Spring Celebrations

 April is a joyful month around here. Not only are the spring bulbs bursting into color and the flowering trees showering the ground with pale petals and filling the air with sweet fragrances, but our table is laden with good things to eat as we celebrate Easter and birthdays, and our days are full of happy conversations and sunny walks ... or starry at night ...or gray and rainy, as is also often the case!

After our celebration of Easter with the family, so much closer now that visiting isn't an "Event" but a get-together, we celebrated my daughter's and my husband's birthdays with the neighbors who have 2 April birthdays in their house, too.  They like to joke that April is the best birthday month, and it is true that many people I love are born in April. But I also love my February, March, May, June, July, and September birthday havers. And those born in October, November and December.  I believe the month of January and August are also awesome months for birthdays, because I know a couple wonderful people born in those months, also.

This year our birthday celebrations were understated since they fell so close to Easter.  The week after Easter was also Spring Break. My daughter decided against having a party since so many friends were going to be on vacation. We stayed an extra day at my parents' farm to spend time with the cousins and niece/grandbaby. Tuesday  we both got our hair cut at the salon, which was a treat, but Wednesday, her actual birthday, was pretty quiet and dull. We took a long walk, and her brother came over for dinner and to eat eclair dessert, a family favorite made with Cool Whip and pudding mix, graham crackers, and a chocolate frosting. It's best made a day ahead, and fortunately we had time to let the pudding mix soften the graham crackers. But she was little glum on her birthday - getting sweet notes and cards from her friends in Texas may have amplified her sadness rather than alleviated it because she was reminded of how much she missed them.  She has made some friends at her new school, but friendship that is kinship takes more time. 

Although Wednesday was a dull day, we made up for it on Thursday. I had hemmed and hawed about what to do for this 12th birthday, since she didn't want a party. A trip to Chicago for museums and shopping had been on my mind as an activity for spring break, but I ended up committing to adding a special event to make the trip even more special - last minute tickets to Hamilton. So the birthday celebration was a triple treat: We took the train to and from Chicago to visit, by her request, the Shedd Aquarium, to shop at the American Girl store, and to take in Hamilton.  

The trip and the show were phenomenal! We already loved the story and music from having watched the PBS version.  But the live performance, even without the original Broadway cast, was transporting. l could hardly tell a difference! Of course, I'm no expert, and there is a part of me that thinks perhaps there SHOULD be a difference.  To be fair, all the actors were incredibly talented, and the actors who portrayed George Washington and Angelica Skylar especially stood out because they had their own sound. The actor who played Hamilton injected some different energy and didn't sound exactly like Lin-Manuel Miranda, but it is a bit uncanny how similar Elizabeth Skylar and King George and Lafayette were to the original cast.  Regardless, the production is genius.  The lyrics blow me away every time, and even though I feel a catch in my throat hearing "Quiet Uptown" on the radio, hearing it in person brought on the tears. 

That was the highlight of spring break, for sure.  Since our return train didn't pull into the South Bend station until 2:30 am, Friday was a lazy sleep-in + errands day.  LK had horse back riding lessons and a play date on Saturday, and then we celebrated April birthdays with the neighbors on Sunday, which was a lot of fun.  Their son just turned 4, so our contribution to the dinner was a dump truck cake - a frosted cake shaped like a truck dumping fruit out of the back.  Then Monday was my husband's birthday, which we celebrated again with more treats - cheesecake this time - and a tenderloin dinner with our son. A part of me wished I had planned a little better for our time off, but we ended up making some lifetime memories. 

Train travel is my favorite! Love watching the landscape from the window.

Chicago!

At the Shedd Aquarium

Starfish touch tank. Visiting the aquarium brought back so many memories of our life in Guam.

The belugas are the highlight of the Shedd

Mother and baby beluga

Along the lakeshore - not quite warm enough yet for the trees to burst into bloom, but warm enough for short sleeves!

Another portrait in the Bean at Millennium park

Which doll do you like best?

Walking by Italian Village, scene of one of our early fancy dinner dates.

Show time!

Fancy ice cream after the show

Behind the dinosaur museum is a prairie conservation nature preserve, complete with a herd of bison.

