Spring in the foothills of Mt. Diablo...

     


     My love and I went on a hike the other day.  It was a glorious blue sky day, not a cloud to be seen, and the air so fresh and light.  We took our water, almonds and cashews mix, brought our pups and headed off on some new trails we had not hiked on before.  

     


     Two horseback riders were ahead of us which made me miss my horses and going trail riding.  To feel the rocking motion of my horse and hear the squeaky sound my saddle would make on a ride.  The sound of my horse snorting as she would breath in the smell of green grass.  She would try to grab a mouthful of that sweet grass from time to time.  I couldn't blame her since it is so enticing as a breeze waves it's aroma to us.  This time of year she would have been full of the beans as I called it.  Wanting to get moving and not walk along. I would feel those powerful muscles under me, contained by my talking to her and holding her back till the right time where I would squeeze my legs and cluck to her, the okay to move out and into a trot or a canter.  That sensation I will never forget nor my desire to ride.  

     My Love always walks faster than me.  I am slow, stopping often to look around and take pictures.  I like to look at him ahead, seeing Annie our Golden see what is ahead on the trail.  Annie whose tail is plumed out waving like a flag, her tongue lolling out.  She is so happy on these hikes.  She hugs his side looking up at him her leader.  They stop every so often to see where I am on the trail.  Little Stewie and I going at our own pace catching up to them to enjoy the views.  


     At the top is this huge Oak tree.  No sign of leaves as yet and I think about how beautiful it will be when it is all leafed out in the weeks to come.  It is all alone at the top of this rise, majestically standing for us to admire.  

     To my right I see Mt. Diablo cloaked in green.  It won't last long this green as the warm sunny days to come will quickly turn it to golden brown.  For now we admire how it looks and think of Ireland when we were there years ago and how green the hills were.  I wish it would stay green all year!

     The poppies are just coming out and soon there will be so many to see on these hills.  

     As we are hiking along I realize I have ridden these trails on horseback.  I just had come from a different direction.  It feels and looks different walking on 
the ground versus on the back of a horse.  Our trail we are on now is narrow and some parts are muddy.  Stewie takes the high side of the rise above the trail to stay out of the mud.  I notice Annie's underbelly coat has gotten muddy as well as her feet and I am glad we have a towel in the car.  


     I love the shadows the trees cast down the slope of the hill.  The wild mustard is rising up with their small little yellow flowers dappling the hills.  Soon they will be quite tall and the flowers abundant.  I wonder when the cows will be grazing on the hills.  They have had the cows graze here for fire protection though the cows trample and leave their huge cow pies everywhere.  For now it is virgin.  Many parts of the trails we walk on have clover with purple flowers under our feet.  


     There are Buckeye trees with there leaves filling in.  I hope that the next time we come up their white flowers will be on them.  I just wish they would stay green all year rather than lose their leaves midsummer.  They are such beautiful trees.  We had one at our previous home and our girls loved to climb up the trunk of the tree and perch on it's limbs.  

     I love these rolling hills!  We hear all the birds singing around us.  We pass just a few people and another horseback rider.  All are happy today and smiling as we exchange greetings.  The walkers pet the pups and those with dogs stop for puppy greetings as well.  Lots of tail wagging.

     


     We see Shell Ridge, it's undulating rounded tops that my photo can't capture all of.  We think it looks like a Stegosaurus dinosaur back.


     Our hike ended up being 6 miles.  We didn't plan to be on that long a hike but with it being so pretty it would be worth the soreness in our legs in days to come.  The pups would sleep well that night as well as us.  




     I told my Love that night that I would dream of riding on my horse Banner on the trails I had gone on so many times.  I wanted to remember all the sights and sounds you hear while out by myself.  I wanted to feel a canter on the trail and feel the breeze in my hair and the sun on my face.  I wanted to feel my seat in the saddle.  I wanted to talk as I use to to my horse who I shared so many secrets, dreams, and tears.  To feel my arms around my horses's neck as I would lean over my saddle, run my fingers through her long mane, breathe her in.  Dream....happy trails....

Renoir loved curves

     With the sunshine coming....I just realized bathing suit season will be just around the corner.....

