BE HERE NOW

2011-12-03T07:10:00.000-08:00

the way things are now.

2011-10-10T07:23:00.000-07:00

‎"the wind changed, the first day that you came through

cut the corn, washed it clean

now everything that's ever gone before, is just a blur

it's all because of you

and now i find, this cities like a stranger to me

... I once was fooled by cadillacs and honey

but no one feels like you

not like you

not like you

not like you

cause even though the flower fades something takes it's place

a marching band on a sunny day, two pretty eyes or a a pretty face"

james vincent mcmorrow

Somehow time does not seem to make the sadness of loss go away. It has settled in now. It is a permanent fixture of my aging face, an implant of my soul.

Bad Day

2011-09-24T14:55:00.000-07:00

Today is an astonomically bad day. There are those days where you are tired or things are just not going your way and then there are days where no matter what happens to you, you are still going to be miserable. Today is one of those days. Luckily I dont get these days that often any longer. Happily I usually waltz through life, my job, the kids, my routine. Today I cannot get out of my own way. Today I woke up after having been awake most of the night waiting for Gary to come home from a show and resenting every second of it, tired with Jonah screaming demands at me.......... right from the get go.

Gary had a wedding to go to so for day 2 I was in charge of kids solo, with no plan, in the hottest muggiest most disgusting weather while also being on call for work. This means I can't go anywhere. Normally I would get everyone out, go to the beach, the pool, anywhere but here in this house stuck with three cranky hot kids. Not today.

Today not only the three kids fought all day. I fought with them all day. Which is not typical of us as of late. But this is just how our day went today. I got called out to see a pt and family in the afternoon which was a huge blessing and secretely I wished I would just get called out for the rest of the day too and leave the kids with my mom. I hate being like this with them.

But I am human.

I took a nap while Jonah played quietly with some new toy I had dug up while cleaning (cleaning always helps, especially when it is 100 degrees in this house). I slept so hard I did not know where I was when I woke up.

Gary didn't call me when he got to his wedding (another reason for me to resent him today) and the only thing I was really focused on today turned out to be a bomb as the Red Sox are losing miserably to the Yanks.

There is a favorite book I read to the kids sometimes called "Alexander and the very horrible terribly no good day." In the end Alexander still has a family that loves him and I am sure the next day is better than the one in the book. It is hard to believe I will move through days like today.

But I will.

Dreaming of you

2011-09-20T15:53:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a dream about John. It's not the first time I have dreamt about him but it was the most profound dream I have had, one where you wake up and cant remember was that real, are they alive?
In the dream John had come back for a holiday. It was a universally recognized holiday that everyone celebrates and it felt completely normal ........ in the dream.
In the dream it was the holiday that marks the return of a lost loved one. John was there, healthy (he has never been sick in one of my dreams, always without oxygen, always smiling). We were all eating at a nice restaurant and we were happy to be spending this time with him, to celebrate that John had come back, how Christ like, especially for someone who didn't particularly subscribe to the whole son of God thing. And yet, there he was breaking his bread, laughing with us and telling us stories. We were elated and of course because it was a dream most of the people in the dream were not familiar to me, but I knew John, and I knew my mother.
At the end of our dinner I went to take a nap, knowing full well that this was only a temporary thing, that John would need to go at the end of this day, this holiday. Still sleep was somehow more important to me in the dream.
As I drifted off, John called me to tell me to come. That this was important. That I was supposed to be doing this thing, dealing, facing this hard deep profound sadness and longing. That I could not run away from it. That as many miles as I ran or laps that I swam or books that I read or naps that I took, I could not escape the truth that John was gone, that John died and he will continue to be dead, to die again and again in my dreams and in my days.
I woke up wanting to stay in the dream. I tried to put myself back to sleep, to place myself back in the dream, back there holding John's big bear hands or hugging his broad shoulders.
But I couldn't.
I realized that in that dream John was my father.
He is my father.
He is the man who tells me to do things and steers me in the right direction
and saved me when I was falling off of a cliff
and there he was again
in my dream
holding out his hand to me
pulling me to do the next right thing.

marking time

2011-08-01T17:57:00.000-07:00

August 1st. Two monthes since John died. That is how we all mark time now. The pictures I developed the other day was filled with before photos and after photos.
And you can tell.
Before John died we went to this amazing concert that Gary was in with the drummer from Billy Joel's band and a full orchastra. It was a great weekend spent carefree walking around Portland Maine, going to meetings, meeting new people, laughing.

It was a weekend where we were not caring for John, not thinking about lung transplants and definitely not thinking about death.

Then there were photos from the Symphony. The week before John died we had an indescribably "perfect day." I remember posting that on my facebook page: Kelli Backstrom had a perfect day.
Sadie won her soccer game, the weather was beautiful, we found gluten free ice cream and we took the kids to see the Symphony with Hailey.
We laughed, people told me what a great family we have and I knew that.
We are happy. Life is normal. We are all here together.
The next day we played "gotcha last" with John, had a cookout with John and listened to the sounds that had become our normal; coughing, wheezing, gasping.

Then there was after.
The day after John's memorial service we went to Jonah's kindergarten graduation. All the kids had prepared songs and ways to show off their new skills. I would like to say I remember this event but I don't. Somehow I knew to take some pictures and boy do they say it all.

There is a glazed over look and a left over feeling that we are left with and it is here all over Nora's face.
As the time after you have a baby, first you mark it with hours. She is two hours old! Then you mark it with days. Wow, she is big for ten days old! And then you mark it with months. I can't imagine my life without this four month old.
I can't imagine my life without John and yet here it is, my life without John.
There was before and now there is after and somewhere in there is the in between time.
I think we are there now.

Camping

2011-06-26T15:08:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow will be one month since May 27th, the day John left us. I get to learn first hand about grief and loss and I can tell you that it is not like they say in the books and it can not be learned. I have come to find out that if you want to know what grief is like, you have to go through it.
I have heard people describe many experiences of loss in my work and in my friendships and to be honest, I really had no idea. How can you explain what it feels like to be freezing when you have never been cold, or to be drowning in a desert? It's surreal, at best.
In the last two weeks I have had moments of clarity and moving on "ness" where I wake up and the first thought that enters my mind is not, "John's gone. John's dead." but more like "It's morning, where's food? I don't want to get out of this warm bed........... oh yeah, John' gone. John's dead."
I have had periods of time where I am working and I am focused on my task at hand. I am not immersed in sadness. I have a purpose.
My mother went to see a grief counselor who told her that it might not be a good idea for her to come camping with us and the Family Folk Chorale for the weekend. She told her that going away from home so soon after a loss can trigger really intense emotions. We talked about it, she wanted to go. I didn't think anything of it.......... until about an hour in to the drive.
We had gone up for our summer retreat with the folk chorale, a community of friends who have come to be our dearest friends. It was rainy and gross out and I dreaded the whole thing. But the kids were excited and I felt like it would be fun for them. Why not?
Half way through the performance I was crying and at then end Jonah and I had left the stage and were wandering through the strawberry field looking for something that wasnt there.
The thought that came in to my head was that we had left John all alone in the house.
I know this is logically crazy
but this is how I felt.
I kept thinking about that box that my mother had so lovingly decorated with John inside of it. I had picked the box up out of morbid curiousity, how much does a full grown man weigh, when broken down in to ash?
It was surprisingly heavy.
We had to get home.
It was too soon to leave him alone in the house.
We wouldn't have left him alone in the house before so why would we now?
It poured.
I cried.
Jonah got muddy and wild and just like that we were all packed up and headed home.

I couldn't get there fast enough and slept like a baby and when I woke up I heard the birds and thought that John was there
and he was.

Midweek Musings

2011-06-17T10:55:00.000-07:00

Midweek musings: Death — and celebrating life

Midweek Musings

The Rev. Arthur McDonald The Gloucester Daily Times Tue Jun 14, 2011, 11:27 PM EDT

I so remember some years back watching a "Star Trek Next Generation" episode in which a scientist from another culture, having finished his work with the Enterprise crew, was preparing to go back home to go through an end-of-life ritual.

Seems that in his culture, when one's primary work is done, and before one becomes ill or enfeebled, he gathers family and friends and has a celebration of life and accomplishments, then ends his life.

As would be expected, the crew of the Enterprise was enraged and tried to talk him out of what they all considered a barbaric practice. But the episode raised great questions around the meaning of life and death, and I was reminded of the fact that in our culture we don't often deal well with death.

We often avoid talking about it and are not always sure how to do ritual around it when it comes. Often parents are not sure whether to include young children in the death and dying process of aging relatives. And only in more recent times, at least in my experience, have we thought of funerals and memorial services as celebrations.

As a minister, performing rituals is a significant part of my pastoral duties. Rituals remind us of what anthropologists tell us, that at base, we human beings are symbol-makers, ritual performers. Truth is, in our lives we do ritual all of the time, both religious and secular. Weddings, baptisms, blessings, healings are all special rituals.

But the ritual I most relish is the ritual we religious (spiritual for those who prefer that designation) people perform around death, i.e., wakes (viewings) and funerals or memorial services.

Death gets our attention; stops us in our tracks. When someone close to us passes on we are often devastated, or, at minimal, deeply pained and saddened. There is a hole in our lives, never to be completely filled.

Yet, in most cases, despite the pain of loss, there is so much to celebrate. And while funerals and memorial services are meant to give expression to grief and sorrow, as they ought, they are also meant to honor and celebrate and the richness of a life, always a gift.

As a minister, it's always a privilege to be asked to lead a memorial celebration. While it's important to bring a certain solemnity to the ritual, I believe it is equally important to bring a sense of joy and gladness.

I recently was asked to be part of a wonderful such remembrance of a local hero, a former "lumper" (a word I recently learned) at the docks in Gloucester and postal clerk, John Mullen.

John died too young — 59. But he accomplished so much in those years. Nothing extraordinary, just special.

Mostly, he was a loving spouse, brother, grandfather, uncle and friend. He always had time for his family and friends. His oldest niece most remembered as a child that Uncle John always took time to play with her when other adults were too busy.

He was a straight shooter; what you saw is what you got. He loved his family, friends and the Red Sox and hated war and politicians who started war. You might have seen him at Grant Circle with his simple yet direct message on a sign that said something like "War is not the Answer."

Big John's memorial service brought tears and pain, but even more so it brought laughter, joy and deep gratitude. There were moments of profound reflection, personal stories, and wonderful music and singing.

The church was filled; a lasting tribute to the manner in which this good human being touched others. Everyone left with a rich memory, a trait they admired and which they hoped to carry with them.

John is no longer visible to us but his spirit lives on in those he so deeply touched. And that's the point, really. We learn from one another what it is to be human; what it is to live well; what it is to be truthful and just; what it is to love.

So, once again, I am reminded how rich it is to ritualize life's major transitions, passages: birth, coming of age, partnering and death. And I am reminded what a blessing it is to be in ministry and to be part of a spiritual and religious community.

Death is a rupture and often the most difficult of passages, yet it is a time for us all to assess our own lives and make adjustments where needed. Are we living out the values we claim to aspire to? If not, how to we get back on course.

Celebrating another's life can be that moment of re-direction; "recalculating" as the GPS voice says. To celebrate a life, especially a life well-lived, is a deep gift to the human community, and I pray that as a culture we will all see and experience the value of facing death as just another passage and, despite the real sorrow and loss, to learn to celebrate our lives and loved ones as the best way to honor their legacy.

The Rev. Dr. Arthur McDonald is pastor of the First Universalist Unitarian Church of Essex

The Family Hero

2011-06-16T18:13:00.000-07:00

John died two weeks after my mother had bought a 55 inch flat screen TV for him to watch the Bruins games. John loved TV. The kids love TV obviously as kids will just love TV no matter what but the other adults in this house don't really care for it too much. Now we have two 55 inch flat screen TVs but we don't have John and we don't have the Bruins anymore until next season.

The night John died my mom called me at the Cape house to tell me, distraught and confused, disoriented, her world changed forever. I was two hours away and when she asked me to come to the hospital I told her I would be there soon but not that soon and maybe we should just meet at home. Molly drove from NH, I drove from the Cape and we were all about the emerge on her in our home in Gloucester. Molly called me to tell me that she had just talked to Gramma and she was doing the strangest thing. She was reportedly at home watching the end of the Bruins game.

Of course she was.

And it was an amazing game. We were all sure that Johnny must have helped that last goal in to solidify the Bruins going to the Stanley Cup. We were sure that there was something divine working here and it had everything to do with John.

Tomorrow it will be 3 weeks since we lost John.
It feels like 3 days and it feels like 3 years and it feels like 3 minutes since I kissed the top of his head and I got him last and I walked out the door never to see him again.
Three weeks of crying and planning and laughing and sleeping and walking around outside our house in the dark looking for John.
Three weeks of hoping for the kids and telling the story of John's life and John's death and three weeks of the Bruins.

Last night the Bruins played the 7th game of the Stanley Cup final in Vancouver. Tim Thomas was our new family hero replacing Big Papi and Tommy Brady and Jonathon Papelbon and
Grampa John.

We cheered for the home team from the big flat screen TV, me, my mom, Charlie and Eddie. The kids were at the Cape with Gary but they called throughout the game to cheer with us, to yell with us and to celebrate the home team.

For the first time in those three weeks there was a long period of laughter and forgetting, of staying present with the team, with the moment.
It was not as loud as if John had been there because he was always the loudest yeller but Charlie and my mom came in a close second. We ate pizza and poked fun of each other and we watched at the edge of our seats.

The Bruins won and they won big. Vancouver went nuts and destroyed the town and in Boston we celebrated but after 5 minutes of watching the after party on TV a new feeling set in, the Bruins are over, John's dead.
It was the same type of feeling I would get when I ate a whole sundae or bought a new outfit. It's so exciting and a great fix for about 5 minutes and then reality sets in and whatever it was that you were struggling with to begin with is still there.

I'm not going to go to the rolling rally in Boston. I'll watch it on my big screen TV. I won't be able to find John in Boston but I find him here in the living room, on the couch or in the woods on top of the hill in West Gloucester. He is walking and dancing and he can breathe. He is a little boy skating down at Fernwood Lake with his friends and his brothers and he can breathe.

Sometimes I feel like I am slowing sinking to the bottom of that lake
without a breathe
without a noise.

Mother Natures Son

2011-06-06T12:30:00.000-07:00

In the last week I have had the chance to look back on this blog. What was supposed to be a blog about a homeschooling family, I realize now became a blog about a family in the midst of illness and watching our beautiful grandfather/father/husband/friend die.

It happened so suddenly. It happened on such a happy day. We were all running through the house, grabbing clothes and high fiving, grabbing Haley at the last minute to take her with us to the Cape for a long memorial day weekend.
It was the last time I worked. I pulled in from a long day of visiting patients and we were off. Going to the Cape.
I had stopped. I'm so grateful that I stopped. I didn't always stop and I wish now that I spent so many more moments in that house with him. But that day, May 27th, I did stop. I kissed him on his head and I told him, "next time I see you, you will have new lungs." He smiled at me.
He had a great day that day. He told me he felt better than he had in days. He smiled at us. He got us last.
And then we were off.
And that was the last time I saw him.

How quickly life can go.

He died suddenly in my mother's arms, a sudden and fast heart attack, respiratory failure, the death certificate said it happened in minutes.
He had pulmonary fibrosis for years but his death happened in minutes.
I hope you didn't feel any pain, John.
I hope you are at peace John.

Today I got in the car and the song on the radio was "Mother Nature's son." It was one of his favorites and I know he was with me.

But I wish that he was with me.

Grampa John

2011-06-05T10:18:00.000-07:00

I wanted to tell you all about a part of John that most of you may not have been able to see and a part of John that was most likely a huge surprise to John himself. I want to tell you about Grampa John.

Grampa John was a single man until he was 47 when he married my mother and became such a huge part of our family. Grampa John had no children of his own but was well versed in childhood, having an innocent heart and a boyish way about him. He was a delight to the children in his life. Grampa John had many nieces and nephews who were a big part of his life and his journey. He loved you all and was changed because of his time with you.

When John was first trying to persuade my mother to go out on a date with him he put his 14 year old niece Patti Ann on the phone to vouje for him. He attended many baseball games and musical events as Uncle Johnny, Johnny Johnny TaTa and Johnny Weed. Uncle John knew how much all of those nieces and nephews loved him.

Grampa John inherited an adult child, me and a special needs child, my sister Colleen. Such a giving and righteous man, he took Colleen and loved her without condition, caring for her through seizures and through sickness, all the while maintaining his sense of compassion and humor. Colleen adored John and she is forever changed because of her time with him.

Grampa John inherited Molly, his first of the four grandchildren. Molly was 5 or 6 when John came on the scene and he took right to her, joking with her and taking her fishing and camping. Grampa John taught my daughter Molly about politics. They fought feverishly over current events and pop culture. Grampa John taught Molly how to drive in the parking lot of the West Parish School, with his calm and patience he sat in the passenger side all the while talking about his mother who was buried in the cemetery in the back of West Parish. John taught Molly about Gloucester and the wharf, about what is important and what is real. Molly is forever changed because of her time with him.

Grampa John welcomed all three of my younger children in to the world. Coxing me up Centennial Ave in labor with Sadie, all the while telling me the stupidest jokes he learned at the post office. He was the godfather to Sadie and I realize now that he was in this role because he was the most spiritual man I know. John cared not for organized religion and looked down upon corruption but John knew God in his everyday acts of kindness and serenity. I knew that John would lead Sadie to God and he did and he continues to through his illness and at his death and today. We know you are here with us Grampa John and we are forever changed because of you.

In his illness John taught us so much. He taught us that Delanys pizza really is better than Sebastians, that a smile is easier to form than a frown, that a kind word can be the best thing but sometimes the kindest thing to do is to not say anything at all. John taught us that there is always time for family and that sometimes family can be created in the strangest ways. Even in his most sick moments John never lost his sense of gratitude in the world, thanking God for the doctors in his life, the oxygen that sustained him and for a good episode of Monk or CSI.

John never complained. This was the hardest to understand. How could he never complain? If it were me I would have whined and moaned and felt incredibly sorry for myself and if he had we would have understood but he didn’t. Grampa John described himself in the last year of his life as the luckiest man he knew, because of his family and his sobriety and his home on the hill in West Gloucester.

All these things we didn’t talk about enough, we were too busy playing “gotcha last” and watching the Simpsons with you. We were too busy feeding you and cheering you on, singing to you and coloring pictures for you. We were so busy loving you that we often forgot to tell you how much and now you are gone and so quickly we are stunned by the silence in our home. Sadie told me that her heart felt as if half of it were missing and Nora looked for you after she came home from school but you were gone.

