Back...but...

     Well we are back from a wonderful vacation in Colorado with family.  Of course nothing like a welcome home with my mother by marriage having a fall and getting an awful gash down the front of her shin bone.  Thankfully she had nothing broken.

     To add icing on the cake our dear Golden Annie was not well on Sunday, a visit to the vet to find that she had a mass on her spleen.  Surgery on Thursday to find out there were two masses!  Now she is home resting watched over by my Love and I with tender care.  We wait with trepidation to hear if the spleen or tumors were malignant.

     This all feels too similar to what happened to our Golden Dixie 10 years ago this month who fell suddenly ill while we were out of the country.  Sadly it was decided her spleen or a mass broke and she bled out.  There was a huge ache in all our hearts the remainder of our trip.  Illness can happen so suddenly in our pets.  They can't tell us what is wrong until it may be too late.  I had already felt before we left that I should bring Annie in but I was concerned she was becoming arthritic since she was acting stiff and not her old self.  Well she is arthritic as that showed on the X-ray along with the mass.

     For now I will play nursemaid to our poochie.   Mother is healing with her leg bound by bandage and a prayer that she does not fall again.  I am wishing I was back on vacation on a hike.   Whatever relaxation I came home with has dissolved.

     Oh there was a star this week!  Our daughter K. was here for several days for us to glow over.  It wasn't the best with my head slightly clouded over with worry but she was a wonderful distraction.  Now she has left to be with her Love up in Seattle and settle into a new place to live for the next 6 months.

    I am having an adjustment with the new format of blogspot...anyone else?   I feel lost!

Purpose

Me ~ 1975

I have a routine of daily tasks and chores I do.  Doing the morning dishes, making our bed, fluffing a pillow, loading the washer, emptying the dryer.  Everyday I set my sights on the accomplishments of finishing what I start.  For almost 34 years of marriage, four children, countless pets, I have nurtured our home life and felt my life's destiny.  I've watched as my three daughters have left home, first to college and then to their own lives.  Sometimes they have been near and sometimes they are away.  I cannot visit them physically everyday yet I miss them being in my life.

Have I been a mother so long I have forgotten the girl I was before children?  

Just the other night my Love and I were talking of a difficult situation that has happened.  We tried to understand this and talk about it.  It doesn't involve us but it does involve our love for those who are.  Inside I was grappling with the importance of how I mothered and am still mothering our son who is at home.  I thought how I feel about my role.  How I know I am needed even though I don't feel the need I use to.  

This is the first time I have only one child to take care of.  I have always been occupied with getting someone from point A to point B by a certain time on a certain day.  In a year our son could be driving himself instead of me.  With R. not being in our presence as when he was younger I am beginning to understand how it will feel when he is fully gone.  I am not taking this well.  It's that Mothering thing again.  I only seem to know how to be a mother and a wife.  


My Love and I began having children three years into our marriage and ever since I have had a child in our home.  What will it be like when that is no longer?  


I use to think that my Love and I would be able to retire, he at a young(er) age due to how strenuous is work is.  We would travel the world just he and I!  Anywhere, everywhere, whenever!  I never thought about the financial side of this.  Only in the last five years did it hit me of how we could pull that off.  The stupid economy zapped so much of his potential jobs.  Who can get a line of credit?  Who can afford to do work on their homes?  More and more people are hiring the "cheap" laborer and acting as their own contractor.  More and more are learning to do it themselves, regardless of how the job might look.  Hey, my Love has been building since he was a little kid beside his father.  You need to know your math.  You need to put in the time and not complain of heat or cold when you outside working.    You need to be appreciated for the work you do by the homeowner.  Virtually all those jobs he use to get use to be referral!  Now so many of those homeowners are dead, old and not needing anymore work.   Everyone now wants a "deal", they want it cheaper, it's like they never think about the craftsmen work to make a job not only be finished but really look good.  


So he will not be retiring early.  He will continue seeking work.  We use to say we would sell our home and buy a smaller home but he loves the home and the land.  Then of course real estate isn't doing so well.


I am deviating from my original thought though.

Purpose.  

I've just watched the inspirational documentary "Who Does She Think She Is?" that is now available on Netflix.  When I first heard about the making of this I was moved.  The role of women in society, the lack of acceptability for a woman to be a mother and to have a creative side.   Wow, I hadn't thought about the role choices that women have!  How utterly naive I was.  I waited patiently for this documentary  to be available.

