I didn’t want them to leave, even though we go back to work tomorrow and most of our grandkids have another week of homeschool before they take their Christmas break. Sawyer is in 3rd grade, Saylor in 1st, and River in PreK. Beckham and Magnolia aren’t in their school years yet.
Aidan, the oldest and a teenager, lives in a neighboring county and attends a private school there. He has finally caught – and exceeded – my height. We’ve been back to back and heel to heel for a year now to see when the day would come, and it has happened!
Even though it’s far from our normal routine where we live with three Schnoodles, having part of our family come for a visit is a joy! They are a lively bunch, and they make us so proud!
We love taking pictures each time we all get together. Our daughter in law sets the timer and makes the run to take her place before the click, while we all watch the flashing light and say “cheese” on repeat until it stops. She’s an iPhone wizard!
This year, no one felt like getting dressed for a picture, so we didn’t. It was a rainy, cold weekend and we were busy staying warm and playing dominoes and watching movies and eating nonstop. So we opted for the reality photo, the one where you have to keep calling everyone to get outside and no one can pry themselves off the couch or chair they’re occupying. No one wore anything except pajamas with a coat or robe (and not the family matching kind with the coordinated Tartan plaid that looks planned and professional). A couple of us had shoes on, no girls had makeup on, and one or two of us might have brushed our hair or teeth. We simply ran out in the misty drizzle for a photo to mark the occasion.
L-R: Saylor, Kim holding Beckham, Briar in back, River, Aidan, Sawyer, Marshall holding Magnolia, and Selena
This may be my favorite picture of us ever taken. When our grandchildren are grown and look back on these days spent with their grandparents, this is what I want them to remember – that we were happy just the way we were, and that we chose to savor every moment relaxing together at home. And that we didn’t need a crippling blizzard to know how to stay in our pajamas and drink coffee and chocolate milk all day and stay cozy.
Seven years before she died, my mother joined one of my daughters and me on a girls’ trip to Dahlonega, Georgia. My college roommate makes it an annual tradition to take her own mother and daughters to start the season of Christmas shopping the weekend before Thanksgiving each year, so we met them there that year, staying with them in their favorite Smith House suite overlooking the Dahlonega square. It was a magical time of welcoming the Christmas spirit, eating great food, playing dominoes and cards, reading, sleeping past 6 a.m., lingering over coffee, and shopping for those on our lists.
I’m so grateful for that time we had together. Mom knew something was different, and she suspected Parkinson’s Disease long before her official diagnosis came. Her right thumb trembled endlessly, and she found she grew weaker and felt increasingly exhausted in her daily routine, even with her normal daily tasks. I was glad our room was close to the town square so that she could go back and rest when she felt too tired to walk.
We were downstairs in one of the gift shops when Mom’s eyes lit up. She’d spotted the sale sign on Willow Tree items. I was curious about what she’d wanted from the selection, so I followed her over to the table, where she stood admiring the Nativity set.
She bought that basic Nativity set as my Christmas gift that year and added to it for the next several years, giving me a new part of the collection each year. At the time, I was thankful, but not nearly as grateful for that gift then as I am today. The memory of our time together lives on, and this is one gift that I truly cherish because it marks our trip and takes me right back to the place where she found the joy of giving this to me and building it over time. When I admire these pieces, she is right here with me. In this Nativity, I see the past, present, and future.
Earlier this week, I blogged about the increasing popularity of rage rooms and the owners who are purchasing vintage glassware, antique dishes, and grandma’s oil lamps to be smashed with baseball bats and golf clubs in controlled settings across the nation. They’re scouring estate sales for the dishes that families have gathered around for the last century or two, purchasing what folks can no longer persuade their children or other relatives to use in their own homes, and wearing helmets with eye protection as it’s all beaten to smithereens behind a concrete wall.
This may seem to some like a violent death of memory and sentiment. It may show disrespect to the items being smashed, from the artistry of the design to the materials used to make these things that have long held presence around tables feeding families or that have held oil to light rooms and keep aglow the faces of loved ones centuries ago.
Perhaps, though, the best chance of life these items have is in their recycling – – a reincarnation, of sorts, for things boxed up in darkness, locked away in storage, held hostage as prisoners of uselessness for decades, like the aging adult’s own version of the Island of Misfit Toys with nowhere to go and nothing to do but wait. A rage room may at first seem in direct opposition to the gratitude factor of thankfulness – but is it really any more offensive than attics full of items without purpose, kept that way by those who should value them most and keep their spirits bright?