The nature preserve is along the continental divide. South Bend doesn't have much elevation - this is one of the highest spots.

At the dinosaur museum

A tall 12 year old!

Snapshots of life and the music of Purgatory

 As with all things, the sun rises, the sun sets, disappointments fade, and we move on to the next thing.  This week started with some difficult conversations, but ended with a delightful visit from our granddaughter and a celebration of our oldest son's birthday.  He has reached the age where I'm a little astounded to say that I have a son who is 29. Since people here know me as the mother of an 11 year old, I sometimes want to pull out a family photo and say, "Look, there are others!" 

Our celebration was a little muted because of the terrible flu going around. Our daughter-in-law ended up staying home with it, and the dinner party we'd planned was smaller both because of flu and because some of their friends had week-old twins a little earlier than expected.  The dad came by to say happy birthday. I ordered them a copy of Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers and Seven Silly Eaters by Mary Ann Hoberman, since they have a two and a four year old at home. 

How many different lives do we live? Each day a new birthing and dying. 

On the other end, another friend has lost a parent.  This is the season we are in now - losing parents, gaining grandchildren.  We are in the midst of planning visits to our own parents in the next month or so.  

Sunday afternoon, I drove a couple hours south to meet up with my high school track coach and one of the runners from my club track team that I still keep in touch with. It was a great visit reliving glory days, and although it meant a lot of time in the car, it reminded me of how wonderful it is to stay connected with these friends from the past.  My track coach was a middle school history teacher and then a high school botany teacher and coached for decades. Although now in his 80s, he still talks about continuing to coach, but it is probably wishful thinking. His wife died not long ago and her care required all of his time and attention for several years. He remembers an astounding amount of detail about the past. His comments about wanting to coach reminded me of the need to have purpose and meaning even in your ninth decade.

These days I run rarely in between aches and pains in my feet and knees, although I've made it to the gym more often. For Lent, I've been trying to be on time and to be considerate of my husband by going to bed earlier. Although I have regularly fallen short in this practice, I have noticed that going to bed early results in better sleep as all the studies say. 

Since I'm not reading anything too exciting right now, this is easier to do. For my book club, we are reading Dante's Purgatorio, which is timely for Lent. What sin, what disordered love, keeps me from Paradise? So many! Those suffering from accedia and from pride are the two that seem most familiar. I've enjoyed revisiting Dante again after many years, through the Mark Musa translation (although I tried listening to a Librivox recording of the Longfellow translation on Sunday during my drive - hard to stay attentive to!) I've noticed more strikingly this time, the curious lack of references to Christ but the abudance of reference to myths and artistic representations of people of virtue, as well as the references to songs as the souls progress.  I looked up a few:

When the souls reach the gates of Purgatory they sing the "Te Deum":

And the prideful sing Beati paupere:

While some of the souls blind to the gospel hear Lucis ante:

Summae Deus clementiae is the hymn of the lustful, which I couldn't find, but here is Beati mundo corde - Blessed are the pure of heart - another verse they sing:

And just as Virgil departs, the souls sing Venite benedicti Patris mei, in the 27th canto as they leave the circle of the lustful.

I'll close with that, although perhaps I should draw the connection between the purgations of Lent, and opportunities to offer up the illness and aging in this world for forgiveness in the next. I hope to make more notes on reading Dante at some point. 

Turning 50 and celebrating 27 years of marriage

Happy Birthday to me! And Happy Anniversary to us!

Last week, I crossed the half century mark.  This feels much more momentous than turning 40.  I thought I wrote a bucket list on this blog about turning 40, but I can't find it just now - I didn't label it birthdays and I didn't write it in April, May or June 2013, around the time I would have turned 40. So I don't know if I did those things I thought I might do - I didn't run another marathon or do more writing. However, looking for it reminded me of those blessed years in Guam. What an experience! I know I complained about the hardships, but I am so, so thankful we said yes to those orders despite the fear.

(Thought: Would I feel the same way if I said yes to the job offer? Saying yes is usually more rewarding than saying no - I have never been good at saying no, and I usually look a little askance at articles that encourage nay saying.)

