Choices

As promised, photos of graduation! This son has accepted a job in Boston.  He had two good offers and agonized over which to choose, and finally picked one.  They were equally good opportunities. After stressing over getting any offers, he was happy to have choices.

I'm grateful beyond measure that we have another one off to a good start to adulthood.

Meanwhile I am having buyer's regret over our decision to move to Texas. This second-guessing happens to me frequently, and I keep telling myself we are making a fine decision; everything will be fine. We will be able to buy a house and send our kids to Catholic schools. We'll be closer to family. It's a great job for my husband.

But now that we've made this decision, I feel like I wasn't fully considering how easy it is to live here. Suddenly, the sun seems brighter, the people seem friendlier, our friends are closer, biking to the library and school seems even more delightful, the parks are more joyful, the school seems better, and it seems crazy to move a rising senior in high school.  I love my job and my friends and my kids' friends. I love being near the ocean and the commissary. We are close to where two of our older kids have landed.  And we are so close to the mountains! I love that the kids walk to school and bike to the beach and get ice cream on Orange Avenue. It is a charmed life. 

I think I have place attachment disorder. For years, I fed myself a narrative of "This is a temporary home, so I better not acknowledge what is great about it." And I said over and over that I didn't want to stay here forever. I let myself be irritated by tourists and traffic and the quirks of our rental home instead of fully enjoying the easy way of life.  Now I am questioning whether we could have figured out a way to make it affordable to stay here. What is worth spending money on? Should we have tried to find a two bedroom condo to buy for $1.5 million? (The only thing less than $1million for sale right now is a 1 BR condo on the corner of the two busiest streets on the island, and it's $900,000.) Should we have continued to rent? Taken a contractor job for three more years to get the kids through high school? 

I have another Navy friend who said she thinks she has moving PTSD. There must be some name for the condition. Moving when I was seven was a life marking event. I felt new for a long time. I am beginning to feel too old for starting over and recreating myself again. I wonder if I will ever feel settled. I always miss the last place more than the one before- so the next place should be better! But I don’t love it till I’m leaving. I’m afraid I am the kind of person who makes a hell of Heaven rather than a Heaven of hell, even though I desire to be the opposite. 

Perhaps if we were going somewhere like the mountains of middle America - the Rockies, or east to the Shenandoah, the Ozarks, the Smokies, the Appalachians, - or one of the small, college towns I made up in my imagination, I would feel more settled in our decision. But I fear that we are trading down.

Fear is the operational word. I fear for the kids, I fear starting over, not finding a niche, having to drive everywhere.  I fear not finding a house - the market is crazy and the houses are not our style. I fear the heat! I fear missing out on everything here. It was fear of not finding another job that made me agree that this was the way to go. What I need to do is find things to look forward to.

The high schoolers aren't really crying about it. They seem to have accepted it.  Last night at the track banquet, I almost cried because the coach said about three times to Claire, "Are you sure you have to go?"  But she smiled and laughed. She's written nice essays for the two schools we are trying to decide between. Our older son is sending his football highlights video to coaches at these two schools that we can't decide between.  The youngest child is the one who seems the most sad to go.  She has cried several nights in a row. She does have a dramatic flair, and she has never had to move, so there's that. But she also has wonderful little friends and a fairy tale house and a great park and library. She keeps saying she wants to come back for her first communion. I think we have to make that happen. Or maybe her second or third.

For now I've got to step forward and keep moving.  In ONE WEEK our oldest son will be getting married! This date seemed so far away for so long, and now we are starting to pack. How have I been caught off guard? Can I list the to-do items?  I have to decide between 5 dresses, I don't have shoes yet, and I have to hem the girls' dresses and boys' pants. I also don't have a gift or a card, but I think we are giving them furniture. I've got to stop wallowing in self pity and move forward to help them have a wonderful, memorable, love-filled day. So writing this is my way of tabling these emotions for a couple weeks. 

My husband is a saint for putting up with me. Did I mention we just celebrated our 25th anniversary?  With everything else going on, we just got Thai food at the restaurant down the street. He gave me silver earrings and a ring from the local jeweler, and I gave him a print by a local artist. We're planning to celebrate with a trip at some point, (maybe we'll come back here!) but for now I'm grateful that he puts up with my mood swings and indecision and anxiety.  Many thanks to the Lord for getting us this far!