I see you in everything. I see you in the garden and in the pine trees, I see you in your brother Charlie’s smile and in the crevice of the couch where you spent so many afternoons with the cat. I see you in the opening of a door and I see you when I turn out the lights. Molly, Sadie, Nora, Jonah, Gary, Colleen and I are forever changed because of you.

Gray

2011-02-26T18:04:00.000-08:00

I think that this is a time better than any other time to think about how crazy our lives really are. What I used to believe was that one moment we are happy and free and another moment we are sad and despairing and there is hopelessness and there is rejoicing all wrapped up in packages in our closets separate. What I know now is that you may find me in a room full of mourners laughing at a line from an obituary wondering if the fluid running down my face is filled with joyful cells or sorrow. Life is not easily catagorical. I know a lot about this. I have learned a tremendous amount this year. Grampa John now has a chronic cough that is so debilitating that when he laughs he runs the risk of coughing himself right in to a grave but do you think that stops us? We can still be found from time to time playing "gotcha last" or reminding him about a famous wharf story about some Gloucester character that was mistaken for a dog in a motor vehicle by the police. Now that's funny.
I have learned that just because I kept my children out of school for so many years didn't guarantee that they would not be subject to the schooly way of life and that I can only hide them out here for so long. One day or another someone somewhere was going to grade them and I was going to lose track of where they were exactly anyhow. And they were going to live, and live quite happily or sadly or both.
I have learned that really it had nothing to do with school in the first place but everything to do with the people that they were born to be and the family that we create. I have joined the ranks and the herd. I am no longer alone in the museum the day after Feb vacation but totally immersed in a crowd of brown and white and fat and skinny and muslim and jewish people all running about taking their school vacationing kids to the same place. I took time off this week from my new job just like most of my office did and I will resume the joyful sorrowful difficult, exciting and boring depending on the moment employment that I have just like most of America on Monday. I am no longer swimming against the current and I am floating of a raft toward the warm sand.
That is not to say that my homeschooling world was a sham or that the joy was not there. I am grateful for every moment of it and my children are too. It's just not so one sided. Life is a heavy duty amount of gray. My mother came in to tell my my grandfather was hospitalized again and I pocketed that information for later. There was just too much in the way at that moment. I had a bill in front of me, a bunch of hyper children about me and food to think up, get out and create.
I cried later.
Right then I smiled, I think I even cracked a joke. I looked at Jonah who told me he was a honey badger today and I thought about my dying patients. I smiled and laughed on my face and cried and mourned in my heart.
My daughter Nora learned a perfect Ode to Joy today on the violin. I thought we would never have time for those things if we did school but of course we do. She ran to play it for Grampa John but he couldn't stop coughing. She cried because she was mad and then she smiled because there was a cookie waiting for her and a hug from her mother and Jonah had decided to strip down and lay on the floor and grunt like a pig. Sadie was curled up in a ball reading Harry Potter for the thousandth time and Gary was cooking.

The coughing stopped and we breathed a sigh of relief and held our breath for the next moment.

White Flowers

2011-01-29T09:38:00.001-08:00

White Flowers

By Mary Oliver

Last night

in the fields

I lay down in the darkness

to think about death,

but instead I fell asleep,

as if in a vast and sloping room

filled with those white flowers

that open all summer,

sticky and untidy,

in the warm fields.

When I woke

the morning light was just slipping

in front of the stars,

and I was covered

with blossoms.

I don’t know

how it happened—

I don’t know

if my body went diving down

under the sugary vines

in some sleep-sharpened affinity

with the depths, or whether

that green energy

rose like a wave

and curled over me, claiming me

in its husky arms.

I pushed them away, but I didn’t rise.

Never in my life had I felt so plush,

or so slippery,

or so resplendently empty.

Never in my life

had I felt myself so near

that porous line

where my own body was done with

and the roots and the stems and the flowers

began.

Gotcha Last

2010-09-19T16:19:00.000-07:00

Currently Grampa John's favorite game is "gotcha last." Over the last two years this game has evolved and changed to mean different things. The rules started out simple enough. I got you last meant I got you last and there was a cat and mouse kind of chase thing and a lot of slamming doors. Over the last couple of years "gotcha last" has come to be played in a more figurative way. You don't necessarily have to get up and chase someone to get someone last. You could give them a glance or carry a yardstick and poke them on their way out the door. Gotcha Last. John always gets us last. I don't know when it happened that way but it has come to be understood that John wins this game. Everytime.

And my children, even my little children who want to win all sorts of other games, understand this rule. They always let John get them last.

Lately "Gotcha Last" has meant another way to say good bye. The kids will be piling in to the car for school or an activity and John's window will open and out will come those words "Gotcha Last!" See ya later, in a while, till next time.

As we wait for this lung I think about that farewell. I remember when he could get up to chase us and I wonder when did that happen that he has lost that ability. Now on most days I find him under blankets on the couch sleeping or fading. Last week I walked in on him roughly carving a peice of wood. He looked up at me almost ashamed or embarrassed as if I would wonder about his new activity. I can't believe how strong he is. I can't believe I think I ever have problems when I can't find my earrings or my pants don't fit right.

routines

2010-09-15T08:04:00.000-07:00

Part of me wonders where this change all came from, is it healthy, are we really ok. But then again, if I read through this blog I will find all sorts of circumstances where I wonder this same thing, am I ok? Are we making the right choices and to be honest my wondering doubting voice is very quiet lately. Mostly I am hearing voices of clarity adn voices of laughter and lightness. The kids have been in school for one week and all of the sudden there are other things in the world going on aside from homeschooling. We are an expansive family that are making our way through many different areas of life both together and apart. Yesterday I had forgotten to pack Sadie's spelling book and so Jonah and I drove over to bring it (Jonah is only in Kindergarten on Mon Wed and Fri) and we had the great opportunity to hear and see Nora running wildly through the playground with the other kids in her class laughing and creating and doing all of those things that I worried she wouldn't get to do if I sent her to school.
I know it won't always feel like this. Life is not all packaged neatly like that. Things ebb and flow. Nora has a spelling test on Friday and she and I both wonder about what that will be like. But Sadie is going canoeing with her class on Friday and Jonah is having his art class on Friday and they can't wait.
In the end there is me and Gary. And really in the end there will be just me. I am spending a lot of time alone right now but for some reason not too much in my head. I am reading a great book and running a lot. My house is still a mess, everyone told me that wouldn't change and I am glad it hasn't. It means I am winding down and it's ok.
I miss the comraderie of our homeschooling group. I had hoped Nora would choose to stay home mostly because I wanted to still be part of that group. And the school moms are not going to replace that community. But its ok. Life moves on and I have made some new friendships recently unrelated to children. I am fairly certain that I got a new job that I interviewed for last week working 9-5 as a hospice social worker and that feels absolutely wonderful.

John continues to struggle and I am glad for a quiet house for him. We wait for a new lung and hope for trajedy and feel surreal. I pray for health and stregnth for him every day and am again always reminded because of him what is really important in life. As I breeze in to borrow a bowl in the midst of craziness in my house and run towards the door to get to the next thing, he stops me and I am able to sit and talk slowly and quietly with him. Nothing is more important now.

We are Family

2010-09-06T17:50:00.001-07:00

Family

Changes

2010-09-05T07:57:00.000-07:00

It has been so long since I wrote in this blog, I am not sure how to begin. Everything is changing. Things are beginning and things are ending and life is moving so swiftly. After much hemming and hawing, last spring we decided to embark on a new journey for Sadie. School.
I couldn't believe that we were even entertaining this idea. I dreamed, thought and hoped that we would be that family that had our unschooling kids hanging around with us, taking the train in to Harvard Extension and trying all sorts of neat and interesting things with us as adolescents and in to adulthood. But Sadie wanted to try school.
I ached about it. I had nightmares about it. I talked about it. I prayed about it. A lot. And then one morning in April or May I awoke and it was ok. There was a deep calm inside of me that permeated throughout my body and mind and I knew that school or no school was not the only thing that identified our family and who we are. We chose a very small Christian school to try out first and Sadie spent the day there. She loved it. She came home with lots to report and with the story of one of her classmates who at the closing prayers prayed that Sadie would make a good decision and come to their school. I loved thinking about a child praying openly.
My best friend Ashley (who someday I will write a big long blog entry about) is Orthodox Jewish and works at an Orthodox Jewish day school and she talks about this affectionately. That although there will be things that bother me about the religiousness of the school, the fact remains that we are raising our children in an Episcopal church and we regularly pray before meals and we hold the hope and belief in our home that our Grampa is in heaven. It's ok. I knew it when I woke up that day.
What is literally shocking is that over the course of the summer, because we had opened that door, all sorts of other doors proceeded to open in front of my eyes. Jonah started to talk about going to school and we figured out ways to creatively cut costs so that he could enter Kindergarten with Sadie next year. And now we are in the final stages of working out Nora going too.
All my children are thrilled for this adventure and there is a calm and ease in our home right now that has not been there in this magnitude for a long time.
I am so glad that we homeschooled. I am so glad that we kept our little kiddos close and that we will continue to do so. It has made all the difference. I am grateful that I was able to hear my children and let them go when they needed to be flying free a little.
Right now Jonah is still in his PJs playing the drums with Gary downstairs in the basement. Nora is brushing her hair in front of me and asking me questions. And Sadie has buried herself in a dictionary learning how to spell better. Molly is in Vermont having her own adventures in college and I am here marveling at this life unfolding before me.

Awakening.

2010-09-03T17:03:00.000-07:00

There's a darkness upon me that's flooded in light

In the fine print they tell me what's wrong and what's right

And it comes in black and it comes in white

And I'm frightened by those who don't see it

When nothing is old, deserved or expected

And your life doesn't change by the man that's elected

If you're loved by someone you're never rejected

Decide what to be and go be it.

There was a dream

One day I could see it

Like a bird in a cage I broke in and demanded that somebody free it

And there was a kid, with a head full of doubt

So I scream till I die and don't ask for those bad thoughts to find me out

There's a darkness upon you that's flooded in light

In the fine print they tell you what's wrong and what's right

And it flies by day and it flies by night

And I'm frightened by those who don't see it

If you forget me

2010-05-14T14:08:00.000-07:00

If You Forget Me

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I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

Pablo Neruda

2010-03-03T11:55:00.000-08:00

Wolf Moon

2010-01-30T15:44:00.000-08:00

Last night I had a dream that I was in my blue and gray nightgown that I wore every night as a child. I was running out of my house and it was one of those dreams where you seem like an adult and you think like an adult but you look just like you did as a child or at least the way you perceive yourself to look as a child which is often quite different than what you actually looked like.
In the dream I am running and it is summer just like every dream that I have from that address in East Hartford Ct. It seems like the blizzard of 78 never happened there and I actually never did sled down the hill on Barbonsel Rd because all of my memories exist in that time warp of warm childhood summer days and nights.
And I am running with hair flying all around me and little child legs that can run forever and the reservior where I am not supposed to go alone lay at my back and the park where I spent every day that Mother Nature would allow sprawled out before lay in front of me, clear as a bell amidst darkness.
In the dream I am going to free everybody. I am going to run through the park and across the baseball field and I am going to arrive at Stevens Elementary School and I am going to throw the doors open and let everyone out, no more papers, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks. I am going to watch them as they all run home or to the park or through the field or to the foreboding reservoir to dive in after a shallow fish.
I am going to run to the elderly nursing home and open all the doors there and I am going to start pushing people out and watch as the elderly take to the streets in all of their limitations and crankiness or wild fervor. And I am thinking about my own Grandmother locked away sitting across from me at a dinner table a few years ago when she was 93 years old telling me never to let anyone tell me what to do as my father told her what to do.
It must have been the full wolf moon but in my dream I am still in my childhood state but I am thinking of my current job where I lock people up and put them away. I categorize their problems and limit their stories. As a profession I can take away freedom. And in my child state I run to let them out.
It must have been the wolf moon because when I swung open the dream like mental hospital door I was standing there with my adult face staring back at me and my adult badge flapping in the wind and my professional outfit on. I looked at me, chubby cheeked child faced me, and me looked back and we both looked down to my feet where I had my running sneakers on

and I began to run.

Dancing through life

2010-01-27T18:28:00.000-08:00

This year Sadie learned how to use her body in amazing fantastic ways. Driving to Cambridge every Wednesday, talking and talking and talking some more. Walking through the city, taking in everything there is to see and then entering a dance studio with professional dancers and amateurs all coming together to move their majestic bodies to beautiful music. Today I went and witnessed yet again, the wonder of freedom from school and the coming of age of my nine year old.

playing with fire

2010-01-14T16:04:00.000-08:00

Some fantastic mothers and I have decided to do some experimenting with our inquisitive children around science and the periodic table. It was Sadie's idea and then my idea and now a group of five families and all of our collective ideas.

Sounds like a good idea, right?

So why am I driving home tonight questioning everything from the scientific method to the dire state of the world to my inability to create enough of something (not sure what) with my children.

Because that is the way my crazy brain works.

So I chatted with my mom. She is, after all, the best mom in my life anyhow and we had a nice cry and then a few laughs and then that was that.

I drove Sadie to the gym for swim team. She didn't really want to go and I told her she didn't have to, in fact we could take a break for a while.

She wanted to go and when she was done was happy for it.

I dragged my butt up to the treadmill who is normally a good friend of mine but today failed me miserably. It's ok, I won't take it personally, another day perhaps.

I went downstairs instead and proceeded to call Ashley and have a good long talk.

I love Ashley.

Someday I will write a nice long blog entry just devoted to Ashley, my biggest fan, my greatest friend.

On the ride home Sadie was happy, content, talking to me about the time she had seen something on TV where they blew different things up and she wondered how that worked.

I did too.

Sorry, I don't have that answer for you. Ask me anything about literature, maybe drug addiction, child abuse or writing, I am your " go to " girl.

Don't ask me those science questions or you lose me in lack of knowledge and lack of interest. Yawn.

My mother had made stew and we ate it up with glee, all six of us, Nora, Jonah, Grampa John, Grammy, Sadie and me and then just like that there it was, the big EXPLOSION we had been hoping for right in the oven. Huge gusts of flame enveloped the oven and as I ran to get the phone John shut the oven and the fire went out, unsupported by oxygen any longer.

And then we talked about it.

Why did it happen (something about the sugar and juices on the bottom of the oven from pumpkin bread) ?

Will it happen again?

Why didn't the fire dept come in our town even though I had called 911 and even though I spoke with someone what if I had been lying?

What if I needed help?

Why do they call firemen firemen anyhow?

Aren't there fire girls too?

Do they get paid as much?

When did they start becoming firefighters?

If I say fireman instead of firefighter will they put me in jail?

How old do you have to be to go to jail?

And on and on it went.

Thank you fire in my kitchen, inquisitive children, caring mother, good friend and an unburnt kitchen.

Bananagrams and what I learned this week

2010-01-09T10:54:00.000-08:00

This week I hemmed and hawed away at all of the things that my children are not getting by not going to school. Mental note to self; in the monthes of January and February you (me) pace the floors, toss and turn at night and write lists all around the house about the "S" word and all of our lacks and flaws. So this year is no different, phew.

I found out that we were missing out on the actual physical structure of the school building when I walked Sadie in for her first day of Basketball practice. The girls were all excited to see Sadie. She is a novelty because she does not attend school with these girls and so they are not sick of her and squealed in girlish delight at the sight of her.

I was too busy noticing all of the posters and pretty artwork.

We should be doing more art work, I thought.

We should have pretty posters, I thought.

"Sadie, Sadie" They squealed.

Practice was fun and we drove home.

It was quiet in my home and I thought about all the friends.

Shouldn't she have more friends around her all the time??

Of course it is 6 pm and most kids are doing homework and Nora is knee deep in clay and Jonah is building something and Sadie is happy as a child on Christmas to curl up with her disabled Aunt to watch The Incredible Hulk.

Homework.

Gary told me this story about a student that he teaches who is so tired from all of his school work and always complaining about staying up late to do it.

He thought, how terrible.

I thought, we should be doing more.

What about all the spelling and the writing and the work that they do?

What if we are wrong?

Can Sadie spell anything??

Today we played a new game called Bananagrams.

It is a pretty fun game where you have to build words fast in a crossword.

Sadie's first word was SEGRAGATE. She was off by one letter, pretty good.

My first word was BRASS and so it went for two hours we played this game over and over again.

I guess Sadie knows how to spell.

In the doctor's office I looked around at all the families.

One woman is quizzing her kid on some science thing.

We should be doing more science.

So I open this really cool book I got this week from my Dad on basically a little bit of everything and start reading off the "important" things, facts, yawn.

Sadie turns away and starts asking me about vacinations and why that sign says we should all get them and we end up in this long discussion about the CDC and the history of vaccinations and somehow Pasteur got in there and by the time our names were called we had come full circle, confused and yet understanding a little bit more.

While I pined over notation and reading music, this week Sadie learned how to play two new Beatles songs on the piano and while I wondered over history we finished the American Girl series and discussed the suffrage movement so much that I had a dream about Susan B Anthony.

My children teach me so much and if I would only step out of their way a bit I may actually teach them a few things too.

Mostly by example.

A smile, a gentle pat and a loving presence.

Songs and Sweaters

2010-01-02T16:26:00.000-08:00

For Christmas I knitted Gary this sweater. It took me four months to make it and I put all the love and positive healing energy I could muster in to it. I brought it with me to friend's houses and to church and to children's events and playdates. I pulled it out in the grocery store, in line at the bank and during some of his shows. He never knew.
As I knitted this for him I thought about him. I thought about the time we met and the child that I was. I thought about the time that he thought to kiss me and the time I thought to throw him out of our apartment. I don't remember why.
I thought about the night he asked me to marry him and how we welcomed all of these children in to our lives, together. I thought about crazy angry fighting and quiet times and laughter. I thought about growing up and how I did this with him. It was a joy to make him this sweater and I loved the look on his face when he put it on.
Rewind to two days before Christmas and I am in the Kohl's parking lot picking up some last minute things, a few pajamas for the kids and a beautiful nightgown for my mother and I am sitting in the car listening to "Baby I'm Amazed" by Paul McCartney. I love that song. Gary loves McCartney. He says he wrote better songs than Lennon and I don't know if I would go that far but I do love his ability to write an amazing love song. I am also a huge sucker for the love story of Linda and Paul McCartney.
Anyhow, there I am taking in the last few notes of that lovely song and thinking about Gary and what a wonderful song it is and the female DJ comes on to tell all her listeners matter of factly that if she ever met a man who wrote a beautiful love song like that for her she would drop everything and marry him, no questions asked.
Gary has written songs like that for me.
In fact most of the songs from the last 15 years of his life have been about me, or us or our children.
On Christmas eve he told me to sit and listen to another song that he had written for me and I remembered what that woman had said and I took pause. I dropped everything and married him again.
Life is really that simple sometimes.

