Back In The Day…

This would be the kind of night that called for a big family dinner.  Something simple, but heavy and warm.  Chili and corn bread.  Or   thick and hearty stew with big chunks of fresh baked bread.  Everything made from scratch.  The house would be warm from the fire.   Sitting around the table for extra long, there was no hurry, no need to go out on a night like tonight.    Food enjoyed and lingered over.   Eventually the dinner mess would be cleared  away.  Setting about would begin.  The weather outside would wrap the house in a comforting atmosphere.  Cold out there.  Warm in here.  Perfect.

Someone would tell a story about last summer when it was so hot, remember?  And how we all had wished for one minute it was cold and snowy.  Now that it is, we all wished we could open up a jar of summer.  HEY!  We can.  Someone runs to the cellar and brings up a jar of summer made strawberry preserves.  The rest of the fresh made bread from the day is brought back out.  Every one relishes the taste of summer in the strawberries.   Sweet.  Hot sun.  Some eyes close relishing the moment preserved in that strawberry burst.

Someone knocks on the door and it’s opened to a handful of neighbors who came over to wile away the evening.  One of them brought their fiddle, or guitar, or mouth harp, or flute, or penny whistle just in case there was a lull in the conversation.  Some times there is a lull.   But it’s comfortable.  Every one is safe with who is with them.  There are no secrets.  Just hard working.  Happy to be living.  Working to be living people.  There’s a feeling with these people.  A familiar and contented feeling.  Everyone works for the same thing.  These moments.  Full bellies.  Quiet evenings to rest and relax.  Laugh.  Sit quietly and just be.

It was dark before dinner was even begun.  The darkness now just wraps them all more snug in the house.  No one knows hustle.  No one is worrying about what they are missing.  No one is frustrated because they can’t go somewhere else or be doing something else.  This is what it is about.  The people in your life.  They’re right here.  Laughing.  Talking.  Someone starts to hum.  Whoever brought their fiddle, or guitar, or mouth harp, or flute, or penny whistle picks up the tune.  Someone’s  foot taps quietly.   Someone might start to sing.  No one really cares if who is singing can sing.  It’s the song and the singer that are comforting, or entertaining.  Poor singing is as enjoyable and fun as quality singing on a night like tonight.

Someone sitting there thinks fondly of someone who is no longer there.  And gives a silent little nod of love to their memory.

Someone sitting there thinks of how wonderful it will be when they grow up and can do this with even more family and friends.

Someone sitting there thinks of all of the wonderful meals they’ve shared with these people.

Someone sitting there nods off in the warmth and noise of the room.

This was the kind of night created for memories and sharing and being.   Together.

No one sitting there thinks there is something better out there.    Everything that is good is at home.

World of Winter

Don’t you just want to be in there?

Amazing how something so tiny can add up to something so

Incredible

or

Beautiful

or

Threatening

or

Stunning

or

Damaging

or

Mystical

or

Empowering.

Think of the ugly it can cover.

Or the ugly it can cause.

It moves some to comfort and shelter and memories.

It frustrates others.

I Wrote From Ireland

In 2007 we went to Ireland.   Had an incredibly adventurous trip.   If I lived there I could not possibly see all of the things that I need to see there.  And I would never have enough words to send back to everyone.  But I sure like going and trying to see it all and to write back about it.

From a  day in November 2007 I wrote a letter to a few family and friends.   The following is an excerpt.  I am copying to here as I wrote it.   So pardon the horrible punctuation and other errors.   I was in Ireland and writing fast so I could go back out in to Ireland.

“so today it is windy and blustery.  rain, sun, wind.  and happy thanksgiving to you all!  i would stop at subway and get a turkey wrap as its the only turkey i have seen here but i fear the repercussions.   ;o)