Celebrations

May has been a flurry of activities and hard decisions. With most of our area vaccinated, and most of our family, life is almost back to its normal pace. My husband and I and the older kids have all had our shots. The two youngest girls are 1. not eligible, and 2. I admit I have some hesitancy about the teen getting it because of the information I have read - and experienced - with cycle irregularities post-vaccine. It's probably nothing to worry about, but I feel it is something that should be studied some more - in many different scenarios, not just with shots. All kinds of medical studies don't look at this variable. That said, in time, continued studies will most likely reemphasize that the covid vaccine is safe, and the girls will get caught up.

So what have we been up to? At the beginning of the month, the library had a chalk walk in conjunction with a belated Earth Day celebration. We chalked birds and flowers - not the ones shown; those were by high school art students. The school shared chalk pastels, which provided more vivid colors and thicker coverage to create beautiful works of art by the high schoolers. 

We've also been going to basketball games and track meets. Football ended after they played five games and won the league game. Basketball had about 10 games, and league play begins next week. This was our son's first season ever to play because he used to play rugby in the winter. He wasn't getting much playing time in the beginning of the season and wanted to quit, but by the end, he was playing most of the games. At the banquet the coach gave him some nice compliments. The experience was a good example of how perseverance pays off. Meanwhile, the league meet for track was today after four meets, and our freshman daughter qualified for the next level of competition. She shows real promise in the 400m and in the 300m hurdles. So does our son - he doubled up and ran at a couple meets, but scratched from the league meet because tonight was prom. I wanted him to choose track, because he likely would have qualified but he wasn't interested. I didn't push the lesson in perseverance this time. So the seasons were short and sweet, but at least the kids got to do something. I found it funny that the players had to wear masks on the sidelines, but while competing, they didn't have to, even though in one scenario they are spaced out sitting, and in the other they are breathing on and touching each other. But weekly testing has prevented anyone from spreading Covid  - if the tests are correct.

I am back in the classroom, as of the end of April, teaching Nature Writing. It's nice to be back, but I have a very small class - just 10 students, and some of them chose the online modality, so I have a "near-far" classroom. Unfortunately, 3 of my 10 students are failing. I don't know what is going on - they just don't turn in assignments, even though they come to class. Last term, my online students didn't seem to struggle as much to get their work turned in. Maybe students are just overwhelmed with the end of school and being back in person. Or maybe the weight of this year is catching up, and their coping methods seem to be crashing down. These students are truly suffering. 

We've also traveled again - this time to the college graduation of our second son. He had a rough spring finishing his fifth year architecture final project. It's a major undertaking. He designed a school for traditional building arts - stonemasonry, brick work, wrought ironwork, woodcarving, etc. He even went to visit a similar such school in Charleston back in January to get more information about what such a school would entail. Then he had to present the final project a couple weeks ago on Zoom. And at the same time, he was still job searching. As of yesterday, he has gainful employment at a high end residential architectural firm in Boston. 

Job decisions were the highlight of the month. After months of interviewing, my husband has finally decided to take a job with the University of Texas in their facilities department. This was a tough decision.  A lot of sleep was lost, wrinkles and gray hairs gained. Even after making pro/con lists, praying, and talking, I still feel a bit unsettled. It's a wonderful job for him, but Texas was not at the top of my list for retirement destinations. I feel like I have no real agency in life sometimes. I'll likely love it eventually - just as I do this place. Familiarity breeds affection, But after being back in the Midwest last weekend for the graduation, I was reminded of how much I miss thick green trees, thick green grass, thick green shrubbery, and lots of flowers. I am also more than a little sad to leave California, even though my heart has never felt quite at home here. We have wonderful, wonderful friends here, a great parish, a dream lifestyle, the ocean a mile away. I love the school where I teach, and I love my classes.  And there's the weather. Why are we leaving again?

I have to keep reminding myself that California was never going to be our forever home.  We don't have much family out here, although our friends are like family.  Although there were some job options to stay here, they weren't quite the right fit, nor were there many, if any, options elsewhere. And the median home price is $815,000 here. Texas is closer to our family in the southwest.  The job is great. The schools look good. But I'm in mourning. Zillow is depressing. I'm worried about the kids, although they've always done just fine. This is the first move the seven year old will remember, since she was only one when we moved here, and she has a passel of really sweet friends to say good-bye to.  After an initial burst of excitement, I'm suffering from cold feet. I'm sure we'll find a great community there, but right now I'm driving my husband crazy with my wavering and "what ifs." Moving isn't easy.  And I need to keep up with my sleep, and stop trolling Zillow because that's one of the sources of my anxiety.  