     I like that Renoir loved curves in his painting...I think I would have fit in better in his time.  I wouldn't have felt so at odds with the softness of the body through the years.   I think all fashion shows and magazines should start focusing on hiring the Renoir Woman!  A body with some curves...yes!   Stop the hiring of young teens to wear those couture for grown women.  They are that shape because they are teens and still growing.  They haven't had a few kids to soften their lean bodies.  Breasts still high and firm.  Give them a couple of kids who have breastfed and see if they could still be offered a job.   I find it appalling that these young girls are being displayed in the way they are.   Sensuously posed in ways that they couldn't even understand.  How could their mothers agree to this?  

     Let's see...summer will be here in how many months?  I think curves with a tan look great.

Mothering

     

     This has been a hell of a week so far.  This was the week of my birthday and there were good parts of the day and there were hard parts of the day.   Yesterday was just as tough.  Why?  

     It has come to our family's attention that my mom is not well.    Without going into a long detailed account, my mom has a type of Dementia / Alzheimer's  that is overwhelming for me to accept and yet I have no choice but to do this.  I don't want it to be, I don't want to accept this.  I want life to be normal.  I want my mom to be like other people's moms and just age gracefully and with all the dignity possible.  Because my mom is a Southern Belle who expects to be treated as Miss Scarlet like in Gone With the Wind.  For right or wrong this has been her way of living.  She has trod on her family at times and she has been wonderful to each of us as well.    I don't always like her but I do love her.  It seems grossly unfair that life should repeat itself as my Nan, her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in the late 1970's.  She died in 1991.  These were the women who raised my brother and I. 

     The act of mothering....

     I look at this photo of my mom holding me and I see her eyes looking at me so intently.  I wonder what she is thinking.  It is my Christening day and I am in a dress that I have in a drawer in my bedroom now.  A while batiste dress with lace inserts on the front and on the sleeves,  handmade by someone though I don't know who.   When my mom gave this dress to me some years ago, I didn't realize that it was my Christening dress.  After all, the dress I was told was the family Christening gown, the one my daughters had their photographs taken in, was not in the end the one my brother or I ever wore.  This dress now yellowed with age, it's hem that has been let out and is frayed has been a mystery in it's history as well as the other dress.  When I began transferring old slides to digital I found such wonders of my childhood as well as my brother's.  Images that I have no story of.

     My father is absent from this day.  I don't know where he is but I must assume that it was because of his being in the Military and not able to be there.  I was brought back to my mom's home town of Selma, Alabama to the First Presbyterian Church, the same church my parents were wed in.  I look like I was being a good baby and my mom looks serene.  I wish she was smiling.  I wish she was smiling and hugging me letting that dress wrinkle and not be concerned with keeping me neat and tidy.  Am I fresh from a nap?  Is this before or after my debut in the church?  

     Then there is my Nan holding me.  This is the way I remember her.  Smiling and being cheerful.  My dear Nan who had to mother and father her daughter when her husband died when my mom was a young girl.  Who still had to mother her grandchildren while my mom worked or went out with her friends.  

      It must have been hard to do it all.  To raise a daughter who could be so self-centered and wanting,  always wanting more for her life.  My Nan the stable, calm woman who gave up so much for her daughter and her family.  Did she feel that my mom needed more help since my dad was gone so much when my brother and I were little?  Did she feel that because her husband died while my mom was so young that my mother needed to be always kept happy and spoiled to make up for that loss?  I will never know. My mom was never one to want to tell too many stories of our family.   I know so little about my father's family.  I have no names or addresses of his side of the family.  I only know that he was an only child just like my mom.  There were no other kin for my brother or I to grow up with or get to know.  There are so many stories that are buried in the Live Oak Cemetery in Selma where many of our family lie.  My father, grandparents, my Papa too.  People I wish would tell me their stories of my family so that I may know who they were and what kind of people they were to know more of my story.  Who am I like?  I would like to know....I dearly would like to know.

