p.s.

My blog is one year old today!
To celebrate, Lynn interviewed me (yes! this means she has started blogging again!) - go check it out at Sprigs. (And while you are there, take a moment to read her poetry if you haven't already. This girl is amazing.)
Over the next few weeks I am going to write a series of posts about blogging...what it means to me, what I have learned in this last year, and other things. Stay tuned.
Thank you for all that you have given me in this past year - kindness, frienship, validation, humor, more kindness - I feel so blessed to be part of this community.

the poem that woke me up {poetry thursday}

It seems like Poetry Thursday was just a couple of days ago, but here it is again. I smile this morning knowing that the next Poetry Thursday will be here next week. I love poetry.

Sometime in the last two weeks, I visited Christina over at My Topography and read this post about a conversation between Robert Bly and William Stafford. Although my heart was warmed by Stafford the story (if you visit me here every now and then you know how I adore William Stafford) and I appreciated the idea behind a poem a day, my instant thought was, “Well, I don’t have time for that.”

This morning, I found myself awake an hour before I planned to wake up and the words for this poem came to me. Even though I drifted back to sleep, they woke me up an hour later and insisted they were a poem meant to be written. This is just a draft, a simple morning poem, but I share it with you.

A morning poem (9/28/06)

In the hour of vulnerability just before dawn
my fuzzy thoughts are with you
in your hospital bed as you took your last breath.
In the kitchen, my husband takes a plate
down from the cupboard that
clanks as it touches the counter.
That sound incites my memory
to grab my hand like Peter Pan,
and we slip out the window.
I pad down the hallway and
curl up on the couch with sleepy
anticipation of our day together.
Sliding open the kitchen door
you see me and say the magic words,
“Do you want a Surprise?”
A slight smile curves around the security blanket
thumb in my mouth as I nod.
Before you turn toward the kitchen,
you walk to the television and turn on Channel 9,
knowing my internal clock sets to
“The Bozo Show” the weeks I stay with you.
In a few minutes you will appear again
with exotic treats of sliced banana, cranberry juice,
and peanut butter sandwiched between Cheerios.
In this hour of vulnerability just before dawn,
grief and love tuck me back into bed
as I drift off to memories of
you, laughter, and sounds of “The Grand Prize Game.”

with my jonny {self-portrait challenge}

We have a secret phrase we say to each other so we always know one of us isn't a clone (hee, hee...yes, we watch too many sci-fi movies). It is the response to the phrase that is the key. Whenever this phrase comes up it is when we are looking eye-to-eye like we are here.

We have a secret handshake. Every few months we add another step. By the time we have been married twenty years, it will probably take us ten minutes to complete all the steps.

We have silly names for each other. I call him Stinkbug. He calls be Lady Belle. (No, he doesn't stink. It just started because I love that word stink. Isn't it fun to say? Seriously. Say it out loud. Love it.)

We annoy each other. I have been known to start singing songs about how annoyed I am...only to, of course, become the annoying.

We crack each other up. We think we are the funniest people we know.

We never forget one another. Even though life creeps in and invites stress, we are learning to remember that we have one another for support. We are realizing always we have to do is lean back a bit and the other person is right there.

(to see more self-portraits taken with someone else, head over to self-portrait challenge)

good night monday

studio 60 on the sunset strip.

how you ease my pain of losing the west wing.

(thank you.)

good morning monday

singing
Paul Simon's new album (and guess what [she says with a whisper], as of two hours ago we will be singing along with Paul Simon in person Friday night. not with an image of him in my mind...no with him. yipppppeeeeee!!!!)

Marc Broussard's "Home" because i just can't get enough of it. i dare you not to dance/sing along when you hear this song.

watching
grey's anatomy (because what else would you watch?)

disc four of oprah's twentieth anniversary DVD collection (netflix. it's a good thing.)

season one of the office (netflix. gotta love it.)

dinner for five, season one (you guessed it. my friend. netflix.)

reading
a wondrous article, really it is almost a small book, about Bill Clinton in The New Yorker (how i wish we could do away with the 22nd amendment for four years and bring him back).

