Friday, March 31, 2006
M, my Third Child,(the"baby")
He is twenty-four and he and his girlfriend have been in Japan teaching English since September. They return in May, and he starts grad school (in physics, yikes!) in September.

They have had enough of Japan, apparently, plus they did not make the kind of money they had hoped to re: paying off student loans.

Apparently, the cost of living is astronomical and they obviously wanted to do some tourist type things while they were there.

They will spend a month with us- hooray, although I will be sharing a car for the first time in a long time! Totally worth it though.
I can't wait!


Wednesday, March 29, 2006
My first two kids as little ones

Here they are, in 1975.

J, my girl, is 3 1/2.

Shawn is 1 1/2.



J, my girl is now 34 and Mama of my grandkids in the previous post.





Shawn died in 1992.


Friday, March 24, 2006
Beautiful Grand-babies...


Kai shows off his Ithaca shirt


Kai shows Malia how it's done......

Serious work at the kitchen table, on a semi sunny day on the West coast. I think these brown overalls were saved from my kids-my daughter likes that kind of continuity. I am sad that I see so many other kids so intimately each week but my own grandbabies I only see every six months or so. We will be there for four days over Easter- such a treat, but it has been three years since they came to see us. I know travel is hard with babies. We live in such mixed up times- I can see these pictures a half hour after they are taken, but months pass without seeing the kids for real. The squeezing feeling in my heart about this could be overwhelming love, or equally overwhelming grief- I can not tell.

Malia is walking and talking since I last saw her- what a dear little voice she has! Kai is coming up to five years old- (in late June.) His babyhood is pretty much over. It feels like scarily fast rapids in this part of the river.



















Beautiful Malia


Saturday, March 18, 2006
WE SOLD THE HOUSE!!
that we moved out of (and into this one) a FULL YEAR AGO.
Today the deal closed and it is all over!
Talk about being house poor- what a relief!
But, this is more about the weird way it feels to have left the house that we lived in for over 16 years really and truly behind, as in, I will never set foot in it again.
All year, while it has been on the market, sitting empty, John has gone in several days a week on his way home from work to vacuum it or mow the lawn or bring another load of random, left-behind, stuff down here, but it has been several months since I have even been in our former city, never mind the house.
I never really bonded to that house the way I did to the Louisa Street house, that I spent 10 years in, more than 6 of these as a single parent. Already I feel at home more here, in our cozy "new" house after one year than I think I ever did there. Or maybe the word might be "safer"...
An awful lot happened there.....a lot of it not so great. Also, it became a very middle-aged house with middle-aged-house problems, on a MUCH busier street, as the city grew, during that time. And it grew too big for us, with all the kids gone now.
I see myself over the last 20 years as I drive those streets and some of it is painful and I am glad to come home to my "new" life, where some significant thing didn't happen nearly everywhere I look.....this is overstated, but it seemed that way today.
Life keeps flowing along like a river, and we are just swept along and then, later, on this particular day, I open the big city paper and there-in the Lives Lived column- is the dear sweet face of a friend-a 44 year old mom of a student of mine who died so tragically of cancer, leaving her two little kids behind, last September.
I used to drive by the Louisa Street house years after we moved to the G Street one, I think because my children were little there- grew up in that house- and I would wish with everything in me that it would be say, 10 years ago and I would go inside and my son would be there, in the kitchen, alive.
Everything seems to sad to bear sometimes.


Monday, March 13, 2006
Back on the Horse, Thank You, Jess....
Ah well, since it has been a month now, I had better fess up and say that I stopped writing in here with a "who would want to read this boring stuff/I have nothing interesting to say/ It is reminding me that I will never have "my own" little kids around again -those days are gone gone gone (I actually have lots of kids here all the time with the students in and out all week, but....) So I would have to say also that I wish my grandbabies were closer- I only see them a couple or so times a year and it makes me SO SAD.
Worse , far worse, I want my own boy who died back- this is a hard time of year. He died on Easter Monday so it is usually like there are 2 bad days to get through- that day, and the actual date, which is April 21. Easter was late that year.
I have been sick with a lot of what are likely mind/body very connected things this year and depressed as a result,or the other way around. Probably impossible to sort out the egg chicken thing.
But, it is March Break and my best friend, who I haven't seen in a YEAR is coming for a sleepover, LOL- John will be away that night. That is good.
We are going to Seattle over Easter to see my daughter and husband and Grandbabies so that is great.
Jess, you were nice to comment- like, someone is actually out there in the howling wilderness.
It made me feel like crying.
Today we took the dogs on an urban adventure- we have decided- John and I , to ultimately go around the WHOLE of Lake Ontario visiting every public water access point. This is a, like, years long project but we are having a great time so far- we go one afternoon a week-end usually, using Lake Ontario Waterfront Trail maps that we downloaded. We drive to wherever we left off and then walk or bike or poke around- it is amazing how it feels as if we have been away for much longer that a few hours.

I have always made it a deliberate policy to tell the truth, which I try to do here. But, then there is also the issue of boundaries. These are terribly important too, as my 6 years in therapy, still very much on-going, has made clear. How do other people deal with this apparent discrepancy?

Kai, my 4 year old grandson, LOVES his pink Fussy shirt-intended for his little sister, really-it is his favourite shirt. He also does not want his hair cut- he wants to be able to sit on it.... can you say "strong-minded"? This Grandma could not be more pleased.
I will get a picture at Easter when we are there, I hope.

Love to all you internets-isn't it a scary thought how many lives just as complex, conflicted, sad, happy, joyful, boring, fabulous, depressing on and on and on as each other are all going on out there times infinity? It is like gazing into the waves to think of it- too scary to look at, if you really think about what you are seeing....


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