Sunday Serenity #401

I Hope You Dance -- Lee Ann Womack

One of my all time favorite music videos.

[This is one of the posts going up retroactively after the weeks long unintended hiatus that began the week after July 4th.  See She's Back for more detailed explanation.]

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Laughter is the Best...

...Comfort.

My therapy continues with more vid vitamins.  A baby's laugh is a happy pill.

Missing Merlin is constant.  The hardest hours are bedtime and morning routines.  He always slept with me at night and dogged my feet when I got up until I put food down for him.  Then there's lunch time when he followed me all over the kitchen begging while I made lunch for Mom and I.

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A Time to Mourn and a Time to Dance

A Chinese talent show.  A three year old dancer.

Watch to the end it's worth it.  Hear his answers to the judges questions: Why do you dance? and What is your dream?  

Old soul, or what?

Watching, reading, listening to uplifting things is my therapy for pulling me up out of the emotional morass of the last 9 days.

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Of Magic, Memories and Coping Mechanisms.

Merlin Moments

In yesterday's ROW80 check-in I shared how caring for our dying fur baby, Merlin, had become an object lesson in how sometimes life gives you something to tend to that turns every other priority to pale and wispy dandelion fluff floating out of sight on a puff of air.

I related how focusing only on his breath and my own as I held him against my heart for hours had calmed me while conjuring a hazy memory suffused with similar sensations and how Merlin's first purr since I picked his limp body up hour's earlier had cleared the haze.

Then I wrapped up the post saying I'd share that memory later.

Memories, I should say.  For one by one and then in a flood memories from my 'tween, teen and early twenties engulfed me.  Memories of holding babies.

In my extended family and in our church community both local and among the affiliates scattered between San Diego and Rock Glen Canada, Sacramento and Salt Lake City, I had become known by age eleven as the girl with the magic touch.  I could calm the fussiest baby or toddler and get them to eat, submit to diaper changes or sleep--whichever was needed.

When asked what my secret was, I said I didn't know.  And I didn't.  My secret was a secret even from me.  Until now.

Now I know that it was my ability to calm myself by focusing only on the baby's breath and mine as I instinctively tried to synchronize them while my spirit was suffused with the joy of their presence and the honor of tending to their needs.

Whether I was on the couch in a family's living room among conversing adults or playing children, in a rocking chair in a quiet room or walking a figure eight around the two sections of 200+ seats in the auditorium at our Thanksgiving Bible Conference held at the Red Bluff fairgrounds, I was focused only on that baby, wanting only his contentment but also aware that if I failed to calm him, his Mama or Daddy or Grandma would reclaim him.

During those years babies were my passion.  Whenever I was around them I could think of nothing else.  Not the story I was currently writing or the one I was reading or the TV show I might be missing to accept the babysitting job, not my homework or the next day's math test, not the last Bible Meeting dismissed two hours ago or the next starting in fifteen minutes signaled by the piano player on the stage softly practicing hymns, nor the cousins whose companionship I'd craved in the weeks leading up to conference, not my ever growing swarm of anxieties, not even my own hunger as I took charge of her littlest so a mama could go through the long cafeteria line with her older children and eat her meal in (mostly) peace with her extended family who were most likely scattered among half a dozen states.

All of that was lost when I married Ed at 21 and with high hopes of having my own inside of a year, abandoned all the babies in my life--the dozen plus families I regularly babysat for, the church community I'd been born into and its 4X weekly meetings and four annual conferences--to move with him to Oceanside, California near Camp Pendleton where he was stationed.

Ed was the only one I knew in that big city full of raucous Marines on leave. I was terrified every waking moment and woke from nightmares nearly every night. And because I had not been aware of how I'd been calming myself in order to calm the babies, I had no functional coping mechanism when events spiraled into chaos.

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This post spiraled out of control.  I spent several hundred words relating those events and there was no end in sight as each memory was like a bead on a string being pulled up out of the muck. With them included this post had lost its focus so I transferred them to another draft but unless I find a focal point for a post that makes it more than a list of woes I'll move them to my personal journal.