Sick

2009-12-30T06:40:00.000-08:00

Nora is sick. She started to complain about feeling tired on Monday late afternoon after spending the night with her friend, Sophie. Nora is my child who always knows how to take care of her body. When she is tired, she sleeps. When she is hungry, she eats. When she has had enough TV, she turns off the TV.
Monday she told Gary she was tired at 5pm and was in her PJs, in her bed sleeping within ten minutes. At 10 she woke up, complaining of feeling hot and wanting to sleep in our bed. I took her temp and it was up to 103.
I am so grateful that Gary and I welcome our children in bed with us. Our bed is such a comfort to not only Gary and I at the end of the day, but also to Nora when she is ill, Jonah when he wakes up in the middle of the night and Sadie when she has nightmares.
And sometimes people just end up there, just because.
That is ok with Gary and I.
I remember when I had Molly as a young child and wasn't as cued in to our own family needs and used to worry so much that she would be sleeping with us forever. Now I am free to let these worries go and recognize that this is very temporary and that my children are learning their safe places and how to go out and explore the world with the safety of unconditional regard at the end of the day.
Having a sick child or being sick myself is not one of my favorite experiences but Nora has made this experience so interesting for me. She lets people take care of her so beautifully and knows what to ask for when her body needs it. She spent the entire day in bed yesterday with a fever of up to 104 and when I asked her what she needed, her responses were always something like, "sleep," "a cuddle" or "a Popsicle." I downloaded two books for her to listen to from the library. She listened to "The Linden Tree" which she loved. I wasn't able to listen to the whole thing with her because Gary was playing in Vermont and Jonah and Sadie required a lot of me too but when I asked her about it at the end of the day she told me it was about a family who had lost their mother. She told me that a lot of times I picked out books that were older or about older girls and when I asked her if she would rather listen to something like Junie B Jones, she emphatically responded No!
Now this is interesting to me because at the same time Sadie loves to watch Curious George and read very low level books alongside her Harry Potters and Little Women. My children oscillate in age range and this is nice.
Nora told me that she liked this story and it was nice to listen to.
She told me that one thing that bothered her was the they never told the reader how the mother died. She guessed aloud that maybe it was just old age and then thought about this for a moment and said that that was probably not the reason, "right, mom?"
I told her probably not and then somehow we got on to the discussion of Grampa and I asked her if she ever thought about her Grampa who died 9 months ago and she told me she did......... "all the time."
Today Nora woke up with a fever down to 102 and wanting to watch some tv. I am not feeling well today and so we made plans to shut ourselves up in this room and watch tv and read books and maybe if we feel up to it after everyone else has left for a bit we can paint her dollhouse.
But only if we are up to it.
Nora will tell me if she is up to it and I know she will know.

sisters and little Mozart

2009-12-27T18:47:00.000-08:00

Eleanor

2009-12-14T19:03:00.001-08:00

Yesterday the kids and Gary and I took a hike at High Rock in Needham. Gary used to spend a lot of time here as a teenager drinking or hanging out with friends, skipping school. He told us some of his best times were times when he skipped school. Sadie and Jonah and Gary wanted to climb the big rock but Nora and I didn't and so we walked ahead along the path. I like to be alone with Nora because she is so content with where she is at any given moment. Sometimes we don't talk or we talk about things that really make no difference in the end, just talking, passing the time. She is a fairy living among trolls in our world. Her innocence pours out of her at all times. She can't help it. She is the only child who I know I could absolutely never send to school unless it was Waldorf where she could be among other fairies much like her. She picked up a stick that was bigger than her and proceeded to crush ice below her and tell me about the little people that live below the ice throughout the winter and even though it was really cold and sometimes there magic didn't work so well they could still survive and they thrived on laughter and parties.
Fairy parties, we had one the other day when Nora turned 7. All of her girlfriends came dressed as fairies or just beautiful beings. Quinny came too and he was dressed as a caped knight defending dear Nora. He came bearing the gift of a hand made candle and Nora accepted this with thrill and love.
For her birthday she wanted a hand made cake from Gramma and a song from her father and her father learned all the words to Eleanor by the Turtles included at the end of this post. Nora sang with her Dad and her Dad cried and Nora smiled. She has won him over again.
Nora and I went to her violin lesson today. Usually Daddy brings her as he does with all of the musically activities in our house but today I was blessed with the gift of alone time with Nora. She came flying in to this teacher's home immediately on the floor with the cat, kicking her shoes off and laughing boldly at the food the teacher was cooking in the kitchen. It hit me like a wave how different she is from other 7 year olds tonight at violin, how naive and precious she is, how innocent and gentle. She told me and her teacher all about the cats and violins and her dad and the fairies and as we walked out the door and I told her how beautiful she sounded she told me of course she did.
Of course she does.
I love the idea that she has not yet figured out the idea that failure is possible, the accomplishment can only be had by other people, that of course she can.
I love that I never have to drag her anywhere and make her do things.
Nora's favorite word this week is crest fallen.
I told her that was a beautiful word and asked her where she heard it and she told me she didn't know, somewhere and that in fact it was not a beautiful word but a tragic and sad word.

Eleanor
The Turtles
You got a thing about you

I just can't live without you

I really want you, Elenore, near me

Your looks intoxicate me

Even though your folks hate me

There's no one like you, Elenore, really

Chorus:

Elenore, gee I think you're swell

And you really do me well

You're my pride and joy, et cetera

Elenore, can I take the time

To ask you to speak your mind

Tell me that you love me better

I really think you're groovy
Let's go out to a movie
What do you say, now, Elenore, can we?
They'll turn the lights way down low
Maybe we won't watch the show
I think I love you, Elenore, love me

2009-12-14T08:32:00.000-08:00

Stratus Clouds Stratus Clouds

Stratus clouds are when the moisture rises.
They fly like a soft bird in the sky.
They look like summer's smoke when a fire is lighting.
They feel like a bed of soft fluff.
The beauty of it all makes me want to
jump for joy.
Stratus clouds Stratus clouds
How you make me want to fly right up to you.

Sadie Backstrom age 9

2009-12-14T07:57:00.000-08:00

RAIN FALLING DOWN SOFTLY
I was walking in the woods one day
I saw a big rain cloud
It started to get puffier
then it started to rain.

I brought my back pack
and it had my stuff in it when it rains
I ran home
and it got sunny again.

I thought I could go
back to the woods
I went back to the woods
on a rainy at first
and a sunny after.

Eleanor Grace Backstrom age 7

reflection

2009-12-11T09:20:00.000-08:00

Reflection

She is quiet

as a cowering child

hiccupping waves

creeping in to her eyes.

A new dawn and the sky opens up for her

but she is blind.

She cannot see.

She is beauty

like a Montana mountain

strong and steady

cold on the top

burning inside.

And she can’t see it.

She is walking in the snow

and she cannot remember

were it is she left her boots

crest fallen seagull swoons along side

of her

speaking to her

remembering July

during brighter skies

when her eyes

could see.

Kelli Backstrom 12/11/09

2009-12-08T16:12:00.000-08:00

Right now I am sitting half on my cat and half on the chair. It sounds kind of cruel but I think the cat likes it. The kids are downstairs and they are watching some mundane Disney channel crap that my mother in law told them was on the TV. I will be down for the Charlie Brown special. I love the Charlie Brown special. Last night we finally had to break down and do some shopping at the mall and every year it gets weirder. We wander around the aisles and we think that maybe we have bought everything in the store at least once but the pieces have gone missing and the game was forgotten and then I start to believe that it does not matter what I am buying for this holiday.
Right now Jonah has marched in to the bedroom and turned on the bathroom light and demonstrated his new trick of unzipping his fly and peeing just like his dad and I have to admit it is the cutest thing ever. How amazing and convenient the male body is.
And now he is laying next to me humming a song he heard on the radio today and I am wondering if there is anything more I should be doing to foster his musical interest and then he is up again. He had grabbed his train flashlight and he is telling me that he thinks we should do something, that maybe we should brush our teeth.
I have my phone near me because I am on call and there has not been a Tuesday night in months where I have not worked but here I sit, not working.
My house is full of lights and Christmas ornaments and Gary has left nothing undone and I am wandering around trying to find things to do but he is Mr. Christmas and I am Mrs. Scrooge.
Next month will be our 10 year wedding anniversary. We will take a long weekend and go away alone and sleep and cuddle and read.
Now Jonah is singing Holly Jolly Christmas in his beautiful soprano voice and he has taken all of my earrings out of my jewelry box and spread them over my bed and he is talking to my toothbrush and I am wondering about what an interesting predictable, very unpredictable world I live in.

6th picture

2009-11-23T18:37:00.000-08:00

From Sandra Dodd's blog:

Choose the sixth picture from the sixth picture folder on your computer and post it.

Well there it is, a thumbprint of Gary and a banjo.

Pros and Cons

2009-11-18T12:41:00.000-08:00

"Of course, a child may not know what he may need to know in ten years (who does?), but he knows, and much better than anyone else, what he wants and needs to know right now, what his mind is ready and hungry for. If we help him, or just allow him, to learn that, he will remember it, use it, build on it. If we try to make him learn something else, that we think is more important, the chances are that he won't learn it, or will learn very little of it, that he will soon forget most of what he learned, and what is worst of all, will before long lose most of his appetite for learning anything."

~John Holt~ Teach Your Own

What I have been thinking about a lot lately is this pros and cons thing. Like on Monday Gary and I started to talk about some of the things that we could be doing if we weren't homeschooling. Like that career I went and did all of that schooling for, like that guitar and recording equipment that gather dust more than not. I think about the conversations that I wish that I could start and linger through and come to completion with. I think about the quiet that I long for like an long lost friend and the noise, the incessant tantrum of drums and growls and chatter that replace this silence.
And then I jump to school.
School may not be great but it could act as some sort of childcare.

And then Gary tells me to come to the Boulevard and drop the bills and the phone and jump in the car with the bikes and scooters and helmets and children and escape to the ocean that we are so blessed to live minutes from.
And so I went and the children rode off and there we were with our conversation that started and lingered and ended.
Our children are like wildflowers growing without abandon all over our messy house. They take over a green patch and then they move on to another part of the house and yard and they have things in their hair and food trailing behind them and muddy feet.
They are planted in my yard and free to roam.
Right now they are all outside, almost dark, helmets on running or riding through our dead end street with the neighborhood kids.
My child is missing his jacket and Nora is not wearing socks and the plate from last week's apples is growing mold on it in the far end of the backyard.
Nora is kicking the soccer ball to Zack and I can hear Sadie practicing the piano. She has chosen to stay in.
I think about the contagious smile that my nine year old daughter held on her face throughout her dance recital last week and the entire Folk Chorale concert on Sunday. She is so beaming with light and love and hope.
The trade off is clear and so I need to remember that this is about my family and in my family we make concessions for each other. Gary tells me to get in the car and I go and the kids want me to come play a game with them and I want to write here and now and they move on and we all give to each other.
Sometimes parenting can be so black and white. Put kids away and meet our needs or put our dreams away and meet their needs.
There is a happy middle ground here in our home.
In a discussion I had with some moms recently I remember that there was much talk about sacrifice and I felt bad because I felt like there are times it is a tremendous sacrifice that I make daily for these children.
I feel like there are times when I worry that my daughter's will feel that they have to do these same things and I want them to feel free to chose. I want them to feel free.
And in the clarity that comes with time I realize that for me it is a sacrifice but it is one that I am entirely ready to make.
And one that becomes second nature to all of us.

Sadie's Swim meet

2009-10-31T11:35:00.000-07:00

2009-10-29T13:07:00.000-07:00

Scrabble seems like a good idea laying on my bedroom floor on a sunny Sunday or a cloudy Tuesday. Making cupcakes seems like a good idea today, two days before the ghosts come out to gather treats and tricks. Listening to music or watching a movie seemed like a good idea to some of us last night but Nora was tired and she said so and so I downloaded a witchy tale for her from our library and she dozed on and off in a feverish haze all through the night.
When I was a child I had many hours of someone telling me what to do and the places that I needed to be but then I had many hours of no one directing me. It was in this confusion that I was lost. That is why I am here
suggesting that maybe it would be fun to make cupcakes of play music together or maybe it is really a good idea to go up in to your room and build on your own.
Nora has made me a scary tie dye ghost out of an old colorful table cloth and an apple and she has come whizzing through my bedroom now with it in hand in all ghostly earnest.
She wants to know how to tie it up and I tell her my idea and off she goes,
half ghost half fairy, six for only a few more days.
Molly runs in half out of breath, having had her last driving test, no longer fairy but now wanting to fly off on her own.
There are things for me to sign and more for me to do and I am happy to do it.
Jonah is not at my heel and so he must be either in the basement playing music or breaking something somewhere and I am thinking about his squishy baby hands
and even breathing feels alright.

Content on Halloween

2009-10-26T14:50:00.001-07:00

Taking care of myself has never come easy. And yet not taking care of myself has never been an option either. Some of the beautiful mothers that I know do such an amazing job being self less and devoted in constant measure to their cubs. Some mothers that I know take it all in stride with such grace.
I've asked for such grace.
I've bargained for this blessing late at night as I question some parenting decision that I made or some parenting decision I did not make, could not face.
Other moms I know make this beautiful transition back to their careers and they get on the train and they go, and they don't look back and they are content in their decisions to embark on this mission.
I am looking for content.
I looked for it yesterday in Salem. I looked for it on the train ride in and I looked for it as we all climbed off the train in to the craziness that is Halloween Salem. I know it wasn't the best place to find content but it seems plausible
or it did at the time.
And so let's face it. What was intended to be a fun day trip turned quickly in to a miserable grouchy should have hid under the covers kind of day and now looking back on it all in my pajamas at 6pm the day after, somewhere in going through my pictures, listening to my music, there is was
not really hidden
just kind of lurking underneath age
layers of skin
and some gray hair.
Content.
And I realize as I reflect on arguing with Gary in the cemetery in Salem with people all around us, I realize as I told all of them we are now leaving Salem if you cannot stop blowing raspberries on strange passerbyers and looked on to their scowls and crankiness that that is all part of the equation.
Later Sadie and I trailed behind and talked among the grown adults who stank of alcohol and had face paint dripping from their faces, and Sadie told me that she thought maybe I was still sick and I thought she may be right.
As it turns out she was. I am sick with the flu
and I was a jerk yesterday
because sometimes I am a jerk.
Sadie told me sometimes she is one too and I aplogized for being one and then we laughed, all of us, the whole train ride home.
Content is noticing a thought float through my head such as "maybe I should go back to work full time" or "I want to go to work full time" or "I am never going to be able to cook anything more than a hot dog" or "there is something inherently wrong with me" and watching it float away into the space of humanity.
Noticing all of the crazy ghouls in Salem and all of the desperate people in the Emergency room at night and my small vunerable children and recognizing the lessons that there are in all of these events and that this is how life evolves and moves so beautifully and so brutally real.

Awe

2009-10-07T06:06:00.001-07:00

I'm having one of those weeks where I am watching my children become the people that they are supposed to be right before my eyes and I am completely in awe.

Molly's birthday

2009-10-02T18:46:00.000-07:00

Today was Molly's birthday. She turned 17 today. A few days ago I took Jonah to a park that Molly and I used to frequent when she was between the ages of 2 and 4 and there I was with my youngest child running wildly through the slides and swings thinking, "Is this Molly..... or is this Jonah?"
Time is such a funny thing. Just when I think I am ready for it to fly by I am taken aback, punched in the stomach and losing my breath thinking about her and how quickly it all went by.
She wanted us to take her out to eat and so we did. She wanted us to take her out along and I understand what she is trying to say to us and so we did. Having all these little siblings cant always be easy and so we were together, the three of us, just like it had been for many years prior to baby #2 as we called Sadie.
Of course things being the way they are around our house currently we couldn't just take Molly in to the city and have our way. First we had to stop for our first appointment at Dana Farber. We all joked and played on the way up and looked around at bald heads and weak bodies and thought about how silly it was that we were there because after all Gary has a curable kind of cancer and there will not be any bald heads in our house any time soon. In the lobby I sat feeling sad for all of these other people that have to go through Cancer while we are all done with that now, thank you, just a precaution.
The nurses and the clinicians and just about everyone was so kind to us at DF that it almost brought tears to my eyes. They were not worried about time, they were not doubtful of us and our intentions and wisdom as carriers of our own bodies. It felt loving and wonderful and spiritual.
The doctor was a tall handsome man with a kind face and a broad and welcoming smile who sat with us for two hours and would have stayed with us all afternoon if we kept asking questions.
He told us that Gary has a 25% chance of chemotherapy and a 75 % of monitoring heavily and waiting and seeing. We will find this out next week after the CAT Scan comes back and I know that whatever happens I trust this doctor and I know that he cares about me and my husband. I haven't felt that about a doctor for a really long time.
We went out to a nice little Irish restaurant and took funny pictures of each other and laughed and ate. It's fun to be with Molly because she is like an adult now and we have fun conversations and I am almost ready to launch her.
Maybe she will want to go back to that park with me.
Maybe I will blink my eyes and find myself there in years to come with her little child wishing for a return to something as sweet as the first flowers in spring and the longest day of the year.

The Backstroms do Neil Young

2009-10-02T07:57:00.000-07:00

festivals

2009-09-25T05:53:00.000-07:00

This is our second weekend of festivals. This weekend Gary will be on a stool.

Codman Farm on Thursdays

2009-09-23T05:35:00.001-07:00

On Thursdays Sadie and Nora work on a beautiful farm in Lincoln. They are having so much fun on Thursdays!

Cancer

2009-09-21T16:47:00.000-07:00

Cancer.
It's an ugly word.
My friend Jane says I shouldn't think of it that way. She says that we all have cells in our body at any given time that are cancerous. I wish I had that kind of faith in my body. I envy those that can always see their body as powerful.
Instead I see the body as powerless.
Not all the time.
Today we went in for Gary's surgery. It was an outpatient procedure and we were told recovery would be minimum and he would be back in the saddle, no pun, in a few days.
I wanted to be in the surgery. I wanted to see all the things I don't know.
Can you see Cancer?
Can you feel Cancer?
What is Cancer?
I want to know.
I want the doctor to tell me definitively that this will work and to stop talking to us about his U2 tickets.
I want him to wipe that rock and roll smirk off of his face and tell me things that are important and of meaning.
Instead I listen.
and things go in and out of my brain
and I agree.
Sure, whatever you think is best.
I waited for him and then helped him to get dressed and I am making him a lentil soup and I am watching the Simpsons with him and I cleaned my house because that is what I can do.
The kids are at Folk Chorale rehearsal and the phone is ringing and life is moving on all around me.
John came in and he has a cough and his body is turning on him too.
Our bodies,
This can't be all there is, these shells that house so much more.
I walked by a homeless man in Cambridge last night and I watched him, his body and his spirit and I was instantly aware
and then just like that it was gone.
I wish I knew why.