     My mothering was self taught.  When we brought our first born home I was walking through a door of inexperience.  I would sit up on our waterbed with our beautifully exquisite baby in my arms looking at her with delight but not knowing how to mother.  I didn't know the first thing about newborns except in the books.  Yet I was drawn to her like nothing I could comprehend.  A deep primal desire to not let her out of my sight but to have her as close to me as possible.  I refused to let her go to the nursery after her birth.   My dear mother by marriage taught me without knowing it the way to talk to a baby.  She did  that with her sing song voice so light and loving.  I found myself conjuring up lullabies or nursery songs that would come into my head while I got to know this baby of mine.  She nursed so well and I never had a problem of breastfeeding her.  Every two hours night and day I would arise to bring her to my breast.  The pull of mothering growing stronger with every rhythm of her pull at my breast.  The letdown of my milk tingling me with a pleasure I could not understand but wanted.  My Love lying beside us watching with a love in his eyes that created a new bond to our relationship.  Our being a family. Of being a mother and a father to this helpless babe we conceived.  

     My mother taught me how to bath my daughter.  I was so afraid I would drop her when she was slippery with baby soap.  She taught me how to give her a sponge bath when she was two days old.   My mother filled a bowl with warm water, soaking a baby wash cloth and applying the baby soap to it creating velvet soft bubbles to gently clean our little one.  Her small body didn't like the sensation of lying naked on her back.   Her little arms out to her side waving them stiffly as she cried out.  I felt awful for bathing her!   Once we rolled her to her tummy she seemed to relax for a minute snuggling into the towel she lay upon and then she cried out again.  But oh she was so lovely.   Her body so perfect!  My mother being a mother to me equally rejoicing in her crying and her sweet little body.   We quickly but efficiently bathed her.  I learned that babies are going to cry but they still will be fine.  Once we wrapped her in a warm towel she relaxed once again and calmed down.  Those days of my mother coming over to help out meant so much to me.  Bringing dinner to us where Papa, Nana (my mom), my Love and I would just dote on this new member of the family.  I hadn't seen my mom this type of happy ever before.  She was so careful not to tell me what to do but to just be there to soak up this special time.

     I wonder about the act of mothering that circles around to our elders.  That circle of life that goes round and round.  How now my care will be towards my mother in the years ahead.  So often when she talks she giggles when she stumbles over names, dates, times and places.  I am grateful she does not get frustrated with the limitations of her language difficulties.  I often wonder if she really grasps the fact she is having trouble or if she is waiting to have me pick out the words she can't find.  I wonder how I even pull these words out for her.  Is it because of the familiarity of our mother daughter relationship?  I have felt like an interpreter for her these past several years as her speech as declined.  Her friends calling me or taking me aside to tell me how hard it is to understand her and hear her as her voice is softer than it use to be.  This was the woman who could reduce me to tears with her sharp words so strongly laid.  Who even with the soft voice and lack of speech can with her tone still stab my heart.  That young girl in me who didn't put her foot down to tell her to back off and except me and her family for the goodness that we are.  Now she is fading.  

     This new path I am about to walk on is uncharted.  I have no map of my own but I will ask for directions so I can keep going.  I know it will get tough and I will need all my patience and positive thoughts to get me through the days ahead.  I will ask for help as hard as that will be but I am ever so grateful that my Papa has left my mom in a position of comfort financially to be well taken care of for the remainder of her life.  I do not look forward to the day my mom does not know her life the way it has been.  I have a lasting memory of my Nan when the Alzheimer's robbed her of the knowledge of who we were.  She would say a mumbling string of words but she looked out of eyes that saw nobody she knew.  I wondered if she even saw me at times when I would bend over to speak to her.  I would bring my daughters along on occasion where I would tell them we were seeing "Nan who is sleeping" because towards the end she seemed always asleep.  They would go along unconcerned with this, looking up at her in her bed.  To them it was normal.  I always had wished they new her as I had but that was not to be as she was already too far gone by the time I had children.  We would speak to the other patients and in my mind pretend that some little lady there in her wheelchair was my Nan.  

     My mom is complicated.  It is a tragedy that she will be robbed of the memories of life as time goes by.  Or is it?  She won't have to say how this friend or that has aged or died.  She won't look back with regrets of her life.  It will almost be like a clean slate at some point.  She will be a different person for all intensive purposes.  It will only be us left behind who will be struggling with this.  I think I will just greet this with an open mind.  I will take this one step at a time.  

     

I am loved...

I am a lucky woman

to have such a loving man

in my life.

Who really cares for me. 

Me...

Who always kisses me in the morning,

kisses me goodbye,

hugs me when I am sad,

mad,

happy,

tearful,

up,

down,

when I don't know what I want

he hugs me.

I am a lucky woman

to have someone who 

shares his emotions.