I hate to end with a glum note, but I need to log off. I'll share some happier photos later. I had a birthday! We have family coming for the holiday weekend! Our son's wedding is just three weeks away! And I still don't have a dress...

Science fair taste test

Basketball competitions

Baby raven in need of rescue at the park. I'm pretty sure it perished after the elementary kids came out for recess and poked at it.

Two of these three are now graduated from the place where this photo was taken. The third will finish next year. 

Mother's Day flowers

May crowning with Little Flowers

Track Queen

Off to graduation! I need to add more photos to my google drive of that event - so I'll come back and post more later.

Poetry Month

The month is almost over, but I thought I would give a nod to National Poetry Month with a few poems from my class. Yesterday we talked about Wordsworth, Blake, Shelley, and Coleridge - no time for Keats and Byron, and Shelley got short shrift - just a quick discussion of "Ozymandias" as an example of Nature's power and permanence. (One of the themes of the day is "Nature's constancy in inconstancy.") Here are the others I assigned:  

William Blake, "The Lamb ," "The Tyger ," "The Fly," "The Sick Rose"
William Wordsworth "The World is too Much with Us ," "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," "Composed on Westminster Bridge ," "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner "

I've switched up the poems by Wordsworth in the past - sometimes skipping Tintern Abbey and instead reading "The Lesser Celandine" because we have a selection in our Norton anthology from his sister Dorothy Wordsworth's journals in which she mentions that he is working on a poem about that flower. I also have assigned "A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal" about being rolled around with rocks, and stones and trees," but it's depressing, and points to a different theme, although certainly it's about impermanence. 

Next week we'll read some Emerson ("Nature"), Emily Dickinson, "A Bird, came down the Walk," "A SERVICE OF SONG,""There is no Frigate like a Book," "A narrow Fellow in the Grass," "THE SECRET," "I Taste a Liquor"

Walt Whitman, "Facing West from California's Shores," "When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer," "Kosmos," " On the Beach at Night Alone," and Thoreau "Walking," and 3 chapters from Walden (I was assigning the whole book, but hardly anyone read it).  Then we turn to Gerard Manley Hopkins briefly:  "Pied Beauty," "The Windhover," "As Kingfishers Catch Fire," "God's  Grandeur." I meant to also assign "Spring and Fall," but left it off because it is more anthropocentric than ecocentric, arguably perhaps. It is a beautiful poem, though, and sometimes I'm tempted to croon "Margaret, are you grieving over Goldengrove unleaving? Leaves like the things of man, you with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?" to my own kids. It's strange and mournful, great for annoying teenagers when they are acting gloomy. 

Later in the term we will read Mary Oliver, everyone's favorite (sometimes I wish she weren't so popular because it feels trendy to read her poems, even though I enjoy reading them - just finished from the library her collection Blue Horses), Wendell Berry, W. S. Merwin, and Camille Dungy, whose poetry I was introduced to when she became poetry editor for Orion. Her "First Fire" is a good one for students (and teachers) in California wildfire zones. But my favorite is "What to Eat, What to Drink, and What to Leave for Poison." The title suggests a more ominous or foreboding tone, but the poem is a song of spring and full of delight - delight that I'm afraid strikes more at my heart's core full of homesickness for daffodils and crabapple trees than it resonates with my local students who don't know harsh winters followed by glorious springs. 

While reading an essay about minorities in the nature writing genre, I came across Tupac Shakur's "The Rose that Grew from Concrete." If I were better at popular culture, I would have known about this song and his album by the same name, and if I ever knew, I had forgotten. For some reason it reminds me of "To see a world in a grain of sand, and Heaven in a wildflower" by Blake - or maybe a similar poem? At any rate, I didn't include it in the syllabus, but by going down the rabbit hole of poetry by Tupac, I came across this moving verse: 

 (Links to an external site."

UNDER THE SKIES ABOVE: AFTER THE MISCARRIAGE by 2Pac

My child is out there somewhere
under the skies above
waiting anxiously 4 u and me
2 bless it with our love
A part of me a part of u
and a part of this love we share
will protect my unborn child
who lives dormant out there somewhere
Sometimes in my dreams
I imagine what it would be like
How could I properly guide him
when even I don't know what's right
Whether he is born in wealth or poverty
there will be no deficiency in love
I welcome this gift of life
given from GOD under the skies above

That's all I've got time for right now, but one of the parts of teaching I enjoy the most is rereading classic verses and sharing contemporary poetry with my students - it's fun to discover/rediscover insights and images. 