Home

2009-09-13T16:28:00.000-07:00

Home is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me round
I feel numb, born with a weak heart
I guess I must be having fun
The less we say about it the better
Make it up as we go along
Feet on the ground, head in the sky
It's okay, I know nothing's wrong, nothing

Hey, I got plenty of time
Hey, you got light in your eyes
And you're standing here beside me
Out of the passing of time
Never for money, always for love
Cover up and say goodnight, say goodnight

Home is where I want to be
But I guess I'm already there
I come home, she lifted up her wings
I guess that this must be the place
I can't tell one from another
Did I find you, or you find me?
There was a time before we were born
If someone asks, this is where I'll be, where I'll be

Hey, we drift in and out
Hey, sing into my mouth
Out of all those kinds of people
You got a face with a view
I'm just an animal looking for a home
Share the same space for a minute or two
And you'll love me 'til my heart stops
Love me 'til I'm dead
Eyes that light up, eyes look through you
Cover up the blank spots
Hit me on the head

David Byrne

When I met Gary I literally fell in to the space and home of what is him. I had never felt so at home. I knew where his key was and I let myself in and the couch was small but it fit all of my body on it. I read all of his books and listened to all of his CDs and looked at all of his pictures and waited for him. We were friends for a long time and we still are very good friends. But mostly it was that once he got home I could curl my entire body up in to him and lay there for a very long time. Sometimes there were things to talk about and sometimes there was nothing and either way it was perfect.
Going through the challenges of the last few months I have come to know what it is that marriage is really all about and it is as beautiful as the forest in the fall and as bittersweet as goodbye and hello all mixed together. People are always splitting up and moving on and I feel so much sadness for them and although I have had my moments of wondering about all the different lives I could have had with different choices I may have made I could not imagine having those lives without this man with me. He comes with me everywhere. He is there when I am in a really bad mood and am a total bitch to be around and he holds me when I cry and laughs at my jokes and believes that I can do pretty much anything. He is the one who taught me how to love my children unconditionally because he loves me this way.
There is no one I would rather spend the day with and no one who knows me like him and when he has sickness and when he is in pain I will pray that it ends and I will watch him sleep.
There is nothing I wish more for my children than to have the kind of love that I have with Gary.

Hitting a Tree

2009-09-06T19:06:00.000-07:00

I'm reading over some posts on Facebook and it is all Labor Day mayhem, bbqueing and drinking and sunning and I think about doing that and then I can't think about doing that but I remember what that feels like just going on, laughing and living.
Bumps in the road come along and you have to diverge in your driving or maybe you hit it head on and then you curse out yourself or the driver next to you. A few miles down the road it is over and then you are on to the next thing, the hair appt, the car payment, the rainy forecast, the things you don't have, the things you do have, your hopes and your dreams.
And then you hit a tree
and you can't move
You know you are alive
and you hear other people driving by
Some sound out alarms
and others don't even look.

On Friday we went in for a fairly routine visit to check on a lump Gary had discovered over the week. We laughed on the way in.
I told Nora who was screaming out of our living room window that no, in fact we did not have chocolate chips but we did have raisins and Gary told me that was the saddest thing you could tell a child.
Jonah came with us and Jonah and I watched Sesame Street and they were talking about the letter Q and drums, two of Jonah's favorite things.
Gary came out
we drove home
for a long Labor Day weekend.
Two hours later his doctor called, an hour later we were in a urologist's office and all of my children had been shipped off to Patricia's house.
She kept them for the next 24 hours.
I cried in the bathroom.

The type of cancer he has is treatable, they think. It is a "good type of cancer to get, if you are to get cancer."
But I can't help think about how quiet my house would be without Gary.
My friend Gwendolyn called me this morning to talk and she told me she had thought about me and Gary a lot lately, about what a great love we had for each other and I know she is right and so I told her and then I cried.

Blanket Days

2009-08-27T16:22:00.001-07:00

Today I woke up with the day spread before me like a warm blanket. Nora had told me last night that she wanted to go swimming at the Y and I had told her that we could do that but upon waking the humidity had finally broke and the air was cool and crisp. No way could we be inside on a day like today and Nora agreed too. I went to my spinning class early, up at 6 and gone and then as I was walking out sweating and smiling there were my three children running towards me as if from a dream screaming "Mommy!" It was like I was a star in my own tv series and these were my greatest fans.
And then there was Gary smiling with books in hand taking our eager children to the library where the librarians all know our children by first name and have suggestions waiting for them and smiles to share with them.
When I got home to my silent house I sat a bit and played some piano and it was peaceful and quiet for some time and then just like that it was full of laughing children, fighting children, apologizing children and reading silently children sprawled out all over my furniture and my body.
We ate a beautiful meal Gary had cooked and Gary and I lingered at the table talking about NYC next week and the future.
We decided last minute to hike at Goose Cove with bikes and skate boards and scooters and feet and Sparky and we talked about different plants and the clouds and the water supply that we were walking around and we played pooh sticks. Jonah won at pooh sticks and the girls clapped and Sadie swore she saw a snake and we talked about what kind of snake it could have been and we talked about looking it up when we got home but we didn't.
I found out today that Nora has no problem counting to 100 when we played 52 pick up with two decks of cards and that she can add pretty well too. I learned that during a game of war. I didn't have to give Sadie a test today about vocabulary words or spelling because I listened to her use words such as indignantly and surpassing appropriately in a sentence and Jonah spent three hours playing piano this morning much to Gary and my amazement.
Sadie wants to read Harry Potter 7 again because she feels like reading it at age 9 will be different than at age 8 and I think she is right so we will.
Sadie asked if all the other kids are starting school next week and I told her they were. She asked if we would start school then too and I told her that all through the summer we never stop because we learn all the time.
We will work on some math stuff and Nora loves the Explode the Code thing. We will do our ecology class and we will take a CSI course at the community college. Swim team starts and Folk Chorale starts and life moves us around much more.Mostly it is like today though, days spread out before us with choices to make about how to spend them.
Right now if all Sadie did all day long was build with legos and play the piano and listen to me read Harry Potter 7 she would be happy and so she can and because she knows this, she knows I have faith in her.
Molly is off to bigger and better things lately. She just cut her hair short and it is adorable. She talks about important things now and she is excited about her future. She spends a lot more time away from home now and I trust that she is making good decisions and that she will come to me when she needs my help or my love.
Right now Jonah and Nora have been soaking in a bath for the last hour and they are relatively quiet. I think they are tired. Jonah continuously asked us to wait for Nora on our walk today and I realize that under all that testosterone and energy simply enough he is just this guy who adores all of us.
I will read to them and we will fight over who lays where and one of us will storm out of the room and return with more covers. We will laugh at the Bearenstein Bears and Jonah will fall asleep and when he starts to snore we will look at him and want to cry at how sweet and chubby he is and one of us may talk about eating his hands and another one of us will surely bring up something that he broke today.

Th e Wishing Well

2009-08-04T14:44:00.000-07:00

For a lifetime now it seems we have been running around like chickens with our heads cut off, always trying to find something, catch up and be at ease. When this recession hit our town and our country Gary and I did not really feel it because, well, we had always struggled financially, so it was no different now. We have always bought second hand, cut coupons and gone without. One of the things that I have always loved best about our jobs is this possibility in both of them. For example, right now I am on call and I will be until midnight. Possibly I could make some extra money tonight. Then again, I could possibly only make a tiny little bit but being the ever optimistic person that I am I always can see it for what it may turn out to be like and usually it does work that I go out and we make some money. In Gary's job and world it has always been this way. He could drum up some extra lessons any old time and we could get those new curtians or pay the credit card bill or whatever. The difference between his possibilities and mine is the slight, ever so small possibility that he could hit some huge possibility. A possibility that could change our whole world and turn us upside down.
A few years ago Gary made a friend, a fan friend. A lot of Gary's friends are "fan friends". They come to a show, see how great Gary is and then because Gary is who he is, when they come up to introduce themselves they are immediate friends. Gary is an amazingly warm and tender person and people are instinctlively warm back to him.
This new friend had all sorts of connections and over the course of the last few years we have rode a roller coaster of possibilities. In a couple of days Gary will travel to NYC for the second time this year to play his guitar with some other musicians in what looks like could be a very interesting turn of events.
So how do I feel?
Part of me is elated. It would be nice to feel freed up from my job for awhile. I would love the chance to travel with the kids and show them our world. I would love to feel more free.
Part of me is terrified. When my dad started to make a lot of money, that was the end of my dad, spiritually and emotionally.
When I went to Target today to buy some gifts for Gary who will turn 42 in a few days it was easy. The kids picked him out little things and I got him some needed stuff like a new bag and a bike helmet. We spent more time hemming and hawing over the cards. The kids wanted to get him just the right one. Jonah picked him out the card with the charging elephants and Nora chose a really sweet one with flowers and Sadie picked him out a card that played "Somewhere over the Rainbow" when you open it. She said it would make him cry and we all agreed it would.
At times like this I wonder if I wished too hard for this break for Gary and what it will mean to us all. He is already being asked to sacrifice some of our vacation time to travel to NYC and to practice.
It makes me feel possessive of him, wanting his overall attention.
Although I am a person that does not ever regret things I would like to be able to look in a crystal ball once in awhile, maybe know what I am getting myself in to before I go around throwing coins in to the well.

Grae

2009-07-25T13:48:00.000-07:00

Gary and I waited up until 11pm on Wednesday night. Grae was home visiting and he called and told us he was in the area. It was no imposition, it was a joy to wait around on the couch for him. I have often thought about writing a little story about Grae, such an interesting path he follows and it is worth telling about the days he comes home and tells us of his adventures. For some reason during his first few visits he reminded me of Dill from To Kill A Mockingbird. Scout would go about her life all through the year and almost forget about Dill and then the summer days would shine upon her and Dill would be at her door, ready to play again. That is how it is for us and Grae.
Grae used to be Greg and Gary has known him for many more years than I. From the stories I have listened in on throughout the years Grae somehow met Gary out in Western Mass or maybe at a show somewhere and they immediately made a connection. They have been friends ever since. The first time that I met Grae was driving to a Max Creek show in the middle of nowhere with Gary on New Years Eve, I think 1996, yeah that is it. I was going to give up smoking and he was trying to talk me out of it. I was not drinking and he was lecturing me on the necessities of living an independent free life away from the constraints of not drinking. To be honest, he was not my favorite friend of Gary's but we sat up until the wee hours in our shared hotel room talking and laughing, the three of us. And then he was gone.
For all of the time that I have known him he has lived in Northern California and he has come to visit his home of Massachusetts once every couple of years so this has amounted to about 8 or 9 visits in our life together from Grae.
It marks time for me.
All the visits occurring in our 20s were marked with drinking and partying and philosophizing and laughing.
When Gary and I started to have children our relationship with him took on a whole other flavor.
There is this thing that happens when friends have children and other friends don't but Grae was around so infrequently that really it was not a big deal. We always cleared time for him. Gary loved him and before I knew it so did I.
In our most recent visits all of the confusion and angst that I had in my eyes throughout my 2os and early 30s are in his eyes in his 40s and now this visit was all about changes and moving on. He has moved all of his belongings in to a storage facility and is going on a great adventure to live in South America on the Amazon River indefinitely. Cool.
We stayed up and waited for him. He looked older, much thinner and much kinder than he ever had. We picked up right where we had left it two or three years ago and then the next day he was gone.
Gary and I are two creatures of habit and constancy. We stay in our flow and we have become foundations for some of our most wandering friends. I love to hear their stories. I love it when they sleep on my couch. I hope that my children travel to wonderful places and have great adventures and find our home waiting for them just where they had left it, a light on and the two of us standing in the doorway....... waiting.

Happy Learn Nothing Day!

2009-07-24T09:01:00.000-07:00

Crap! I forgot today was Learn Nothing Day! The kids have already gone off to Nature Camp, listened to the radio, opened books and talked with us about all sorts of various things. Learning Nothing is a very hard thing to do...........

2009-07-20T16:51:00.000-07:00

In younger days I danced like this. This is how Gary met me. Looking and feeling like this. This was a festival before we got married. Gary had just come home from 6 weeks out on the road and we had driven the old tour bus two hours to this festival. I think Gary may have been playing while I was dancing here but maybe not.
We camped with our good friend LJ. Several years later LJ drove across the United States and left us a message staring at the clouds in Montana chanting about the surreal beauty in the skies. He overdosed two weeks after that call.
We were dancing during this photo. He and I loved to dance together.
I miss being that carefree. I know what they all say, all the old cliches about age and youth and all that but I know that when I go out now even if I may be swaying I will never dance like that again.
I danced in those days with the lightness of a floating petal, carefree and full of the promise of another day and one after that. I danced without the burden of bills and taxes and checklists. I danced in the eternal glow of youth.
I love this picture. I am glad it is here to remind me.

2009-07-12T16:41:00.000-07:00

"He took her soul—though, being a secular-minded person, he didn’t think of it that way. He didn’t take the whole thing; that would not have been possible. But he got such a significant piece that it felt as if her entire soul were gone. As soon as he had it, he not only forgot that he’d taken it; he forgot he’d ever known about it. This was not the first time, either.

He was a musician, well regarded in his hometown and little known anywhere else. This fact sometimes gnawed at him and yet was sometimes a secret relief; he had seen musicians get sucked up by fame and it was like watching a frog get stuffed into a bottle, staring out with its face, its splayed legs, its private beating throat distorted and revealed against the glass. Fame, of course, was bigger and more fun than a bottle, but still, once you were behind the glass and blown up huge for all to see, there you were. It would suddenly be harder to sit and drink in the anonymous little haunts where songs were still alive and moving in the murky darkness, where a girl might still look at him and wonder who he was. And he might wonder about her."
Mary Gaitskill Mirrorball, at Pantheon Books

2009-06-30T09:51:00.000-07:00

One of Molly's friends took this picture with her new Pentax that I am secretly seething in jealousy about. I don't know, there is something about this picture of Sadie that is amazing to me.

Jonah at age 4

2009-06-21T14:14:00.000-07:00

Jonah will turn 4 on July 5th. To me these last four years have been a whirlwind of change, moving, and growing. Out of all of my children Jonah has blessed me with the most plentiful of moments to explore my own experience of parental anger and displeasure. I have had moments with Jonah that I thought only existed for "those parents". And yet, there they were for he and I to explore and learn together. We are closer as a result. I am grateful.
On the dawn of his fourth birthday I have many thoughts in my mind about him and about the thought that my baby days are over. I watch as other friends of ours begin their families and I wonder at that timeless moment and those sleepless elated days where it feels like there could never exist anyone else in the world aside from you and this new being and the man that helped you create this baby.
And then you blink
and it is gone
just like that, things to do, bills to pay and other children to attend to and then you notice that his baby fat is somehow changing and subsiding and that he will no longer let you call him baby anymore anyhow.
He still yearns for me though, needs me in a visceral kind of way, in a way that only he can. That's ok, I'll take it.
Last night we took the kids down to St. Peter's Fiesta which the first year that we lived here made me think that I should always live here and made it impossible to imagine life without the culture of Gloucester. Every year since it has made me wonder what the hell I am doing here and where I belong in this crowd I cannot place and do not know.
Last night we got tickets for Nora, Sadie and Molly to go on rides but it turned out that Nora was absolutely terrified of rides and that Jonah loved them so off he went on the "Crazy Bus" with his big sister without me.
I held back, close to Gary, looking around at the display, watching people walk around in circles in St. Peter's Square, not knowing this culture that I had chosen to live in.
Jonah got a new set of drums for his birthday and has been playing them for days in a row without avail and he actually makes a really good rhythm with the drums, he has a thing for it. He and Gary go off together and speak that language and I can't believe how lucky I am. I can't believe how blessed I am to have this all, the husband and these children and my life.
Now if I could just freeze Jonah at four...............
I sneak in to his room at night just to get a smell of his head.
It terrifies me that that smell may dissipate over time.

The hulk in me

2009-06-17T20:11:00.000-07:00

Sadie sits on the outside looking in. Nora runs to embrace the next moment while Jonah stays close to me. And Molly, self assured poised for her next moment, eternally hopeful for her next move. I'm looking in a fish bowl and watching the world go around, swimming in a sea of ins and outs where some days it feels like I connect and am in my habitat and others I am a visitor. Today I was a visitor and I was not like Nora who ran in to the playground, picked her next friend and started her game.
Today my game should be meaningful. All my moments are meaningful and what does that make the moments that are mundane and more of the same. I have no patience for it. Gary and I met and fell in love under the auspices that we would take over the world. There were people who were petty and did not understand, we called them "taco bell" people. They just talk and talk but nothing actually comes out of their mouths.
I have worked hard to develop patience in this and to foster love and compassion in my children. The mothers in Molly and Sadie's dance classes years ago were these people. They talked about Target like it was some sort of extension to heaven, to Buddha himself, as if you could find happiness in the dollar aisle at the market.
I knitted and by the end of the year the mothers didn't talk to me at all.
Sometimes that is a bummer. I feel like why can't I be more like that? Why can't I fit in with ease? Why is it that I relate to the homeless guy I chat with on Mondays in front of the library better than I do my own friends?
I love that homeless guy. He is slightly smelly and he is sometimes cold and I give him a bite of my muffin and hang on his every word. He understands something that I am trying to get. We only get here one time and I want to get it this time around.
Sadie goes in to a party like a lost deer, starry eyed and confused, finding an activity or some sort of tree to climb.
I look for Gary.
We went to see the movie Up on Monday and it was the love story that my inlaws lived and Sadie told me she would never get married. I agreed, getting married is a big risk to run. You will get hurt eventually. Someday one of you will be lonely for the other. You should plan. You should create networks of friends for yourself so that when you are left alone you will be ok. That is what my mother in law should have done.
But she didn't want to. She fit in with him and I fit in with Gary.
It's really the only place I do fit in.
Sometimes I fit in with the homeschoolers.
Sometimes I fit in with the social workers.
But most times I don't.
David Banner didn't fit in. He had to keep on moving every time he turned green and had an "episode". Too bad he didn't have a partner in crime. A little green lady would have been perfect for him. At least then he would have been able to laugh about all those episodes later and someone would tell him that they are all just "taco bell" people and they could be green forever together.
Sometimes I feel like if I just stopped trying to fit in so much maybe I would embrace my not fit in ness and relish the person I am.