Now after watching it I am flummoxed.  Have I neglected or hidden my creative side?  I certainly have given little credit to what I can do or would want to do creatively.    And what do I want?  What part of me feels inspiration?  I just don't know.  I just don't really know who I am.  Certainly not the woman inside me.  I know myself as my Love's wife, friend and lover.  I am loved, wanted, and needed.


What do I want to round myself out with?  I love to write, I love to take photographs.  I don't see myself as really good at either but it does give me pleasure.  In seeing the women that were filmed I realize that each of them had a purpose that became fulfilled once they let themselves become what was always there.  It was sad though that several lost their marriages due to their desire for creativity.   It was a choice they had to make almost like women of the past who made choices to be wives and mothers or be creative.  History still repeats!  Do men feel so threatened by a woman's need to be personally fulfilled?  


I know my Love supports my need to write.  I try to balance my life with keeping our home a place I feel comfortable in and one that my family does as well.  Still I am feeling this uncanny search for my unsettled feminine Goddess within.  


I just ordered the book "When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions" .  I love how Sue Monk Kidd writes.  Her other book that fulfilled my heart's wish to someday be able to travel with my three daughters,  Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story , that she partially co-wrote with her daughter of their travel to Greece.  In this book she shares her inner feelings of being a woman and what she is searching for in her own life and what she is concerned for of what life means to her daughter in being a woman.  Her words reflected much that was and is in my heart for my daughters to want a loving, caring, respecting, resourceful, growing relationship with me.  Not just that I was their mom but I am a friend.  There is much we can share and learn from each other.


This passage said an uncanny thought I have felt that was in that book: 
" Finally, I began to write about becoming an older woman and the trepidation it stirred. The small, telling “betrayals” of my body. The stalled, eerie stillness in my writing, accompanied by an ache for some unlived destiny. I wrote about the raw, unsettled feelings coursing through me, the need to divest and relocate, the urge to radically simplify and distill life into a new, unknown meaning. And why, I asked myself, had I begun to think for the first time about my own mortality? Some days, the thought of dying gouged into my heart to the point I filled up with tears at the sight of the small, ordinary things I would miss."

How odd to get to a certain age and think of ones mortality.  Yet I do.  I don't dwell upon this but it does rise up and I look at every beautiful sky, every lovely flower and think this could be gone and how I do not want this to be.  I lull for days sometimes bemoaning these thoughts till I realize I am wasting the precious days that flow by.  Stop!  Live...live....and enjoy.  Be happy with your life be happy with yourself.

I often wonder if my weight gain of the forties and fifties is a response many women go through of being concerned with the denial of happiness.  Does food fulfill this?  No it does not.  Does our body naturally gain to compensate for the anticipation of another decade on the heels of midlife when appetites dwindle and the body needs the fat to live upon?  I rather like that theory better.  Yet, I find myself unhappy with my body.  I compare to what I use to look like.  How can I feel this way?  If I wasn't preoccupied with such thoughts and felt fully fulfilled with myself would I become the way I envision myself to be versus the one in the mirror? 

Purpose.   Goal.  Choice.   Forgive.  I need to love what is inside me as well as what is outside me.  I have what I have and some of these can't be changed without medical intervention (those lovely veins that I developed after the birth of my children), softening of tone in my body (I am doing the gym...geesh it sure takes a lot of effort now), little lines on my face and neck (don't look too close in the mirror, especially a magnifying mirror).  What matters is what I express from within.  How I express it to others.  

I am open, careful of my feelings.  I will wake in the morning and melt inside with joy when I see my Love beside me.  I am not alone with him to share each day with.  He loves me for me.  

Peanut Butter Crisscross Cookies

Peanut Butter Crisscross Cookies

2  1/2 C. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 C. butter (at room temperature)
1 C. peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)
1 C. brown sugar (packed)
3/4 C. sugar
2 large eggs
**extra sugar for rolling the cookies in

Heat oven to 350 degrees

Working with a stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed for a minute or two, until smooth and creamy.  Add the peanut butter and beat for another minute.  Add the sugars and beat for 3 minutes more.  Add the eggs one at a time, beating for a minute after each addition.  Scrape down the sides and the bottom of the bowl.

Add baking soda, baking powder and salt on low speed.  Add the flour mixing till all blended.  

Working with the dough, I use an ice cream scoop to make my balls.  On a large cookie sheet place 9 balls.  Dip the tines of a fork in the sugar and press into the dough to make crisscross marks.

Bake for 12 minutes.  When done the cookies will be lightly colored and still a little soft.  Let the cookies sit on the cookie sheet for a minute before removing to cooling racks.  Cool to room temperature.

