that's mrs. mediocrity to you

put your heart into everything you do.

there are times when it’s okay to stay quiet.

give of yourself and your time, freely.

if you can’t fall asleep sitting up,
well, you’re just not tired enough.

take care of what you have.

comfort comes before fashion.

kindness is the cornerstone of love.

if you have the right tools,
you can fix almost anything.

giving up is not an option.

your family is who you are.

integrity helps balance out mistakes.

whistling while you work is the
best way to make the time fly by.

patience isn’t a virtue, it’s a way of life.

the bigger your heart, the bigger your life.

showing up counts for more than you think.

a sense of humor, and learning to laugh
at yourself, will get you through.

::

thanks, dad

::

::

This image is part of Texture Tuesday over at Kim Klassen’s Cafe.
Click here to check it out or join in the fun!

When you can’t see the forest for the trees, remember that you are the forest and the trees.

This came to me as a gentle reminder from a friend on Twitter, on a night when I was struggling with questions. Always, the questions.

But it was the perfect answer in that moment.

And then another friend joined in, and it was determined that I am suffering from a bad case of wiggly spirit. And while I had never heard it put in quite those terms, I knew immediately that it was the best diagnosis I have ever been given.

It was the perfect description of how I felt at that moment.

It was fairly late in the evening, too late to call a friend, everyone else in the house was sleeping, and in truth, I was feeling a bit sorry for myself. Several other friends joined in the conversation, and then several more after I mentioned my wiggly spirit on Facebook.

Before I knew it, I was feeling much better. For me, this was social media at its best.

Sometimes, the best thing you can do is bounce your thoughts, your ideas, your feelings, off other people. It makes you see that you are not alone, and can also shed a whole new light on the issue. A light that only finds a way to shine through discourse with others, because you just couldn’t find the switch in the dark, on your own.

I’ve never been very good at asking other people for help. It is one of my flaws. But on this night, these friends, people that I have never actually met “in real life,” understood that this was what I was doing and reached out their virtual hands. And I was grateful.

When I was looking for an image to go with this post, I came across this shot that I had taken of a reflection on my kitchen table. I’m pretty sure it’s a picture of my wiggly spirit.

And see that star? That is you all,

shining down on me.

I thank you.

One of my favorite songs of all time is Springsteen’s Candy’s Room.

“In Candy’s room, there are pictures of heroes on the wall.”

I sit here in my living room looking around me, and I see pictures of heroes everywhere. My children, my parents, my grandmother, my husband’s father whom I never met, pets from both past and present.

In a row of six, along one wall, there is my grandfather working on a tractor, his face hidden, probably completely unaware that his photo was being taken. And there, in another shot, he stands with his brother and an uncle or a cousin, and next, there is a woman that I don’t even know, just that she was someone’s wife or mother or sister, someone related or someone that knew someone related.

In those days, pictures did not come as easily as they do now, nothing quick or instant or easy. They were records, of time and people and life.

Hardworking people stand before me in these pictures, people who worked themselves to the bone and then some, just to survive. People who struggled through the Great Depression, the World Wars, poverty, hardship, strife.

This is where I come from.

No one famous, no one rich, no one that stood out in any crowd. Average people that lived average lives and made the best of it all, and could still manage to crack a smile for the camera. My grandfather, stricken with polio at a young age and permanently disabled, was one of the hardest working people I have ever known. I wonder what he was like when he was young, if he was ever carefree and silly, if he ever had time to sit in his backyard and ponder life.

Down further on this same wall is my drawing of our dog, Coby, the dog that made his way into my heart, a gift to my husband on his 40th birthday. And around the room are our children’s senior portraits, reminders of a time that seems like just yesterday and long ago all at once.

On the bookshelves, there is the old frau who befriended my husband as a young soldier in Germany, my grandmother in her nurse’s uniform, a woman who worked as a nurse to support nine children, mostly on her own. And my parents, whose smiles have been a constant in my life.

These are my heroes.

They’re all over the place, right here in my living room.

I am honored to stand among them.

My name is Jake.

I’m here to wish my dad a very Happy Birthday.

This is how I look, every time I see him.

p.s.

My mom says Happy Birthday, too.

and sometimes, flowers.

he chops wood and carries it in,

and cleans my car off when it’s cold.

he brings me wine, and chocolate,

and he still hasn’t guessed

how much i love him.

he’s not perfect.

nor am i.

::

but every so often, together, we get there.

The other day, after I had posted about my belated blog birthday, and my ongoing craving for a cupcake, I heard someone at the back door.

