I was talking with my Hita this morning. We have coffee via telephone about once a week. We were talking about how different and how hard it is to be parents at this stage of life. You don't have little kids anymore - you have these adults. And it's weird.
They are all independent and stuff. They don't have to listen to you or follow your rules anymore. You can't just say to them, "No! You aren't doing that. Why? Because I said so, that's why!"
They are OUT there, in the big, wide world living their own lives, making their own decisions and you HOPE that you have given them the tools they need to stand on their own, and do the right things. To make good decisions and be smart and be good and brush your teeth twice a day and don't spit in public and don't drink and drive and have safe sex and be careful and aware when you are out and don't drink too much and...well...the list goes on and on.
But when I think what I was up to and what I was doing at 16 or 20 or 24, I worry about "my kids". Because I have BEEN 16 and 20 and 24. And I know it may seem to some of you - the kids - that it was a loooooong time ago, I remember it like it was yesterday....
*cue the mist, the fade to black and the "Granny has a flashback" music*
Hita and I were 16. I had turned 16 in January and had the crappiest car - affectionately known as The Tank - in all of the Denver Metro Area. She was an ugly beast but she was mine. Hita had turned 16 about two weeks before the incident. It was spring break. It was 100% THIS time of year. RIGHT now. Only it was 1985, so our hair was big and the music was better.
Hita and I and Sidekick (the names are always changed to protect the guilty but you KNOW who YOU are) talked Sidekick's older brother into buying us booze. A fifth of Peppermint Schnapps. I'm not going to say that I didn't drink because I was driving, cuz I did - more's the pity - I sipped on that bottle 3-4 times...maybe 5-6. Hita and the Sidekick DRANK. Hita and Sidekick got DRUNK. I was a sober 16 year old girl in charge of two very DRUNK friends. And when that happens, there's no way things are going to end well. Sidekick was wandering down the dark street claiming she was going to walk home, whilst Hita was puking up Peppermint Schnapps all over the back floor of The Tank. And that is the gift that keeps on giving - candy canes have been out of the question ever since.
I got Sidekick home. (She was still ambulatory and for that, I have been forever grateful.) Safely into her own house. I got Hita out of the window well at my first husband's house. (which is an whole other story and I don't want to bore you with ALL the details) All I had to do was get her home. Only she'd passed out by the time we got to her house. I either had to carry her in or leave her in the yard. I was 16 but I knew that wasn't the right thing to do. I couldn't believe my luck! Her mom wasn't there! I had this idea that I would just put her in her bed and get the hell out of there. I had dragged her half way up the stairs when her mom (not so fortuitously) came through the door.
I can laugh now at what we must have looked like to her eyes but at the time NO ONE was laughing. She, quite understandably, turned into a dragon lady before my eyes. She yelled! She cursed! I jumped a foot and dropped my Hita. Thud-slouch-slitther-thud-thud back down the stairs. Still no laughing. Her mom screamed to get out of her house and I ran like a rabbit before she could get her hands on me!
When I was 20, I packed my bags and moved to Washington DC. Alexandria, VA to be precise but DC sounds cooler and seriously, it's all the same. I married my first husband. I'll call him Fred. Fred and I were in school together when we were 16. He moved back to CA with his family but we were best mates on the phone in the following years. Back when you had to PAY for long distance!
He had joined the Army and was stationed at Ft. Myer - in The Old Guard - Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Arlington National Cemetery, and all that - very prestigious. We hatched this plan to get married. I would live and work in DC and make my own life there. He would get to live off base and get a raise for being married. We'd be room mates and best mates; what could go wrong?! Hair brained but at the time, it all made perfect sense. I ended up staying there for...about four months. Then, in typical hair brained plan fashion, it didn't seem like such a great idea anymore and I shagged my ass back to CO.
When I was 21, I packed my bags and moved to Sacramento, CA. With a guy. We don't have to change his name, cuz he is loooong gone. CA was like a dream. I'd always wanted to live there! I was there about six months. I came back home with some life lessons, some stories to tell and the beginnings of a decade long drug addiction. Needless to say, I'd been up to no good.