Celluloid

    She and I are walking towards the building with multipane widows
       covered in green curtains that do not let me know what is behind them

     We walk inside a door, like the kind at any store up and down
        the town we live in, glass which you push firmly to open

    The room has young adults sitting on vinyl couches and chairs
        it feels like a time long ago when drive-ins and soda fountains were around

     They look at us, the mother tall and proud, the child meek and timid,
         they look at us as we walk past the desks off to the side of a room that feels too long

     The man has a grey hair with a white short beard, I sense kindness 
         the polite greeting of my mom and he while I stand mute and lost

     The room is emptied, just us three, and I am taller, she is older and less of presence
         the question and answer begin and I am getting taller and stronger

     My voice builds with longing of what I missed
        "I missed you mom.  I missed you wanting me when I got older".

      She has become rigid and uncomfortable, her words I can not hear
         only her lips and mouth open and close, tightness when pressed together.

      "I couldn't be me, I had to be what you wanted.  You wouldn't let me breathe".
          Words fall from my mouth like alphabet soup letters, forming sentences and phrases.

       I see around me the slow fading in of the young adults that have begun to appear.
           Their faces supporting me as they become clearer, eyes on me not her

       The scene like a celluloid movie, that flickers and displays a scene of us
            "I am your mother, I know what is best for you"

       The man speaks to her, "She is not for you to keep tucked in a drawer".
             I am growing and she is aging as the film continues on the reel.

        Is it dark or light,  the colors are faded,  flashes of brightness and the room
            is real once more,  the young adults are smiling 

         My mother is old and weak, she is sad at her loss of control over me
             "You are wrong, she needs me" her words are desperate

         The man talks gently to her even though she repels his words
               For once I am forgiven for being me, by a man who listened


          The room of young adults has come to life, the child I was walks towards the door
                 her pure white ankle socks on chubby legs runs


          I push through to bright sunlight
                  the sound of the reel clicks, clicks, clicks


            

        * I had a dream last night of this.  So oddly it floated to my head.  We had watched a show on PBS of film making where I think the flash of celluloid came from.  The ankle socks from my friend Lori who shared a photo from her childhood wearing while ankle socks.  The constant theme of my mom and I and my struggle to be loved by her unconditionally.   The man represented the therapist we went to back in 2004.  He did not help "us" during that time but thankfully in my dream he did.

          So relieved to have written this down before it was lost on the day.  I did not turn on music knowing that the sound of songs would erase my thoughts.
     

Get thee to the Farmer's Market and make this!

                   

        Apricots are ripe and ready to do any number of delicious things with.  I already made jam and decided to use the last ones to make an Apricot Crisp.  This was heaven....so go to your nearest Farmers Market and buy some deep orange Apricots and make this...you will not be disappointed.
        Have you tried the new Black Velvet variety of Apricots yet?  They are dark purple black on the outside with a variegated orange with red inside.  The ones I found were not big but they were yummy!


                              Apricot Crisp

1 pound fresh apricots
3 T. sugar
1 T. flour
a pinch of nutmeg and a pinch of cardomon

Crisp topping:
1/2 stick butter, melted
4 T. turbinado sugar
1/2 C. old fashion oatmeal
1/2 C. all purpose flour
pinch of salt

Heat oven to 400 degrees.  Wash, pat dry and cut apricots in half and remove pit (no need to peel).  Slice into chunks (I did 1/2 inch size chunks).  Spray a small baking dish (8 x 8) and place cut apricots in.  Add sugar, flour and spices and stir in.

To make topping, melt butter.  In a small bowl add sugar, flour, oats, and salt.  Stir in melted butter.  Sprinkle mixture over the apricots.  Bake for about 30 minutes or until just lightly browned. 

*note:  I did reduce the sugar amount in the topping from 6 T. to 4 since I thought that seemed a bit much.  Also I would check it to make sure it it not over browning.

Mothering

Mothering, what does it mean mothering? 

To be a mother is the most important unselfish act a woman can do.  It is the most terrifying, fear ridden, heart stopping, nail biting, demanding, sleepless journey.  It is the most absorbing, life-altering, soul searching, moving, love fest ever.


