Category Archives: spirit

PhotoHunt Saturday: Low

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Just about every morning when I wake up, I find I’ve been dreaming about my mom. The dreams are disjointed and stressful because she’s always sick and I’m always trying to help her get better. I often start the day feeling a little blue, a little low. I’d like to stop those dreams and rewind my memories to happier days, but I don’t know how. Maybe after I’ve worked through things in my conscious mind, made peace with everything that happened if that’s possible, my dreams will bring my old, healthy mom back. I hope so. I miss her.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. ~Kahlil Gibran

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PhotoHunt Saturday: Creamy

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This is the creamy white clematis, Henryi. I moved him last fall from the back of the yard to an arbor that gets more sun up by the deck. So far he seems much happier in his new home, not only does he get more light, but he’s also protected from the harsh winds that can blow through my yard. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about gardening over the years, it’s that you have to be willing to be flexible and change your plans, things don’t always work out quite the way you want them to in a garden.

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself. ~ May Sarton

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PhotoHunt Saturday: Lock

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This is the group shot from my mom and dad’s 5oth Wedding Anniversary party in June 2006. It was the kind of day I knew that I needed to savor, to lock away in my memory forever because things were about to change for my family. I don’t know how I knew this, I suppose as we get older and our parents age it’s a given. Yet, it was more than that. I remember that the air itself had a golden glow that afternoon. My parent’s four children were together as we rarely are, most of their grandchildren too. But as great as the day was, there was also something very fragile about it. It felt like we were on top of a hill looking back at our life as a family, ending a chapter and about to turn the page. I wanted it to be the perfect day for my parents because deep down in my heart I knew as if someone had whispered it in my ear, that their perfect days together were quickly winding down. The following winter my mother’s health began to noticeably decline, and by May we began the rounds of doctor appointments and hospital stays that marked the last difficult fifteen months of her life. Memory can be a wonderful thing, binding us to our past, but only if we lock in those pages filled with joy and let the sorrows go.

PhotoHunt Saturday

skywatch friday

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I took the photo above on the patio this morning. We’re in store for another beautiful spring day around here. Yesterday, Meagan and I had fun shopping at garage sales and a resale shop for Brooklyn. I must say, that’s the way to go, especially for toys and clothes that they grow out of so quickly. It’s starting to seem real for all of us, that this new little soul is going to come into our lives very soon. And yet we often seem to add, “if everything goes all right” at the end of a sentence when talking about the baby and the future. We’ve tried to stop feeling that way, tried to assume that everything will be fine this time, but I think the truth is we are all balancing precariously on our own individual emotional tightropes. Going through each day eating, talking, working, pretending everything is okay all the while afraid deep down that one more heartbreak may be one more too many. Sometimes I worry that we need this little girl too much, is it really fair to expect one small baby to heal so many bruised and battered grownup hearts? Then again, maybe we’re already falling. Maybe we’ve been falling since we lost my mom and baby Kiley, maybe the moment we hold Brooklyn for the first time each of us will finally find that soft place to land.

Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven. ~Henry Ward Beecher

best of youtube

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My husband asked me what flying dreams mean yesterday. I told him I always thought they were confident, hope filled dreams. In his dream he was flying with ease, turning and soaring through the air while holding something up with his hands (he couldn’t remember what it was). Strangely enough, I had just run across this flying video on YouTube the day before his dream when a Twitter friend posted a link to a similar one and I saved it for a future post. I haven’t had a flying dream in a long time myself and I told him that I hoped it was me he was holding in his hands. Mr. bookbabie may not be Superman, but he’s been my best friend for thirty years and I’d go flying with him any old time!

The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious.  And why shouldn’t it be? – it is the same the angels breathe. ~Mark Twain

teaser tuesday

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Rather than pick up the book I’m reading now for my two Teaser Tuesday lines, I went to my bookshelf and pulled out The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodson Burnett. As a young reader, it was one of the first novels I read and I haven’t looked at it for many years. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve ever read the actual book in my hands, I bought it just so I would have a copy in my library. I hope my future granddaughter is a reader. I would love to have her wander into my den and pick up this book someday, then ask me what it’s about and whether I liked it. When I opened the book this morning my eye went right to this wonderful line, “Fair fresh leaves, and buds-and-buds-tiny at first but swelling and working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden air.”

I’ve been working outside a lot for the past few days, weeding and planting flowers in my own garden. We’re making a lot of major changes in the landscaping around the house this year, taking down many old trees and shrubs. There are times in our lives when we don’t want change, when we perhaps get a little too comfortable with the way things are. This spring, I felt like I needed to shake things up a bit. While Mr. bookbabie was concerned about cutting down the overgrown trees, I couldn’t wait to have them gone. I wanted to cut out all the old growth around our property and let in more light, start over again with new trees and shrubs and a whole new color palette for the flowers. Perhaps it’s silly, but I think a part of me hopes that this landscape makeover will also help makeover my spirit, cutting out the old dead growth and letting in a rainbow of fresh new light 🙂