When I was 24, I packed everything into a pickup and a VW Bug and moved to a wee town in Western CO. I had a better plan this time. I'd gotten a job with the BLM over the phone, rented an apartment sight unseen, in a town I'd never been to before in my life. Did I mention it was WEE? Population about 3,000 souls. One grocery store, two bars, 10 churches. It was like a setting in a book and I was the proverbial city mouse. A fish completely out of water! Still pretty hair brained but I came to love my life in Meeker. I became who I was meant to become in many ways. I'd been looking for my place in this world in big cities; I found it in the sticks. I loved my job. I loved my friends. I loved the area. I loved. Then I let that drug addiction take it all away. I fell back into my no good ways and I lost it all - the job, the friends, the place. I had to get out or go crazy, so once again...I went home. I did get to keep Bob. The one treasure amongst all that crap.
I've made so many bad decisions. For so long, every time I was faced with a choice, I chose badly. So when I look at "my kids", I see all the choices that are out there in this big, wide world. I see the traps that Satan has laid for them. I know how pretty and alluring those traps can be. I see CLEARLY how easy it is to slip and I know what it costs to swim amongst sharks. I see how I wasted so many years of my life; fighting against that slippery slope. I know what it feels like to live in the dark. To think of "my kids" - those bright and shining little beings, whom I have loved so well - making some of those same mistakes or falling into those same traps...well, it breaks my heart. It makes me cry.
It's hard to let go - to admit that they are adults who get to choose their own way. It's hard not to say, "LISTEN TO ME! THIS IS WHAT I KNOW!" Cuz they won't. They think what I thought at their age - "Old people, sheesh! I'm not stupid! Those things won't happen to ME! I'm smarter or faster or better than THEY were!" But you aren't. Trust me on this - YOU AREN'T. I'll tell you what else I know. There is no joy in any of it. Real joy comes from something completely different - from spirituality, from family, from nature, from love, from respect for and pride in yourself.
At this stage in the game, I have all this experience and know all this stuff and no one will listen. So, I pray a lot for my kids. All the time. They pop into my mind and I pray for them to be safe and protected, to be smart and wise, to be healthy and happy, to make wise decisions and build a brilliant future; to create today a past they can be proud of when they are 44 and looking back on their own lives. Not to waste ONE MOMENT of their precious time chasing empty things that will only bring them complications or pain or heartache.
And I pray for me. I ask for forgiveness; I ask for peace; and I give thanks for mercy and grace and second chances.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Pseudo-Spring is in the Air!
Another week has flown by and here I am again.
This week, I am held firmly in the grip of pseudo-spring.
I am so blessed to have grown up and to live in the Rocky Mountains. I can't think of a more dazzling or enchanting place to called home. This time of year is a heartache. We all buckle down to face the winter. Sure there are those people out snowmobiling, skiing and ice fishing, but I am not one of those. I gave a hearty try to the snowmobiling thing and it's just a LOT of work. It seems like it would just be point the skis in the right direction and go, but it isn't. There are all these hills to climb and drifts to get stuck in. Then you have to dig and haul that heavy machine back where it should be; in parkas, snow pants, scarves and ski masks. And fleece long johns, wool socks, knee high Sorrel boots, a t-shirt, sweatshirt, two pairs of gloves and earmuffs. It's a LOT of clothes and by the time you are done, you are sweating from the exertion...in 20 degree temps...with sweat cycles in your hair. Not to mention, sometime during the day, in the woods, in all those clothes, you are going to have to pee. Girls, you see where I'm going with this. There are also all these skills to hanging off the side of the machine so that it won't roll down a cliff that it turns out, I just don't have. Upon much soul searching and contemplation of a few of the downright terrifying cliffs I'd been facing, I gave it up. It seems a complete blasphemy to say that I grew up in Colorado and don't ski. I gave that a good try too - cuz it seemed like I should - I'm just no good! It was a no go on ice skating, too. So during the winter, I do what most rational, not-so-athletic people do. I hibernate. Just like a bear. I stay warm and cozy in my house, wearing sweaters and slippers. I curl up with good books and mugs full of hot beverages. I make homemade soups and breads. I organize my house and rearrange the furniture. I make things. I watch the snow fall out the window and love it. It's a grand life!