(finally) some Poetry Thursday posts and other blogs. i have been so busy lately with work and life and stuff that i haven't been able to read blogs as much as usual over the past few weeks. i had a little time this weekend to read a few and it was wondrous.

creating
a purse or two. i have my first commission (thank you a.) and will get started on it soon! so exciting. i have purchased some gorgeous fabric in the last few months and can't wait to create some bags from all the succulent colors and patterns.

enjoying
time with my dad and his girlfriend. they are visiting and we have had a great time so far. tomorrow they go down to portland to visit my brother. then back up this way later in the week. it is so much fun to share our favorite places with them.

cuddling on the couch with millie the pooch. she keeps me company as i work late into the night some nights.

the fact that my little office/studio is almost done. i am getting there. organizing ain't as easy as some of you folks make it seem. (and anyone who wants to come help me figure out the rest of it is welcome any time. i promise to feed you tea and cake.

eating
the ponzu salmon bowl at anthony's. oh yummy.

peanut butter on toast. (i am that easy. yep. just love it.)

pumpkin doughnuts at starbucks (have you tried one? oh my goodness.)

drinking
genmaichi (green tea with brown rice). oh it is some kind of good.

a strawberry mango margarita that just makes a person so happy. i enjoyed two last night as we watched the notre dame game at a restaurant/bar in seattle (we couldn't get the game at our house). it made the game go down a little easier since we were plainly going to lose. except for the part where they won as we were driving home in the car. so glad they won. so sad we missed it!

it is fall and that means pumpkin spice soy lattes. i just can't get enough. i just can't get enough.

anticipating
a new dishwasher!!! one of the many great things about having parents visit is that they sometimes buy you things you need...like a dishwasher! i spent part of yesterday morning contorted inside ours, unscrewing things and cleaning out the "self-cleaning filter." oh it was some kind of gross. i mean really. imagine the stuff you clean out of your drain only with food that has been in there for years. ugh. triple ugh. so after breakfast tomorrow my dad is taking me to get a new one. hee, hee. love it!

going shopping on thursday with my dad's girlfriend. this is really the first tiem we have done something just the two of us and i think it will be fun. it will be great to show her around seattle. i am getting excited about/greatly anticipating a fun weekend i have coming up in november and i want to get a few things for it.

thinking
about the time i spent with maureen in seattle on friday. oh i just adore this woman. i will share a bit more soon...

about the letter i wrote to my teenage self last week. i think i am going to write a few more to myself a different ages. a very interesting, thought-provoking exercise. and most of all, this practice was very healing. healing wasn't my intention when i wrote it, but it is permeating from it i think. i keep thinking about that girl who would receive this letter as someone who is really out there. i keep wondering what she is thinking when she reads these words. kind of crazy i realize, yet i feel she is there...because...of course...she is.

loving
the way my husband just loves me. even when i bug him. he just loves me.

meeting bloggers is one of my favorite past times i think. i just love it. all of you who i have met and talked to and emailed with during these past few months...well...you just fill up my spirit. thank you.

a letter to my teenage self {poetry thursday}

It's Poetry Thursday!

This week I am sharing the first part of a writing exercise I am doing. I am trying to jumpstart my writing a bit because I have spent so much time on my laptop lately that I am not always motivated to come back to my computer to write for fun, to write for me. Earlier this week I was jumping around from blog to blog and found a letter a blogger wrote to her teenage self (updated 2013: link to the blog no longer works). I loved this idea and immediatly thought, "this would be an incredible poem." I decided to let this be a prompt for me this week. I wanted to first write the letter and then create a poem from it.

So here is part one...the letter. I was imagining writing to myself the summer after I graduated from high school.

Dear Liz Elayne,

I am just going to put this out there first. I know it is hard to believe that I do not have at least three of the five children you were convinced I would have. That I am thirty! and do not have even one child but instead I have, of all things, a dog (she is my second golden retriever by the way). I know it is hard to believe that I am not a doctor (chemistry was not any easier in college) or a Constitutional Law lawyer (still love it just didn’t take that path). Something happened, not so unexpectedly, that shaped this path. I don’t want you to be afraid. You are safe; nothing happens “to” you. But your life will shift a bit. Remember that feeling you had when you thought mom and dad were getting divorced when you were 14? Remember feeling alone, lost, and scared? Those feelings continue to guide you for a while. I don’t want to scare you, but it isn’t as easy to work through it all as it might seem. I am sorry about that. But you will realize that the feelings you have now are part of the human journey. They do not go away. The feelings you had reading The Awakening will continue to wash over you for…well, from what I can tell…your entire lifetime.