we have been out sight seeing and checking out the round towers, castles and abbeys.  and being out on a blustery day like this you get pretty chilled.  not to mention the cow dung stuck to your shoes as you walk through the cow fields to get to the fairy raths and round towers and such.  so you find places to sit and have a pot of tea.  i dont know how many pots of tea we’ve had, not enough i tell you.  america needs to do more tea.  i am advocating that.  so anyway the coolest place we found today was a place run by an old order of monks.  i mean old.  they were so nice.  the tea was great.  floor was flagstone, just like our cottage.  OH REMIND ME TO TELL YOU OF THE GHOST IN OUR COTTAGE  anyway…. we are enjoying our cuppa and trying to listen to the monks.  well, we could hear them alright, we just couldnt understand them.  remember, they are irish trying to speak english.  i think we should speak irish when we come here.  they were very nice, even had the very old fashioned true to monk fashion that is, hair cut.  i think its called a cowl????  the robes were old looking too.  they offered us food, i wish we had said yes but we declined.  spent about half an hour in there.  it was lit by candles.  everywhere.  so bright enough but full of atmosphere and turf fires!! thank God it was chilly out!  the monks kind of walk you to the door.  very chattery considering they were monks.  then we stepped out in to that very cold wind and wait til you see the picture we took after we left!  when we turned around to tell them good bye THERE WAS NOTHING BUT RUINS!  ”

I share this with you because I love this story.  It was a real place.  The abbey, though in ruins, was still fabulous.  It still had rooms and second and third floors we could go on.  We walked the path the monks walked saying their evening prayers.  The place they ate was still intact.   It was just incredible to stand there and put yourself in their shoes, did they have shoes?  From about four hundred years ago.  It was easy to imagine.  It was easy to feel it.

I thought it was fun to go rumbling around all of the ruins and hills and stores and bakeries.   It was a great time.   Something made me want to add something to my daily email back to family and friends.  So I put the monks in there as best I could to make everyone feel what I had experienced.

But the best part of this story is my aunt.  Don’t worry “aunt” I won’t call you out in front of everyone!  Who still says to me every time she sees me “I THOUGHT IT WAS TRUE!  I’VE BEEN TELLING EVERYONE THIS REALLY HAPPENED!”   The best part being, I wanted her, and everyone else, to believe.   To feel it.   She did.  She got it.  This makes me feel good.

It did happen.

It did.

And the blurp about Subway?  I wrote in an earlier email that they had Subway and we had stopped in for a wrap.  I caught quite a bit of grief from the Americans for going to Subway.    Mind you, it was still an Ireland Subway, so it was different.  Can you get corn in your wrap here?   No.  For that matter you can’t even get a wrap anymore.  Grrrr.   But that’s another blog.

4:25 a.m.

It’s a Saturday morning.  At 3:30 something woke me up.  But I don’t know what it was.  David was “listening”.   It’s one of those moments where you know something is not right.  But you are not sure what it is.  Normally when something is not right David is content to let me go check it out.   It’s David being secure in his masculinity by letting me be the one to get out of bed and go check out abnormal sounds of the night.

But tonight he heard more than I.  What ever we heard woke me so I wasn’t sure what I heard.  I think he was already awake when he heard the noise.

My heart skipped a beat not by the sound so much, as by him getting out of bed to go check on the noise.

This caused me concern.

David never feels it necessary to check on the noise.

The noises usually don’t concern him.

Or he doesn’t hear them.

Tonight he heard.  Hushed.  Soft on his feet he goes through the house.  Which is quiet in it’s aloneness.   No children, not a one, in the house.  They have all scattered to other places for the evening.  The house seems extra large.  Extra quiet.  Extra vulnerable with less people in it.

The fact that David is being so cautious and quiet raises my alarms even more than if I had actually heard the noise and reacted on my own.

He made his way back to the bedroom and went to the window.   There under the watchful eyes of the house windows lay the casualty of the night.

Our shrubbery and trees on “this end” of the house.  Plastered by fifty tons of snow that had cascaded off of the roof and squashed the once tall tree like things (though I don’t know if they are actually trees) in front of the house.

Bummer.

Musical Depth

This song gets to me.

It makes me think of so many people.   So many situations.

It makes me feel and think of my parents love and the security it gave me to become the person I am.

It makes me aware of the friends who share their lives and their love with me.

It makes me appreciate the family who I can not imagine my life without.

It speaks of the love I have with my husband, my children, my grandchildren.

It makes me happy and melancholy for everyone in my life.

I am thankful that I can hear a song like this and have it speak to me with so much meaning.

Planning Committee

Lottery Village.   I have decided to be prepared.   Janet and I were discussing it at work.   I need to have plans in place for when I win the lottery.   This village won’t get developed just by sitting around and day dreaming about it.