I am in transition.  Like in giving birth I feel I am in transition.  I thought when I gave birth that stage was unyeilding and overwhelming but now in my fifties this transition seems to put me in that state of confusion and fear of going forward.  I can't stop going forward to my next stage of being a woman, I have to go with confidence knowing that on the other side of this step will be a calm or an acceptance of my new stage in life.  The contractions of my mothering now is to allow myself to let my grown children be.  To understand that they are no longer in need of my protection like when they were children.  They need to make the mistakes that I tried to shield them from because I knew what the outcome would be.  No, now I must watch their highs in life and their lows.  I must be constant and supportive.  I must learn to hold my tongue yet hold my arms open and let them discover their own journey in life.  If I fight this, I can feel the beat in my heart thump faster and fear sets in.  The mother warning lights begin to flash.  My arms, my wings want to gather and hold them though I know this to be unwise.  Did I not teach my children while young, of life?  Did I not share daily as we played, read, lived what to understand of life they might encounter?  Hold my hand while we cross the street, careful how high you climb because you will need to climb down without falling but I am here to catch you if you do fall, knives are sharp and scissors are too. 

In giving birth to my babies, that stage of transition was what appeared to be an insurmountable wave that kept getting higher and higher.  Each contraction brought more instability and undermined my true faith in giving birth.   Just when I felt I couldn't go on, that I couldn't let my body do what it knew how to because I thought it was too hard, too painful, it was "too" everything, the shift came.  The calm of being at last over the wave, into the calm, brought back to the shore.  The next wave I knew I could handle because my babes tiny sphere of their crowning heads came to view and played with my heartstrings as they would appear and disappear, each contraction more closer to my arms, to my sense of smell and taste.  With a whoosh their emergence to welcome cries and a swift flow to my open arms.  That first kiss sealed our bond.  While their umbilical cord was cut and ceased to nourish them, my breasts inside called out for my mother's milk to flow.  That cry of a babe to begin the let down reflex, the tingle in my breasts,  where we once again were held together, no longer in utero, but our skin touching linking us forever.  I became the mother I was born to be.  As in love and fiercely protective as one could be.


Yet I had to let go of the babes.  I had to let them test their wings though it was hard.  My invisible hand and arm stretched out to hold on but I couldn't let them see that I wanted so much to hold them.  I wanted to sing my lullabies and rock them to and fro, the rhythm of the rocker that would became the beat of our hearts.  I had to let go with a smile and trusting knowledge that they could and would handle whatever obstacle that came to them.  My Love and I sometimes held each other with tears trickling down from our eyes to fall on our bed, the bed they were conceived upon, as we soothed ourselves knowing that those years of parenting were a gift that was of unimaginable measure.  Whatever would be, we all would ride the swells of waves in storm and calm.  


Now I am facing the ascension of age.  I find myself confused at times in observation of my relationship with my mother.  The woman who now openly talks of loving me in her limited way.  The woman who did not do this with conviction or my comprehension of feeling this.  I find myself mothering her.  How can this be?  It happens so naturally to do.  As though automatically my inner mothering emotion to care comes forth.  To be calming, gentle, loving to this failing woman, my mom.  The rise of fear to know that I am not on the threshold of youth but on the threshold of elderhood does not escape me.  I am not willing to step over yet to see the possibility of my being like my mother.  I do not want this.   And so I am thrust with transitional trepidation.  I fear to see her die, I fear to see the continuing progression of aging though I know I should not be.  It is all a part of that circle of life.  I cannot stop this circle but only ride it like the pangs of labor.  Not to always think of the difficult times but think of the blithesome times.  Perhaps not to even try to define this time but let it be.


My children, my darling children whom I adore, treasure, I only ask your patience to me while I take baby steps right now.  I am in no hurry as I was to see you learn to roll over, sit up, to walk then run.  I am in no hurry whatsoever.  Let me take my time and breathe in the wonders I let escape my view before.  Let me run my fingers, slowly over the petals of a rose, so soft like the feel of your baby skin so long ago.  Let me linger over a walk in the woods, to inhale the denseness of the wood there.  Watch the way the light falls between the limbs and leaves, to see the shadow play.  It is only now that I at last see such beauty with it's purity.  Before I would watch and listen as you each would run over the padded forest floor and hear your voices echo off the trees.  Now let me be.  Share this time with me.  All I ask is for you to hold my hand, let me feel your presence beside me, let me grow up because I am still doing this just as you are.  

Let me birth this woman inside me.

Being alone...is lonely

           I am on day three of being alone.

     I am not use to this at all.

     I have been married for almost 34 years (this July!) and my Love and I have almost, except for the two weeks he went to Mexico (who he and R. are with right now near Joshua Trees) but I had M. and R. at home at that time, so I really wasn't alone.  Now I am alone...A. L. O. N. E.....

     What have I been up to?  Oh much.  Let's see...on Thursday I went shopping.  Girl stuff.  Shoes...didn't find any.  I hate shoe shopping.  I did find some cute capris though.

