We had been at the off-leash dog park, my rambunctious pup and I. He’d had a good series of gallops, so I was feeling guilt-free that I had a bunch of quiet time, for him, of online tasks to do when we got home and practice for the open mic I planned on going to. As I crested the top of the dramatic Keystone Hill Road and headed down the 11% grade, I could see the beach in the distance ahead of me. Ah, a walk on the beach, pick up some more white rocks for my garden bed, and listen to the waves swooshing in. Nope, my do-it brain said, I had things to do. Yet a calling inside me beckoned: it is early yet, the beach is right here, Pup is happy now. Go to the beach. So I did. The tide was in, which left a narrow path of beach rocks between the wall of driftwood and the incoming waves. Within a few steps along the beach, I saw a long-lived sea shell there among the rocks and picked it up. What a gift!
Finding sea shells was always special when I was a kid with my folks and my Grandmere as we walked the Mukilteo or Kalaloch Beach.
What stories could this shell tell? It had clearly been up down, and all around for quite some time.
Recently, I heard Karl Olsen of the Trinity Lutheran Church in Freeland sing “Christmas in the Trenches.” Went right into my heart. His excellent voice and rendition of this song, written by John McCutcheon. An event on Christmas, 1914 that I believe we need to remember and explore. To hear John talk about it a bit then sing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIxqJlnH2m8
My grandfather was stationed in eastern France during World War I, which is part of the impetus for the novel I am currently working on. His being there is how this part of my family got here, how where I am and who I am came to be. Oh, to talk with him now.
Walking along the beach, the waves washing up over my boots a few times as I reach down for those white rocks calling to me. I find another shell! How cool is that? Enjoying the walk as I balance myself on the unsteady rocks, hear the waves swish up to me, and keep seeing ‘one more’ white rock in front of me. Then I spot another shell! Woo-hoo! What a remarkable day this is.
Seems about time to head back to the car. I am nearing the logs and driftwood to climb over and there is a fourth shell! Indeed, this is a day to be remembered! Hi Mom. Hi Grandpa! Hi Grandmere (my mom’s mother)!
Indeed, I hold these shells wondering where they’ve been, what beaches have they seen and washed up upon, what creatures and how many lived in them. And what they would tell me if they could.
How fortunate that I listened to my inner voice. I am blessed indeed. A wondrous, health-filled 2024 to you. Thank you for reading.
Bon jour. Having traveled a bit over the years, lived a few months in Italy in my early twenties, and lived most of my life in the Pacific Northwest, it is an interesting question for me now. Where is home? My adult children have lives and families far from me. I live in a comfortable home with a nice view. Is this my forever home? A new thought for me.
My recent trip to France was wondrous in every way. Paris is beautiful, historic and has endless things to do. Including sitting at an outside bistro enjoying watching the world of people bustling past, cars, and busses on their journeys. The Louvre, the metro, the Orsay, the Eiffel Tower, the crepes!
This cruise on the Seine river was fantastic. Another opportuinity for me to learn to be present and not rant about the unexpected obstacles. We got lost in Paris, missed our connection to enter the Eiffel Tower, and so were a couple hours late. If we had not been late, we would have completed our Seine cruise during the afternoon and missed the stunning sunset on the river.
The Apollo Gallery at the Louvre. Oh yeah, pretty impressive. It was the model for the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, which was completed in 1684. Versailles and the Louvre have been home for scads of people over the centuries. Things are still being discovered. Walls of the original medieval fortress were found under the Louvre as they excavated for the glass Pyramid in 1985.
Have you ever, or how many times, have you asked Where is my home? Is where I am now my forever home?
In Langres, the ancient town of my maternal ancestors, the question arose for me in a new and vibrant way. I re-connected with all four of my third cousins, and their families, after twenty-five years. Third cousins as our grandmothers were sisters. Rich, wonderful experience. Their children and grand-children are my fourth and fifth cousins! Yes, it matters. Family matters. Finding where we belong matters. Right?
Here is my new favorite refrigerator magnet: my four cousins and I at the Langres train station as I head back to Paris.
Am I going back to Langres? You bet! Am I finishing my novel set in Langres? Oh yeah! Watch for it to be out early next year~
Thank you for reading my blog. Merci d’avoir lu mon blog.