As I drove to visit a family member having surgery two states north of me last week, I listened to Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. The author herself reads the book on Audible, and hearing her voice is almost as pleasant as pausing every few minutes to truly soak in the meaning of her words from a new perspective – – and an important one. Similarly to the way Aldo Leopold reminds us of our duty to be good stewards with a strong land ethic in A Sand County Almanac, Kimmerer reminds us in her chapter “Allegiance to Gratitude” that every single item we eat or use comes at the cost of the life of a plant or animal. As good citizens, we should follow the guidelines for the honorable harvest of consumption, from the wood in our furniture to the food on our plates. Allegiance to gratitude is what begets abundance – not the collecting and storing of items that are not being used, because this disrespects the energy from Mother Earth to produce these things and invokes perceptions of hoarding: get all you can, can all you get, and sit on your can. Taking and using only what is needed is the way to be environmentally responsible for future generations. Having what can be used and fully appreciated cultivates a fuller appreciation of all of our blessings.
Gratitude has been a year-long spotlight word for me – – a goal word. It is fitting that in December, I am reading Kimmerer’s words with a renewed sense of gift giving. This year, we’re practicing a different gift-giving arrangement for my grandchildren. They’ll each receive something they want, something they need, something to wear, and something to read. We’re simplifying, redefining less as more.
We will have an open mic night at our local coffeeshop this evening, where we will share stories. Mine is entitled Ancestral Spirits.
Before my mother died 4 days after Christmas in 2015, I asked Dad to look through the recipe box and give me some recipes written by the hands of my ancestors. I framed them, and they hang on the wall of my kitchen to welcome the kitchen spirits for those times I attempt to cook anything. They gather, I’m sure, standing over my shoulders, shaking their heads, convinced by now that I’m a complete kitchen misfit.
Throughout her life, Mom was a great everything, teaching my brother and me the ways of the outdoors on the coastal island of St. Simons. We crabbed and fished off the pier, collected shells, and learned how to identify all kinds of birds.
Mom had some inner sensor that alerted her to bird presence, particularly hawks. My brother Ken and I frequently send text alerts: Mom was on a wire by Highway 362 checking to make sure I had my seatbelt on, warning me the cops are running radar up ahead.
We believe in the presence of birds to convey messages.
Ken and I were a little divided on where she’d be buried. We walked through Christ Church Cemetery, my preference being in the old section, where she’d have casket neighbors who were friends. My realtor brother was concerned with the oak roots and preferred the new section.
“Fine, brat,” I told him. “I picked the spot, you pick the plot.” So he picked the new section.
I wrestled with it and lost sleep. At breakfast, I confessed to my preacher Dad (who did her funeral) that I needed reassurance from Mom that she’d be okay up there by herself until more burials happened. “I prayed for a sign – – some majestic bird, with a large wingspan, like an eagle. Since there is no tree canopy up there yet, I want her send a bird to let me know Ken didn’t mess this all up.”
We pulled into the cemetery for the graveside service, and parked up by the tent. And when the car doors opened, we heard them before we ever saw them.
“What have you done?” My father looked at me accusingly, like I’d done some voodoo magic.
We glanced up, and three buzzards circled overhead.
My brother elbowed me and pointed to the skies, chuckling. “Look! She showed up! And she brought her parents.”
My ancestral spirits seem to enjoy their gatherings, always giving us signs and messages. Imagine our deep comfort when, just last week, one of my grown children was having surgery two states north of here. As we left the hotel for the hospital that morning, there on a wire above my RAV 4 was a hawk. Mom. Gathering with us. Waiting on us to say everything’s going to be okay.
Yesterday, I shared about the time spent with my daughter during her recovery from surgery the last week of November. We’ve been knitting hats, having great conversations, and keeping her occupied so that she can focus on doing things with her hands – which is said to take the mind off of pain.
Anticipating the time we would be spending together, I also decided to bring some sketch books, puzzle books, and Christmas coloring books for adults. And I brought the smooth colored pencils that I scooped up back in the good old days when Hobby Lobby still had the daily item for half price with the online coupon. My guess is that they couldn’t keep Scholar Prismacolor oil-based pencils in stock, so they had to stop that kind of giveaway.