He can shed tears over sentimental moments,

truly feel it in his heart.

We were a perfect match...

We are a perfect match...

I knew I loved him the 

moment I first saw him.

Even if I was so young,  my very core

knew he was the one.

My most cherished times

are entwined in his arms..

my head cradled to his chest...

I am surrounded 

and I surrender...

I am safe...

I am loved.

Dreaming of Wildwood

Dreaming of Wildwood

There was a home 

where I was wed ...

A magical home when you

entered it's gates... 

Through rooms that voices still resonated

 from the family who loved it

so dearly

 but whom had to leave.

Where they grew up

with a family that filled each room.

With laughter and tears, 

hide and seek, running up and down

it's gilded stairs. 

To belong now to a family of two

that would fill it's rooms with the 

sound of jazz music, an organ and the

swirling sound of a water color brush

casting images of barns, 

ocean and beaches.

My parents nurtured it's

rebirth to splendor

in time for ...

My wedding to be,

 only months after they bought 

 their dream home, 

in the rear courtyard garden

amongst dear friends and family.

I slept there but only one night 

wondering who's room I might be 

dreaming in....

To gaze out the multi-paned 

rippled glass to see where I would

say my vows to my Love....

I threw my bouquet

of white roses and baby's breath

from the small balcony

above the massive front door.

I felt like Juliet looking down...

My dream come true that day.

This home my children played

and explored in, 

where the doors opened to soft breezes 

and the 

fountains mimicked their

sweet, high voices as they dipped 

there tiny toes in the pool below.

Where taking the narrow, hidden staircase

would lead to a secret room that

was the old wine cellar.  

Where slumber nights at Nana and Papa's 

house was a time of tea parties,

make believe with dolls 

and bubble baths in

 the huge old bathtub off the

room they slept in.

Eva

She who sleeps in beauty....

We were all entranced by her.

She was always there in the garden 

outside the courtyard. 

Through the old wood gate you 

opened on to her boudoir

where she napped unselfconsciously

in her nakedness

for us to admire and touch.

A story was told that one of the young sons

who played in this garden 

once painted her nipples green....

His father was not happy 

and the young boy washed

and rubbed the paint away

till Eva was pure once more.

He became a priest when he grew up.

My heart broke when

my parents sold Wildwood.

I had dreamed of my

daughters three

wedded in the gardens...

Now I can only pause as I

drive by to remember

in my mind the joyful days

spent here.

Eva...

She moved next door

to live in a new garden

where she is loved as

we loved her.

Wildwood's windows

are closed...

as though whoever lives

there now doesn't wish

her to live as she did.

Why?

Her gardens so overgrown

that the yard is shrouded

in bush and growth like

a Sleeping Beauty Castle.

The gazebo is gone...

where my daughters would 

play as they skipped

on the large round steps

that would lead to the 

rose garden their

Papa tended with care.

My heart is there...

 Some homes

always are joyful.

They are full of a spirit

that comes from the happiness

that happened there.

My heart is there...

In a funk....

  

     So I have been in a funk all week.  I have tried to raise myself from the doom and gloom that wants to wallow inside me making me feel like I have weights attached to my mind and my limbs.  My fingers can't type and I spell badly.  The process of communicating with anyone is severely impaired where words don't form and I simply don't want to talk.  I could be quite comfortable not speaking all day.  I have had this before and it has been a waiting it out for it to go away.  Like a storm that comes over and it rains and rains for days on end, where you wonder when will the sun come back and you can go out without an umbrella.  I am waiting for this storm to pass.

     Adding to my mood or part of my mood is our dryer.  It has been ill or dying for a month give or take.  When it is really in pain it sounds like a mouse being slowly killed by a cat with a microphone amplifying the high decibel constant squeak/screech it can till the dang thing turns off by my hand or the dryer timer.  I mean I do have to dry our clothes!   If it is not dying then it is making embarrassing squawk sounds intermittently and sometimes simultaneously with the mouse squeak/screech magnified sounds.  Our pets are hiding and I should wear earplugs.  My Love tried to deal with the dang dryer but basically said he couldn't get to wherever the sounds are coming from.  He used WD40 in various spots, watched it spin but no cure was found.  Then there are the times where it works fine without any noise.  Why?  What inspires it to create mind damaging sounds?

