Like my mother....

While I was emptying the dishwasher tonight I pulled out 2 spatulas, and I thought about my Mom.

Mom was more than careful with what she had.  She was so frugal and made do all of her life.  She had one spatula.  By the time I left home I don't think it could be called a spatula any longer. Actually it was always called the "rubber scraper".  But there was only ever one 'rubber scraper' and in time it was actually 'a wooden stick with some rubber around it'. (it was obviously better rubber than we have now on the cheapey rubber spatulas!!)  How could it ever have scrapped anything?  And because it was the only one and used for everything it was discolored and brown.  It was clean.  Mom was very careful with 'clean' but it was an interesting shade of brown.

When we were married we had a rubber scraper.  I don't know if it was a wedding gift or if I bought it but we had one.  After a number of years I came to realize the monetary value of a rubber scraper.  So why the heck did I only have one and why the heck was it just as discolored and worn as my Mom's?  I made a decision to: 1. have more than one rubber scraper and 2. throw them out when the rubber was cracked and broken!

I often wonder what sort of things our Daughter will realize she has been doing/is doing because 'that is the way Mom did it'!  I hope she can smile and do it differently .......

a long day

I have no idea why it has seemed like such a long day!  I swear it felt like it was 30 hours long!  Maybe the post-Christmas blues have hit.  Maybe reality has hit.  Maybe ......

I finally finished the basement.  If repair men weren't coming tomorrow to work on the boiler I doubt I would have been that ambitious.  It seems that unless I have myself some incentive I can procrastinate for a very, very, yes, very long time.  The after Christmas laundry has been done for over a week but I don't like making beds for some reason so the clean sheets have been sitting on the beds, waiting.  And then there is the vacuuming.  But now it is decent, even the bathroom.  

I actually accomplished quite a bit today, didn't sit around feeling lonely or bored but it was a long, long day.

And now people are coming for care group.

I wonder what tomorrow will be like.........

Twenty ten

I understand 'twenty ten' is 'the way' to speak of the new year.  Not quite sure when I started to care about 'the way' of speaking......

As I wrote the Christmas letter in December, I commented on how quickly 2009 had passed. Later I discovered that this was basically the same way I began the letter of 2008!  I hope I come up with a better way to begin a letter at the end of this year.  But it does seem that the older I get the quicker the years go by.

A new year has often found me melancholic and contemplative.  Some times I have been downright depressed.  I still remember and can still feel the night of new year's day 29(?) years ago.  I had suddenly realized that was the year that our first born would begin school.  I began to grieve 8 months before anything happened.  No wonder I found life difficult at times.  I kept carrying burdens that no one, not even God expected me to carry.

I continue to learn to live by faith, to accept the present, to enjoy the moment.  I continue to believe it is a lifetime process and will experience ups and downs in that process.  I was reminded recently that eternal life is knowing God,  knowing Jesus.  (John 17:3 I think!). Eternal life is qualitative and not quantitative.  Well, I realize that there is eternity sometime, somewhere but sometimes I am less sure of what that means too.  More need for faith I think!

And so I wish you eternal life in the coming year.  That sounds rather weird but somehow I think that is exactly what I want for people, not a head full of knowledge but a "knowing" of God and a "knowing" of what it means to be his child.

New year's day, 2010? I don't really recall one contemplative thought!  We went to see "The Blind Side" which did bring some 'thinking'.  We both enjoyed it and for us, to BOTH enjoy and no one sleeping !!!  it was a good movie.  Not profound but a feel-good story based on true life.  After that, we had a meal at the Keg thanks to a gift certificate from friends and were home by 6!  Yikes, we are getting old.

Imagination

I have had the chance to visit all of our children/grandchildren in their homes in the last month. Grandpa was there for visits with two of the three families.   I guess one of the many advantages of being a Grandma is having the time to just observe, I don't have to worry about all the concerns that come with being the parent.  

One thing that brings such enjoyment is the imagination of all the "Seven".  It is such fun!  They all have their own stories, pictures and thoughts.

One to share:  I was holding Jae and Beck, telling them stories about themselves and then about the three little pigs.  Jae hopped off my knee, started into a tale of her own, climbed back up, put her hands together and opened them, palms up with the command "Read it".