When I walked out into my kitchen, my dad was standing there, with this little cake in his hand. “Happy Anniversary,'”  he said, and I almost asked him what anniversary, before I remembered what I had written.

Mind you, this was a day that was so cold I didn’t even feel like walking out to the mailbox, much less getting in my car and going out for a cupcake.

But my dad was going out to the store anyway, and my mom had mentioned about the cupcake, and so, here he was. My house isn’t anywhere along the way. But that is the way my parents are, selfless, kind, generous. I am a very lucky girl.

Technically, it wasn’t a cupcake. It was a fabulously delicious mini chocolate turtle cake.

Technically, it was the sweetest thing, ever.

.

.

this post is part of prompt me wednesday – a treasured gift

the other night i was on the couch and my daughter,

who lives three hours away, sent me a text.

“can you see the moon?”

it was the moon in this picture but about three hours later.

and that moon, the one that she sent me the text about,

hanging low in the sky like a perfect golden pendant,

was so worth getting up off the couch to see.

but mostly, i loved that she knew that,

and thought of me.

Bigger than you
And you are not me
The lengths that I will go to…
(lines from an R.E.M. song)

This is a story about my mom. My mom and my dad, really, two people who are bigger, in all the best possible of ways. The lengths that they will go to astound me. They are givers, my parents.

Recently, a friend of my mom’s died after a long battle with cancer. She was young, too young to go, only in her late 50s, but she went all the same. To tell the truth, I don’t really know all that much about this friend, E., I know that she and my mom used to work together, and after they went their separate ways career-wise, they stayed in touch and would occasionally go to the movies or have a girls night out.

Last week my mom told me that this friend was nearing the end, that it was just a matter of time. And she told me that she was going to go to the hospital and sit with her. And then the next time I talked to her, the next day, or two days later, she told my that E. had passed on, while my mom was there, at the hospital.

But she didn’t tell me this part of the story until last night, another day in which she gave up eight hours of her time to help me and my sister with a jewelry show.

Apparently, on the day before she died, my mom and E.’s husband were sitting in the room with her and my mom was wishing out loud that there was something she could do to ease E.’s discomfort and continued on to tease that maybe a glass of beer would help.

And let me just add here that my mom does not drink, I have only seen her have a drink once in my entire life.

E.’s husband mentioned that she didn’t like beer, but that she really loved strawberry dacquiri wine coolers.

That was all my mom needed to hear. She went out to the desk and asked the nurse if it would be okay to bring one in for E. The nurse checked into the matter and basically gave permission in an “I didn’t see anything” kind of way.

So my mom, who does not drive, went down to find my father who was waiting in the lobby with a book, and asked him to take her to the liquor store. The liquor store because my mom, who does not drink, didn’t realize that they sell wine coolers in the grocery store. And of course, the clerk at the liquor store set her straight, and then my father drove her to the grocery store, and mission accomplished, they returned to the hospital with a strawberry dacquiri wine cooler poured into a soft drink bottle. Just in case.

And so E. had her wine cooler, or a few sips of it, and it put a tiny smile on her face.

The next day, E. left this world. Afterward, her family passed that same bottle around the room and each one took a sip, as a toast to this woman they loved.

That’s my mom. And her bigger-than-anything heart.

She just kills me.

Because she loves blue flowers, I emailed this picture to a friend earlier this year, it was May I think, back when there was blue in my garden and not so much orange and rust and gold.

You know how sometimes in life you meet a person and you feel that instant connection, you become friends immediately, and it feels like you have been friends forever? Well, for me, Debi is one of those people. And truth be told, I’ve never actually met her in person, we met through our blogs.

And today, a whole bunch of us are celebrating Debi, whose blog, emma tree, is featured in this month’s issue of Artful Blogging.

And we are also celebrating celebration itself a little bit, because Debi reminded us a while back that we should all celebrate ourselves, and each other, just a little more often.

So here’s to you, Debi. To the way you write that takes my breath away, sometimes. To the way you love blue and aqua and lace skirts and graffiti and rain on sideview mirrors. To heart shapes and word shapes and signs and needs and tears for a cat that was loved.

And here’s to your friendship and your encouragement and your bravery. And to those aqua-colored Chuck Taylors.

I told you this already a while back, but now I’m going to say it here, right out loud. When I was thirteen and I pictured in my mind what I thought I would be like when I grew up, well, it was pretty darn close to you.

Congratulations, my friend, on Somerset Life and Artful Blogging and for making signs and for having needs and for making it through a tough year and for celebrating.

