Tag: Gratitude

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Rag Quilting in Retirement

Whenever a new grandchild is born, I dust off their great grandmother’s Bernina sewing machine and start cutting rag quilt squares to welcome the baby in style. My mother left me her treasured Swiss machine from the company named for the Piz Bernina peak in the Alps. It’s the same one she taught me to sew on, and while I’m not the excellent seamstress that she was (nor will I ever be), I feel a deep inner joy knowing that the same machine she used to make our clothes for decades is still being used to make quilts for her great grandchildren. I hope she’s smiling with pride as she gazes down from Heaven!

A lot of times, it’s hard deciding on a rag quilt theme and colors, but this idea came easily. Since Oakley Finn and I share a birthday (July 8), I chose stars and stripes for America’s 250th. There are also narwhals on one of the square designs, and one with waves too, because these grandchildren live in coastal South Carolina and love ocean and sea creatures. Even though there are not any narwhals making the trip from arctic waters down to the Lowcountry waters, I think they fit into the scheme of things just fine.

Retirement time allows for visiting family and sewing rag quilts, and I’m loving every minute of being able to do the things I truly enjoy! I feel blessed!

Rag Quilting

generations stitched

together, transcending time

where love knows no bounds

Our 8th grandchild, born on July 8th, weighing 8 lbs, 8 oz. – the 8th member of his family!

Today is the first day back for students in our school system in Georgia. When I started feeling the tug to retire throughout last school year, I said to a few friends, “If the stars align, I’m thinking about retiring.” Isn’t it ironic that on this first day for students, my sister-in-law Bethany sent me a reminder that this very morning there will be a planetary parade of lined-up planets! It’s as if we have moved out of the realm of the stars and into the planetary universe with someone upstairs nodding a big YES on this first day that I will not be in all the school traffic trying to get to work. I’m home – – living a more relaxed pace and loving it.

Screenshot
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Where I’m Not

I’m always thrilled when my writing community members send me poetry prompt resources. I could sip coffee and read the prompts all day long. Audrey Gidman (audreygidman@substack.com) provided a poem for this prompt for inspiration for today’s poem: Read “I Am Not I” by Juan Ramon Jimenez (tr. Robert Bly). Write a short poem about/for the “I” who is not you but is walking beside you. A version of yourself, perhaps, or a separate self. Special thanks to Denise Krebs for sharing Audrey’s August calendar with me.

Where I’m Not

I’m not there

I’m not at that desk

in that cubicle

in that office

I’m not in that email thread

in that chain of reply all

in that blind cc secrecy

I’m not in that document

in those tangled thought-weeds

in that kudzu-strangled chaos

I’m not in that calendar

in that life-choking schedule

in that insane-paced rat race

I’m not in that meeting

in that half-charged screen energy

in that work-awaiting timewarp

I’m not in that webinar

in that can you hear me???

I’m not in that workshop

in that pen and paper jungle

in that wrinkled, wadded wastebasket

I’m not in that task

in that tsk-tsk-tsk

in that Wednesday-Thursday-Friday!!??

I’m not in that agenda

in that checked box

in that never-finished-never-enough-always-more place

I’m not there.

I’m over here in Retirement !

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A Pitcher of Zinnias

a salt pottery

pitcher of home-grown zinnias

sister-in-law’s gift

These days of early retirement have been filled with such sweet wishes from others. My sister in law from across the farm called last night to ask if she could bring some of her zinnias over. She’s been growing them, and they are stunning. I placed them into one of my mother’s salt pottery pitchers and sat them on the childhood dinner table, and they feel like a smile from beyond – – my parents loved growing zinnias, too! There is nothing like fresh flowers to bring the warmth of love.

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Journey into Retirement: A Shadorma

The next journey officially begins today. Not all trips are geographical ~ there are those of the inner self, too. I’ve written a shadorma on this first day of the new chapter.

This is it!

too many

years I’ve spent working ~

wake early

get up, get

dressed, get out, pound the grindstone

…this is it

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Remembering Fitz

Fitz was a camping dog. I think he liked camping so much because the space was more confined, always keeping him closer to me. We had to say goodbye when CUPS disease and an enlarged liver got in the way of his quality of life, so I held him in my arms as he crossed the rainbow bridge. I held him in my arms every day we had together, and although he is gone from the physical realm, I still hold him in my heart. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss my Fitz.