Now though...things they are achangin'. You can feel it in the air! It's MARCH! St. Patrick's Day is this weekend! That is a sure sign that spring is coming to my little corner of the Rockies. The wind blows differently. Warm and chilly at the same time. Ice and snow are melting rapidly, leaving behind what I not-so-affectionately call, "Mud Season". And on that warm-chill wind is a familiar scent - an old friend of mine - it's the smell of where the wild things are. It's sage and mold. It's trees thinking about budding. It's dirt roads and fishing holes unlocked from the ice. Things are on the move again.
Of course, it's only March. Hence, the pseudo-spring. It's not really time yet. If you went out into the hills right now, you'd find more snow and all that mud. You still can't go anywhere. And there WILL be more snow! But things in the house change. Fishing gear gets hauled out and mended; cleaned up and organized. The boat gets dragged out of storage and sent for an tune up. The camping gear gets washed, replenished and repacked. Because it is time to prepare for the REAL spring and that glorious Rocky Mountain Summer! Held ever more dear because it is so swiftly fleeting. Sweaters and slippers get swapped for shorts and wading boots. Mugs full of hot drink morph into lemonade and ice cold beer. No more soup and bread, this is the time of year to cook everything on or in a real fire. I will abandon my house and give myself up to living in the forest. Books will be read in hammocks on the river, by that mercurial, erratic shadow-sun light that filters down through the trees.
There is nothing like a Rocky Mountain summer! Even when I was very little kid, I knew summer meant mountains; rocks, trees, rivers, lakes, cool breezes and thin, crisp air. Most weekends in summer were spent exploring - Central City (in the 70's it was the BOMB!), Nederland, Georgetown Lake - my dad behind the wheel, singing "16 Tons", always edging over to where the windy, two-lane asphalt dropped steeply off into a canyon, causing my mother to freak out and us girls to squeal with laughter. It was trips to Mesa Verde, Glenwood, Gunnison, Steamboat and Telluride. It was horseback riding at Trapper's Lake and fishing the White River. It was wading and rock hounding and making sandwiches on picnic tables covered in bird poo. It was running for shelter from sudden summer storms and rodeos on wooden bleachers. It was picking and collecting leaves and flowers under cobalt blue skies. It was tents and campfires on obsidian nights full of a million stars. It means the exact same things now that I'm grown, although a few things have changed. I spend more time fishing and the place names read different - Virginia City, Philipsburg, Seely, Gardiner, Livingston, Rock Creek - and I still go to Georgetown Lake! The places that are magical to me - old friends that you visit once or twice a year. And always new places that I will not fail to recognize because I see them in my dreams.
This time of year is exciting to me! It's a physical and mental thrumming. Here come all the reasons I live in these sometimes horrendous western climes; my reward for lasting out another too-long, too far north winter. I need it like I need air. Thank you God, for placing me right where I NEED to be. For knowing just what my soul would always need and providing it in abundance. My whole life You have surrounded me with this slice of Your glorious creation. A gift, for which I am truly thankful.
Psalms 121:1 - "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help."
Bring on THE SPRING!
Western Skies - Chris LeDoux
(This video is not mine. The music is not mine. None of the photography is mine)
These photos ARE mine.
This week, I am held firmly in the grip of pseudo-spring.
I am so blessed to have grown up and to live in the Rocky Mountains. I can't think of a more dazzling or enchanting place to called home. This time of year is a heartache. We all buckle down to face the winter. Sure there are those people out snowmobiling, skiing and ice fishing, but I am not one of those. I gave a hearty try to the snowmobiling thing and it's just a LOT of work. It seems like it would just be point the skis in the right direction and go, but it isn't. There are all these hills to climb and drifts to get stuck in. Then you have to dig and haul that heavy machine back where it should be; in parkas, snow pants, scarves and ski masks. And fleece long johns, wool socks, knee high Sorrel boots, a t-shirt, sweatshirt, two pairs of gloves and earmuffs. It's a LOT of clothes and by the time you are done, you are sweating from the exertion...in 20 degree temps...with sweat cycles in your hair. Not to mention, sometime during the day, in the woods, in all those clothes, you are going to have to pee. Girls, you see where I'm going with this. There are also all these skills to hanging off the side of the machine so that it won't roll down a cliff that it turns out, I just don't have. Upon much soul searching and contemplation of a few of the downright terrifying cliffs I'd been facing, I gave it up. It seems a complete blasphemy to say that I grew up in Colorado and don't ski. I gave that a good try too - cuz it seemed like I should - I'm just no good! It was a no go on ice skating, too. So during the winter, I do what most rational, not-so-athletic people do. I hibernate. Just like a bear. I stay warm and cozy in my house, wearing sweaters and slippers. I curl up with good books and mugs full of hot beverages. I make homemade soups and breads. I organize my house and rearrange the furniture. I make things. I watch the snow fall out the window and love it. It's a grand life!