I am so very glad that you are you. I’m so very glad to have bumped into you. I’m so very glad for your friendship.

Here’s to you, Debi.

::    ::     ::

Go and visit Amy at Winged Paths to see the full guest list!

and p.s., I’m doing my own tiny dance of celebration because one of my pictures is in the same issue of Artful Blogging, and I am honored.

And so, pickles.

Lots of pickles have been made, 74 jars total, bread and butter last Saturday, dill yesterday. Jars and jars of pickles that aren’t even pickles yet, because you have to wait for pickles to pickle.

With pickles, you learn patience. I like things that teach me patience, I don’t come by it naturally.

Gardening taught me a lot about patience. The cycle of life, the growth and the bloom and the setting of seeds, prepraring for the next generation. This is the life of a flower.

My friend Katie, who is really more than a friend, will be 84 in just a couple of weeks. My mom calls Katie “Blossom.”

84 years is a long time. Long enough to learn about patience. Long enough to come to terms with the cycle of life. Long enough to have lived through the worst thing that can happen, and survive. Long enough to do more than just survive, long enough to relearn how to live. To giggle and to carry on, through endless years of pain, both physical and emotional. To find joy once again.

Katie was born with both hips dislocated, 84 years ago, before they knew how to fix such things. Her son, who is just shy of fifty, was born the same way. But by that time, his time, doctors knew to pop his hips back into place just after he was born. Problem solved.

And that son, the one just shy of fifty, was Katie’s second son. Her first son, if he were alive, would have been 58 this year. She mentioned this while we made pickles. But her first son is not alive, he died when he was six, in the kind of freak accident that could happen to anyone, at anytime, these things just happen.

Only it happened to Katie, who had already, at that point in her life, gone through dozens and dozens of painful surgeries, spent her whole childhood having surgery, her whole life in casts and crutches and wheelchairs. After one of these surgeries, when she was quite young, she was left in a room under lights to dry the cast she was enclosed in from the waist down. But as it turned out, the lights were too hot and the cast started on fire.

Katie, at all of four feet, nine inches tall, has the spirit of a giant.

Many years ago, when I was sixteen, I dated her son, briefly. That didn’t work out, but my friendship with Katie remained. And then it expanded to include my whole family, until essentially, we adopted her as a grandmother. My parents and Katie and her husband spent a lot of time together years ago, before her husband died. Since then, my parents have taken care of Katie in a million small ways. They are like that. Good people. Her son lives out of state now, my parents and myself are her emergency contacts.

But this wasn’t supposed to be a story about Katie, it was supposed to be a story about making pickles. It is hard to tell one without the other. But okay, pickles. My mom and I went to Katie’s and we sliced and we sliced and we sliced some more. Cucumbers, onions, peppers. We put the cucumbers on ice and then we waited three hours for them to crisp. And then later, we simmered but never boiled, and we filled 22 jars, hot jars, hot lids, we wiped their mouths and we tightened down the tops and then, pickles.

During those three hours of waiting, we talked and we laughed and we listened and we admired Katie’s latest doily, which is amazing. She sits there while she watches baseball (Yankees) and crochets these intricate doilies or she knits mittens, dozens of sets each year, just to give them away.

And my mom talked, about her mom and her father, how they used have a huge garden, how they would can everything, even venison. How the smell of the pickles was taking her back to her childhood, which wasn’t the best of times for her, either.

And there we were, three women, 84, 68, 47. Almost two hundred years of living between us. But compared to these two women, my life has been simple, easy, a blessing.

Through all of this slicing and waiting and simmering and chatting, we giggled.

And then I vacuumed Katie’s house and emptied her garbage while she made us egg salad sandwiches for lunch and we ate and talked a little more. The house is getting too hard for her to handle, alone. She is in pain, constant pain, her hip and her spine are literally crumbling. My parent’s house is getting hard for them to navigate, so many stairs. My mom is worried about my dad, her sister, life.

And even through all of that, still, we giggled. Katie, who has a million reasons not to giggle, ever, giggles quite a lot. And it makes me smile and laugh, and at the very same time, it breaks my heart, just a little.

In the end, when we had finished, there were 22 jars of bread and butter pickles sitting on Katie’s counter.

Jars filled with spices, cucumbers, onions and peppers,

love and tears and memories and friendship,

and one whole day’s worth of giggles.

The best pickle recipe, ever.

::  ::

p.s. I will tell you about the 52 jars of dill pickles another day. And if you want the bread and butter pickle recipe, I have posted it here.