Indeed, it is the end of December. Blueberries have been out of season for months here in the Northwest. Yet they are on sale at the local supermarket. The label says they’re from Peru and Chile. Again the question and thought arise: How has the world changed so much in the last decade? I will spare you my theories about that, I am working on clarity and not blaming!
Successes this year? Getting healthier, being more patient with my pup, who is now 2, helping my family, scads of work done on my home, walking regularly. And getting my book completed and published! Up on Amazon, so now the ongoing marketing.
Dmitri Matheny, my book, and I at the Anacortes Library in October.
A piece of clarity recently delivered was how the book, my pup, and the myriad of issues with my house have distracted me from my music. A couple of recent gigs and one coming up have brought back that missing element to my life. And it feels good to have it back, a void that I had not noticed until it said, “Hey, no practice, no gigs! No practice and your playing sucks!” Oh yeah, and I forget stuff! There is a richness and a being present when I play music, even practicing scales.
Practicing gratitude daily has also become part of my life. My opportunities, my freedom, my view of Admiralty Inlet, having a carport, my pup, caring and supportive people in my life, my adult children’s stability and families, my return to lap swimming. Oh yeah, and blueberries in winter.
All the best to you in 2023, it portends to be an abundant, productive year. Thank you for reading.
Rejection. Who needs it? Mary Buckham says we do. In an interview I did with the accomplished writer and successful writing teacher, she spoke about dealing with rejection and managing the uncertainty of a writer’s life. She shared an encouraging reality: those challenges prove you’re in the game. You are truly in the business of writing. You have engaged the clutch, the car can move forward.
When she told of losing one of her sons to SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and how she had to follow her dream of writing not only to fulfill herself, but for her son and what his dreams might have been, tears welled in my eyes. And a dormant bulb ticked on in my mental chandelier.
Of course, pursuing her dream also included her five other children, as they were there for the sacrifices, balances, compromises, collaborations, late dinners, and undone laundry that is part of having two artists for parents. Yet, ardently, rigorously structuring her life in order to write was directly related to honoring her son.
Am I respecting Rosie by living my dream? We were sisters yet I don’t even know what her dream was. She checked out at the age of forty-nine years and four days, over16 years ago. She had worked on Alaskan fishing boats, in a busy studio as a photographer, and was in optician school when she died. She had drifted, looking, never seeming to find an answer. What did she give up on? And why? Do I honor her by staying the course, no matter how difficult? The African folktale, “The Cowtail Switch,” says a person is not really dead as long as they are remembered. Does that go for dreams too?
My father died relatively young, a bit shy of age sixty-six, the decades of smoking had done irreparable damage by the time he quit in his early sixties. He resented quitting, actually, but his emphysema gave him no choice by then. What about his dreams? He gave up on a dream of professional golfing in order to take care of his wife and three children. At one time, he was a ‘scratch’ golfer, meaning he had a zero handicap, meaning he was really good. I shake my head remembering one occasion he tried to teach me a ‘natural’ swing when I was around thirteen. After a series of golf balls hit our Great Dane/Labrador dog, knocked over a couple tall droopy sunflowers, and ended up lost in the blackberry bushes, Dad gave up and went in the house. Do his and Rosie’s dreams live on in me when I pursue mine even though I can only guess at what theirs were?
Crystal sunset March, 2021
My Mom was ninety-one when she died. She, and my dad, told me I could do anything, being President was just one option. She wanted to be a social worker. One of her teachers strongly encouraged Mom to go to college. Yes college was a nice idea – yet regular people got jobs and got married. Will I carry her dreams with me now that she has passed on by living mine fully, as she would want me to? Have I already done so without making the conscious connection, as I worked many years in social services and graduated from college in my forties.
By living my dreams, pursuing heart-driven goals, and delving into what I feel passionate about, do those other peoples’ wishes find a path as well? Am I the vessel for more than just me?
Storyteller and sublime harpist, Patrick Ball, tells about going to college in pursuit of a law degree. Then when his father died suddenly, he walked away from that legal career as he realized that law was his father’s dream; Patrick went looking for his own, and found it in music. Yet by doing so, did he carry his father’s even further?