Birthdays and field trips

We've celebrated life around here the past week. In addition to the Seven Year Old's birthday last week, this week we celebrated Dad's birthday (he got new clothes for civilian life and... something I still need to buy) and the dog's birthday (he got an extra treat and a long walk) and a big football game and a first track meet and a last swim meet. We also made a trip to a local community farm - and paid $20 to do stuff we did for free a couple weeks ago at Nana and Pop's farm, but this was educational. 

After having six weeks off from teaching for Quad 1, I am not hastily updating my syllabus and Canvas course for teaching Quad 2. I have been trying to finish a book review that I started in December (how can this be so slow? I can only write about 2 sentences at a time before I get distracted. The problem is NO DEADLINE. Although at this point, the book is no longer new and the editors may no longer want a review. It's about postsecular representations of faith in young adult literature, and was actually a very interesting read - both in terms of defining postsecular and in reading about the ways YAL grapples with faith - in addition to all the contemporary hot button issues that YAL often features. The book is called Teens and the New Religious Landscape and is edited by Jacob Stratman if anyone is interested in checking it out. 

I also have not finished our taxes, quelle horreur! I have never been this late before; I'm usually done by February or March. I actually had them almost finished before 4/15, but I got hung up on whether our oldest can still be considered a dependent since he was in school full time in the spring of 20.  Since he filed for himself this year, I have to revise and take him off as a dependent. And that just didn't get done this weekend in between sports and class prep. 

And the other thing that is absorbing too much attention: Shopping for a mother of the groom dress. Can I complain about this? I don't want a formal - the wedding is at 1:30 on a Saturday in June. I don't want black, white, red, for obvious reasons, or pink, because I look terrible in most shades of pink, especially blush, which seems to be reserved for Mother of the Bride/Groom type dresses. I keep looking at vintagey styles, but my husband has nixed the few I've found in colors I like because of big bows or large collars or too many flounces. Since I've been searching all over the internet and physically shopped at Nordstrom's, Macy's, Nordstrom Rack, TJ Maxx, and Ross -because I hate spending a bunch of money - I'm hoping an ad one day will show up in my sidebar with just the right thing.  In the meantime, I also need to nail down the rehearsal dinner plans - I think we are hosting two events: one for the wedding party and grandparents who will be at the actual rehearsal, and then an "open house" type happy hour at the hotel for all of the out of town cousins who may be arriving. Since Covid numbers are down (and I have my first vaccine and my husband 2 doses. He got the "posh" Pfizer version. I got Moderna before I realized it wasn't as elite as Pfizer according to an article I read this morning. Who knew? But I suspected in the way everyone asks "Which one did you get?" a tone of superiority from the Pfizer recipients...), the wedding will be normal sized, but I'm not sure how many of our out of town family will travel, particularly the cousins in Germany and the other cousins who rarely travel even when we aren't at the tail end of a global pandemic. 

Then we jump right into planning the Change of Command/retirement ceremony.  Still no changes from last week, although he had an interview with a university hiring a facilities director. The university opportunities have been slim - several have advertised positions but are in a hiring freeze because of the unusual situation of the past year.  A friend who works with veterans commented that so much changes in the year after transitioning that sometimes staying in the same place reduces stress.  And granted, there are many pleasant things about living here, aside from the great weather, most comfortingly friends and a good parish. But we will never be able to buy a house in this neighborhood, unless some rundown 1 bedroom shows up for less than a million dollars, and we add a cardboard structure to the back to house the kids. But I don't want to move to another neighborhood if we aren't planning on staying more than a year or two, especially in this high-demand market.  So we'll see. Practicing Trust. Calling on Divine Mercy.  Hoping for a sign or at least a sense of peace.

 

These are maybes in the MOG dress category. Will florals be too distracting in photos?

Happy Easter!

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! He is risen, indeed, Alleluia!