Know that you will find a sense of support from a few amazing friendships. Some books and a golden retriever will change your life. You will begin to loosen the grip your fingers have around fear and loneliness. I promise. And many of the friends you have now, yes, right now, will be your friends still today. I know you know that, but I just wanted to tell you. However, you will never have sex with Lee Travis. Nope. So just let that go. Seriously sweetie. Just let it go. The girl everyone thinks you are in high school…the good girl…the good girl who never really does anything that might get her “in trouble.” That girl. Honey, that is just who you are. It is okay. (Though when V. has a heart to heart with you in a bathroom in Boston, listen to her. You just might do something that is totally unlike you, something of little importance, yet something that will remind you that you can be just a tiny bit reckless. Of course, take R. up on it when she wants to come too. Bravery in numbers.) You will fall in love with a wonderful man who honors every inch of who you are. I don’t want to spoil it all for you though. Just trust yourself like you always have.

I feel a need to say I am sorry I am not saving the world like you wanted to. Yet, I feel closer to you now than I ever did. The hopes, dreams, funny (good funny) way you have of looking at the world…I feel a bond with all of that. A bond that got a bit lost in my twenties. You know how your spirit yearns for a connection to the Great Spirit you have read about? You will continue to seek this connection. It will be an important part of your path. And don’t let anyone tell you how this connection should look. There will be a time when you feel terrified that if this connection doesn’t look a certain way you might lose people who are important to you. Keep listening to that voice inside. That voice is, just as you suspected, the voice of what you will keep calling god in your own mind because that is a word that makes sense to you. When you find yourself out in the Pacific Northwest, away from the expectations of those around you, you will step into a world that embraces all you want to be, which is all that you already are. You will begin to shed the fear like a clothes on a hot Indiana day and honor that maybe you are saving the world, just in a different way.

And know this…I would do it all again to be in this place where I am now. All of it. That thought isn’t a cliché; it is truth. Your truth. So even in those dark moments that are coming your way, trust you. Trust. You.

Oh and have fun. You will begin to understand the fragility of life when you get to be my age, and laughter and joy and moments filled with truth and caring and love will become more important than you ever realized. Notice those moments, so that you can remember them when life hands you something else.

I don’t want to give away anything more than I already have. Just live it baby girl. Live in your life. I am always here for you; all you have to do is sit quietly and breathe and you will find me.

Love,
me

my grandmother, memories, and grief {self portrait challenge}

With a loved one. With my grandmother. With memories and grief.

I cannot talk to her anymore, but I can surround myself with little pieces of her.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a poem about my regret that I did not brush my grandmother’s hair away from her face when I saw her in her casket (I hate that I just typed “her casket”); you can read this poem here. I keep reading this poem, and I cry every time. The feelings in this poem are tangible to me; I feel like I can actually touch them in the air in front of me.

After she passed away, I wished I had a carpet bag like Mary Poppins so that I could sweep the entire contents of her room into my bag and take it home with me. I didn’t want to recreate her room in my home; rather, I just wanted to go through each little piece of that room. I felt like she would have wanted me to do that. But as the granddaughter, it was not my place. There are things I would have taken with me. Little things. Like the pen next to her bed, a tube of lipstick, a piece of paper with a grocery list, a hair pin, socks, the sweatshirt we bought her that had chickadees on it, her radio that she would listen to at night. But I didn’t know how to explain that I wanted these things. Everyone was dealing with their grief, and again, it was not really my place. I may have been the closest person to her, yet I had a role. I had to step out of the way.