Something has opened up inside me that is driving this memory dredging and the way the insights seem to be clinging to them indicate it is important to let it continue but not necessarily in the raw on Joystory.

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Twice Grand

Ashley and Mason James

Ed and I became Grand Uncle and Aunt twice over this week. It happened inside of twenty hours between 8:30 am Wednesday when Mason James was born to our niece Ashley in Montana and 3:12 am today in Washington when Clara Belle was born to Ashley's brother Kirby.

Welcome to the world sweet babes.  Welcome to our hearts.

Kirby and Clara Belle

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Sunday Serenity #322

Can't begin to say how much I needed this today.

The first version I saw on facebook via wimp was played at half speed and that was uber hilarious and I shared on my wall which I so rarely do.

Am celebrating a milestone on the Secret Santa crocheted crafter's tote today.  I finally finished the Mushroom rounds on the last of the eight strips.  Sometime this coming week I should have the five strips of the second panel joined and have pictures of that to post.  I'm targeting Thursday.

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My 55 Surprise

Brandy

I turned 55 today.

Mom and my sister called me into the kitchen where Mom was eating her breakfast as soon as they knew I was up.  Carri presented me with a large cardboard box and a box cutter saying We decided not to wrap it.

I sliced thru the taped up end and slid out a box that looked like an oversized shoe box--long and narrow.  In the middle of the lid it said Ashton-Drake which is a name I'm quite familiar with having drooled over the photos of their collector babies in magazines and mailers for decades.  So I kinda knew it was a baby doll but it was even better than that clue led me to expect.

This doll is so lifelike I'm afraid if certain congress persons learned about her they'd be trying to pass a personhood amendment on her behalf.

She has a cloth torso stuffed with something that reminds me of beanie babies but denser.  Her limbs and head are a vinyl or vinyl-like substance that looks so lifelike you are surprised it isn't warm when you touch it.  Her hair is embedded one strand at a time and Carri believes they used human hair. She is about the size and feel of a 6lb newborn.  She smells like a freshly bathed and powdered baby.

Her collector edition name was "Sweet Dream Belle".  The name Belle was growing on me through the day until mid afternoon when I heard myself say 'Baby Belle" and instantly thought of the cheese snack I love and started having second thoughts.  But the clincher was when I made the association with the heroine of Twilight and knew I did not want her to remind me continuously of an insipid teen pining after a vampire.  Which reminded me of the defiant teen pining after a drug dealer in my story Making Rag Doll Babies and Million Dollar Maybes, who gives birth at age 15 to a baby girl she names Brandy.  And there was my name.

I gave the infant character the name Brandy to signify her role as symbol of the spirit in my Fruits of the Spirit storyworld.  I'm thinking that by naming the doll Brandy too she might serve for me as a FOS storyworld muse.

My sister left for an out of town dental appointment for surgery on a broken root soon after I opened my gift and I was on duty with Mom for the rest of the day.  I fixed toasted cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for lunch and burritos for dinner and cleaned up the kitchen. During Mom's nap this afternoon I posted two albums on fb--one for the doll and one for fiber arts featuring the diaper bag and crafter tote. After dinner I sat in the living room with Mom crocheting until she headed to bed.  Then while she was getting ready for bed (it takes her up to an hour) and until my sister got home just before 11pm I was catching up with fb messages and my NaNo noveling.

I made it through the day without mishap!  No crashing into the dishwasher, Mom's walker, or Mom.  The worst thing that happened was boiling over Mom's cup of soup in the microwave and then dragging my sleeve through it when cleaning it up.

I'd been planning to put up both a It's Monday, What are You Reading and a ROW80 post before sleeping tonight.  The first for Tuesday's post and the second for Wednesday's post.  But after visiting with my sister for half an hour I was ready to call it a day and decided to put up this post instead thinking it would take me about fifteen minutes.  Ha.