     Thursday night I had it all planned to try a new recipe.  Oh I bought everything I needed at Whole Foods, stuff like Garbanza flour...what is garbanza flour?

 Garbanzo Flour is a protein-rich flour made from dried chick-peas (garbanzo beans). Oh...

     I came home and read the recipe at 6:00 PM and realized I couldn't fix that recipe tonight.  I saw it in Sunset Magazine called "Chickpea Cakes with Fava Leaves and Arugula Salad".  Sounded good and healthy and I wanted to make something I knew the boys wouldn't eat.  I couldn't find Fava Leaves so I substituted spinach leaves which was an option.  I decided since it would need to chill for awhile that I would start the recipe and have it the next night.  This is what it looked like before I put it in the fridge to chill.  I have to say I sampled the "dough" of chickpea flour and it tasted yucky.  I was hoping that once it was cooked it would taste wonderful.

    This put the other Sunset recipe up for dinner called "Spiced Lemon Quinoa".  I made some changes and would still make some other changes now that I have tried it.  It presented well and I enjoyed the flavor though it seemed dry.  

     I sat outside with the poochies as it was a lovely evening.  


     Friday found me off to visit my mom and then to do some errands afterwords.  Mission accomplished!  Did laundry and managed to change all the beds and wash Annie (my Golden poochie).  


     I was excited to try the Chickpea thing and took it out of the fridge.  The recipe told me to invert it onto a cutting board, where once inverted I am to slice into triangles and then I will lightly fry in olive oil.  My inverting went PLOP!  It did not firm up and was just disgusting.  I felt like I was cleaning up doggie vomit.  (Sorry for the graphic word.)  Dinner became fresh eggs from our hens, scrambled with toast and homemade strawberry jam.  Yeah!  I really wanted the eggs anyway.  Forget that recipe!


     I watched "So You Think You Can Dance" that we had on the DVR and then crawled into bed with Stewie.  It was breezy and the house was creaky.  I couldn't sleep and I kept seeing Stewie with his ears all perked up like he was hearing something.  Finally after a half hour I fell to sleep and Stewie went to his own bed.


    Today cleaned house.  I also realized I am not talking much.  Is this what happens when you are all alone?  I find myself (I do this anyway) talking to the dogs about what I am doing..."I'm going to vacuum the kitchen", "I'm going to clean the bathroom"...on and on...and I don't like that I have no "person" to talk to.  I miss my boys....   :(


     I decide that I am going to take out the old home movies and watch them.  The really old ones.  This is my desk and all my movie stuff out:

       I found that the bulb to the projector is out and find the replacement one we have stored.  Low and behold it too is out.  Bummer.   I have an editing machine and thankfully the bulb in it works!

      So here I have sat and gone through a gazillion home movies.  Not as easy to watch as this is an editing unit and the clarity is how fast you are turning the wheel.  Too fast and it is a blur, to slow and the film comes off the gear wheel.  Movie magic happens as I spin away.....


      I thought I would look up the price of a replacement bulb.  ebay....$50!!!!  Crazy!!!!  Note the price of this bulb on the box.  I wonder what year that was?

     I realize it is getting late and the poochies are looking at me wondering "when is she going to feed us?".


    I feed the critters, get the fresh eggs from the hens for today and grab a bottle of vino from the wine cellar.  Hey, no reason I can't have a nice glass of wine!  I pick this out...my Papa use to buy BV ...seems like a good choice.

     I had marinated a chicken breast simply in soy sauce and thought I would grill it on our panini grill.  I rarely use this and I know why.  Cleaning is a pain.  Still the chicken breast came out lovely!  I toasted a slice of rustic wheat bread, brushed a bit of mayo on it, added sliced avocado on top of the chicken breast and sliced some tomatoes with a little kosher salt and fresh ground pepper.  Voila!

     Simple and utterly perfect for me tonight.  The poochies kept me company on the deck for another lovely evening....by ourselves....   :(  (miss the boys)


     So here are my companions...Annie

     And Mr. Stewie.....

     I mean, really...aren't they just the cutest...dinner companions?


     Let's see...I have two more dinners alone...thank goodness E. and I will go see a movie tomorrow!  I will have a real live human being to be with!  I get to go to my sister by marriage for breakfast tomorrow for Father's Day...not with my honey...but waffles!  Hhhhhmmmm.  And people!!!!


     Miss my boys....did I say that already?   Guess I better clean up the movie stuff....I was going to watch Toy Story 3 but it is getting late and I was woken up this morning by Luna (our kitty) purging somewhere near the bedroom.  Lovely...