Life hasn’t been the same since. I hope the good Lord has a space in heaven so I can see him again someday.

Missing Fitzie

I miss him so much

this Soul Schnoodle, my Fitzie

world’s lovingest dog!

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Traveling the Journey


Looking in the Mirror

I look in the mirror

see the gray hair

see the neck wrinkles

see the crow’s feet

see the lazy thyroid laying down on the job

and thank God I’m here to show the wear

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Disney Dads

Back in 1974, we took a vacation to Walt Disney World with another family who were close friends of my parents. At that time, Dad was the pastor of First Baptist Church on St. Simons Island, Georgia, and his friend Joe Fennell was the husband of the organist in our church. Our mothers were close friends. In fact, when I hadn’t had chicken pox by the time they wanted me to have it before I got older, their children got it and our mother arranged for us to go and play with them so that we would contract it. Tiffany, standing third from left in this photo (next to me, the tallest kid in the green shirt) freely shared her germs. I kept a scar right between the eyes well into my teens from a popped pox.

The popcorn cart reminded me of the popped pox as I sort through pictures of travel this month. While I’m not particularly a fan of amusement parks, we made such wonderful memories there even when the Disney parade was nothing but a few characters walking down Main Street without lights and music and all the thrills of a big parade.

Disney, 1974

Popcorn, Pox, Pops

Disney popcorn cart

between-eyes popped chicken pox

posing with two Pops

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Juneau, Alaska

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be on a glacier with all this heat in the Southeastern United States today? We were there several years ago, and we took a helicopter ride to Mendenhall Glacier, where we got to ride with the sled dogs. Fun fact: they pee and poop on the run. Meeting the next generation of Iditarod and other sled racing dogs was a highlight of that trip!

Sled Team

Mendenhall Glacier

riding with the sled team dogs

Alaskan sporting!

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Saguaro Cactus

In February, we traveled out west to visit one of our daughters in Nevada. We saw beautiful deserts with sunset skies in violet purples, tangerine oranges, buttery and vibrant yellows, and deep rose reds. Many of the cactus plants looked as if they were singing praise to their maker. I painted a watercolor picture, but it did not turn out at all, so here is a photo I did not take that shows better what I had tried to capture in color.

Silhouette of a tall cactus with two arms in a desert at sunset with colorful clouds

Holy Hands

Saguaro Cactus

praising purple sunset skies

raising holy hands

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On the Day I Was Born – July 8

During the last week of June, I had the amazing privilege of traveling to Portland, Oregon to visit the archives of the poet William Stafford at Lewis and Clark College as part of The Stafford Challenge Poetry Conference. I learned that people often ask to see the actual hand-written notes and poems that he wrote on the day they were born, and so I did the same.

Archive Haiku

William Stafford:

I visited his archives …

my birthdate writing:


Here is my best transcription of this page from his handwritten notes on the yellow pages in the photos that follow, below.

8 July

We thought leaves waited, without
winds. But their work flourished, then.
Lost as leaves are, in the fall, each
has all its guarantee: sun, air wind.
I take the fall.

Maybe someone found all this language
the world brings. Not a snake but a stream
through the air, or maybe little waves
nothing holds — anyone in this town fear
news the ants work on? News peeled off
the yellow car that left here this morning; news
trotted among sounds, under the bridge. I felt
the snake across my feet in the bus. And watched
the conductor act calm, as required by the state.
The fox I stole gnawed : inside my coat. Men
act so free: “No fox I stole has ever bitten
me.”

Forsaken liberal, I stamped the curb:
every cause I ever found

has had my vote. Now the animals
prefer their keepers to the kept or freed.


8 July 1966

Seasons mark the brain: a shaft
of spring has always hurt what winter
held. I see beyond the plate and
feel the foxes well. No angel, no
prophet rides with me, but animals.
Keepers are enough too and they live well;
To feed that fox I commit to walk through hell.

every day
Lizards and liberals both low and

adaptable, come back to their holes and love it there.

Such great song scared the birds;

they tiptoe – winged away

Pascal fell through a million windows,
a little kid too smart to be saved by
stupidity.

Though the handwriting is challenging to decipher and does leave some questions, I hang on the first two lines:

We thought leaves waited, without
winds. But their work flourished, then.

Yes, these periods of waiting often seem frustrating, challenging, and even pointless at times. Some days we feel we are merely holding on. But we wait, knowing our work is flourishing. Knowing that the best is yet to come.