Now though...things they are achangin'. You can feel it in the air! It's MARCH! St. Patrick's Day is this weekend! That is a sure sign that spring is coming to my little corner of the Rockies. The wind blows differently. Warm and chilly at the same time. Ice and snow are melting rapidly, leaving behind what I not-so-affectionately call, "Mud Season". And on that warm-chill wind is a familiar scent - an old friend of mine - it's the smell of where the wild things are. It's sage and mold. It's trees thinking about budding. It's dirt roads and fishing holes unlocked from the ice. Things are on the move again.
Of course, it's only March. Hence, the pseudo-spring. It's not really time yet. If you went out into the hills right now, you'd find more snow and all that mud. You still can't go anywhere. And there WILL be more snow! But things in the house change. Fishing gear gets hauled out and mended; cleaned up and organized. The boat gets dragged out of storage and sent for an tune up. The camping gear gets washed, replenished and repacked. Because it is time to prepare for the REAL spring and that glorious Rocky Mountain Summer! Held ever more dear because it is so swiftly fleeting. Sweaters and slippers get swapped for shorts and wading boots. Mugs full of hot drink morph into lemonade and ice cold beer. No more soup and bread, this is the time of year to cook everything on or in a real fire. I will abandon my house and give myself up to living in the forest. Books will be read in hammocks on the river, by that mercurial, erratic shadow-sun light that filters down through the trees.
There is nothing like a Rocky Mountain summer! Even when I was very little kid, I knew summer meant mountains; rocks, trees, rivers, lakes, cool breezes and thin, crisp air. Most weekends in summer were spent exploring - Central City (in the 70's it was the BOMB!), Nederland, Georgetown Lake - my dad behind the wheel, singing "16 Tons", always edging over to where the windy, two-lane asphalt dropped steeply off into a canyon, causing my mother to freak out and us girls to squeal with laughter. It was trips to Mesa Verde, Glenwood, Gunnison, Steamboat and Telluride. It was horseback riding at Trapper's Lake and fishing the White River. It was wading and rock hounding and making sandwiches on picnic tables covered in bird poo. It was running for shelter from sudden summer storms and rodeos on wooden bleachers. It was picking and collecting leaves and flowers under cobalt blue skies. It was tents and campfires on obsidian nights full of a million stars. It means the exact same things now that I'm grown, although a few things have changed. I spend more time fishing and the place names read different - Virginia City, Philipsburg, Seely, Gardiner, Livingston, Rock Creek - and I still go to Georgetown Lake! The places that are magical to me - old friends that you visit once or twice a year. And always new places that I will not fail to recognize because I see them in my dreams.
This time of year is exciting to me! It's a physical and mental thrumming. Here come all the reasons I live in these sometimes horrendous western climes; my reward for lasting out another too-long, too far north winter. I need it like I need air. Thank you God, for placing me right where I NEED to be. For knowing just what my soul would always need and providing it in abundance. My whole life You have surrounded me with this slice of Your glorious creation. A gift, for which I am truly thankful.
Psalms 121:1 - "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help."
Bring on THE SPRING!