A few weeks after the funeral, my aunt sent me a package that had a tote bag and these slippers in it. The tote bag is an “antique” Epcot Center bag that my grandmother would have purchased on a trip to Disney World with my family. I am the Disney lover in the family so my aunt sent it to me. It was actually the bag my grandmother packed with little things to take with her to the hospital (at least I think this is true). Her Ponds Cold Cream and other things. I sent my grandmother these slippers as a silly little gift a few months before she died. When I was at her house when we were there for the funeral, they were sitting right next to her bed. When I opened up the package that contained these two items, I was struck by this realization that my grandmother had been wearing these slippers. That she had been alive with her feet snuggled warmly in these slippers. Alive. And she had touched them. I felt so far away from her all the way across the country from everything that was hers, that I was simply overwhelmed by this reality that these slippers had been worn by her. I left them inside the bag and tucked the bag far up into my closet. I just couldn’t go there.

Today, I reached up to that high closet shelf and took down the box that had kept this tote bag and slippers far away from my mind and heart. I pulled out the slippers and slid them onto my feet.

My grief feels even deeper and wider lately. Bigger than it did seventeen months ago when she died. I have moved to a place where I just let the sobs and moans come and settle in sometimes. Last week when Jon was working late at school, I found myself sobbing while warming spaghettios on the stove. I was thinking about how even though my grandparents have a microwave they always heat things up this way. Our microwave recently sizzled and died, so we are doing the same, but not by choice. I had the thought that I would have to call her and laugh about that the next morning. Then I remembered. She is totally dead. I found myself just moaning through tears as I stirred my dinner, poured it into a bowl, and settled on the couch. Moaning seems to be my new way of grieving when I am alone and the feelings bubble up.

My aunt also sent me this framed picture of a stem of lily of the valley. I have the same one up in my home office. I took the picture out of the frame and realized it was a card I had sent my grandmother about twelve years ago. She had kept it and put it in a frame. Little did I realize we were both looking at the same card each day. I learned to love lily of the valley because they always seemed to be in bloom when I visited my grandparents’ house as a child. Their smell will forever make me think of her. They are our favorite flower.

When the family was together for the funeral, my aunt and mom decided that I should have the turquoise ring we bought for my grandma when I worked at a Native American store in Jackson, WY while I was in college. To be honest, I am the only one with fingers the same size as my grandmother’s (not small), but it did make sense that I would have it. I wear it and think about how she would wear it and probably think of me. And now I think of her.

I think what I feel sad about now is this idea that is captured in a line from a Trisha Yearwood song, “we were just getting to the good part.” I feel like we were just getting to this place where I was learning more about her, her past. A place where she was opening up a little bit more. And I feel like this has been stolen from me. I had so much I wanted to tell her and ask her and learn from her. I still don’t know how to make a pie crust. I. Have. No. Idea. She taught me at least twice. But I needed her to show me again.

“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”
Kahil Gibran

(to see more self portrait challenge photographs, click here.)

reflecting on a reflection

Something interesting has happened over the last few weeks. I have been looking at myself in the mirror for a few minutes, almost every day, and I have started to see someone else.

This is somewhat challenging to explain. But it is as though I have begun to feel comfortable with this person who stares back at me, and we have previously unknown level of familiarity.
She looks me in the eye. And her eyes are softer and a little more accepting of what she sees when she sees me.

And when I look at her, I pause to really look. I don’t just look up quickly and move on. I take time and honor who she is, even if only for a moment. This happens when I brush my teeth or wash my hands and look up into the mirror or when I unexpectedly spot my reflection somewhere. I pause and honor this person who stares back at me.

And she looks different.

Sometimes you see people only in pictures and then when you see them in person, they look different. Not bad or better, just different. They become alive for you. Maybe you have seen pictures of a friend’s sibling and then when you meet him, he looks similar but now he is moving and breathing and laughing. You see beyond one millisecond in time.

This is how I feel when I look in the mirror.

I kind of love it. I feel like I am meeting myself for the first time. Seeing beyond a frozen sense of self and into the deep, wide places of who I really am. And it isn’t scary or someplace I do not want to go. It is just me.

********

If you have been looking in the mirror during the last few weeks, what are you seeing? An old friend? A new one? New layers of who you thought you were? Confirmation of who you always knew you could be?

And if you aren't taking part in this meditation, I invite you to get up, walk over to a mirror, and look for a moment. What do you see? Who do you see?