Side note: Those posts also reminded me to share the request for prayers for the island of Guam after it was walloped by a typhoon earlier this week. Thanks be, there were no deaths, but the destruction was overwhelming.  It will take years to recover. 

And yet, no doubt Guam will recover.  It is truly a testimony to the human spirit that so human beings have lived for so long on islands where natural disasters occur at regular intervals. ***

To celebrate our midcentury birthdays, a couple friends and I met up in Nashville this past weekend.  We picked Nashville as a central location and because it has a reputation for being a fun place to visit - we had a great visit with each other, but downtown Nashville caters to drunken bridal parties, drunken birthday parties, and drunken partiers. No wonder my young adult children teased me for going to Nashville for a "Girls' weekend." Opportunities for drinking abound, but we are not those kind of girls. We had to hunt to find places for a quiet dinner with delicious food near our hotel where we didn't have to shout at each other.  Our days were more pleasant: we visited book stores, strolled through Centennial park and the Parthenon and the campus of Vanderbilt, went for a long hike on the outskirts of town, and visited the convent where my cousin the Nashville Dominican lives. Not your traditional girls' weekend itinerary. We did, admittedly, visit a winery on the grounds of what was a plantation - we strolled the grounds and tasted wine and spent about 3 hours over lunch. It was a beautiful day. 

Had we done any research, we probably would have realized we weren't Nashville's typical tourists, but we all were busy, and it's hard to get a feel for a place without actually being there. 

This is the first time I've done anything like this with friends. Something new every decade! I can't come up with a bucket list right now, but I hope it includes more time with adult children, family, and with friends and finding a place to finally settle down where those adult kids and friends and family want to come to visit.

To celebrate our anniversary, we are talking about going out to eat and then dancing at the Broken Spoke, the two stepping place that is family friendly.  But we also had the neighbors over last night to celebrate our neighbor's bday - also 50 - and we visited a lot later than I expected, so we'll see if we have the energy when 7 pm rolls around.  We haven't done much entertaining this spring, so socializing has been a treat.  I feel like I've read a few articles and/or book reviews lately about entertaining. It certainly was a lot easier in our old neighborhood where we could walk a block or two to a friends' house to visit, and we belonged to groups that socialized - work, book club, parish groups, etc.  It's harder in the suburbs both to join those kinds of groups and to socialize. There has been one work event in two years - a reception for an artist doing a project on campus - although we talked about hosting a Christmas party, but never pulled it off. I think people would be relish the opportunity to connect outside of work, at least based on what these recent columns have written. 

I feel I should set some goals or review some memories to mark these events - twenty-seven years of marriage is not a milestone, but it is something to celebrate. Marriage in some ways has gotten easier over the years - we know each other pretty well, we share a lot of wonderful memories, we trust each other even more implicitly than we did before. But there are still challenges we are learning to navigate in this season of life - those challenges are still often about parenting and our relationships with adult children.  We struggle to find time to have meaningful conversations, not just listing to-do items or recounting the day's agenda, and sometimes those conversations are difficult when they are about the future. We still grate on each other over issues we've rarely agreed about - frequently money: how much money to spend and how much to save. But at least we know I'll be the frugal voice and he'll be the enjoy life voice. And often we meet in the middle.  I know my indecisiveness and anxiety can drive him crazy, and our sleep habits still don't often align - I'm still a night owl while he still gets up early. So we both could use more sleep. 

But we both also appreciate each other more. We both are thankful for this life we've built, even if it looks nothing like we imagined, as the cliches suggest.  Being comfortable with each other is a great gift that I didn't realize I would value so much.  And I imagine that comfort with each other will continuue to ripen into a richer relationship as the years roll on. 

And that also goes for these relationships with my college friends. We picked up right where we were last - a short visit a couple years ago when we first decided we needed more time, a whole weekend, to spend together revisiting the happy days of the past, sharing current struggles, being grateful for our friendships and marriages and children, and looking forward to what's to come and how to make the most of life. 

This is all very sentimental - birthdays and anniversaries can bring that on. So here's to many more!