     I went online to check out dryers and washers on Best Buys website.  I mean we should just get a matching pair, new at the same time.  I found some even on sale and great financing, those new fancy Energy Star ones because ours are not in that league.  No the dang dryer was bestowed upon us by our neighbor after our previous one died over a  year ago.  With the economy in the dumps we simply couldn't afford to buy one so he had one sitting around in his garage.   And I am really grateful that we didn't have to buy one but going into it being installed we didn't know how much life it had left.  We had already replaced the previous washer the year before as the other one died.

     History of washer and dryers for me has been hand me downs from others.  Every once in awhile we had to buy a new one but they never matched except the last set which came from my parents house when they moved.  They lasted almost 14 years but many repair jobs happened along the way.  If I sound unappreciative of mismatched appliances it is because these are the tools of my trade as a professional home engineer.  Would my Love choose to use second rate tools in his profession of building?  I just figured that once we became Real Adults we could buy Brand New Appliances.  I have never, ever had a brand new refrigerator.  Every one we have ever had came from someone else's house, usually off a job my Love was doing.  I would scrub and clean out someone else's dried up food inside till it looked sort of brand new.  Dents?  What dents, I would just ignore them.  Hey, I looked at it this way that at least I had some appliances.  I didn't need to go to the laundromat using saved up quarters and dimes, while sitting for hours with a newspaper or book, secretly observing the other folks doing their laundry.  I did that while we were first married.  Then it was sweet as we would go together on  Sunday mornings when we lived in San Francisco, buy the Chronicle newspaper and be together.  Young lovers doing laundry together.  I never went alone.  Too bad there were no Starbuck's in those days.  And talk about great people watching.  We lived across the street from Golden Gate Park and our laundromat was just up the street near where the Jefferson Airplane's house was when it was painted all drab black.  Very interesting people came in and out of that laundromat.

     Now the real reason I got into this funk to begin with was over Valentine's.  I sweetly received a card from my brother several days before and then on Valentine's Day my love wished me a Happy Valentine's Day and on my pillow that night was a cute card.  Fair is fair I put mine on his pillow that night too.  So okay he was safe....sort of (?).  My kids said nothing and three of them are grown adults though one is out of the country traveling.  Nothing.  I missed those days when they would make a card with a cute picture with hearts and I love you's written on it.  But my Love didn't even take R. down to pick a card out when he went.  I don't know...I just felt...denied.  I didn't understand their ignoring me.  Is it because they don't have any sweethearts themselves?  Are they feeling it is odd to send mom/dad a card?  I was so excited about Valentine's Day.  We had planned on having the Grandparents over for dinner but  one set came for breakfast instead and my mom for dinner.  I planned out a menu to feed my love ones with choosing to do a Beef Wellington because my dear mother by marriage use to fix The best Beef Wellington ever.   Fresh and peeled Asparagus just like my sister by marriage does (she is a most extraordinary cook and has taught me as much as my mother by marriage).  A big salad and a mixed Brown Rice (though I added too much salt by accident).  For dessert I fixed a fancy Chocolate Ganache Tart with Cocoa Meringues to decorate it with.  My mom brought a lovely bottle of wine to go with our dinner and even though we couldn't understand her we had a good time.  It was the next day that it hit me that the previous day just felt regular except for me.  I mean I know my parents can't get out and buy cards like they use to but really a card from my children?   How hard would that have been.  Or for the Grandparents.   Really.  Didn't I always get into the Valentine's love all their lives?  My Love and I always celebrated with them and didn't go out to dinner just the two of us.  It was Always a family affair.   What went wrong?

     Needless to say I was an unhappy woman and that was the beginning of my foul mood.  I even swore which I NEVER do.  My Love asked if I was okay (like he couldn't tell that I was in a sad way) and I didn't say anything at first and then it just popped out!  I said I felt like s**t!   I couldn't believe I said it myself.  I mean you have to know me...I may have sworn a lot as a teenager but that was it.  So he got the message I was not in a sweet mood.  I didn't mean to be mean or uncivil towards him, I know, but when you are married you tend to do these nasty deeds from time to time because of "Heaven knows what came over me!" insanity.   Can I use the Hormone excuse at all?