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Sunday Serenity #238

art print for sale at art.com
photo by Linda Johnson

The Packing is done and now its time to start unpacking. But not tonight. Tonight I sleep. I need to be well rested when my sister-in-law brings Mom home as my sister leaves town. At that point I go on duty for a full week,

So this Sunday I've set my heart to gladness and joy for the blessing that I'm able to bestow blessing on my family; to give my sister a much needed break; to give of my time and abbilities such as they are to contribute ao my loved ones serenity and joy.

Here's an image to take with you as you imagine my week: A woman in her fifties and a woman in her seventies walking about a suburban two story with bells on their toes.

So OK if you didn't laugh you at least smiled at that comical scene.

Funny it may be but if it fulfills its intended purpose the payoff for the mild humiliation of feeling like a clown for a week will be: zero broken dishes or bones, zero bruises caused by collisions between the two of us. It won't protect me form colliding with a table, chair or wall though for that I'm on my own and the best hope lies in my learning to live at a slower pace for the next week, to walk not scurry about, to pay attention to what I'm doing and where I'm going, to make no sudden moves. But to accomplish that I need to be well rested.

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Sunday Serenity #205

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

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Sunday Serenity #162

Sleepy Baby by Mary Cassatt
print for sale at art.com

My favorite thing to do even above reading or writing stories is to hold a baby. Today I got to meet, hold and play with my 7 month old 3rd cousin--son of my cousin's son. I was on cloud 999.

Holding babies was always a serenity inducer for me. Sometime just dreaming about holding a baby is enough to calm me down.

It's been years since there have been babies in my life. All my nieces and nephews are in their teens-thirties.

I wish I would have thought to take my camera with me to my cousin's house.

Mary Cassatt's art is also a source of serenity for me. I used to have a poster of this one.

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Well, I'll be Jiggered

Well, I'll be.

This picture was the perfect expression of how I'm feeling on day 2 post-op.

If you like it, you might like more of the offerings of My First Fail. A blog on the order of LOLcats featuring babies and small children.

Had the 24 hour post op exam at the eye-clinic this morning and results are beyond expectations. At my intake exam several weeks ago I could only read the third line on the chart with my right eye. Today I could read the fourth line on the second page! Without my glasses. And that is just the day after!! There is still blurriness and other distortion due to swelling etc. which is to be expected and why I have to wait four weeks before being fitted for lenses for close work.

Last night just before Ed went to bed I started staring at his shirt completely fascinated by something and my eyes kept going back when I tried to look elsewhere. I reminded myself of a baby who'd just discovered their hands and stare at them hypnotized. I finally figured out that it was because I was seeing the wrinkles in his T-shirt and the gape of his shirt pocket in 3D. For the first time in five years my eyes were coordinating to see in 3D. So I've been doing a lot of staring at things at the 6-10 foot range which is were the lens they put in my eye is set to focus.

Ed and his mom have both commented that I'm moving around better. With more confidence and less hesitation. I guess I just trotted out of the doctor's office today and headed for the car door and didn't need my MIL's elbow or even her warnings of or guidance around obstacles. I wasn't even aware I was doing that nor of any sense that it was abnormal and it should have felt odd since it had not been common for some time--years.

Then this evening Ed and I were sitting visiting on the front porch after dark and I was exclaiming over being able to see this and that in the light of the sodium vapor security lamp over the pool behind our yard that lights up portions of our yard near bright as day. I was describing things I was seeing that I'd not known were there or not seen in awhile and ed suggested I stand out on the end of the porch and look up at the sky and see if I could see any stars. I had to stare straight at the dark sky for over a minute before I started to see darker shapes against the dark that reminded me of trees and when I told Ed he directed me to look a tad up and to my right. I actually startled and said 'Whoa!' when this bright tiny light popped into view. I had found Venus! It was the only one I could spot even after another ten minutes of trying and not really a star but it is the first light in the sky besides the moon and landing jets that I've seen in years.