The Incredible Hulk

2009-06-11T16:13:00.000-07:00

I have to admit, it was one of my favorite shows as a kid. The Love Boat, Happy Days, The Electric Company and of course The Incredible Hulk. Lately they have been showing old 1970s Hulk episodes on one of our TV channels although I am not sure which one. We have all become hooked. Today when we were driving home from this Optics camp that we spent the last two days participating in Sadie started talking to me about the different kids that she had met and how she went about meeting them and working through some of their many differences. We talked about how important it is in life to learn to work with other people that you like or that you don't like or that you meet in the line at the grocery store or that pull you over for speeding in your car. She tried explaining the rules of four square to me, a child hood game that has always eluded me and I am sorry to say still does. She told me the basic rules to this game that she plays all the time during FFC rehearsal with all of the FFC kids who have become like family to her. In the end she said, "We do a little playing.......... but most of the time we just work through the rules and argue over different aspects of the game until we all agree and continue to play." To some this may seem like a waste of time. In gym class this would have been wasted time. Kids get 45 minutes a week or day if lucky to play gym games and they need to move and have constant fixed rules. At the FFC the kids rule and it is true, although I would not have believed it many years ago, that the kids find rules that are for the most part equitable, respectful and that work for that group at that time. This of course prompted a long discussion about rules and flexibility. More important than workbooks, more important than tests.

I found out today that there is a lot to be learned from that beloved Hulk and we talked about it during and after the show as Jonah stripped naked and practiced his Incredible Hulk moves with Grampa John. The Hulk is in a particular dilemma. Why doesnt he just go get help? What if people found him and tried to cage him up like a wild animal? Would he escape? Would he die? How should we treat people and who can we call on in times of need? Where was his family?

Where was his family anyway?? I think about this a lot, family. You would have thought that somewhere there was a Mrs. Banner missing her large green son. Lord knows I would miss mine, green crazy hair ripped up pants.

Nora told me the other day out of nowhere that she had noticed that there were a lot of mothers who didn't like having their children around them. I have noticed that too lately and it makes me sad. At the doctors today the four of us were sitting there reading a book when a very impatient woman came in scolding her child about homework and just treating him horribly, rolling her eyes at the other mothers and I felt like there was something that they all understood that I didn't.

One thing I have noticed lately is that my son, the Backstrom Hulk, has grown a lot. My baby will be four and all of the sudden I am starting to want to peice together time. I tried to pick him up today and he didn't want me to. He is running through the house in a cape flying past Nora and yelling "Rawrrrrrrrrrrr" all chubby legs and fingers and I want to hold this time in my mind forever, this sweet, surreal magic time of childhood fairies and mysteries and wonder.

99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall

2009-06-04T12:44:00.001-07:00

Monday we traveled down to Arlington to practice for our Family Folk Chorale Concert coming up at Faneuil Hall on July 3rd. I am pretty close with the other families who sing with the FFC and most of these families homeschool and so as usual when together with other homeschooling families in June there is much discussion about end of the year reports and plans for Sept. I have been talking with two of my favorite moms about getting together more often next year because our children like spending time together so much and because it would feel nice to be together and feel supportive to me. I need this type of thing.
So as is my way, in mid discussion I start feeling really overwhelmed. Am I not teaching my children enough, are they learning enough, will Nora ever read, will Sadie learn math skills that can get her ahead in life, will Jonah stop beating us up with sticks, am I doing the right thing, do I have enough money to homeschool, and on and on.
Am I ok?
Am I doing the best for my children?
I get lost in the content of the questions, of the concerns and so I have to bring it back to the moment, to the center and the core of what it is that we are doing here in this house. I need to reconnect with our initial vision.
My children happy.
Children learn everyday on their own naturally.
My children believing in themselves.
My children getting dirty and feeling freedom.
My marriage solid, foundation firm.
Loving respectful unions.
Trusting relationships.

We rehearsed and singing is so grounding for me, so back to the basics important for me now. On the ride home, we drove Sophie home. Sophie is a close friend of all of my children's. She lives down the road from us and spends a lot of time with us. In a nutshell we love her.
Sophie is going to school next year and we are all grappling with the changes that will follow this decision. When I have her now I wonder what Sadie thinks and if Sadie wonders about what school will be like for Sophie. I know I do.
We got moving on to our 45 minute drive and just like that one of the girls started singing "99 bottles of beer on the wall" and within seconds we were all singing it. Gary harmonized and the kids took turns singing in big and fanciful funny voices and laughing as Gary lost count over and over again.
When we hit 55 we had to stop, Sophie was hoarse and we were getting tired.
Life is so much more than one part of a whole. My children are getting to live a full life rather than being put in to a catagory or a segment of community. Reaching out in the world farther and farther and then coming home to touch base unconditionally, fervently continously, joyfully.

Jonah's many looks

2009-05-27T11:14:00.000-07:00

2009-05-25T09:36:00.000-07:00

Going to the beach house used to be a happy carefree event filled with too much food, too much booze and too much sun. This weekend was just too much sadness and a lot of not knowing what to do anyway. Gary's dad is dead and there is no trace of him anywhere and his mom can barely pull herself together to get up in the morning and I know I will be the same way. There is no way I can live without Gary.
We talked in to the late hours last night and we talked about the things we have to look forward to like Gary's mom getting older and sadder and John getting sicker and older and eventually dying and leaving my mom alone.
So depressing.
Nothing really makes it feel better.
I came home without the kids and Gary because I am on call today and I panicked because if I didn't get called out how would I fill my time?
So I cleaned all day and I am tired now, resting.
Life is really hard.
I found out my Aunt has breast cancer, another maternal relative with breast cancer, makes me think about me and my daughters, me and my daughters.
I think about Gary and my friends going through divorces and surgeries and some who have already left us.
I realize that these are the things that test faith and that even if I had all the faith in the world it would still suck.
I guess that is the biggest bummer.
I realize that I believe whole heartedly that those that have left us are somewhere else, happy somewhere but that doesn't make it easier for me. I want them here with me. I want to tell LJ to come back and stay here with us longer, maybe we could have helped more, and then maybe he would be alive.
I want to go back to Friendly's with my father in law and really listen to him ramble on about the democrats and Fox news and hold onto every word knowing that those would be the last words that I would hear from his mouth that didn't have to do with death or sickness or pain.
I want to go back to that night when he died and stay there holding on to his last few breaths and Gary's guitar talking in the background and just pitch a tent and wallow in my own sadness for as long as I damn well please.

Prom

2009-05-17T12:50:00.000-07:00

Our pediatrician asked Molly two years ago when Molly left traditional schooling whether she would miss the important things, you know, like the prom. Molly and I had the closeness at this time to smile at the absurdity of this remark. Yesterday Molly went to a prom. We spent the day doing those things that moms do with their 16 year old daughters the day of the prom. We did nails and hair and got all ready.
I drove Molly to the boy's house. This is a friend of hers that she had a little relationship with at some point but that she had decided long ago was better as a friendship. I was not sure about the whole thing but I was sure that it was Molly's and this boy's decision to go to the prom together and that my job was to support her and help her along with anything she needed.
The day was really fun, she had a friend over who helped her do her make up and the kids got a real kick out of grown up Molly in her beautiful dress. She looked stunning.
We drove everyone over to the boy's home and he looked cute and his parents were excited and it was good.
Molly went off and the day seemed to go without a hitch.
I feel lucky that I understand that things like proms and weddings and graduations and performances are just time and space just like any other. They mark special occasions but they do not mark defining moments and they certainly are no more important than those laughing fits at the breakfast table or waking up on a Tues next to your best friend of 20 years.
Molly did not have the greatest time. In fact she was home early, she had gotten a ride home from a friend that was there.
I am not sure what exactly happened but I do know that there are two stories to every conflict and so I will not dwell on the content of what happened but more on what was important about this weekend for me personally.
When Molly got home she called me right away. I was out at work in the hospital and I stopped everything to talk to her. She is more important than my work.
We talked about the feelings around the night, the guilt she felt for leaving the boy and the remorse she felt at my having spent a lot of money on the event.
I told her that these were signs of growing up and that now all she could do was learn from the experience and move on.
I told her that it was worth every penny to see her dressed up, to spend the day with her getting ready and to have the opportunity to have this discussion.
I told her it was a pleasure to spend money on her and that I regretted nothing about the day and that I felt sorry that she was hurting but that I knew she would feel better in a few days.
This morning she felt better. She got up and took the train to Salem to meet up with a friend and that was that. There was no big tear fest because I think she had normal expectations around this event.
I am glad for this and proud of Molly.

April in our unschooled house

2009-05-07T08:13:00.000-07:00

Unschooling in our house looks like building things with boxes, dressing up in fancy clothes and messing with gender roles, knitting, peeling carrots, playing music together as a family, riding bikes and hearing The Entertainer played by a friend and spending two weeks constantly playing it to master it. Sometimes it means sleeping in, today it meant getting up at 6am to watch another episode of The Brady Bunch which my children are currently hooked on. Today it means making meatballs together, building homes for our fairies, visiting Grammy and going to Lowell Mills.

Now

2009-04-24T07:26:00.001-07:00

Salty Wispy Slipping sand falls around our fingers
Orange fire blazes the sky
Causing a bird to see through the sky
To home
To a place he calls home.
Crystal blue eyes look out at it all.
Am I still alive or did I die here one thousand aching years ago?
And do I have to do this again?
And will you be there to meet me?
Sheltering sun smiles on the scene
I am wind
And sometimes when snow touches your nose
I am snow too.

2009-04-23T15:54:00.000-07:00

It's quiet at your home. We went there a few weeks ago. It was Easter and we had made you a basket and the kids got out of the car and some of them went to your side while others opted for the warmth of your car which is now not driven by you anymore.
When you died several people put dibs on your car.
I don't want your car, you always hated it when I drove your car. I'm too fast. I'm too careless.
We left a stone that Nora picked out at your home in the dirt. It is pink and heart shaped and says "Handle with Care." I'm not sure she wanted to leave it, but she did.
Everytime we go back, there is less.
The first time we went there were the beautiful yellow and pink and white celebratory flowers all over. But they wilted and now they are dead too in the ground with you.
The kids make it easy to forget about where you live now and yet it is impossible to forget.
Gary cries all the time and when we opened up the beach house I know you were watching me as I was trying not to be too careless with your yard but I can't seem to make it as beautiful as you.
We have another funeral to go to on Saturday and Chris has asked Sadie to sing that song that she sang at your funeral and she doesn't want to and I won't make her and so we will go to softball again.
When we watch Sadie play softball there you are shouting out direction and encouragement.
When we go to your new place in the ground I know you are not there and still you are there. I see you everywhere and then I am mad that you are not here.
I want to be cremated.
I don't want a place in the ground so that no one will come there to the lonely quiet place expecting to see me.

2009-04-16T12:16:00.000-07:00

We went to the grief group last night. I signed Sadie and Nora and me and Gary up and me and Nora and Gary went because Sadie wanted to play softball instead. That was ok. Softball is Sadie's way of coping and playing music is Gary's way and my way is driving people around and making appointments for people and cleaning my house.
Nora was nervous and Gary was late and I was confused about where I fit. I talked to some social workers that I knew because technically I still work for Hospice even though I have not worked for Hospice and edged between professional and client and then there was the feeling that maybe I didn't belong there because many of the people had just lost young spouses and had these young children and had shattered lives.
I don't have a shattered life.
I can come home to my home and forget that Back is gone and go about my day. Sometimes I wake up and it is not the first thing I think about. I am back to being frustrated with Gary for various marital things and then I remember and then I feel bad.
Gary came in and he looked broken.
He has this look about him that is looking for someone and that person isn't there but they have always been there and even though this is the natural course of events for a human it seems cruel and abnormal to lose someone that has always been.
Before Gary, there was Back.
Before me and Gary, there was Gary and Dad and Mom.
And now he is gone and Gary is talking to his mom all the time and they have this secret that I can't even touch or understand and I want to help but I keep reverting back to the things.
There are things to be done and things that haven't been done and things that we have and things that we don't have and should have......
shouldn't we?
I remember in graduate school learning about content.
My supervisor would tell me, "Kelli, no matter what you do, don't get lost in the content."
I always get lost in the content.
On an interview I revert back to the toothpaste and the car payments and the chipped paint instead of focusing on the entire experience of the family.
Today I am here and the kids have been playing outside and I am in my house and Gary is driving around looking for someone who is not there and pretending to work and I am here staring at four walls and listening to play that I can't join and that I am not sure if I want to join wondering why my house isn't bigger and why I can't lose 10 pounds and why I can't seem to fit in anywhere.
Back never fit in anywhere and yet he fit in everywhere.
Nora made a mask in her group and when Gary took her out for ice cream she asked Gary if he ever made a happy face when he was not happy inside.
She has the perfect little mask.
Sadie lost her softball game and Jonah cried on the field with my mom because the field was so cold and I drove to Hamilton to have a homeschool mom meeting and I laughed and talked and looked like I fit in and inside I was sad and wanting to go home and be with Gary and then I got home to Gary and didn't know what to say anyway.
Molly is excited to go to college and apply and she is happy that it is sunny out and I am too a lot. Most of the time I have smiles to give and hugs to share but it is not the whole experience and I am thinking that Gary is an anchor for me and he is someone who pulls me out of things and here he is drowning and do I have the stregnth to get him out? That is the real truth that no one really knows. Gary is the strong one and always has been.

That's what love can do

2009-04-10T09:19:00.000-07:00

Homeschool Mama

2009-04-03T16:44:00.000-07:00

One of the things that I love best about homeschooling is the way that it makes us as parents feel so connected to our children. It is not just really about the way that our children can feel opportunities to be connected to us. It is not just that we let Sadie still sneak in to our bed at night. It is that I love to cuddle with Sadie at night. It is not just that Sadie wants to read a book with me but I actually want to read the book that Sadie is reading and Nora may join and maybe Jonah will put down his truck for a few and come cuddle in.
One of the things that I love about homeschooling is that some of my children's favorite people are attached to some of my favorite people and when we get together we do funny things like dress up like foxes and chase our children dressed as chickens around the yard. Sometimes we get together and sing and sometimes we just get together and do nothing but the nothing is always funner because we are together.
Some days I can imagine my life as a school mom and then I have days like today when I can't imagine my life any other way and I feel like all warm inside like maybe I will cry because I am so happy to be here doing this thing that most other people are not doing with this group of people who are doing this thing with us.
Some other things that I love about homeschooling are the way that my children are so good at being children. They are still questioning me all the time, talking to me about such cool neat things and sharing their knowledge and their questions with me and we get to explore them together and we learn so much! I realize through homeschooling what a dope I really am with all of the things that I did not learn in school and then college and then grad school. I learn so much from them. They taught me this week how to love someone and hate them at the same time. They taught me that maybe it is ok to pray when it is not only a special occasion but maybe just because it is any occasion. They taught me about grief and how it can reer it's nasty head all sorts of places and then they taught me about forgiveness.
I love this time with them and feel so blessed to have discovered this wonder and joy of doing something so different, so beautiful together.
One of the things that my father in law's death has taught me is that life is short and the most important things in life are the people that we love. Spend time with them and life is better.

Eulogy

2009-03-26T12:53:00.000-07:00

While I was helping Lil and Gary write Back’s obituary I was struck by how much focus he put on his family. Some people feel compelled to accomplish great things and acquire lots of stuff but Back lived his life simply and really his greatest accomplishments were his long loving marriage to his wife and his relationship with his son, grandchildren and extended family. I like to think that this has always been the way that it has been for Back but maybe not. I think about my own situation and how when I first encountered Gary’s loving family I thought I have got to be a part of this and I think maybe it was that way for him too. Anyhow, either way he made it his livelihood to work hard and be generous with his family with both giving of gifts and giving of himself. I realized that raising Gary was his greatest joy and that living to see his grandchildren born was like renewal and playful youth all over again.
In looking at the pictures of Back and Lil in their younger days at Buzzards Bay, it makes sense to me why they are always telling Gary and I to go out and have fun, to appreciate what we have and to enjoy the simple things. They really did all of that and more. It was a joy to look through those photos with my children and I am so glad that they are there. I had an idea that my children would write a wonderful thoughtful letter about Grampa B and I could read it here but children being children need their own space and time to deal with this loss. So I can imagine that they would thank him for his time, and his patience and his endless games of kick the ball in his living room. They would look back fondly on his barbecue hot dogs and corn and his willingness to take them to Perry’s even if it was kind of cold. Sadie would thank him for teaching her cribbage and letting her get away with all sorts of mischief on his watch. Nora would thank him for coloring with her and feeding her watermelon on the beach and reading to her. Jonah would thank him for laughing with him, for letting him live the day that he took a baseball bat to his vase of flowers and for teaching me that boys will be boys and he’ll grow out of it. My daughter Molly loved Grampa B and taught him all the ways of being a grandpa. She will miss him tremendously as will they all.
Gary asked me to read a letter he wrote to his father the day after he died:

Dear Dad,
How could I ever really be ready to say goodbye to you. I was just looking at some pictures of me and you when I was a baby and you were welcoming me into the world. Now I have had the honor of seeing you off to a better place and the sad honor of being there as you passed.
We had a lot of great times, some big fights, some great laughs and some moments of pulling together when mom went in to the hospital. It’s a good thing she got out cause you would have lived on hot dogs and sardines every night. No offense but Mom’s a better cook.
I wanted to thank you for so many things when I came to visit you in the hospital but all I could get out between my blubbery tears was I love you Daddy.
So here it goes: Thank you for carrying me home from the hospital when I was born, thanks for teaching me to ride a bike, for my first sip of Schlitz beer, listening to me try to figure out the Star Spangled Banner on the organ and putting up with loud band practices in the basement. Most importantly thank you for teaching me how to be a good husband and a good father to all of your grandchildren. You were like a dad to my wife Kelli and my kids could never get enough of you. We will miss you on every holiday especially our favorite, Christmas. Who will I call to ask if I set the tree up right, who will I race with to get the lights up first in the yard? Who will I call to see if we are really going to get 20 inches of snow? Who will I call when I miss you on your birthday?
Don’t worry I will take good care of mom. I’ll kill all the squirrels in your yard as long as you promise that when I leave this world, you will come to carry me home from the hospital again. I love you so much, Gary

Obituary

2009-03-26T12:52:00.000-07:00

Needham- Harold C. “Back” Backstrom, 78 died peacefully surrounded by family in the loving care of the Beth Israel ICU Boston on Wednesday March 18, 2009. He was the husband of 56 years to Lillian A. (Maida) Backstrom.
Born in Brockton on October 10, 1930, he was the son of the late Harold C. Backstrom and Thelma (Johnson) Backstrom. Harold was raised in both Brockton and Wareham and graduated High School at Wareham High class of 1949. It was in Wareham that Harold met Lillian whose family summered along the shores of Buzzards Bay. Lillian and Harold have been together ever since those days, marrying in 1953 and residing in Needham.
Harold was a very hard worker, at times holding several jobs at once to support his family. He has worked as a meat cutter and for 40 years was a regional sales manager for McCormick Spices. After retirement from McCormick he went back to work part time to keep busy. Throughout his married life he enjoyed summers along the beach on Buzzards Bay, playing cards with friends and was a well known prankster who loved to laugh at himself and at others. He had an infectious zest for living that lasted throughout his entire life and a laugh that could fill a room.
Harold’s greatest accomplishment was the birth of his only child, Gary in 1967. He spent countless hours playing ball with Gary and supporting Gary’s great talent with music. Often while Gary was in high school Harold opened up his home for “jam sessions” and encouraged his son to pursue his passion for music.
In 2000 Harold had major heart surgery but fought hard and lived to see his grandchild, Sadie born that July 4th. Grampa and Sadie had a special relationship and he helped to care for Sadie while both of her parents were working for several years. “Grampa B” lived on to see Eleanor Grace born in 2002 and his only grandson Jonah born in 2005. All of these grandchildren will miss him deeply.
Harold was a member of the Village Club in Needham where he played cribbage every Tues night with his beloved nephew Michael. He was an avid fan of the New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox and was thrilled to see the success of both these teams in the last few years. He loved to work in the yard, grill on his barbecue and to share himself with friends and family. He will be sadly missed.
In addition to his wife Lillian, he is survived by his son Gary J. and his wife Kelli of Gloucester, four loving grandchildren, Molly Notine, Sadie Marie, Eleanor Grace and Jonah Seamus all of Gloucester, his brother Roy Backstrom of Sagamore and his two sisters Carol Greenhatch of Bourne and Linda Sullivan of Attleboro. He was predeceased by two brothers and two sisters, Leon Backstrom, Walter Backstrom, Jean Randall, and Beatrice L” Heareux. He is also survived by many loving nieces and nephews.

