a tossed salad; there is no organizing theme, not even the vinaigrette is reliable.  My family and friends and colleagues are similarly scattered.   I think this is a problem with my writing in general.  I am not exactly writing about any particular thing on a regular basis.  You know, like the pretty meals I have cooked, the books I have read, my travels, or even carpools I have known and loved (or hated), being a lacrosse mom, the emptying nest, or what it is like to have a child run away (even though you know exactly where he is).
5. Fear of the ordinary.  I say I fear the ordinary, but at the same time, I believe in the ordinary – mine and everyone else’s.  That’s why I like following blogs and talking to people on buses.  I have even written about my belief in the ordinary.  https://momdeguerre.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/joy-v-08-19-12-the-long-good-bye-begins/
6. Fear of being uncovered.   I really try not to write anything that would embarrass my people, but …..recently I wrote a barbed review of an evening at my home with a visiting relative.  I compared our kitchen that night to a saloon and mentioned that it was my first lap dance ever.  (It is well-known that  I am not leading a lap dance sort of life.  )  Then I emailed it to a few friends, but would be mortified if the kitchen island lap dancer, who is related to my husband, ever read it.
7. Not sure I like my blog name and I do not like the subtitle.  Okay.  I love the name, mom de guerre, because of the play on words but it is grim to the point of being a mismatch with  my everyday life.  As for the subtitle (“musings from the dark side of parenting”), it spilled onto the screen during a black period of child raising.  I have had my nose pressed against the underbelly of parenting and it is ugly.  The child who takes me there has given me permission to be open about it, but at core I am upbeat and hopeful, as well as protective of his privacy.  Besides, I really do not want to wallow there even if I should.  I have entertained a new blog name and maybe for my mental health I should adopt it.
8. The dogs need a walk, there is a load of laundry to be done, and I brought some work  home.  This relates to # 1.  There is always something more urgent to do.  I am a horrible relaxer and consider that a character flaw.  I also have a 20 year long guilt streak about being a mother who works hard outside the home.  Even as I write this, I am thinking about our federal taxes (due Monday), two cards I have to write, whether this is a productive way to spend an afternoon off of work, and, of course, the dishes in the sink.  Oh! And did I exercise yet today (not really).

Hustling on the Bridge Between Today and Adulthood – summer 2012 – a flashback

English: Ryan Jergensen bare footing on Lake Berryessa in 2006. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am the mother of a boy who loves summer. I get it. We live in an emerald city surrounded by water and mountains. But good weather comes late, if at all, and when it does it is a golden reward for surviving the rest of the year and makes us forget the trials we endured for the reward.

The boy is now 17 years old and heading into his senior year of high school. Before this summer began, he said to me dreamily one day “what i love about summer is being on the lake or beside the lake, hanging with my boys.” One of my favorite summer photographs is of the lot of them lined up on a dock in their bright swimsuits in the early evening July light. 15 year old limbs and bravado everywhere. The confidence that the summer belonged to them and always would hung in the air. I remember that summer. Mountains of damp towels, sleeping in tangled combinations here and elsewhere. It was before they could drive.

But that is not this summer. Senior year is like a train barreling toward us on the tracks ahead. And he is being recruited for a college sport. There are three teams, one-on-one work outs with coaches, a trainer. And he is criss-crossing the country in a series of airplanes playing in “showcases”. He and his best friend have emptied their bank accounts and taken on investors to start a business: they are ice cream men. There are sober conversations between them across our kitchen island about insurance, routes, sources, and how to keep a circa 1979 U.S. Mail truck cum ice cream wagon on the road.

I wish someone had told me this last summer. I miss the damp towels.

Joy v. 08.19.12 : the long good bye begins

Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus), Michigan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I think about JOY a lot these days.  I have posted obliquely about the darkness that cloaked 2011 until I stopped looking for joy in life’s headlines and started looking for it places like well-made sandwiches or the late summer return of the sharp shinned hawk couple to the tree we spend the rest of the year worrying will take out the entire block in a wind storm. 2011 was one of those years that proves the second part of this statement: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”  (V. Lenin).  I finally concluded that “joy is in the footnotes” for my own mental health and immediately started looking more closely for it there. 

Now as our nest begins to empty, I look for joy in the everyday for different reasons.  In two weeks my youngest plunges into his senior year.  The long good bye begins.  He lives a good life – crowded with sport, his talents, loving friends, academics, a business, his opinions, dreams and us.  Less and less us, of course.  This summer his father and I have sat on the figurative front porch of his life (and the literal front porch of our home) waiting for drive-by’s.  And we love it.  Even as I miss the carpools, the down times on sidelines of practice fields around the region, long and lazy post-dinner conversations, crowds of boys around the PS-whatever in the basement – and ask my husband why we couldn’t have raised at least one mama’s boy – I know in my heart this is what we raised them to do: to leave, carrying their own portable nests.

Several years ago when one of my sisters-in-law faced the emptying of her own nest, she recommended The Gift of an Ordinary Day: a Mother’s Memoir   by Katrina Kenison, to me.  www.katrinakenison.com When Kenison faced her own sons’ flight from the family life they’d built and known and loved, she wrote about it. At the time I took the book as a reminder to enjoy the ordinary rhythms of our lives together and as a caution that they would too-soon change. I now appreciate the deeper meaning.

Yes, I am going to look forward to this boy ‘s last year at home.  We didn’t get a last year with our oldest son.  He left suddenly one day before he finished high school – loudly, viciously, prematurely with more emotion than plan.  We have been dealing with the backlash ever since.  To this mother, a long good bye sounds delicious. And I am going to find joy in the ordinary every single day.