So I'm pretty pumped. I can't wait til I get my new prescription glasses so I can read and sew with my right eye again. The lenses they put in the eye to replace the lens damaged by cataracts are not able to multifocus like the normal eye so you end up with one distance for focus and need prescription lenses for the other distances--like close work. I have to wait at least a month though before they'll even issue a prescription as it takes that long for the eye to settle down to a new normal.

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Sunday Serenity #139

Warning: Partial, Non-Sexual Nudity In Video Clip

Why Moms can't do yoga
by Hubzesailor

I hope nobody is offended by this but it just cracked me up and this week's Sunday Serenity is all about laughing out loud.

I found this on another site on the pattern of LOLcats which features kids instead of kittehs. It's called My First Fail. It's mostly still shots and they don't appear to have the embed option for those so I went with the video.

If you need a good hearty laugh to spice up your Sunday you can't fail to find it on My First Fail.

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Thursday Thirteen #64

I am so late getting this posted. It really isn't Thursday anymore but I began work on this post over thirty hours ago. I kept running into snags of various kinds. Mostly to do with learning my way around using the scanner and the photo ap where I crop and prepare the pics for posting. But also due to the hectic nature of life here at my Mom's where I'm visiting. Then there is getting lost in just shuffling through the photos and other memorabilia in the boxes.

I've taken on the task of scanning all our family pictures into digital files and creating a digital scrapbook for all family members. This will be a huge undertaking and I am just getting started this visit. I won't be taking the photos home with me because I don't have a scanner. The idea was for me to scan as many as I could into my laptop while here and take them home that way and over the next few months use a photo application to crop and otherwise twiddle with them.

Earlier this week I posted pics of my Dad's parents and his childhood. They were the first because they had been hunted out and collected for the collage displayed at his memorial service two years ago. My hopes of doing my own childhood and my mother's family were dampened when Mom told me she wasn't sure where they were anymore. But I went looking for them and found one box. It includes some of my Mom's family pictures and some of my baby pictures. But so far I've not found my brother and sister's baby pictures nor my parent's wedding pictures. I did find my wedding pictures which was really great because I lost my own wedding albums in our 87 move from Medford OR back to Longview WA. I had more pics in mine than the album Mom has but it is better than none at all.

OK let's get on with it.

Thirteen of my baby pictures:

1. In the living room of our new house. Mom and Dad had to move when I was six weeks old because the house they were attempting to buy did not pass muster with the bank when an ant infestation was discovered. We lived in this house until I was nearly eighteen. I loved the knotty pine paneling in the kitchen and living room. But I think I was in grade school before I learned that it wasn't 'naughty'. You can't really see it in this. There is a better view of it in the next picture.

2. At two months. Mom is introducing me to cereal.

3. In my crib at 2 and 1/2 months. I still vividly remember that wall paper. It shows up in my dreams from time to time still. My love for lilac flowers and shades of blue and lavender may have originated here.

4. This was probably taken on the same day as the one below. I am 6 months old. I remember that Holly tree behind us. It was taken out when they put in the concrete driveway and slab for the carport when I was about 5.

5. Late May of 58. The back says 6 months 10 days. Which means this must have been near Daddy's birthday. Mom is getting ready to take me on a train trip to Paul, Idaho to stay with Dad's parents for several weeks. Grandma was ill and needed help. Mom took the swing with us because it kept me so content.

6. From the trip to Idaho. Here I am held by my Dad's paternal Grandmother, Sue Coon.

7. Still in Idaho. Taken at the farm of some friends of the family there. Mom has forgotten their name. Obviously either they or the ones who gave us a ride were from the Bible Meetings I was raised in as there is one of our trade-mark 'Gospel cars'. My Uncle, husband of Mom's sister, painted those for all of the Brethren of our 14 or so Assemblies scatter from Phoenix AR to Rockglen Saskatchewan

8. July 58 just after arriving home from Idaho. Dad is introducing me to the sprinkles from the hose as Mom waters her flowers.

9. This was taken in July 58 shortly after Mom and I returned from our train trip to Paul Idaho. I'm 7 and 1/2 month. This is in our front yard. That street in the background became a major artery of Longview within a few years. By the time I was ten it was four lanes plus center turn lane plus parking on each side. A mall was built in the field across the street.