Arrangements: Visiting hours will be held on Sunday, March 22 at Doherty Funeral Home , 1305 Highland Avenue in Needham, MA. from 3pm- 7pm. Funeral Mass at St. Jospeh’s Church will be held at 10:00 am on Monday, March 23. Internment at St. Mary’s Cemetary in Needham. Expressions of sympathy may be made in Harold’s memory to Tippett Hospice House, South Street, Needham, MA.

2009-03-24T10:08:00.000-07:00

Sadie approached the casket in earnest, briskly undertaking this grief thing. She gazed in at her grandfather, who looked like her grandfather with a little bit missing, still more than he did at the ICU over the last 10 days. She took him in and then headed for the bathroom, punching me in the leg as she passed.
Sadie grieves in a funny and unpredictable way. She peeked out as people, swarms of people came to pay their respects to Gary, to me and to Molly who stood next to me weeping the entire four hours.
Sadie appears once, maybe twice.
The next morning as we waited in our black outfits and our swollen eyes Sadie was the first to speak, "Are we rich? Look at the size of that car!" and she was gone, out the door letting the chauffeur open the door for her, chatting the whole way to the funeral.
At the funeral there was not a dry eye as she and Gary and our friend Chris sang "May the Circle be Unbroken". She held the bread and wine with grace and patted Grampy's casket on the walk out.
She says that he is still here and I must admit I felt him all around us in the Needham house but now we are back here in Gloucester and he is nowhere to be found.
On Saturday after all the commotion and people had returned to their lives I went for a long run. I ran and ran and ran and when I couldn't run anymore I walked around town. I couldn't believe that it was Saturday night and people were still getting on with life. The world goes on no matter who dies. I couldn't find him anywhere on the streets of Needham.
On Sunday my mother in law and Gary and the kids and I just seemed to walk around each other. We decided to get Chinese food for dinner and although the temperature was 50 on her thermometer there was snow falling everywhere all around her yard. Big huge flakes fell magically from his sky. My mother in law hates snow, my father in law loves snow and Gary and he always talked about the snow together. More than anything my father in law loved to piss my mother in law off and there he was doing it again. She grumbled and then burst out in tears. Sadie waltzed by and said, "Yep, there's Grampa." and that was that.
That night Jonah and I cuddled and Nora and Gary cuddled and we all intermittently cried. Jonah kissed me and whispered, "You can keep me forever if you want to."
I wish I could.

The view

2009-03-17T08:48:00.000-07:00

The window that looks out of the 6th floor at Beth Israel Hospital overlooks the Citgo sign and Fenway park. The kids and I sat there on Sunday and talked about baseball and I told them the story about the time a couple of years ago when I went to Fenway Park with their grandfather and we cheered and ate hot dogs and grumbled about the price of popcorn at Fenway and when we were walking back with the crowd glowing from our win, Grampa tripped over a curb and I had to help him up and all of the sudden he appeared old to me.
This is how it often went with my father in law in the last few years. One day he would be up and at em and the next he would be tired and weak and we would remember that he was old in years and we should tell him we love him.
I'm so glad that we did often tell him that we loved him. We spent time with him and we knew him really well.
When we were sitting in the window sill one of the buildings looked like Curious George's apartment building, you know the one where he is window washing and then he comes to an apartment that has painters in it and they are taking a break and Curious, because his is so curious decides to go in, even though he was told not to go in, and he paints the whole apartment a jungle scene. We love that one. And there we were in the window looking out over the scene, imagining it in our heads.
Grampa would do something like that. We would tell him to turn this way and he would turn the other way and then blame it on the liberals or The Boston Globe.
Do you know that I almost hate taxes as much as he did now?
In the window there is another woman there and she is older than me and she is having trouble too. We are all having trouble in this place because this is the ICU and trouble comes here.
She doesn't speak much English and she is periodically crying and she sees my son and proceeds to give him candy. She has a lot of candy. I know about the candy thing because on Wednesday last week when I left his bedside I headed straight for Trader Joes and if I could have intravenously injected chocolate into my blood stream I would have. Instead I got a box of peanut clusters and proceeded to eat them all without even noticing what I was eating. And when they were gone I was still crying.
Jonah was happy to be the recipient and fondly took the Hershey's kisses from her and smiled at her and batted his eyes at her until she dished out more. I turned my back for a moment, happy to gaze out at Curious's apartment and when I turned to them again she was kissing Jonah's cheeks and crying and he was letting her and although this probably should have creeped my out it didn't and I hugged her.
Her son is in the ICU in a coma.
Life is hard and these are the hard times.
In the elevator on the ride down Gary cried and some people next to us were laughing and the kids were climbing on parts that they shouldn't have been and we were all there together.
Human beings are so wonderful and caring and life is so sweet.

2009-03-12T11:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I spent the day by my father in law's side at Beth Israel. He is still out of it from pain meds and suffering with the oxygen tube down his throat. They thought that they may be able to remove the tube yesterday but as time went on it became more clear that they would not be able to do this. His kidneys were failing and his lungs were still having a hard time. My mother in law and I passed the time talking to him, talking to each other, getting a bite to eat and pacing the halls.
Yesterday when I was driving Sadie to her Chess class before I went down to the city she was practicing her Family Folk Chorale solo:
"One by one the seats were emptied
One by one they went away,
Now this family they are parted
Will they meet again someday."
She sang it so soulfully in the car it brought tears to my eyes.
She said she needed to practice it a lot so that Grampa would like it.
She was quiet for a long while
and then she said matter of factly: "He won't be at the concert, will he?"
And what can I say?
When my mother in law tells Gary things like, "things are looking better, tubes are coming out, his kidneys are progressing........" and I know these things to be wrong, nothing more than her brain playing tricks on her to help her cope, what do I say to Gary?
I told Sadie she was right, he probably wouldn't be there for her concert.
I told her she should still practice because she will be there are I will be there and Grammy will be there and God will be there.
She told me that she prays all the time for Grampy and I know she does.

Unfair

2009-03-08T18:56:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when the children were babies I would anxiously watch them in their quiet slumber. I would meditate on the up and down that happens in those hours making sure that each breath was a fruitful effort and all was well in their sleeping baby minds. It never ceases to amaze me how our bodies know what to do. We are born and there we are, out of the womb, crying and breathing, sucking and reaching, clinging to life and to each other. In youth I am witness to the miracle of life and of growth. In old age I am witness to the slowing and breaking down of all that once was.
Three weeks ago, Grampy was at Sadie's basketball game. He was intent on watching the game, checking the score and making sure Sadie knew what position she was playing. We went out to Friendly's and ate food and talked about sports and the weather and politics whatever else to pass the time.
Today he is in the ICU at Beth Isreal hospital and he is clinging to life. He has a tube down his throat to keep himself breathing while they try and get rid of his infection and get his heart rate down and try and just get him stable enough to undergo treatment for colon cancer. I feel like I am in a dream.
Gary and I sat with him for several hours today. We talked a little to him but he became so agitated that we had to stop and finally they gave him sedation. He can't talk to us because of that tube and there is still so much I want him to tell me. How can it be possible that one moment you are with someone not even aware of the moment and then it can be gone, just a fleeting memory?
So we sat. I watched as he breathed in and out. I cheered inside for all those breaths and prayed and meditated for the ones that followed. Could this be the last time I see him?
Because I don't really want it to be.
I really don't.
I also don't want to tell my children their Grandfather died.
My father in law kept telling me that this was not fair and I see his point.
But on the other hand, it is what it is, old age, poor health, expected outcomes.
Then I think about the other Grandfather, the one I spent last night with telling old stories about the West Gloucester neighborhood and "Bunsy" down on the wharf. I listened to him tell me about how his mother died when he was 11 on that very day. I thought that was sad, he thought that was life.
He never tells me it is unfair that he has a life threatening illness, that he can no longer chase the kids.
I think it is unfair.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and about it, I am so mad.
Sometimes when I come in from an overnight shift in the middle of the night I look up at his window and see him standing there looking out in to the darkness, in to the trees that sheltered him as a child. I tell those trees to keep John here for just one more day.
And then I secretly wish that those days spread out before us like a mighty forest, lush and green, growing and thriving, breathing life in to all of us, this family.

master cleanse

2009-03-03T10:28:00.000-08:00

My father in law is very ill in a nursing home now with Colon Cancer, emphysema, chronic heart disease and overall malaise and depression. The PT people came in to give him rehab over the weekend and he was resistant. He doesn't want to do it. He doesn't want to get out of bed really. We went in on Sunday and brought the whole group and took turns going in and out and walking around talking with the elderly people there in the nursing home. Most of the people that we ran in to were suffering from all sorts of stages of dementia and Alzheimers and they were just happy to see us and well, happy to be eating and alive I am sure. Ignorance is bliss. My father in law knows where he is. He understands what this could mean for him. He has never lived anywhere but his own home and now he is here.
Watching my father in law has sparked this new fervor in me regarding my own health and the health of my husband and children. I recognize that these things run in families and I want to grow old with my husband and not be a huge bummer for my kids to have to take care of and to worry about all the time. Also I worry incessantly about Gary's weight. I gave up drinking alcohol about three months ago and so I decided to really seal the deal by doing the Master Cleanse (http://therawfoodsite.com/mastercleanse.htm) It's pretty extreme and most of the people in my life think I am crazy for doing it but some of my good friends that are in to food and nutrition have been exceptionally supportive and helpful in my adventure to be healthy and energized. Also I was secretly hoping that Gary would see how good it was for me and join. So the first five days were pretty much miserable, I was exhausted and crabby and weak and at one point spent the morning in the bathroom throwing up. What I can say is that I held on to the notion that this was my body's way of ridding itself of the toxins that had come to live in my body and that this was going to all be ok.
It was ok.
Our bodies are such amazing vehicles really. I can't believe that my body was able to run on a lemonade concoction for 10 days but it did and in a lot of ways it ran much better.
What I can say now that I have hit day 10 is that I have come to realize a lot about myself through this process. First of all I have been drinking coffee for 25 years at least with no breaks. I loved coffee, looked forward to it in the morning, associated it with all things good such as long discussions with friends and early morning walks. Coffee was actually not helping me in any way whatsoever. It was making me tired and nutty and anxious and a little crazy. So I am relieved to be rid of it. For the last 6 days I have been feeling really peaceful internally and pensive. I have a lot more time on my hands with out the continuous what am I going to eat next thing going on and I feel empty and full at the same time.
Throughout the next week I will begin to come off of this fast, starting with fresh juice tomorrow and then a veggie soup for a few days following. I am excited to start to plan healthier meals without sugar and to move forward in health.
I realize watching Grampa John and Grampa B and their illnesses how precious life and health are, how quickly these gifts can be taken from us. I also realized how important it is to teach my children about health, farming, agriculture and self sufficiency. For a long time I have bawked this in the name of unschooling. I can no longer do that. Both of these grampies learned to eat and to treat their bodies the ways that they did from their first source, their first homes.
Gary finally did join the fun and he is on day 3. Poor Gary just loves food so much and with all that he is going through it is hard for him to not jump in to food for consolation. He is trudging through though. It is hard to not feel the need after a visit with his dad. I am hopeful that our new eating habits will stick with him and help him to be even more amazing than he already is.

painted nails

2009-02-21T15:41:00.000-08:00

I painted Nora's nails today. Jonah wanted nails painted too. The color was bright crimson red, seductive really and we all realized that Jonah actually has fantastic girl hands, beautiful, elegant, long.
While his nails were drying I got a phone call from some relatives and gave out the scoop again about my father in law. He is sick in the hospital with newly diagnosed colon cancer. There is possibly more cancer and more cancer and more cancer.
"Jonah, don't touch the table cloth, keep waving your hands........ Yes Aunt Janet, it seems quite serious."
We picked up the house without one smudge for Jonah. Nora peeled most of hers off and mine are a total wreck. Sadie would rather wear a dress than paint her nails (for those that do not know Sadie, she does not wear dresses) so she was paintless and in her basketball uniform most of the day.
We got in the car to go to the library. We were going to meet Gary there. He was out walking, out thinking. His dad is sick and people are still getting up and moving about the world. People are still calling looking for guitar lessons and I still have to feed our children. Everything seems in a state of dream.
Gary said he had a dream last night that he was falling off a cliff.
I didn't dream. I slept like a rock and then woke up and had a full minute
before I remembered. He is sick. He has cancer. He is almost 80 and these may be our last times with him.
At the library there was a party for our favorite children's room librarian, Cathy. She is leaving after 19 years and all of my children's lives. She has been there from Carl books through all the Harry Potters and more. She is leaving and Jonah showed her his nails. She thought they looked beautiful. They really did.
Gary came along after us strutting with a look on his face I don't even really know. He plowed in and proceeded to belt out several different kids songs for Cathy and the kids and pay tribute to her in the only way he knows how. Guitar, song, voice.
Jonah had a peice of cake and when he ate it a little girl next to him admired his fingernails.
We went to the animal store without Gary. We said goodbye to him in the front of the library. Jonah was crying because he didn't want to leave and I was frustrated that Jonah was crying and Nora was excited about her new Narnia CD and Sadie was happy about her new book and Gary looked pale, childlike in the rear view waving at us.
He is going to visit his dad. At the same hospital where his dad first held him, he will go hold his dad.
Jonah and Nora wanted to spend their $10 Valentines money from Grammy and Grampy on two new fish so we picked out a shiny fish bowl and two really beautiful goldfish and talked to the salesguy about the book "A Fish Out of Water" which he had never heard of. We told him to get it and read it and Jonah pointed at his new fish with his shimmering red nails, smiling all the while at "Baby Einstein and Nemo."
On the ride home we talked about life and fish and sickness and I imagined what I would say to them the day that one of their grandfathers dies. One is 80 and one is 55. One is in the hospital gasping for breathe, watching Fox news and talking about the Red Sox. The other is using his oxegon, watching Leave it to Beaver, playing "Gotcha Last" with my children.
Jonah is laying on the floor with his sister Nora watching Harry Potter. He has forgotten about the red nails.
I am swirling through the red nails, the laughing faces and the mudpies. I am praying for more days of childhood before I have to talk to them about goodbye.

MUSIC

2009-02-09T07:41:00.000-08:00

Driving in Circles

2009-02-06T17:16:00.000-08:00

Today we took Molly to take her learners permit test at the Registry of Motor Vehicles. It was her second time. The first time we brought her a few weeks ago she went in very confident and came out very sad, proceeding to argue with one of the workers there that some button wasn't working or something. That day she learned that some things are not as easy as others. Take her GED, for example. I think she thought that that was going to be easy, studied a little bit for it and then passed it with flying colors. Not all things in life are easy and I think she learned that day that just because a lot of other people tell you that something will be easy, doesn't mean you won't find it hard.
So we drove her down today quizzing her all the way. Sadie and Nora had some good questions such as, "When will you be old enough to drive me places?" and we listened to music. The girls and I went to a diner and got snacks and coffee and waited and then she called, happy and full of energy, she passed and could she please drive the car home.
I told her that she could not drive us home but after we drove Sadie to basketball practice we could drop Nora home with Grammy and go do a little driving. She was excited.
When I got home with Nora I dropped in on my mom and Grampa John and asked John if he would come with me. He said no. I asked him again, I pleaded a little and then my mom chimed in that he had been home all day and it would do him good to get out of the house and he said ok.

I thought, "This is good of us, taking ole Johnny out. Poor guy does not get out enough and we will get him out." John is sick with pulmonary fibrosis, out on disability from work, on partial oxygen and 55 years old. We'll take him out.
So off we went to the school where Molly was waiting for us. I told John to hand over the keys to Molly and he looked at me like I had five heads but rescinded. He said, " I don't think this is a good idea, we should start out slow." And I don't know what I thought or if I really even thought at all. I just figured if we gave her the keys she would know. It's easy, I've been doing it for years. I don't even remember learning.
But two seconds in the parking lot with Molly made it clear to at least John that we would need to stick to the parking lot so we found an empty part of the parking lot and we drove circles around it so she could practice gassing, braking, turning, signaling and getting the feel of it. John got to talking about the West Parish School while coaching Molly, about his days there, about different teachers he had had and about the playground. John had been a child here 45-50 years ago. We listened to him talk about his first grade room and some character from his past digging paths to cut to school. We listened and it occurred to me how important this moment was. It came to me like a wave and I laid back and floated. I heard all the words in his mouth come out and he was sharing them with us and this was Molly's first time driving and we were here and maybe he wouldn't be here in a years time or two years time and we would have this to carry with us. John and the car and the stories of West Gloucester and the steering and the lessons. Things go slow. People learn slow sometimes and other times fast. Molly needed to make circles in the parking lot for an hour before she hit traffic. Sadie needs to take rests in math because she can't absorb everything at once. Nora needs to read the word BAT for a solid year before she registers the connection between BAT and the black flying animal in our back yard in the summer time. I need to run slow before I can run fast and these are the important things, this is important. Be here now.
We let Molly drive through the cemetery next to the school and it was twilight and the trees looked like shadows in the sky. We read all the names as we passed and John told us stories about different families and different histories of his city, Gloucester. We drove by his mother's grave and I asked him if he remembered her funeral and her burial and he told me that he never went. He was twelve years old and he didn't go because his dad didn't let him. He said, "what are you going to do about it now, can't go on crying about it, what's done is done." when I told him I thought that was sad. He told Molly that right next to his mom was his 7 year old nephew lying there in a grave after being killed by a car 29 years ago. Tommy would have been my age and John rarely ever talks about him. One time he told me about the softness of his yellow blond hair when he was going to identify his body with his brother 29 years ago. I told him that I wondered what his mom thought about him as she looked down on him and he laughed and Molly and I both said she would be happy.
We got back to watch the end of Sadie's scrimmage and Molly asked John if he would take her out again and he said of course and then I realized that this is going to be a thing for them like the way that Sadie still loves to tell everyone how Molly taught her to ride a bike. My grampa John taught me how to drive a car, that will be Molly's thing.