At home, I never take the time I should take to knit a hat or to color a picture or work a puzzle while having a great conversation, and it’s probably something I need to do more often – even sharing a cup of tea and talking more often on FaceTime – to feel a greater sense of presence and togetherness.
At the end of each month, (or beginning), I review my yearly goals and spend some time reflecting on how I’m doing in living the life I want to live ~ a way of becoming my own accountability partner and having frequent check-ins to evaluate my progress. I’m still in the process of revising some of my goals as I encounter successes…..and setbacks. New goals have asterisks for the month of December, when I will report on them in a few weeks. For the month of November, here’s my goal reflection:
Category
Goals
My Progress
Literature
Read for Sarah Donovan’s Book Group
Blog Daily
Write a proposal for my writing group’s book and a proposal for an NCTE presentation for November 2024
I participated in the November book discussion with Sarah’s reading group and look forward to reading January’s book (we skip the month of December)– I Hope This Finds You Well, by Kate Baer. I’ll participate in this book discussion in January 2024.
I continue to blog daily, and the daily writing and reflecting is a wonderful habit for me. I don’t feel complete without some form of daily writing, and the blog is a way of continuing the habit.
My writing group is writing a series of new books, and I will spend time editing the chapters we have written. I will continue to add chapters as we receive feedback from our proposals. We are each sending our proposal out to some publishing companies. I’m also meeting to help write a proposal for the NCTE 2024 Convention in Boston in 2024.
Creativity
*Decorate the house for Christmas
My main December creativity goal is decorating the house for Christmas, since we didn’t decorate at all last year. The grandchildren will be coming to see us, so there must be trees! For the month of November, I spent some time knitting hats and doing some therapy coloring with a daughter recovering from surgery.
Spirituality
Tune in to church
Pray!
Keep OLW priority
We have tuned in to church every Sunday in November and will continue doing the same for December. We plan to attend a Christmas Eve service this year as well, with one of our children.
My car is still my prayer chamber for daily prayer, and there’s so much to give thanks for. I continue my conversations with the good Lord each morning and afternoon.
I’m still keeping my OLW my priority: pray!
Reflection
Write family stories
Spend time tracking goals each month
I have shared family stories through my blog this month and will continue this month to do the same. I’ll participate in an Open Write storytelling event and share a family story out loud!
I’m tracking goals, revising, and considering some new categories as I look at my goal table. I’m already looking at my goals for next year.
Self-Improvement
*Reach top of weight range
This is a setback for me since April. I’ve hit major stress and gained weight, despite joining WW. I need to set a firm date and get the mental mindset that it takes to stay on track. I have work to do. Update: every day, the diet is starting “tomorrow.” I seriously need a good mindset to start back.
Gratitude
Devote blog days to counting blessings
I begin the days this way and end them giving thanks as well. November was full of gratitude and thanksgiving by its sheer celebrations, and I celebrated the birthdays of a grandson and a brother. Taking time to pause and give thanks for people and blessings brings joy and reminders that family is a gift.
Experience
Embrace Slow Travel
Focus on the Outdoors
I’ve taken a trip to be with a daughter having surgery in November, and while this was not adventure travel or vacation, we found ways to maximize our togetherness and make the best of a time of recovery. Next month, we will be welcoming visits from family members and visiting some out of state as well.
I’ve joined Project Feeder Watch, since birdwatching is far more comfortable and warm from inside the house. I plan to add two entries per week throughout December, totaling at least one hour per week.
Throughout her life, my mother loved birds. Songbirds, water birds, and birds of prey. She could spot a hawk from a mile off, as if she’d had some inner sensor alerting her to their presence.
My brother Ken and I often share pictures of hawks when they manifest themselves to us, especially on significant dates – birthdays, holidays, or times of concern. We often mention that we saw Mom sitting on a wire by the highway making sure our seatbelts were fastened and our doors were locked.
My children often share how much she meant to them – taking them to Dairy Queen for Cotton Candy Blizzards, making strawberry figs in the kitchen, taking walks along the beach. They called her Mimi.