I didn't remember saying that call and response prayer regularly until we lived in Virginia. It very well could be that at our previous parishes I just wasn't paying attention to its use, or maybe it wasn't used often, but I love that there is a common language for expressing the joy of the season.  Easter has arrived with warmer days and lots of pink blooms in our neighborhood adding to the sense of all the world celebrating new life now that people are no longer in hiding from the coronavirus.  Our celebration was small, in keeping with the restrictions that are still in place for military, even though my husband is vaccinated, but it was a happy feast day with our oldest son home. We had the traditional basket and egg hunt in the morning, although my daughter worried that I would never get the eggs filled (she lately has doubted that I can do the things I've always done without her knowledge of them - I never finish filling the eggs before midnight! And she has no idea how much fun we have eating jelly beans and drinking cheap champagne while we fill and fill and fill plastic eggs and then hide them badly.) We didn't go to the Vigil this year, because we were scheduled to serve on Easter Sunday, which disappointed the kids because they love the candlelight service. Sometimes we have gone to both, but decided not to take a seat from someone, or to sit in the parish hall at the Vigil since spacing regulations are still keeping the church half full. Our neighbor friends from college came over for an early dinner after brunch, and we all ate too much, but it was good. My friend made a Mediterranean lamb on polenta that was fabulous, especially after giving up meat for Lent.

Easter followed closely on the heels of a quick visit to see my family with our youngest in honor of our oldest son's fiancee's wedding shower. I wasn't quite ready for Easter when I returned, so I had to make some desperate purchases at the local Catholic book store and to rely on Amazon next day delivery for some quick gifts, but everyone seemed happy with their baskets and happy with the day in general.  Everything has been sneaking up on me lately - the shower itself seemed far in the future until the week before. I had purchased the tickets at bargain basement price two months earlier, so the day of departure seemed distant. As did our daughter's seventh birthday, that we celebrated Thursday.  As did the day of the start of my next class, which is now less than two weeks away.  I was able to schedule a vaccine appointment with ease at the pharmacy down the street for next week, when vaccines become available to everyone in California, so that I won't have to get weekly Covid tests since I will be in the classroom. Being eligible for the vaccine also seemed something far off, but here I am. My college kids have been joking about getting their microchips or 5G receptors after they've received their shots, and I am mildly bothered that their schools have practically made the shots mandatory, but here I am with an appointment and anticipation of being done with restrictions eventually, although we finally have enough masks in the house to wash and wear and not argue over "Where's my mask?" 

 I didn't mean for this to be a coronavirus update, but I've got some class work to finish up, so no more time to reflect on my sadness that Lent ended too soon. We now are hurtling toward my husband's retirement date this summer, and although he has no firm offers in place, he has had a number of promising interviews. This is a slow process, I'm realizing, which gives us time to continue debating the merits of where to live - whether we want to let our son who is a junior finish his senior year here, or whether we move in hopes of finding a better place elsewhere. Despite my dreams of better schools - and night and daydreams about new houses - I know that there isn't any place that is perfect. Moving our second oldest before his senior year worked out in his favor - he had a great year once he settled in and realized he didn't have to conform to any peer groups and could finally be himself. That took a few painful months. And we had a sweet baby for him to come home to in the evenings.  That baby is now a sweet seven year old who leaves little love notes for everyone around the house and makes little bouquets of flowers with stems too short to fit a vase, and who loves to be a helper and have everyone together. She cries when her siblings leave. She loves to travel. She loves to go on random errands. She mostly doesn't mind doing her school work. She loves her activities and her friends. Other than an occasional meltdown and regular complaints of loneliness when no one will play with her, she is a most pleasant child who now suddenly is reaching the age when she isn't technically a small child anymore. For Easter she wore the dress that I wore when I was baptized the Easter before I turned eight, when my parents came into the church.  Time collapses.

Easter Sunday

My baptismal dress made by my cousin, who is like an aunt. My first Communion dress and flower girl dress were never found when my parents moved, but this dress still looks fresh.

Peep donuts and St Catherine

The Easter Lily bloomed in time for Easter morning

 

Easter Dinner al fresco

Egg decor on the side of the house plus blooming climbing rose

A view of a water cannon salute on our flight - the plane we were on carried the body of a fallen soldier home to his family. 

 

The daughter's photos of flying

The honor guard welcome

 

Visiting the family and learning a little family history

Looking for spring wildflowers with the grandparents

You can't really see the tiny white blooms of Spring beauties and Dutchmen's breeches

Sunrise

Sunrise

Sisters after the bridal shower

Artwork while on the road

Sunset over forsythia

Playing "wild girls" with the cousins 

Finding the Ent in the forest

Trillium

Bloodroot

The brave cousin

Spring beauties

Hellebores

This years crop of calves

Bathrobe time was one of the best part of Nana and Pop's

Seven is heaven