I hope he is there to teach Sadie.
And Nora.
And maybe even Jonah.
Tonight we had ice cream for dessert and Jonah liked to talk about it:

camcorders

2009-02-02T12:30:00.000-08:00

Sunday morning at 5am I roused Sadie from sound sleep to get ready for her swim meet in Somerville (start time 7am). She was cranky but I remember that she is cranky in the morning no matter what so we didn't talk too much and I helped her get dressed and bundled up for the cold and promised her a nice bagel on the ride in. She was tired.
The scene at the swim meet was like any other that we have been to, parents and children running a muck, purchasing swim gear, pep talking their children to championship status.
And then there was Sadie and I munching on our bagels, hair all everywhere barely out of our pajamas, laughing.
She was a little nervous. She always says her belly hurts before these events. I feel bad for her. I want to tell her that we don't have to do this and that we can leave at any time but I don't because I know that she really wants to do these things and that at the end she is always happy to talk for days about these things. I always hated that about my mother. Whenever any little thing became hard in my life she was always there telling me to quit, why bother? I know Sadie really well and I am glad that I do.
I went up to the bleachers to watch and there they all were. All the swim moms. I had heard about soccer moms and hockey moms but these swim moms are equally crazy. They are frantic and writing down times and statistics.
I had the Boston Globe and proceeded to read it from front to back.
What is wrong with me? Why can't I get in to this mom world? Why am I so wrapped up in my own world to relate to most people?
Anyhow, I waved to Sadie. She was happy to locate me and playing with friends. I admired her in her NSSharks swimsuit and her cap and goggles. I watched in awe at her body manipulate the butterfly and I thanked God for giving me her in all of her youthful glee and eternal hopefulness. When the meet started the camcorders came out and I realized (as I always do in moments like this) that I never carry a camcorder. I pretty much never do. I video the kids in the house and on summer vacation and I take a ton of pictures but I just can't imagine needing video of every freestyle race Sadie swims in during her life.
But then I feel bad and I look empty handed and kind of pathetic.
So I whip out my phone. My new phone has videoing possibilities and although I don't really know how to work it I looked like I did and I was in uniform with all the other moms. We were in videoing stance poised for our child's victory.
In the end Sadie improved on her times (I think) and did really well. She did not win a medal but these were the districts which is the best of the best all over the state. She was most happy about the pool size and that her team came in 3rd out of 18th. She talked about that the whole ride home. In between talking about Harry Potter and the piano.
I did have a video camera at her first meet. Here she is two years ago.

Storms

2009-01-28T10:30:00.000-08:00

Today is the day when I woke up to go to the gym like normal at 6 am and got dressed and ready and looked out the window and was trapped again by the formidable foreboding hill and a whole bunch of snow. Today is a day when I can't fit in to anything right and the way that the house looks is large and evasive and endlessly dirty. Today is a day when my children seem to be walking around in a daze bored with the snow day stuff, how many times can one child make cookies and roast marshmallows by the fire?
Luckily Sadie has the piano and Nora has her dolls and Molly has her laptop and well Jonah has a stick. Gary is happy to make 25 rounds of cookies. It is mostly me in the way here today.
Today I had a disagreement with a sort of friend and I can't let it go and I am muddling over what I should of said and what I could still say.
I am sad because my favorite boss is leaving our site and going to pursue other goals, good for him, bad for me.
The snow is inching its way around me, encircling me, drowning me in cold and slippery slopes ahead.
It's only one day out of many days to come. The feeling will change and warmer weather will come. Riding out these feelings is like riding out a storm. I wonder where Nora and Jonah came from with their intermittent explosions and then I remember, they are me. I gave them the blessings of strong love, crazy laughter and mad unpredictable disposition. I gave them the abilities to make someone stand up tall or shrink down to earth with a few sentences uttered from my ever flapping mouth.
As I get older these things get easier. The waves are calming and life is out there more and less in here.
I get to watch them and maybe their storms will be less intense. Maybe not.
Tomorrow I will get up and go to the gym at 6. There is no storm predicted.

The Symphony

2009-01-25T13:35:00.000-08:00

Last night Gary and I rode the commuter rail in to Symphony Hall to see the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This is not a regular occasion for Gary and I and it was nice to get away from our normal routine and do something different. We talked a lot about how we would get there because it would mean taking the commuter rail and then a green line T ride. We would have to be in and out of there dependent on someone else's schedule and it would be a long ride. However we chose to go this way and I am glad that we did.
Now that I live up on the hill here in West Gloucester, sometimes I can spend days on end in my own head, which is never a good place to be. Lately with all of the snow I have been stuck up here for long periods of time. Time in which I literally don't see anyone but my own family. Some people might love this experience but I am a person who really needs to be around people. I am not a person that necessarily needs to talk to people all the time or anything like that. I just really like the idea that there are other people around, in this world with me.
On the commuter rail there was a scruffy looking man who got on with back pack on back and two small boys, also sporting back packs. I was dying to know what they were doing there and I loved listening to this man with these boys on the way in. I imagined that they were running away from something or that he was recently divorced and had no car and so he had to shuttle his boys to his ex's house via the commuter rail. I imagined that they were recently homeless and trying to find a place to live. I imagined all sorts of things. It turns out that one of the boys was his son, another was his nephew and he was taking them for a sleepover at the Museum of Science yesterday.
People got on the train with their instruments and I thought about Gary as a younger man traveling around with his guitar on his back and I thought about the time when I left my mothers house at the age of 22 in search of my own situation. It was in a huff and a long time coming and when I left I, too carried a guitar on my back. Somehow it signified something to me at the time. Gary had been teaching me to play and although I never did anything with it music and Gary have followed me around ever since.
I saw people come on alone and people come in groups. I saw black people and white people and Spanish speaking people and people speaking languages I don't know.
When we got in to North Station Gary and I had some time to kill so we ate a sandwich at this little pub and that also was really interesting to me. We talked about what it must be like to work in a place like this where everything is so transient, so changing and ebbing and flowing. There was a man next to me who looked as if he may be a regular but that was more of a sad looking story than anything. The young female bartender was describing a patron to her coworker and she said, "you know him, he is like, well a little older like 30 or 40." and I made fun of Gary for this the rest of the night and he smiled with me a lot.
On the green line we were squished together like sardines but I didn't mind. I loved listening to different conversations. There was a really uptight young man sitting with his girlfriend and I felt so sad for her. I kept wanting to reach over and tell her how many other guys there were out there and that she shouldn't waste her life with such a stuffy guy. And then there was this adorable young couple goofing off together and I held all the hope in the world for their future. There was a group of drunk 20 something girls half dressed and obnoxious and I prayed none of my daughters would act like that one day and there was this little old lady clutching her bag, worried.
I stared at them all and I got to know them.
And then just like that they were gone and we were out on the street walking toward Symphony Hall.
The Symphony was magical and my brain and ears are still swimming.
On the train ride home I slept on Gary's lap and we arrived quicker through my sleep.
When we got off the train there was a guy limping and he asked us for a ride in to Gloucester and I thought, "no you can't give him a ride, he could have a gun or a knife, get in the car." But instead we opened the car and let him in and I learned that sometimes believing in people is enough.

A Piano

2009-01-21T07:39:00.000-08:00

I hear a soft symbol of song singing to me.
When you put a key down
you hear a depth of eerie song.
Its song revolves on me.
Its song can make me sing "La La."
When I hear its song so beautiful
it makes me want to sing along.
It makes me quiet when I am loud.
It makes me calm when I sing along.

Sadie Marie Backstrom age 8

River River

2009-01-21T07:27:00.000-08:00

River River
I love you.
River River
Come see me.
Upon the ocean
I will bring
some nice fluffy roses
I will bring.
River River
Be happy forever
And River River
I love you!

Eleanor Grace Backstrom age 6

me and Gary 9 years

2009-01-16T07:26:00.000-08:00

Gary and I have been married for 9 years today. Nine years ago today I woke up and took a long walk around our neighborhood and had lots of thoughts to myself. I don't often get too many thoughts to myself these days so it is nice to reflect and think back on those times. I remember thinking about the actual event itself and what it would be like and my beautiful dress and all of that stuff. I also remember thinking about our life together.
I remember when I had Molly, I was 20 years old and I had no future thoughts. It was like, wow here is this baby and it will be me and this baby forever. It wasn't until she was like 4 that I started to really think about her as an individual, that she would be a teenager, an adult, an older person someday.
I think it was a little like that nine years ago, like I was thinking, "I really love this guy, we are in love and now we will be married in love and stay 27 and 32 forever. " Now we are 36 and 41 and someday hopefully we will be 51 and 56 and 72 and 77 and maybe even more. My face gets a little more laugh lines and I actually need to spend money on coloring my hair, its not just for fun anymore. Gary looks great, he has aged wonderfully, solid as a rock, never changing.
We are different together though. I never dreamed Gary would be the parent that he has turned out to be. I never dreamed we would buy one house and then another, that Gary would route me on to finish my graduate degree and we would be content to be together in this crazy town of Gloucester for this long.
I am reading this book about this woman who ends up leaving her husband after many years together, after raising a family and becoming old together. It is so sad and depressing to watch her as she just walks away from this man and to read about this loveless life that they had together. I adore Gary. I really do.
Some people grow together, some people grow apart.
I also look forward to our later years. I am not wishing our children older or any of that but I also relish my time with Gary alone. I crave it all the time and I look forward to it at the end of the day.
Gary and I are going to North Hampton for the weekend. Grandparents are watching children and we are free to be together for three days and reconnect.

having a teenager in our house makes life interesting

2009-01-07T05:47:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on tomorrow

2009-01-04T12:02:00.000-08:00

If there is such a thing as reincarnation I wonder what I may have been doing in previous times. I carry with me a great sense of humor, a morbid sense of melancholy and an aching bit of uncomfortableness in my own skin. What could I have been facing in other times? I think that maybe I may have died in a really horrible way, the way that I fear airplanes and fires and overall general catastrophe. I think that I may have starved and been really poor at one time with all of my anxiety about money and food. I know that I have traveled this road before with these characters in my life. In some of my relationships it is like a glove that I put on and it fits perfect every time, so warm and inviting and easy to slip in and out of. In other relationships it is like those jeans that I ached to get on after I had all of my babies, lying on the bedroom floor, sucking in and pulling at the zipper until I could feel my body beg for relief, such a struggle to feel right, to fit. I wonder am I here to battle it out with certain characters again and again in to infinity and what will break these cycles anyway? The holidays are over and for the first time since I met Gary, Mr. Christmas as we affectionately call him, I have admitted to myself that these are not easy times for me. Phew, thank God that's over is my general feeling this year. I feel like in my late twenties and early thirties I spent so much time looking around me at the way that other people feel and do things that it was hard to really get to what it was that I was feeling, my experience. My experience in the holidays is never really an accurate healthy one. I am usually in some state of anxiety and dismay and guilt because of my anxiety and dismay. I want to get back to the routine. I am a creature of habit. I like to know what to expect. I embrace the new week and the start up of the routine tomorrow. Although I homeschool and do all of these alternative cool things with my children and overall adore them, I can say that parenting has been the most blessed and most challenging thing in my life. It is with relief this year that I come to realize that it is ok to feel overwhelmed by the holidays, by my young children and by all sorts of things. My children are doing so well despite me and all of my shortcomings and we continue to move in our own directions, sometimes together in a music room in a zone all our own and sometimes separate in our own rooms reading or writing or dreaming very separate dreams. It's all the same, it's all good.

Beginning of the Year

2009-01-02T13:35:00.000-08:00

1. The world is shifting changing and emerging all the time.

2. "Nora, do you need some toilet paper?" was the last thing I said.

3. I wonder what the next chapter in my life will look like.

4. A beginning is at the end of all things.
5. There's something to be said for time spent together.

6. Grateful is where I want to be.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to tomorrow my plans include playing music with my familycleaning and reading Grapes of Wrath (which I have never read before now!) and Sunday, I want to enjoy the last day before Gary goes back to the old grind!

2008-12-29T16:17:00.000-08:00

Jonah and I went to a party today, a birthday party just for three or four year old little boys. It was sweet and charming and I was glad to go. Sadie went with Daddy to a gig in Stratton Mt Vt where they got to listen to Harry Potter and talk about stuff the whole ride. Nora played outside most of the day and Molly came home from her adventures in Maine and now is playing with her new toy a shiny yellow laptop.
I am in the zone. I made a commitment to myself this week that I need to take better care of myself, go to bed earlier, eat better and exercise more. There is not surprise in the fact that of course this makes me feel better and the family flow better and life move on in a happy more satisfying way. I am thankful for the willingness to arrive here this week, before New Years Day, before the hype of quitting things and getting it together.
While I was at the party with Jonah today I had the pleasure to be with him and see him in his boyness and his way. He is a shy boy and so it usually takes him a little time to warm up but that is ok and he is a child who does not play all the games, some, like pin the tail on the donkey he will not play because of his vision, but others he will not play because he doesn't want to.
That's ok, I like that about my kids. They are generally friendly and good natured but they won't do something they don't want to.
Sometimes this is tricky. For example, sometimes I would like Sadie to get it in gear and get on my agenda and then unschooling is more challenging. I try and remember that these are moments for her in a whole spectrum of time and space. I try and remember my most independent child and how she is turning out and I couldn't be more impressed and in awe of her these days.

Vision

2008-12-23T06:09:00.000-08:00

When I was in the tenth grade I dissected a cow's eyeball. I remember this event very well because my partner was John Daughterty, a boy I had an on and off again love affair with all through high school. The only thing I remember about the eye itself is the way that it looked as it went flying threw the air when he threw it at me during a quarrel. I don't remember anything about the mechanics of vision or the organ itself. I couldn't tell you how we came to, as a group of beings, process all this information that comes through these windows to the world.
When Jonah was diagnosed with severe myopia at age 13 months, I remember the tears falling from my eyes and the way that my daughters looked solemnly at me and the look on Jonah's face of which I came to recognize as his "without glasses" face.
After two years I am still grappling with this. We have a ophthalmologist, who we see regularly. We had early intervention services, and services through Perkins School for the Blind. He is followed by doctors at the Low Vision Clinic at Perkins and now will be receiving help from the Carroll Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired. The course of his vision issues has been an interesting one for me on all different levels. I have periods of time where I think that he will be a little boy who needs thick glasses and that will be that and then I have periods of time where I am so worried about him and confused. I am still learning. I know more about the eye today than I ever learned in school. I understand how it works. I understand that Jonah has an elongated eyeball and that his retina has very low pigment and that he is at a higher risk for retina detachment. I understand what that means, that he could just eventually lose pieces of the picture, spots in his world. I understand that myopia tends to get worse with age and that he could lose more of his already preciously small amount of vision and this makes me worried.
I understand all of these things but lately I have been thinking emotionally, spiritually about what they mean to me and how I make sense of them and it makes me quite sad.
Jonah had an IEP meeting last week at the Gloucester Preschool. It is supposed to be one of the best around, especially for special needs children but when Gary and I visited it in the fall, I knew I could not send Jonah there. I knew that Jonah would be a homeschool kid too. We continued through the process however because I do want the help from the Carroll Center and this is the only way I can get it.
So I had to sit through the meeting, all three hours of it. For the most part it was fine. I understand what schools need to do and the way that administrators and teachers think about things like this. What surprised me most were some of the things that the woman from the Carroll Center was reporting. Jonah will not be able to drive a car ever. For some reason this makes me so sad, this loss of independence, this loss of a rite of passage in our country. Jonah is not seeing that well even with his glasses and could possibly benefit from a cane someday.
So I have spent the weekend looking for more information. I checked out the few books that there are on vision impairments. One in particular has been very helpful entitled, "Children with Visual Impairments, a Parents Guide, " by M Cay Holbrook.
Last night we were finishing up our Christmas shopping and I was in a huge Barnes and Nobles. I was searching for a book for Jonah for Christmas that featured a child with glasses. I wasn't looking for Arthur or Magenta gets her new glasses or something like that because Jonah doesn't have typical glasses like those characters. I was looking for a book that captured his experience, his reliance on his other senses, his fear in the dark, his perception of the world. I asked around. The friendly woman brought me over to the Special Needs section where they had a billion books on autism but not one on visual impairment, nothing. They had a book on vision with autistic children but not just plain old vision. The woman told me I should write one. Normally this type of thing would roll right off of me but last night it made me feel incredibly alone. I feel alone in my choice of schooling, and alone with this child who is not blind and yet has a serious condition. I can't go to the schools about it because I don't have any faith in their ability to help and I have lost faith in his ophthalmologist who did not explain his condition enough to me because he was afraid, I am sure of hurting my heart even more.
Jonah is in the bath with Nora, his little buddy. They are playing Santa Claus face with the bubbles in the bath and some game that involves farting in the bath. The kitty is sleeping behind me and Sadie is hanging out with Myrtle. Gary is lugging in all the Christmas stuff and Molly is still sleeping. Two more days until Christmas and my life moves on in all sorts of interesting ways.

Christmas meme thanks to Christa (sodonti)

2008-12-18T18:44:00.000-08:00

1. Real tree or artificial? Real and all six of us need to be in the tree place picking out the tree. It's a yearly event.

2. When do you put up the tree? Usually in the first week of Dec

3. When do you take down the tree? Later and later, thanks to Mr Christmas himself, who I married nine years ago.

4.Wrapping paper or gift bags? I hate those gift bags, a total waste and no fun to open. Lots of paper and different kinds.

5. When do you start Christmas shopping? oh crap..........

6. Who is the hardest person to buy for? My father in law

7. Easiest person to buy for? Nora, Nora loves just about everything we give her.

8. Angel on top of the tree, or star? Gold angel.

9. What is the worst Christmas gift you ever got? Once a friend of Gary's bought us a Jamaican Santa who sang reggae Christmas songs which my children loved so we had to listen to them over and over and over that year, somehow, he disappeared.......

