Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I babysat the youngest grandson today, and he was easy peasy. We were anxious he wouldn't sleep in the portacrib upstairs, but he did well. My daughter is doing a sewing project in her four year old's preschool, and I offered to watch the one year old. He hasn't been with us much in his short life, and when I watch him, it's out his house, so this was a trial that went very well. After I walked to the post office to mail pillowcases and a pillow to my two year old grandson, who approved the fabric and colors. I also impulsively took three mysteries from a Little Library box, so I'm going to indulge, then return them after I'm done. What a delightful idea the Little Library is. It's fun to peek as you are walking along and occasionally find treasures. Not quite as wonderful as browsing a bookstore, but much more economical!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I woke up early as I do these days, so I went to the post office to mail a couple of packages, then met up with my friend to take a walk and have a cappuchino. That caused me to need to pee, so we went to Trade Joe's for the bathroom and came out with two bunches of peonies each. We figured we'll get them while they are available. A bunch of five is the price of one stem at a florist. What's not to like?! I then returned home to continue reading an incredible book about a man whose two year old daughter died when a brick fell from eight stories above on her and her grandmother. Talk about chance and randomness. It sounds gruesome, but he describes so well all the grief and suffering that I have felt that it's like hearing the truth from someone who KNOWS. He and his wife struggle to come back to an approximation of their lives, and I know they are going to succeed, so the book is hopeful and encouraging as well. In the chapter I just finished, they've gone to a weekend retreat/workshop for people who have lost a wife, brother, child. They are skeptical, but comforted by being with other strangers who have had a similar loss. I find myself also soothed by friends who have had losses. My walking friend lost her husband in their forties, and raised her two kids alone, as did another friend. I feel like they "get me" and we don't need to say anything. Words don't help. But friends really, really do.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I did enjoy sewing yesterday and will continue today. At the end of the week I'm watching a quilting show with a friend at her house. She's signed up and I will buddy up with her. I am fascinated with quilting, but the Rosie Lee Thompkins kind: free spirited and unmeasured. The show is supposedly in that vein. I love Gee's Bend quilts, and many years ago my younger daughter and I saw the show at a local art museum, sketched some ideas while there, then came home and made our own crazy quilts. Mine is still at the foot of a guest room bed. I also love the Kantha quilts from India, with all the minute stitches and myriad of colors. I've never made one, but I like the idea of trying. Baby quilt size is about all I can handle, and the fabrics I picked this time are soft, flannely and sweet: moon and stars on a gray background, lamas on a mint green background, and forest animals on soft gray. I also have rainbow stripes with contrasting lilac stars for small burp cloths or shoulder pads. I used to do more elaborate quilts, but now my eyesight and aging joints make it too challenging. I've adapted, rather than quit altogether, which I believe to be the wise choice.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Today our daughter will have been gone one year. There is a whole in the universe but not entirely, as long as we who love her keep her memory alive and her writings remain available. She sent out her voice and it was heard. Our granddaughter is energizing our memorial to her mother, set for the fall. She is a tiger, like her mom. And, stunningly, as she has become a teenager, she looks more and more like her mother. Yesterday I spent time searching for old photos of my daughter on IPhoto. She was so beautiful, with a smile that glowed. Then I looked at photos of myself at my granddaughter's age, sent years ago by my childhood friend. I was thinking of my granddaughter, daughter and myself at 13. It's a complex, difficult age, and my daughter's father died when she was that age, and I had to move across country to begin a high school where I knew no one, and now my granddaughter enters her second year without her mother. I'm thinking about how those events shaped us, and how, for me, it took many years to fully face the loss, my mother's cancer, and how much my subsequent actions were a response. We handle what we can handle when we can.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I had a rough time sleeping last night. All day I was brooding over the rush during the pandemic to buy guns and the almost daily mass shootings in this country. You can be in church, getting groceries, walking in a park, buying shoes for your kids, and someone armed like a battleground soldier swoops in with intent to kill. It doesn't matter the reasons, none of them make much sense anyway. I've supported gun control for many years, and so have a majority of Americans, but we are less protected than ever. It's like a relentless will to selfdestruct. There is no country more dangerous to visit than our own. When I told my husband how depressed I was he reminded me that tomorrow is the first anniversary of our daughter's death. I'm taking it hard. I don't accept it, I can't really believe it, and the loss just feels too great to bear. She had so much more to do: raise her daughter, write more books, paint, travel, scuba dive, sing, dance, play the drums, laugh and eat with friends, fuss over her nephews. It's as if a brilliant star became a shooting star and left the sky darker and us in shadow. It's unacceptable.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

This morning I went with a friend to Coatco to get earthquake supplies. Every few years we do this. I joked that since I keep them in the garage, probably it will immediately collapse when the big one comes, and I will have nothing. Nevertheless, we are both responsible people so we do it. Maybe it comforts us. We talked about wills and investments as well, with me relating how my father's preparations eased my way when he died suddenly, after my mother dying ten months before. I explained how from the shock of my parents' deaths was soothed by clear instructions, paperwork, and my parents' lawyer, accountant and investment advisor. Those people knew how to intrepret the will, manage selling their house and how to deal with the IRS and other entities. I was grateful to my father for being so organized. My friend has three kids and four grandchildren, and I have four kids and five grandchildren. He surprised me by not having a will. His kids are all successful as are mine, but as I told him: the blow of your death will make everything hard to deal with, so write your will for their sakes. I'm sure he was listening. After all, we have ourselves all prepared for earthquake and fire! I know, there IS no real protection. But we try.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We did a spontaneous thing this weekend. Our daughter called and invited us to spend overnight with them at their Air B&B and we did. I had promised to take a friend to BART to catch her flight to Berlin, but when I got back Sunday morning we loaded the car and drove south. Their rental was roomy and they gave us their king sized bed, and they took the sleeper sofa. The beach was pristine and huge, and we had fun with the boys digging for sand crabs and making castles and roads. That afternoon we took a long hike at Moss Landing wildlife refuge, and though we didn't see seals or otters, we saw pelicans, herons, sandpipers and ducks. The boys were intrepid, with the one year old trudging mile after mile while his older brother rode in his stroller. We picked up seafood dinners and came back exhausted. Yesterday morning we went to the beach again and played, then packed up and drove looking for tidepools, but the whole world was on the beach, and we couldn't get a parking space so we split up and they took the boys to a playground and then headed back to have a barbeque at a cousin's house, and we took highway 1 and enjoyed the views and masses of wildflowers. We didn't even encounter traffic, except at Half Moon Bay, where they design it so you give up and stop somewhere. But we didn't. I made waffles for dinner and we were exhausted but happy. A nice surprise for us, and we love those close encounters with the third kind: grandchildren.