Imagine the deep feeling of comfort when my daughter and I were leaving for the hospital from our hotel this morning and noticed, resting on the wire directly above the car, a hawk – seeing us off, assuring us that her spirit was right here with us in these tense moments of anticipating surgery. A tonsillectomy is rough surgery for an adult, but Mom’s spirit affirmed for us that we are on the way to better days ahead.
I’d parked the car with her guidance the night before. That inner voice told me, arriving after dark, to park near a light – not on the back side of the building, as had been suggested by hotel staff at check-in. I followed that voice. She is always steering me in all the right ways, right down to parking the car for safety and so she’d have a wire for a better morning greeting.
Even brief appearances and signs bring deep comfort to us! Mom knew how much this hello from Heaven would mean to us.
Boo Radley, Ollie, and Fitz hiking the red and white trails of FDR State Park in Georgia. I do not own the rights to this music.
Our time on this Thanksgiving getaway is coming to a close for now, but instead of starting the campsite breakdown as we normally do on the last afternoon of our camping adventures, we took an impromptu hike with the boys on the trails of F. D. Roosevelt State Park in Pine Mountain, Georgia. I’m sharing a video of their tail-wagging joy as Boo Radley, Ollie, and Fitz traversed the terrain.
We met another couple hiking, and the wife observed, “Looks like you have your own sled dog team!” I chuckled because I am always referring to them as our sled dogs. When my sister in law walked them with me this week, she was surprised by how hard they pull. I told her that if there were snow on the ground, we could put on skis and they’d pull us all around the campground. Truth.
Our Georgia State Parks offer different types of clubs for kayakers, canyon climbers, dog walkers, and cyclists. Tails on Trails seems like it would be a healthy challenge for the two humans belonging to these three canine trail enthusiasts for 2024, so already I’m thinking of working it into a yearly goal.
As we sat around the campfire last night, I turned on the green sparkle lights and watched them dancing like tiny fairies in the trees as I reflected on what I loved most about the week- being able to get away and enjoy time in nature with family, spending time with each other and with our dogs, and truly taking time to give thanks for our blessings. Time. Togetherness. Thanksgiving.
These are the parts of the week that meant the most to me.
I’m a fan of author Tom Ryan. My strongest reading personality is that of a non-fiction reader, where the reading takes me into the lives of people and places I may never meet or see in person. I also like fiction, but I believe that my life has been changed far more from the non-fiction reading I’ve ever done than from the fiction. Tom Ryan’s love of his rescue dog Atticus (a Schnauzer) in his book Following Atticus and his rich descriptions of hiking the White Mountains for a friend who was dying of cancer is just the type of book that grabs my heart.
The first question anyone asks me when I recommend the book is, “Does the dog die?” No, not in the first book. But the friend with cancer does, and Tom hikes and eats a vegetarian diet because he nearly did. Will’s Red Coatwas the second book by Tom Ryan, and of course this one holds a few more tears when he adopts an aging rescue dog and brings it to the summit – not just the mountain, but the summit of life itself. And if there were ever a beautiful dog death, Will experienced it.
I shared the books with my friend Jayne, but she’d had to wait a while to read them, since she was on the heels of a dog loss herself and couldn’t face the emotions. After a time of grief, she read them and loved his books so much that she subscribed to his Substack and also gifted me a subscription as well. Now we both follow Tom Ryan on his coddiwomples around the nation when he sets out on adventures with Emily and Samwise. I’m giving the gift subscriptions to the two of us this year – – we both find that his writing soothes us and gives us a sense of joy and peace – especially when he shares his videos.
I was reading a post a couple of days ago that he invited subscribing readers to make public after three days. You can read it here. As I was reading about the support for his Jewish readers by Christian readers who were requesting Hanukkah cards from him this year (he sends them out for certain levels of membership), I came to this sentence: “I’m right there with you, folks, and this non-practicing Irish Catholic will have my electric menorah in my window each night of Hanukkah.” He closed by stating he wasn’t sure whether this would help during such troubling times, but wanted to assure them that they were not alone.
That lit a spark in me, just like those Christmas eve candles that people light from flame to flame down an entire row until the whole church is glowing.