There are some things  I need to get working on.   Janet asked if there would be an ice cream shoppe.   Silly woman, of course.  And it will be along the lines of an old fashioned ice cream shoppe, with a counter to sit at.  Soda jerk behind the counter.   She also asked if there would be a Tim Horton’s.  I want to say “duh” but it seems kind of cruel.  She is, after all, just making sure.  We discussed a “church”.   After some discussion we decided to call it a place of worship.  But we do want to come up with a better name for it.    Something creative and inspirational.  Worship Hall?   The Praying Place?   Yeah, I think I need to work on that.

A general store, reminiscent of the Oleson’s general store in Little House On The Prairie.  Minus the missus and Nellie of course.  But with a wood porch, wood floors in the store.    We have decided to ask Tammi of Tammi Jo’s cafe to open a diner in the village.

There is no doubt about a few other things as well:  school house; work out facility; fire pit that will be huge village friendly; gathering place for the entire community; community building for our dances (Janet and I discussed the various dances and of course square dancing will be included, just in case you were worried).

A theater that will seat us all while we watch some very old or very new movies.  Or we can watch plays.  Or talent shows.

There will be a bank.  But I have a few ideas about a bank and the way it should be run.  I’ll get with UT on that.

A community garden.  You can have your own too, but a community garden would be fun.

I’ll be working on my list of businesses.   And houses.   I’ll have only so many houses to give to friends and family.

So much to do!   I best get crackin’!

Shocker!

When exactly did I become an adult?  I’d like to know!

Sure I’m 46.   Sure I have two daughters.  A grandchild.  Another grandchild on the way.  One daughter married with her family.  One daughter going to marry.  I have a job.  I have a college degree.  I have responsibility.   But when, exactly, did I become an adult?

I think it happened today.  I don’t know why I realized this today.  But I did.  I was having lunch with my mom.  Red Lobster lunch.  We both like the Lobster.  They know us there, that makes it nice.  But it suddenly occurred to me.   Today.  At lunch.  With mom.   Criminy, I’m an adult.

I was sitting there eating my flounder all innocent like.  And bam.  While mom is talking to me it dawned on me.  She isn’t talking to me like I’m her child.  She’s talking to me like I’m an adult.

I have to admit, it stunned me very briefly.  Well, maybe more than briefly because I’m still thinking about it.  So forget I said briefly.  Yes, I could take it out of this blog, but then what would become of this paragraph?  So I sat there in my stunned state.  What exactly did I do to deserve to be treated like this?  I’m not sure how I feel about this.  Pleased I guess.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  I have always wondered why my body seems to be getting older but the way I feel and think still feels like the me of old, er, I mean young.

I see folks in their seventies, eighties, nineties and it usually does occur to me to think; do they feel at 90 the way they felt at 50?  The way they felt at 30? If I feel, or think I feel, the same way now that I did at a much younger version of me…will I feel that way when I am 90?  I mean if we still think and feel inside of our skin like we did when we were much younger, is aging only physical?

Maybe some things about me are more mature.  But I don’t think I’m different as much as it is that I just know more.  I mean there is no way you can know as much at 16 as you can at 46.  You haven’t put as much time in so to speak.  Quantity wise, you just haven’t had the chance to be exposed to more.  I don’t know where I’m going with this.   Anyway.    Suddenly today when I realized mom was talking to me as an adult, I skipped right out of this perhaps naive state of being I have always been in.

I’m an adult.  Great.  I mean, no, really, great.  Okay, no explanation mark there.  So maybe you don’t believe me when I say “great”.   I don’t believe me either.

Coming to this realization doesn’t make me feel any different.  Well, okay, it does.  I’m still a little stunned.

Laurie Metcalf

Do you know who she is?  I remember her for many clips.  But she sticks in my head for this one scene.  She made me laugh.

Why do I find this funny?   I don’t know.  Click on this video and stick with it until “Jackie” gets on the phone.

I was talking to a couple of different people today about things that made us laugh.  I can’t quote movies.  I can’t quote comedians.  But I love sitcoms.   I loved Jackie in this show.  She made me tune in on a regular basis for a good laugh.

I was just thinking about this clip and sure enough it was on YouTube.  I hope it made you laugh.  Or think of another show that made you laugh.

To Eire Or Not To Eire

Sorry, I could not resist this blog title.

It’s that time again.  Well, it’s always that time.  Time to talk about going back to Ireland.   There are some of us who never tire of talking of Ireland, thinking of Ireland, looking at pictures of Ireland.  Going to Ireland.  We all know who we are.  We love it.  If you haven’t been, or feel no connection to it, go ahead and skip reading this.  Stop.  There’s no point on continuing.