The stool I am sitting on was made of upholstered juice cans. When set on its side it rolled. There are pics in this series of my using it as an improvised walker--pushing it across the yard.

10. At 10 and 1/2 months. The dress was yellow with tiny pastel flowers. A 6 month photo was taken in it too. This dress was bought for me by my mother's father. Mom says it was waiting in the crib at their house in Gerber, CA when we arrived for my first visit with them the spring of 58. Later that dress was handed down to one of my dolls.

11. Here I am 2 years old. The dress was picked out by my Dad for my 1 year picture and I'm still wearing it a year later. It was pale blue.

12. Here I am in February 1960 at 26 months helping Mom build a snowman in our back yard. That white expanse behind me is the parking lot of Mark Morris High School which I would attend from 73 to76. Where I am standing is about where the carport was built when the addition was built onto the back of the house when I was 5 and 6.

I remember that red snowsuit. Maybe because it was handed down to my brother and then my sister. But I am pretty sure of a few memories of getting stuffed into it and having to struggle out rather urgently because I had waited almost too long to come in the house to tend to certain necessities.

13. Here I am 27 months. Mom made this dress out of material one of her sisters sent her. It was white with tine pink rosebuds. I often wore it under a jumper.

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

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Sunday Serenity #33

Laughing with babies is one sure route to serenity. You can't watch this and hang on to your anxiety or anger or fear or sadness or boredom. There is just something about a baby's laughter that energizes and uplifts and lightens the heart.

Join us for a moment of serenity.

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Monday Poetry Train #24

print for sale at art.com

Thanking Evan
by Joy Renee

We thank you Evan
For your visit.
Though you came and went
In the space of a smile,
In that little while
Blossomed the flower
Of eternity.

We thank you Evan
For you exist
Now in hearts enlarged
To hold the ocean of love
Which over the years
Of absorbing our tears
Will return our joy.

For Eric M twin of Evan M b. 7/27/95 d. 10/31/95

#############

In mid October of 1995 Ed and I began babysitting three month old twin boys. On the morning of Halloween we were expecting the arrival of the babies and instead received a phone call from the mother. Evan had died of crib death.

Because Eric was Evan's twin, doctor's recommended he be attached to a monitor for a year and any caregivers would need to be trained in how to use the monitor. The family decided to keep care of Eric inside the family.

So, in a sense, we lost both babies. Ten days is plenty of time for me to bond with an infant.
The day before, Evan had gazed into my eyes and smiled, holding the gaze and the smile for what seemed like an eternity. Memory of that moment sustained me through the grief process and was the seed for this poem.

It is hard to believe Eric is twelve years old now. As far as I know anyway. His family were friends of friends of my mother and I haven't heard anything further since my mother's friend showed me a photo of Eric at age three.

___________

Sorry I'm so late getting this posted this week. It has been hard to drag my attention off my NaNo novel.

Plus it is getting harder to select a poem. I've got three left now! I'm going to have to start writing poetry again or start reposting poems or switching to fiction outtakes....

Maybe I'll be inspired once I get inside the heads of my three POV characters: two poets and a Professor specializing in medieval poetry. Which leads to an interesting question: when a character in a novel writes poetry which is included in the text of the novel, who is the author?
__________________

for more Poetry Train passengers

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Sunday Serenity #14

I went to YouTube looking for a simple video of a sleeping baby because watching babies sleep and holding sleeping babies and rocking babies to sleep are all serenity inducing for me. But in my search, I came across these two music videos. I couldn't choose between them so I'm posting them both.

I adore Anne Geddes photography. I could spend many serene hours looking at the baby pics she produces.

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Water Babies Swim in My Dreams

I haven't just been surfing the web this week. I have been deep-diving for pearls. Pears otherwise known as free electronic format books to either read online or download. It began as part of my project to find substitutes for at least some of the resources I lost when our libraries closed earlier this month. Then the search itself became fascinating in its own right. I will be sharing some of my finds either in posts or in my sidebar.