I made a decision right there to join Tom Ryan by doing the same thing. I ordered a menorah with candles that will sit on a table next to our Christmas tree. Let me make it clear that I’m not converting religions. Let me make it equally clear that I’m strong enough in my own religious beliefs that I don’t feel threatened by inviting another religious symbol into my home. That’s not who we are. Our roots of Christianity are firmly attached to Judaism with Abraham at the helm, and my belief system includes Father Abraham and his tribe as a part of the lineage so important to my own Christian roots. My arms and heart are big enough to reach out. We will embrace our Jewish friends, honor their beliefs, and pause to think of them and the injustices that they are suffering.
To set up a menorah with its candles that we will light beginning on December 7 is to embrace an entire culture of people under attack who cannot light their own this year. To light the candle each evening will be to hold sacred moments for innocent people who are under attack by those who are evil, who will never know the peace of a silent night.
I want to thank Tom Ryan for inspiring me to join hands with him and to be reminded that we are, all of us, able to make choices about how we respond to situations. In a world where we can be anything, we should at the very least be kind souls who stand by others, whether we practice their same beliefs or not. After all, I have to believe that Jesus, the King of the Jews, whom we serve, will be tearfully embracing us all as we share in the sorrows of mankind.
Fran Haley and I are hosting this week’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com as we prepare for April’s discussions on Ada Limon’s The Hurting Kind. You can read Fran’s prompt today here or below. Be inspired and come write with us!
Title: Birdspiration
Our Host
Fran Haley is a literacy educator with a lifelong passion for reading, writing, and dogs. She lives in the countryside near Raleigh, North Carolina, where she savors the rustic scenery and timeless spirit of place. She’s a pastor’s wife, mom of two grown sons, and the proud Franna of two granddaughters: Scout, age seven, and Micah, age two. Fran never tires of watching birds and secretly longs to converse with them (what ancient wisdom these creatures possess!). When she’s not working, serving beside her husband, being hands-on Franna, birding, or coddling one utterly spoiled dachshund, she enjoys blogging at Lit Bits and Pieces: Snippets of Learning and Life.
Inspiration
As previously mentioned in this series of Open Writes: Come April, Kim Johnson and I will be honoring National Poetry Month by facilitating discussion of The Hurting Kind, the most recent book by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón(you can join us via Sarah Donovan’s new Healing Kind book club).
In preparation for this event, I came across a May 2022 interview with Angela María Spring of Electric Lit in which Limón speaks of inspiration for her book and the way humans search for community: “It’s the Earth and it’s the animals and it’s the plants and that is our community.”
What a glorious opening for birds today.
Over several summers past, I facilitated a writing institute for teachers. We spent a portion of one session crafting poems about birds, for, truth is, everyone has a bird story of some kind. Just as we went out for lunch, two doves flew into the building to land on the windowsill of our room. How’s that for symbolism?—and awe.
Process
Listen to or read the brief transcript of Episode 674 of The Slowdown, Limón’s podcast. Here she shares a poem by Hai-Dang Phan entitled “My Ornithology (Orange-crowned Warbler)”. Note Limón’s reflection: In observing birds and their world, we learn something true about ourselves. Experience Phan’s warbler up close and personal through every rich detail in the poem.
Now, consider what you’ve learned from birds in some way. Find a kinship. You don’t have to love or even like birds; you could contemplate the Thanksgiving turkeys sacrificed for your holiday table.You might go on a birdwalk or watch awhile through your window for birdspiration.
Explore birds and their lessons for your life in a short form like haiku, senryu, tanka, or a series of stanzas with the same number of lines. Invent a form! Phan uses three lines over and over. Consider how enjambment and varying sentence lengths can create bursts and phrases like birdsong. After all, poetry is about sound.
Play with form today. Let your lines sing.
What truths have birds taught you?.
Fran’s Poem
Harbingers
That Morning You Drove Me Home From the Medical Procedure
back country byway, winter-brown grass trees, old gray outbuildings, zipping, zipping past small pond clearing, wood-strewn ground bald eagle sitting roadside—too profound—
I thought it was the anesthesia until you saw it, too, before it flew.
And I knew.
On the Morning I Returned to the Hospital After Your Surgery
lanes of heavy traffic, day dawning bright our son says you had a painful, painful night dew on the windshield, fog in my brain all hope of moving past this gridlock, in vain but for the glory of autumn leaves, a-fire against cloudless blue where a solitary flier glides by, white head and tail gleaming in the sun…
Common Threads 