Western Skies - Chris LeDoux
(This video is not mine. The music is not mine. None of the photography is mine)
These photos ARE mine.
 |
| Me, my dad, my sister circa 1977-ish |
 |
| Me and Bob and Alice Dog 1994 |
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| Me, Bubbah, Dew Drop 2002 |
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| Bubbah and Dew Drop Racetrack |
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| Mina 2009 |
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| Mina's Fish 2011 |
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| Dew Drop & Newt 2012 |
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| Seymour Lake |
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| Rock Creek |
 |
| Fishing the Big Hole |
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| I'd tell you where, but then I'd have to kill you. |
Friday, March 8, 2013
My sisters and their kids
Today is March 8! That can mean only one thing in my heart and mind. The birthday of my nephew. We'll call him "Bubbah". Everyone HAS a Bubbah, right? I know right where I was standing and what I was doing on THIS day, twenty years ago. I was falling in love. Happy Birthday, my darling!
It has been with great delight that I have fallen in love with other people's kids over and over again. My own daughter, aka "Lil Dew Drop". My enchantment - whom I was fortunate enough to be able to choose for my child. I got me the BEST ONE. Plus, she's produced a son of her own who is the sun and stars in my sky They say grandchildren are our reward for not killing our children and they were right! But also children related to me by blood and a slew of 'em related to me by heart.
I have a sister - we'll call her "Maggot". You know, a sister of the "grew up with the same parents as you" variety. She is my best friend. The person I see every day and talk to on the phone all the time. She helps me keep my shish together when I'm sick and can't manage it all by myself. She's been changing my cat boxes for FIVE YEARS! Not many friends would do that just cuz they love you, but my Maggot will. She's the ONLY other person who truly understands how crazy my mother is! *Love ya, mom! XX* She has two great kids - Bubbah and Mina. It has been true love to watch them grow. I'm proud of 'em like they are my own. They are as familiar to me as my own.
I have a friend - Bean. We've been friends since we were NINE YEARS OLD. Like...best friends, talk all the time friends...for 36 years! She and I have spent at least 2 minutes together every New Year's Eve since we were 14. Everyone knows we are together at midnight. Bean is just GOOD. She does what she should because it's the right thing to do. She always has, even when we were kids. We grew up together, same as if we had grown up in the same house. We're sisters. Her kids have called me auntie all their lives - the first of their kind! It's been a privilege and an honor to be their Auntie.
My best friend is called Hita (cuz we've never known how to spell hijita). It's what her dad called her - and often me - and it means something like little girl or daughter. THIS girl is my heart. We've been best mates since we were 12. And ohhh...the shenanigans! If I was in trouble or having the best times of my life, the story is always going to start, "One time, me and Hita..." The girl makes me LAUGH. NO ONE - in my WHOLE long life - can make me laugh like my best friend. She is the mother of The Three B's. That gorgeous pack of wildcat girls who have made long to be young again at all stages of their lives. They have become my friends; in their own right and separate from their mama.
My NEW old friend, I've known for 20 years now. We'll call her Bob - only because she doesn't have a nickname and the names must always be changed to protect the guilty. *wink* She can read my mind. She and I find the same things beautiful. We could talk together until the end of time. We survived the war together. She's sweet and smart and pure light and energy to my soul. Her kids were wee when we first met. Between 4-7. It's been a gift to watch the three of them grow and to see what kind of brilliant young people they have become.
My joy in all my Sisters is to have watched them go from girls to teenagers, to mothers and now to grandmothers. Which is hard to believe, I don't care how old you get! They know everything about me. We have jokes between us that are 30 years old! Everything I have ever done or ever been - anything that has ever happened to me, good or bad - has been witnessed by the four of them. Shared, counseled, deemed a good idea or ridiculous horseshit and they were always there at the end to say, "I told you so" or pick up the pieces. Every battle of my life has been fought with one or all of them by my side. They are the walking, talking repository of my personal history and I am theirs. "And my memory is looong." I can't even imagine WHO in this life I would BE if I hadn't had them. What would be funny? What would have meaning? What would be important and what would be pure gimcrack and bunkum, if they hadn't been there whilst I was growing and leaning what had value and beauty in this life? At EVERY stage of my life! We share a long history. THIS is love - all it ever was and will be.