I'm going to begin with a book that I stumbled upon which sent me into a nostalgia daze. That is The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley. I have vivid memories of this book from childhood. It wasn't mine but a cousin's and I remember not only being in awe of the story and its illustrations but in awe of the privilege of borrowing such a treasure from an older cousin whom I adored.



I remembered the story of a little boy covered in soot because he worked cleaning out rich peoples chimneys all day for a boss who was a bully. Then one day he fell in a river and became a water baby--naked, having "nothing on but himself" and about the size of an adult's hand He proceeded to have adventures with talking animals and fairy godmothers and a very special little friend.

I stumbled on these ebook editions first at Project Gutenberg. There is a choice between HTML and plain text downloads. I was thrilled and a tad sad at the same time. It just wasn't the same without those dreamy illustrations I remembered. I immediately thought of the Google full view books I had discovered several weeks ago in my search for online reading when I was preparing that TT about substitutions for library resources. I knew that Google Books was in the process of providing both online reading and PDF downloads of a great deal of public domain literature. So I headed over there and soon found this version, which said it was illustrated. I was quite pleased with this one once it was open, but not completely charmed as the illustrations were not one bit familiar to me and I was just yearning to gaze on those ones once more.



So I did a Google search for The Water Babies and somewhere on the first page or two of it, there was this link to some pages on the Library of Congress site, purporting to celebrate an exhibition of the twelve "lavish drawings Jessie Willcox Smith produced as color plates for The Water-Babies in 1916." That sounded very promising so I headed on over there and as soon as I was on the first page, I knew I was in the right place. The pages had been created to promote a 1999 exhibition of the original drawings at the Swan Gallery. Moments later I had found this page, displaying all twelve of the drawings in JPG format. I checked carefully for any warning that they were copyrighted in anyway or forbidden for download and found this page clarifying the law and etiquette of use of the pictures found on the LOC site. So I think I am safe to post a couple here.

This is the one I remember the clearest:

I just couldn't get over how tickled I was to be gazing upon them once again. Ah, the power of nostalgia. But it is more. It is the power of nostalgia coupled with the power of story and imagination. It is the memory of the way a book like this could take me out of this world. I am a bit afraid that the cloying, Victorian morality ambience of this story is going to rub the adult me a bit wrong but I have determined not to let that stop me from enjoying emersing myself in the water baby world again.





As I look at these pictures I am left wondering just how much influence this book and these illustrations had on the strong baby motif infiltrating my dreams from those early days. I cannot remember a time when I was not remembering vivid dreams nearly every night of my life. One of the strongest themes running in my dreams was that of infants and baby dolls. They can range in size from as small as my thumb to as big as a large watermelon. But the two most common sizes are that of a typical newborn and that of my hand. Oddly enough these are the sizes of my two most favorite dolls in childhood. I had the newborn sized doll from about age three so it is hard to know whether the doll or the dreams came first. But I know that I had been having the dreams for years before I ever got my Cheerful Tearful doll in the late sixties.

Babies about that size, swimming in water, speaking with import if not wisdom, needing rescue, offering comfort, have proliferated in my dreams for decades. I don't know which came first--the dreams of babies or my fascination with them. But my mom tells me that I exhibited an extremely strong fascination with my newborn baby brother at 22 months, pulling him off the couch onto his head in an attempt to kiss him and another time nearly tipping the buggy over by pulling down on the handle until I could get a good view of him inside. I know I was still in a crib when I began having dreams of babies and living baby dolls but I suspect I was already sharing my nursery with my baby brother.





For a bonus: In my explorations of Jessica Wilcox Smith's work, I ran across these pages offering prints and posters for sale. Here. Here. And here. From them I discovered that I had seen Ms. Smith's illustrations in many more of my favorite childhood books. Many of you may recognize some of them yourselves.

This could have been me except that this 1920 Good Housekeeping cover was published about forty years before I was old enough to hold a book that size by myself.
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