Birthdays and blessings

 This week the kids have been home from school three days in a row because of an ice storm. All over the community, trees are down, and power is out. The kids won't go back to school again tomorrow because of power outages and road hazards, even though the rain is over and the temps are warming.  The ice did quite a bit of damage to trees and power lines.  I'm pretty sure some of my landscaping plants won't recover. Goodbye, lavender and rosemary! Goodbye, salvia and Sago palm! And good-bye to some rather large branches from our spreading live oak tree in the front yard.

Today was our first day to venture out after two cozy days in relaxing in our pajamas most of the day. At noon youngest and I went to Mass for the Feast of the Presentation - forgot to bring candles. Then we stopped at the grocery store and picked up a birthday present for her friend.

The days off of school were welcome opportunites to spend time together, and the second day happened to be our third son's 23rd birthday. His gifts were not exciting, but we had a delicious Italian dinner to celebrate. He is the one who spent the summer with the Benedictine nuns in the Pacific Northwest, and then decided not to go to Spain and teach English and live on peanuts. He's still looking for full time work, although he did have a seasonal part time gig. I love having him home because he likes to experiment in the kitchen and helps with errands. Yesterday he made bread and butter (by overwhipping whipping cream), and concocted a ragu sauce with roasted tomatoes and peppers that simmered all day into deliciousness. 

When I was looking through pictures for some baby photos for the yearly birthday social media post, I was reminded of how much I used to do with the kids - there were the fancy birthday cakes (for example, a cake shaped like a guinea pig for the 23 yr old's 7th birthday, when his present was his first guinea pig. Actually, we just bought him the cage; we made him save up for the purchase, which we told him was $100 to postpone buying the rodent. The party was taking him and 4 or 5 of his friends to the fun pet store that had all kinds of animals that customers were allowed to pet, like a large tortoise and a parakeet room, The kids think they had small monkeys, but I think this must be wrong. Probably sugar gliders? Although there was a pet shop in Norfolk that sold wolf hybrid puppies behind the counter...) We also did things to celebrate the liturgical year - All Saints day costumes, special dinners for the kids' patron saints days, crepes for Candlemas, throats blessed on the Feast of St. Blaise, which we always thought would be a cool name for a boy, but too cool for us. 

Of course, it is natural that as the kids have grown up, we set aside some of these traditions, although I am sad for our youngest that she didn't experience them, and the older kids seemed to have forgotten - I myself had forgotten many of the memories captured in these photos. A good reminder that I need to print some more photos from the last eight years! 

I have been grateful, though, for the days at home with my two girls who got to stay home from school and with the 23 yr old.  We made crepes today for Candlemas and enjoyed the left over eclair dessert that served as a birthday cake and made bracelets and Valentines and walked around the neighborhood to look at the ice damage and pretend for awhile that we live in a crystal palace. Tonight the ice is almost gone - melted away by warming temperatures, although the sun is still in hiding. 

We also read and loved Kate DiCamillo's Beatryce Prophecy, the story of a young girl in a long ago and far away place who is destined to unseat the king and cause great changes in the kingdom. With the help of a vision impaired monk, an orphan boy, a demon goat, and a mad runaway king, she makes her way to the palace to right wrongs and fulfill the prophecy. It was a fun book to read aloud while wrapped in blankets on the couch with tea and cocoa.  My reading has been spotty lately, mostly books for class, although I have to reread the Odyssey for a training at the community college where I am teaching one day a week in hopes of getting a humanities class next fall, although I'm still not sure if I should seek out some other career rather than continue adjunct teaching for little pay and irregular hours.  At any rate, all I seem to be able to finish are books for young people - this book, the March books about John Lewis, the book for book club West with Giraffes, a book about the cross country travel of a pair of giraffes destined for the San Diego Zoo and the young man who drives them, which is in the adult section but seemed appropriate and of interest to middle grade readers.

Time for bed now before the day is officially over. More time to catch up on life tomorrow. 