10. What is the best gift you received as a child? A fluorescent 80s outfit with bright orange suspenders and all. I'll never forget how psyched I was to wear it to school.

11. What is your favorite food to eat at Christmas time? Aunt Grace's peanut butter balls, Gary's chili and the morning of Christmas traditional cinnamon buns.

12. What do you want for Christmas this year? Four happy children, one loving husband, health and inner peace. I guess nothing then because I already have those things.

Another day

2008-12-17T10:22:00.000-08:00

I had an idea that while Gary was out running errands with Jonah, the girls and I would play board games, a luxury that inevitably Jonah always seems to reek havoc in lately. So, Gary and the little man left on their journey and I pulled out Blokus and Mancala, both favorites of Nora and Sadie and I. In that five minutes time, Nora had pulled out all of the polly pockets and somehow Sadie had dug up an old doll house circa 1995 possibly, and they had built their own game.
Needless to say I didn't interfere and here I am writing, something that I love to do.
Lately our lives have been like this. Sadie continues to travel on her journey of listening to the Harry Potter series over and over again while building things in her room. This week she has moved away from the Kinex and has moved on to the "Dangerous Book for Boys" projects. She tossed the "Daring Book for Girls" and told me that it was too girly and that if she had to do all the things in that book she would rather be a boy. So she is in there making and perfecting the paper airplane. Occasionally she emerges to show us one that does flips in the air or one that dives or something but all in all she is content, her and Myrtle, to hang out in solitude.
I used to worry about my children and socialization. It's funny because I never even think about this anymore. I still worry they are not "learning" enough although I am almost over that hurtle too. I never worry about the social thing anymore.
This worries me a little as I think about it now because I wonder if it is because I genrally think that most of mainstream America is a bunch of nut cases and I, myself, tend to spend way too much time alone. It's a harder life, so I hope I am not instilling this in them. But they are happy and joyful most of the time.
Now that I am not working that much anymore I have a lot of free time which I did not have a few months ago. I find myself waking up in the morning with this sense that I can do anything I was to do that day. We can go to the Museum, which we did on Monday or we can just hang out in our pjs or bake or whatever. Sometimes this is a little much for me, I like to be active and doing things all the time but for the most part I have surprised myself with how much I am ok with this.
This weekend we got a new beautiful piano that was given to us by a friend of Gary's. It is absolutely gorgeous and of course every morning for the last week we have ended up in that room before even eating, playing songs. Sadie has been playing the piano so much lately just by ear and she is an amazing piano player. Gary has taught me some bass and of course Jonah is dancing and playing the guitar or drums. We have learned Rudolph and Jingle Bells and Feliz Navidad and we sound pretty good. These are the things I hope my children will remember about their childhoods and the reason that they don't go to school.
Molly found out that she passed her GED yesterday and is just so happy and thrilled with herself. She scored so high on her reading part that she was considered superior. Part of me wanted to make a copy and send it off to some of her crappier teachers in her life. Part of me felt like crying that I had put her through school as long as I had. Most of me was just happy for her and excited for her future.
Now they are here and they are wanting me to play those games and so it goes.

Christmas Tree Lighting

2008-12-07T14:45:00.000-08:00

We went to the Christmas tree lighting today and watched the parade. Now Gary is downstairs making a huge fire and dinner and who knows where that will lead.

2008-12-02T16:49:00.000-08:00

Lately I have had so much to write in my blog about that I have not known where to begin. So I guess I will just begin with the beginning of my thoughts. Jonah has pneumonia. You would never know it right now with the racket he is making behind me as he plays with trucks in my bed with his sister. It is really the nights that are the hardest for him, he comes in complaining that we have the heat on too high, or saying "put the fire out" when there is no fire going, fevers high and he is stripping down naked and shivering. I called the doctor today and she had an Xray ordered and low and behold he has pneumonia. I dont even really know what that means other than it sounds really scary and now I have to talk him in to taking medicine twice a day.
Sadie had an appt last week to have four teeth pulled. Once again she handled it true to Sadie style talking about it for weeks, spending inordinate amounts of time upstairs in her room putting together every puzzle she could find and finishing off the Harry Potter series (so much for my theory that she would never get in to Harry Potter). She went in to our crappy dentist's office (more on why he is crappy later) last week with trepidation and misery in her face. It was just she and I. The dentist made no small talk, pulled out the biggest needle I have ever seen and called Sadie a "drama queen" and "foolish" for refusing to let him lay his hands on her. Needless to say once I realized he had no child skills at all and possibly some other mental problems we left there with her four teeth in tact and a referral for an oral surgeon.
Today was the oral surgeon's turn. We spend all week processing that mean dentist and his mean words and how some people take their bad days out on kids and how it was not her fault to be afraid and how I would never let anyone hurt her and all that good stuff. We went in to the oral surgeon's office with some obvious skepticism and prepared to leave if we needed to.
What a difference a little kindness makes. He clearly had children and grandchildren and lots of kid experience. Plus he obviously valued children and Sadie. This was very important to me and to her. We talked about our previous experience and he was so kind to both of us. He told us he would use general anesthesia because clearly Sadie had had a rough experience and the teeth really did need to come out.
I can't tell you what a difference this dentist made to us and to Sadie. Gary still has a hard time going to the ophthalmologist because when he was a kid the ophthalmologist was terribly mean to him and he still suffers. Luckily we have a great ophthalmologist, Dr. Sorkin who everybody in our family adores.
In the middle of all of this craziness is my now 6 year old Nora who celebrated her 6th bday on Sunday with a collection of her closest buddies. She is at a great age right now, asking me how she can help in the midst of sick children and tooth pulling. She rooted right along side me today with Sadie and told me her theory about how the sun hangs there in the sky suspended like that (more on that theory in some other post along the way).
By the way, Dr. Kowalski is crappy doctors name. I need to find a new one.

Today

2008-11-27T16:41:00.000-08:00

This thanksgiving was like most others. For the last five years Gary and I have hosted our families here at our house and so we are able to hang out in our pjs all morning cooking and cleaning and watching the Macys parade on tv. There is an air of specialness in the air, a frozen in time feeling. This year I vowed to video the kids more because I have been thinking a lot lately that time is slipping by and my babies are quickly turning in to not babies anymore so I videoed a lot today. When family got here we feasted and that was wonderful and at the end of the feast my children hung around with family and then things were quiet and when I went to look for them I found Nora upstairs sprawled out on her bedroom floor flipping through the pages of Curious George and Sadie tucked away in her room listening to Harry Potter 4 and doing a puzzle and Jonah quietly sitting in the playroom with his trucks. I love that my children can entertain themselves without tv and without video games and that they know when they need alone time and are not afraid to go take it at their own liberty. I have always been a person that required a lot of alone time and am always feeling guilty for asking for my required allotment, they know just what they need.
My favorite part of today was at the end of the day when the fire was really going and it was dark and it was just the 6 of us left, in our pjs again in the living room and we all started singing together. We sang many Christmas songs and folk songs which got Gary thinking about Alice's Restaurant and so we sang that song for a little bit but we all wanted the real thing so we came up here where I am now, at the computer and listened to two different versions of Alice's Restaurant, one live and one recorded and then we got to talking about the draft and war and littering and four part harmony and folk music and Vietnam. Then we listened to The City of New Orleans which we found out actually wasnt written by Arlo Guthrie and also comes with a great story that you can find at youtube if you are interested and Gary and I talked about growing up in the 70s which somehow got us back to the kids favorite thing to listen to on the computer which is the soundtrack to Grease.
Unschooling............
by the time I am through with Jonah I will get it but on the way I am stumbling through math worries and future concerns and the frameworks of education.
My favorite unschooled moments this week:
1. When Nora asked Gary and I on the way home from Maine whether trucks and trees have middle names.
2. When Jonah sang the alphabet song in entirety at the Thanksgiving table just because he felt like it.
3. When Sadie told me an hour long story about Charlie, an elderly man she visits regularly with Grampa John during their Wed meals on wheels trips.
4. When Nora told Gary to stop talking to her because he was disturbing the story in her head.
5. When Nora asked (in all seriousness) for the ability to fly as number one on her Christmas list.
6. Every wonderful chapter of Harry Potter 7 that Sadie and I read together.
7. Singing together

There are so many things I am grateful for today. Right now I am grateful for the piece of pie I am going to eat right now while watching the Incredibles on tv with the kids.

22 years

2008-11-25T11:45:00.000-08:00

I have not seen my middle school friends in these pictures in 22 years. I recently came in to contact with Judy who is taking most of these pictures via Facebook. She surprised me on Sat and brought out my best friend from middle school, Beth and her sister Shari. Words cannot describe how wonderful it was to see them all. I'm tearing up just thinking about it now. I figured out the other day that as a child I moved 13 times! So for me having long term friends was not a big possibility but my friendships during those years in Maine are still sweet and wonderful in my heart.

what you know about me?

2008-11-06T17:10:00.000-08:00

Sadie on her way

2008-11-04T12:51:00.000-08:00

This morning at 8:50 am I watched as my eight year old boarded her first plane. It has been a long time in the making, this trip to Colorado and New Mexico, one in which I would never have dreamed even a few months ago. My Aunts visited about 8 weeks ago and were talking about the big family get together coming up in November in which my grandfather will be honored for his medical service in Farmington NM where my mom grew up. Sadie heard about it and wanted to go. Sadie talked about nothing but New Mexico for weeks until finally we bought her a ticket to go with my mom and Grampa Johnny. The last four weeks has been such an interesting process to watch and be part of. During some of the last month Sadie behaved just horribly and sulked around the house and/or lashed out at pretty much any member of her family. She actually came to such blows with my mother last week that she stormed out of the house and ran around it 5 times before returning. We talked and talked about what she was going through, she wanted to go, she was scared to fly, she has never been away from Gary and I for more than one night for a sleepover at a friend's house. She spent one solid week in her room where she listened to Harry Potter 3 and 4 and then finally begged me to go out and get 5.............. one week! She locked her door, played with her turtle, drew many pictures which all featured air travel of some sort and put puzzles together, quiet as Myrtle in there thinking muddling it over, working it out.
She crept in to our bed for the last two weeks pretty much nightly, climbing in and placing herself so close to me I thought for sure she was returning to her origins. She asked continuously about airplanes, we looked up different videos of airplanes taking off on YouTube so she could have some sort of perspective in to what it may look like for her.
Last night at Folk Chorale rehearsal she looked to me like someone who had gone through a very deep, very searching journey and emerged out of it more strong and vibrant than ever. She sang loudly and beautifully, more beautifully than she has all session. She played happily and talked about her trip openly and truthfully. She talked the whole way home and the morning and was so grateful and pleased with the purchases that I had made for her at Barnes and Nobles: a new Whimpy kid series book (her favorite) a collection of Calvin and Hobbes and a new set of crayons and a travel journal. She cuddled up with Gary and I right after she brushed her teeth and we all slept together.
This morning she was nervous, but not as nervous as me and not as devastated as my dear husband who spent the entire morning hiding in a tissue box, emerging only to take calls from Sadie. I drove her and her grandparents in to the airport and we hung around until it was time to go through security. I have to admit I was nervous she would not get on. I was kind of planning on having her with me on the way home but she gave me a good solid huge and ran off, not looking back once, and I know because I stood there and waited for a good 10 minutes while she took off her shoes and sent her bag through the check. I waited while the elevator came up and dinged once and then twice and I waved people away. I was waiting to watch her and take her in, so wise in so many ways, so happy.
I feel blessed on so many levels. I feel blessed Sadie does not have to worry about making school work up and can just take off like this in the middle of a school session without assignments and worksheets. She doesn't have a math book with her, she isn't expected to write in her travel journal for my scrutiny and she knows this. She is going to learn so much this week and she is going to experience life and family. She helped Grampa Johnny with his oxygen tank and talked to him about feeling better about having to wear this in public. It was hard for John and Sadie knew this and helped. Sadie is 8 and she has that level of compassion and regard for her grandfather. I feel so blessed that through Sadie's struggles this last month Gary and I knew our daughter well enough to watch in wonder at this whole process, not to judge, not to play interference, not to pathologize, just to watch, love and hold her space sacred. It we had not listened to our instincts and not been as tight as we all are, this month could have taken a much different course and here we are, Sadie has landed in Colorado and is just thrilled to pieces. She talked to Gary and I a bunch of times already and my joy is immeasurable at the person she is becoming.

our non traditional family

2008-10-29T16:37:00.000-07:00

Today I had the blessing of having to explain homeschooling to a pretty mainstream bunch of people namely attorneys and mediators at a court house. This is always an interesting thing to me especially when I have encounters like todays in which the curious questioners were surprisingly rather open to my unconventional ideas and since I no longer have the fear of losing custody or suffering consequences where my teenager is involved it left me rather open and honest. The curious minded in this scenario asked the basics like "Do you have to teach all your children?" and "Do you have to do your 'teaching' during the school hours?" and "What about testing?" Pretty standard stuff for the seasoned homeschool mom. I took it with stride and found that the more I talked the more they were able to hear me which was nice and welcoming and not scary.
Recently two friends of mine have lost custody of their young children due primarily to their homeschooling choices which makes me feel incredibly sad and so grateful to be at this stage in the game with Molly.
On the ride home of course I did the standard questioning of myself that occurs after such a conversation. Am I doing the right thing? What are my children learning? What are they missing?
I got home to my three little ones in the yard playing with the neighborhood kids who had a half day. When I got out of the car one of the neighborhood kids said "Look I am just like Sadie today, free to do what I want!" with such glee and happiness on his face, I felt so happy for him for today.
Sadie had spent the morning delivering Meals on Wheels with Grampa John and I had the great opportunity to sit with her in her room for a long time talking about the many people she had met and the many challenges that they were facing including one woman who has pulmonary fibrosis like Grampa John and wears oxygen too. What a blessing that she had this time with him. How beautiful and truly meaningful is her life.
I built a huge elaborate dominoes building with Nora and Jonah and then watched in joy as they knocked it down and then played in their fort in their room and all three of them read a bunch of books. We read this really cool Cartoon History of the Universe one I got from the library on the beginning of our solar system, the big bang and our evolution. The kids loved thinking about this and wondering about it and then we read some of the Little Shakespeare books that I found at the library. Sadie did some math from her little workbook and we practiced Spanish from this new conversational Spanish book I just got and while I did the dishes Sadie and Nora practiced the many things they could say related to food and dinner including Jonah es gordito which means Jonah is chubby")
Sadie is locked up in her room almost done with Harry Potter 5 and I can't wait to start together on number 6 just to have the experience of finishing the series with her!
Molly went to her teen mentoring program and worked on some school work. She hung out with Grampa John for a while and he fixed her up with an awesome Halloween costume of a letter carrier. She looks really cool in it and is excited to spend time in Needham with some friends on Halloween while we take the little ones trick or treating.
Gary is in NYC playing with Sam James for 6 record execs tonight. I have my thoughts and prayers with him and the red guitar. He's an oldie but a goodie:)

A Little Blue Humor author unknown

2008-10-24T14:57:00.000-07:00

Dear Red States:

We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country,

and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't

aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota,

Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will

be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of

New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We

get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You

get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You

get Ole' Miss. We get 85 % of America's venture capital and

entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to

make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 % lower than the Christian

Coalition's , we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single

moms. Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and

we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need

people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently

willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you

don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish

you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing

to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 % of the

country's fresh water, more than 90 % of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 % of

the nation's fresh fruit, 95 % of America's quality wines, 90 % of all

cheese, 90 % of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all

living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus

Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT. With the Red States, on the other hand, you will

have OA to cope with 88 % of all obese Americans (and their projected health care

costs), 92 % of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 % of the tornadoes, 90 % of the

hurricanes, 99 % of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 % of all

televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University

of Georgia. We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 % of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually

swallowed by a whale, 62 % believe life is sacred unless we're discussing

the war, the death penalty or gun laws, 44 % say that evolution is only a

theory, 53 % that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 % of you crazy bastards

believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

Finally, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed

they grow in Mexico.

Peace out,

Blue States

Oprah on Tuesday

2008-10-21T13:55:00.000-07:00

It is Tues afternoon and my children have been outside playing all afternoon in the drizzly rain. I cleaned the house, prepared for dinner, got Sadie's swim bag ready for swim team and did some paper work for work and then I was left there wondering what to do with myself. So I turned on Oprah. Initially I forgot which channel she is on and then I wondered whether possibly she was still on the air, in fact I wondered whether she was still alive at all! What am I going to do with myself when these kids do get older and more independent, who am I anyhow? Oprah, the couch, a bowl of raspberries, do other people actually do this as a regular kind of thing?
I have to admit, I cannot just blame my children, it is inherent in me that I be busy. I have been busy since birth. I have been redecorating my bedroom since I could walk and learning new things as much as possible. I had a list of things to do in Kindergarten and I have about 800 different renditions of "What I Want to be When I Grow Up."
Molly came home from her college courses and told me that her psych professor reminded her of me and it got her thinking that I should teach a class and I actually entertained the idea, in fact I even made some phone calls to steer myself in that direction.
I guess once you have three jobs, what's a fourth?

The Backstrom boys

2008-10-14T16:40:00.000-07:00

socialization problems

2008-10-11T18:39:00.001-07:00

homeschoolers are always getting a bad rap for not being socialized enough, yeah right! Here is our Friday when we spent four hours at the park, some of which were school hours playing with friends and getting some rays on this glorious Indian Summer.
Sadie told me she couldn't believe how lucky she was to be able to play as much as she does with her friends after another day at the park today with friends.
Playing with friends, isn't that really what life is all about?

Timeless

2008-10-10T17:14:00.000-07:00

Timeless

My time with you is less than the time spent in a sea of green grass

And floating waves

Diving under

I am swallowed by the flow of the everlasting

The ever timeless

Ness

Of us

One time I met you when we were much younger

And you and I were children

Babies really

Sweetly nursing each other back to health

I’m submerged and drowning

And there you are again

Using all of your strength

Against the stream

Of water

Of time

Of reality

And I said

What is it anyway?

What is it that look that you put on your ever changing

Clown face?

The face that I dream of

The face that I see

When I don’t see anything

Don’t believe in anything.

At the bottom of the ocean lay

Sparkling darkness

And shimmering light

You and I might

Die there

And yet we live here

Again and again.

The Colors of the Sky

2008-10-09T08:58:00.000-07:00

I love the colors of the sky
It really is just grand
If they weren't there I would be so sad.

I love the colors
because they are so colorful
when they move along.

When the sun is setting
and it is very dark
the colors come out to say goodnight to everyone.

Do you like the colors?

Sadie Backstrom age 8