So when I say my sisters, I can mean any one of them because they are more than my friends. And when I say my kids, I'm drawing from a highly populated pool of love - even though most of my kids aren't kids anymore. This is what I know - not everyone is so privileged. Some will never know stronger, braver, kinder, more giving woman then the women that I call my sisters and friends. Some people can go a whole life and not be blessed with ONE and I've had FOUR. Women who have raised fine, beautiful, and enthralling kids whom I love.
“A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.”
― William Shakespeare
There isn't a more charmed or fortunate life than mine.
It has been with great delight that I have fallen in love with other people's kids over and over again. My own daughter, aka "Lil Dew Drop". My enchantment - whom I was fortunate enough to be able to choose for my child. I got me the BEST ONE. Plus, she's produced a son of her own who is the sun and stars in my sky They say grandchildren are our reward for not killing our children and they were right! But also children related to me by blood and a slew of 'em related to me by heart.
I have a sister - we'll call her "Maggot". You know, a sister of the "grew up with the same parents as you" variety. She is my best friend. The person I see every day and talk to on the phone all the time. She helps me keep my shish together when I'm sick and can't manage it all by myself. She's been changing my cat boxes for FIVE YEARS! Not many friends would do that just cuz they love you, but my Maggot will. She's the ONLY other person who truly understands how crazy my mother is! *Love ya, mom! XX* She has two great kids - Bubbah and Mina. It has been true love to watch them grow. I'm proud of 'em like they are my own. They are as familiar to me as my own.
I have a friend - Bean. We've been friends since we were NINE YEARS OLD. Like...best friends, talk all the time friends...for 36 years! She and I have spent at least 2 minutes together every New Year's Eve since we were 14. Everyone knows we are together at midnight. Bean is just GOOD. She does what she should because it's the right thing to do. She always has, even when we were kids. We grew up together, same as if we had grown up in the same house. We're sisters. Her kids have called me auntie all their lives - the first of their kind! It's been a privilege and an honor to be their Auntie.
My best friend is called Hita (cuz we've never known how to spell hijita). It's what her dad called her - and often me - and it means something like little girl or daughter. THIS girl is my heart. We've been best mates since we were 12. And ohhh...the shenanigans! If I was in trouble or having the best times of my life, the story is always going to start, "One time, me and Hita..." The girl makes me LAUGH. NO ONE - in my WHOLE long life - can make me laugh like my best friend. She is the mother of The Three B's. That gorgeous pack of wildcat girls who have made long to be young again at all stages of their lives. They have become my friends; in their own right and separate from their mama.
My NEW old friend, I've known for 20 years now. We'll call her Bob - only because she doesn't have a nickname and the names must always be changed to protect the guilty. *wink* She can read my mind. She and I find the same things beautiful. We could talk together until the end of time. We survived the war together. She's sweet and smart and pure light and energy to my soul. Her kids were wee when we first met. Between 4-7. It's been a gift to watch the three of them grow and to see what kind of brilliant young people they have become.
My joy in all my Sisters is to have watched them go from girls to teenagers, to mothers and now to grandmothers. Which is hard to believe, I don't care how old you get! They know everything about me. We have jokes between us that are 30 years old! Everything I have ever done or ever been - anything that has ever happened to me, good or bad - has been witnessed by the four of them. Shared, counseled, deemed a good idea or ridiculous horseshit and they were always there at the end to say, "I told you so" or pick up the pieces. Every battle of my life has been fought with one or all of them by my side. They are the walking, talking repository of my personal history and I am theirs. "And my memory is looong." I can't even imagine WHO in this life I would BE if I hadn't had them. What would be funny? What would have meaning? What would be important and what would be pure gimcrack and bunkum, if they hadn't been there whilst I was growing and leaning what had value and beauty in this life? At EVERY stage of my life! We share a long history. THIS is love - all it ever was and will be.
So when I say my sisters, I can mean any one of them because they are more than my friends. And when I say my kids, I'm drawing from a highly populated pool of love - even though most of my kids aren't kids anymore. This is what I know - not everyone is so privileged. Some will never know stronger, braver, kinder, more giving woman then the women that I call my sisters and friends. Some people can go a whole life and not be blessed with ONE and I've had FOUR. Women who have raised fine, beautiful, and enthralling kids whom I love.
“A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.”
― William Shakespeare
There isn't a more charmed or fortunate life than mine.
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