A day of mourning

My day started out well. It's my 49th birthday. What a strange and unlikely thing! I don't feel a day over, oh, maybe 33 -- other than the persistent pain in my feet and the fact that I don't recognize myself in the mirror or photographs sometimes. Who is that person with gray hair and wrinkles? I remember feeling quite sad to leave my thirties behind when I was turning 40. I feel equally sorry to not be 40 something for much longer, but the difference between 40 something and 50 something seems much smaller that between 30 something and 40 something. A 30 year old could still be considered young. I am decidedly middle aged, if not on the edge of old. 

The morning began with gifts and a walk with friends and my daughter during which we talked about what to do with the gift of another year of life? 

My daughter, who is my walking partner once again now that she is home from college, thinks I should try to run another marathon since I did one in my 20s and one in my 30s.  I would like to do more writing, I say every year.  I also say every year that I would like to organize photos and make photo books.  I'd like to make another trip to CA, a trip to NC and to MI to see cousins, and a trip to Boston to see our second son and then a little jaunt up to Maine to meet his girlfriend's parents. I'd like to go backpacking again. 

I have no shortage of things I'd like to do. And I feel blessed that I will get to do many of those things, unlike the 19 children and their teacher who died today, or the 13 who were murdered last week in New York.  I didn't hear the news about today's tragedy until midday, but once I became aware of the catastrophe, the celebratory nature of the day was over. I can't even imagine the mourning that must be happening in Uvalde, a town that is only three hours away. Our 15 year old came home from school nervous. She saw some statistic that there have been 27 school shootings in 2022. That's a number that is difficult to fathom, impossible to explain. Far too many people who won't have the opportunity to celebrate the gift of another year or life. 

The death of child is tragic; the death of multiple children is unconscionable. May God welcome them to Heaven, console their families, have mercy on all, and send healing to the broken hearted everywhere.

One last time

That last post was kind of dreary and anxious, don't you think? Time for happier memories - Fall is perfect for nostalgia. October has arrived with cool evening breezes. We have all the windows open - partly to enjoy those breezes, and partly because I almost burned the house down, and we need to air it out. I left a pan of dry chickpeas boiling on the stove when I took the youngest and her friend to the park. I meant to just bring them to a boil, then turn off the burner and let them soak until dinner time, when I planned to make the panfried curry chickpeas recipe my son made up. Happily, the girls had a wonderful time at the park and played over an hour. Unhappily, my beans were boiling and burning all that time. We returned to a smoking house. Billows of smoke poured forth when I opened the front door.  I removed the charred pan from the stove and took it outside then opened up every window that raised - the scorched pot and charred peas are still sitting out back perhaps tempting racoons and other vermin. After six hours of open windows and high level fans blowing, the house stills smells like old campfire. I may have to wash curtains tomorrow.

Rather than dwell on that misfortune, here are a few more photos from our last month in Coronado. I've got one more batch to share from Dan's change of command/retirement ceremony, before I fast forward to the present again, whenever that might be.

First up: July birthdays, family bdays and country bdays

Our oldest girl turned 19 on the 3rd. Loved having her home for her freshman year of college, even though we are sorry she missed out on that experience. 

She is the party!

Ready for the Fourth of July parade. 

Here come the classic cars

Classic colors on the curb

Bagpipers piping by

Best treats to eat on the Fourth of July

Ready for more fireworks and fun!

Another birthday party

Had to fit in a few last surfing trips at the beach. They did, not me.

Getting glam for something.

A quick trip to a nature center

Another birthday! Fifth son turns 17! His gifts were mostly edible - +cash. What every teenage boy really wants, and what makes sense when you are getting ready to move in a couple weeks.

And just before our time in California expired, I finally was able to visit with blogging friend Gretchen! For years, we've talked online about visiting. We nearly made a visit to her a few years ago when we went north, but we didn't quite get far enough north. Sometimes the imperative of time running out is needed to make these things happen. So thankful we had a time for tea and to meet in person. Our visit could have lasted much longer, and I hope our paths cross again! 

More birthday scenes - a cakeball cake

The last birthday celebration on F Avenue

And then the cousins arrived!

Time for a few last games at the park - family competitions can get heated

Cloudy skies did not prevent beach time.

A last portraits of our home for six years. We never meant to stay this long, but we are so grateful we did. 

And a last glimpse of the front walk