Grandpa Alfred, my Mom’s father, died at age thirty-nine of tuberculosis. In 1937, all that could be done then was put TB patients in a sanitarium and wait. Like Doc Holliday fifty years before him, there was no cure for TB. In fact, Doc was about the same age as Alfred. What a mysterious scourge TB was: Doc’s mother had also died of it.
Dreams. Alfred married a French girl he met in eastern France where he was stationed in World War I. Big dreams when he brought her back to the U.S. four years later and started a family, as well as a furrier business in downtown Seattle. Then died when his children were thirteen, nine, and four. Dreams. My mother tells of the family moving to Cle Elum to be near the sanitarium; Mom, being the eldest, usually fixed dinner as her mother was over at the hospital every night till dusk. Then one evening, her mother came home, sat down on the porch step and remained there. Mom watched her mother through the screen door, then after a few minutes, she came out of the cabin. It took a moment or two before ma Grandmere’ quietly said, “He’s gone,” as she looked over across the field on the other side of the road. Wondering where the dream had gone?
Dreams in the laboratory, dreams in the courtroom, dreams in the typewriter, dreams over in the next valley, dreams on the stage, dreams taking off on a journey, dreams unspoken in the secret place in one’s heart.
Where do dreams go that are released, abandoned, forsaken, or denied? Are they inherited? Do they collect in a big pool somewhere? A gigantic cosmic canning jar?
Can others’ dreams live on in me even if my dreams are different than theirs? Yet, maybe all dreams are much the same: what makes us feel alive, what gives us hope, what compels us to tell the stories about them, what pulls our eyes to the horizon? What makes us aspire to better? What keeps us in the game? Dreams.
A favorite caveat of mine over the years has been, “How hard can it be?”
The two story, split-level 2,324 square foot home my family was living in at the time very much needed painting. I said, “How hard can it be?” It took me two years, I got it done.
Play the harp? “How hard can it be?” I went to Dusty Strings, rented a harp and bought a teach-yourself book. Yes, I did make progress, yet I needed a teacher and found the amazing Harper Tasche, who’s been with me many a year patiently teaching me. It has taken me decades, I’ve done it. Okay, it is ongoing yet I’ve got the basics~
Over the years, in watching people, in being involved in the legal system and social work, I noted that Justice is like Truth, it depends on who you ask. There’s a loaded statement. I could ask the prosecuting attorney, the parent of the young offender, or even myself, “What is justice in this case?” and get three very different answers.
I came to realize that we each choose a belief system. We can accept the one handed to us by parents, adapt it as we go to school, get married, enter a workplace, or a social community. Yet our beliefs are still a choice, even as they change.
Autumn Snohomish River. Photo by MDessein
‘Freedom comes in many forms’ is one I am just stepping into. Living in America, I definitely appreciate the freedoms I have to live where I choose, vote for whom I choose, work where I choose, and so many other freedoms. The deeper personal freedoms I am learning about are my freedom to say no when asked to do something, my freedom to simply be for a while, not listening to the ‘Mary, you should be doing xyz and being productive,” from my inner critic, and my freedom to be kind to myself.
A wonderfully generous contractor was here at my home recently helping me resolve an issue. I offered to help him with a literary project of his. Then I smiled and offered to play the harp for him on a family occasion. He smiled and said nothing. “Everyone needs a harpist at some time or another, they just don’t know it yet,” I told him. Indeed, don’t we all need a comfort, a balm, a beautiful experience to soothe us, to celebrate, or to enhance a moment we are in?
In packing and sorting recently, I found my graduation cap from the University of Washington-Bothell and the commencement program. Out of a class of 450, I was one of the top 20, the cum laude graduates. In telling my son about this, I remarked, “I forgot I was a genius!” He laughed for a full minute. “Mom, how could you forget that? I’m using that line!”
Graduation!
Are there times you have forgotten or had a stellar accomplishment pushed aside as the river of life had you surging along with family, work deadlines, financial obligations, neighborhood friction, local and national politics, and the list goes on. Remember your stellar achievements~
My daughter’s Siberian Husky had 11 puppies two months ago. Gorgeous little creatures. I’m getting a puppy! How hard can it be?