Unless you want to.  Then go ahead and keep reading.

So those of us who love it probably love it for various reasons.  But I bet there are some reasons we all share.  Or not.  But those of us who love it, understand another’s love for it also.

One thing every one should remember, it’s an island.   For someone who has never lived near large bodies of water, with constant winds and rains and freshness, this is an experience its self.  I stepped off the plane in to Ireland and in to air that felt soft.  I don’t know that I had ever breathed air that felt sweet as it filled me up.  I always felt healthier there.  Foggy, rainy, sunny, cold, warm, hot.  It just felt healthy to me.  Clean.  Yes, fresh.

One of my (many) favorite things about dear old Ireland is the old of it.  The old buildings.  Old relics.  The ruins fascinate me.  Going in to buildings or structures that are hundreds, thousands of years old amaze me.  I am standing, walking, sitting and touching where our ancestors walked.   Where great things happened.  Where great people took stands for things they believed in.  I look at the ruins of some places and try to imagine it in its grandeur and completed state.  I can imagine it.   Then I remember how long ago it was created and I stumble over my perceived image of it.  When I picture things I do so from a 21st century perspective.  I have to go back to before Christ to get a full picture of some of these places (New Grange) and how they were developed .  I think it is difficult for us to totally get the magnitude of what the ancients created in this world.  We picture it with using our knowledge base.   How did they create it from their knowledge base.  Some of the buildings we went in to were only a couple to three centuries old.  Only? In many of the older businesses and homes you have to take 2, 3 or 5 steps to get through the doorway.  The walls are that thick.  Makes me come home and shudder at the insecurity of my 2×4 walls.

Food.  Before going to Ireland my first time I read in many places that Ireland was one of the most expensive places to eat.  Silly travel guides and advisors.  Or idiots.  I don’t know where they were going, but it was pretty food friendly to me.  Oh how we loved walking down streets in little towns and bigger cities.  Hungry?  Step in the bakery and buy a fresh scone.  Bakeries every where.  Walk by the butcher and see the fresh meats hanging for the folks needing to stop in and get something for dinner.  Gas stations with chefs and fresh baked goods.   Five pounds of stew.  Beef stew.  Lamb stew.  Tuna salad with corn.  Cookies, pardon me, in Ireland it would be biscuits.   Pub food.  Yes.  Pub food.  Good.  Good.  Good.  Stuff.

Fortunately we never stop when we are there so I can eat more.  Yay.   It’s non stop walk, look, walk, look.   I can’t see enough!  Not only do I want to see more, I want to go back and see what I already saw.  My first trip around Dingle Peninsula I had my eyes stretched so wide open my eye sockets hurt.  Oh, we were on our bikes for that one.

So we are always talking about going back to Ireland.  Or talking about about having been to Ireland.  Or talking about the ancestors who came from Ireland.   Or talking about the family found and connected with in Ireland.  Right now it’s the talking about going back.  Regardless of what points we have to ponder:  cost, flying (my fears), family situations, planning around all other responsibilities it comes down to what David once told me.   If we have a chance and put it off, who’s to say another chance will come along.

So if all things come together, it is likely to Eire.

Ice Cream For Dinner At Mamo’s

Sometimes lessons are not easily come by.   We just can’t get them.   Or they pass us by totally.   Then there are lessons that manage to penetrate our consciousness, and we learn great, or happy things.  Some of them are easy, some take longer to learn.   Some I can’t believe I didn’t learn a little bit quicker.    Like today’s little lesson:  it’s okay to have ice cream for dinner.   And pizza for dessert.  Why not?  Who’s it going to harm?   Not me.   Not the Queen.   Though it did do some damage to the princess shirt she wore until we took it off.

Make time for friends.  Everything is better when people share the wealth of happiness and joy.   What’s the saying?   What is the one thing you get more of when you give it away?   Yes, love, that’s it.

Most people want to help.  With something.  For others.   They enjoy the good feeling it gives them, when giving to others.

Most people want to love.  Live.  Share.  Be happy.  Experience.  Have WOW moments.   Have peaceful moments.  Most people want full lives.   Maybe the definition of “full” is different.   But they all have it defined in themselves, somehow.

Family is great!  You might feel stuck with them sometimes,  but guess what?  They are stuck with you too!!

I love a good lesson from life.  I love a good feeling from life.  I love that I can have ice cream for dinner.  Pizza for dessert.   And people to learn from.