     Today I laughed for the first time in five days.  It was the dang dryer.  I was alone and had turned it on to dry the towels and I just came unglued with laughter.  The dogs came out wondering what had happened to me.  Was I okay?  They wagged their tails, licked my hands, and then thought "maybe she is happy finally and will give us a biscuit".  Every time the dang dryer made the dying mouse sounds I gleefully laughed.  It felt good and I might even be able to talk this weekend and smile and be happy.  I will be REAL happy if we go looking at washers and dryers and BUY them as well.  Maybe see a movie that I want to see.  Valentine's isn't just one day to let a love one know...everyday we should let each other know that.

     Hormones in a woman who is newly menopausal is the b***h!  Ooops!  I did it again!!!!

Honeymoon Part 2 ~ Corfu ~

   




  By the time we got off the ferry and gone through Customs dawn had past and the morning light filled the sky.  Birds were singing and the people of Corfu were starting to appear.  The group of us that got off the ferry had dispersed  and our ferry had already left for the mainland of Greece.  


     Our plans to meet A. we had set up many months before when he was getting ready to go on his first trip to Greece.  He would check the ferries that came in each morning for a window of days to look out for our arrival.  As we looked around where we figured we would see him we thought about how hungry we were and that we had no Greek currencies.  The exchange office wasn't open yet so we couldn't buy any food.  We found a place to sit and wait for A.


     Our first image of A. coming towards us was who is this guy?  He came walking in his determined saunter, with his hair flowing and combed back like Jesus, quite blonde, wearing cut off jean shorts, flip flops, and a gauzy shirt half unbuttoned.  He was quite tan and talking in Greek to anybody that he saw  and then we noticed they were talking to him back as though he lived here.  My Love and I thought he looked like some Greek God the way he came towards us in slow motion for all to see.  He came up to us very excited that we had made this ferry.  A. didn't mess around with a long talk about what we had been doing since we came to Europe, he was ready to show us Kerkyra (Corfu). 


      So off we started walking towards the old town.  He was talking the whole time of everything he had been doing since arriving in Corfu.  We butted in that we were a tad hungry and could we find an exchange office to get some Greek currency.  "No" and adamant no to the money.  He would pay for everything we would need while we were here and that was that.  This was our wedding gift from him.  All during our walk as he talked he would be yelling out to people walking by "Kalimera!" which is Greek for "Good morning" and everyone would respond back to him the same way  but with an addition of "Kalimera Andreas!".  It felt like we were with a celebrity of sorts.  We walked the quaint town streets till he stopped in front of a shop and started saying this place had the best yogurt.   As you came inside there were a few tables with chairs and in the back a counter.  All felt cool and clean inside.  He started spouting out in Greek what he wanted which all sounded Greek to me.   Quickly the man behind the counter brought out white bowls that had a pale layer which turned out to be honey on top.  Carrying it to a table I noticed the bowls were warm.   I had not eaten much yogurt in my life so I was thinking right off the bat I wasn't sure if this was my idea of breakfast but I was so hungry I figured it had to be better than nothing.  That first bite sealed my love of fresh warm yogurt.  I have never had it quite the same even when I made my own.   Between the warmth and the flavorful honey it was the food of Greek Gods!   He told us they also made really delicious rice pudding served warm and creamy as well.   Now that I had food in my belly I could start to enjoy where we were.  We left with him saying "Efharisto" which means "thank you".  


     Walking outside I looked around and noticed I couldn't read any of the signs.  The Greek letters aren't like Spanish or Italian where you can maybe figure out the word because of similarity to some English words.  He continued showing us around the town pointing out different places that had really good this and really good that all the while saying "Kalimera!" and talking to people he came across.  We knew A. had taken Greek before he came but we couldn't believe how he seemed so fluent in it.  He had picked up the street Greek while on mainland Greece with friends he had made on his travels.  The locals really liked this crazy American who spoke like they did.   It felt like the whole town new him.  


     He attempted to teach me some Greek words to use while we were here and my Love and he laughed about it all knowing how shy I was.  Me speaking Greek to a Greek.  So there was "Yasa" for "hello", "Andio" for "goodbye", "Ne" for "yes" and "Ohi" for "no".  I felt so silly but enlightened to a new culture with my celebrity brother in law to show us around his new island.  




*I wish I could take credit for this photo but I don't have many photos from Corfu.  So thanks to a travel site where I saw this of Corfu