My response was for her to read the "story".  She was still insistent that this was up to me so....

I still have some imagination too so  I told her the words were to small.  That seemed to satisfy and off she went to do something else.

"You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you."  Frederick Buechner  "Telling the Truth"

I thought about  trying to say something about this quote and realized how feeble it would sound.

I guess I do want to say it affected my mind, my heart and reminded me once again how relationships are so incredibly important both with family and friends.  

God has given me so many, many amazing relationships and I am humbly thankful........

A sunrise and thoughts

I watched an amazing sunrise the other morning.  I am sure I don't need to mention that the days are certainly getting shorter, the sun rises rather late compared to a couple of months ago!  But that is not the point .....

I watched the clouds, the colors, how they continually changed, moved and were more and more magnificent.  Then this ball of gold started peeking over the horizon.  It was awesome!  My thought was how can I possibly take it all in, how can I enjoy this to the full.  I knew there was no way to really capture the moment.

Now my next thoughts are rather corny I know but I thought, this is how I sometimes feel about my grandkids.  They are changing, they are magnificent, they are moving  and growing.  How can I possibly enjoy them to the fullest extent?  

And sometimes I get so "desperate" about making the most of my time with them that I don't enjoy the moment, don't appreciate the moment.

Seems to me I am continually learning about living in the moment, enjoying the moment.

And so the journey continues.....

Thinking....

Somehow I grew up being suspicious.  Suspicious of other denominations of churches, "other" political parties, other nationalities.  The church we went to was a small, non-denominational mish-mash of believers but..... somehow I "knew" that "we" had the corner on "truth".  As an adult when I voted a protest vote for a party other than the "right" one I remember a sense of guilt as though I had somehow "sinned"!  My parents were immigrants from Denmark so they did not pass on a superiority about nationalities and yet.......

Where this all came from I am not sure.  I don't remember my parents telling me what to believe and telling me who was right or wrong.  I keep mulling all this over in my mind, wondering where this kind of belief system comes from and I wonder if it is from not thinking.

When I don't think for myself, just believe what I hear, what I am told , what the "experts" say then I get swallowed up in all sorts of half truths and untruths.  I do think my parents felt a sense of inferiority because of their lack of education in this country and then relied on the knowledge of the "experts", didn't allow themselves to question. That included all sorts of people: doctors, our school teachers, the "right" preachers who followed the "truth".  But as I look back, my Mom was a bit of a rebel inside.  That side didn't show itself very often but I heard hints of it here and there and an thankful for her understanding as I grew up.

Move ahead to life as a parent.  I read so many books, tried to follow the advice of "experts".  It depressed me!  I couldn't measure up!  One of the last books I read on parenting was something like "A Mother's Heart".  That was when it began to dawn on me that maybe that was the key to parenting, from the life within me.  I asked God one time (never expecting an answer!!) "why did you make me a mother?"  In my mind I did get an answer, one I will never forget..... "that is the only way you will learn to depend on me".  That was probably a baby step in heading towards believing that I actually could depend on God, that I didn't have to just "try harder".

As the parenting progressed and these kids began to ask questions for themselves I think I started to allow myself to think too. (sometimes I wonder if I learned more from my kids than they learned from me!)  But it is probably only in the last ten years or so that I have really allowed myself to question and then live with the possibility of either no answers or answers that don't fit all that I thought I believed.  

I started reading a book a couple of years ago and put it down because it certainly did not fit with the theology I was taught.  Somehow I was afraid to keep reading.  I read it this spring and realized again how narrow I can be.  I also realized that I have limited God in so, so many ways.  Did I really think I would somehow be "damned" for reading a book?  Where is my faith anyway?  In someone's opinion or in God?  Sometimes I get so discouraged with myself and my brain and my faith and my attitudes and........

Maybe I should just go spray some weeds and plant some bulbs.

I remember son #1 saying one time that he was thinking so much and his head hurt, not a head ache but it just hurt.  That hasn't happened to me very often but recently I have been having head hurts and I think I understand.  

Then I wonder why on earth would I put these thoughts out there for other people to read?  I may hit delete and then again I may not!  'Cause what does it matter anyway.....