Messenger Bag

Bag for B:

Resurrection

I'm a notorious plant murderer. I can't help it. No plant is safe in my vicinity. My mother in law had a grass green thumb and my dad is a master at coaxing tomatoes and basil from the earth. I imagine a wanted poster hanging in every greenhouse from here to Pennsylvania, warning all gardeners to be on the look out for the nefarious plant killer.

For Mother's Day I asked for (yes, I asked for), two hanging pots of flowers to put in front of the house. My children and husband looked apprehensive. Their eyes searched my face for clues that I was joking. I told you I had a reputation. But they acquiesced and bought the plants. I can't even tell you what they are, but they are fairly common little flowers, in purple and white, my favorite colors. They went right outside onto my little flower stand that I hadn't used since I brought a geranium to its knees in 2004.

I watered them, and the kids enjoyed helping. We bought a little watering can. We left it outside right by the flowers. We watched them and watered them. And the pretty purple flowers began to shrivel. They turned brown. Their stems looked dried up and puny. I watched them die a slow and painful death. When we poured water into the pot, it streamed right out the bottom, its soil was so hard. But I couldn't throw it away. The poor dead Mother's Day plant smacked of failure. Putting that mass of sad leaves in the trash would signal my complete ineptitude.

The pot sat on the picnic table in the backyard, taunting me all summer long with its brown limbs and cracked earth. Every time I looked at it, a part of my gasped with despair.

But.

Last week, as I sat at the kitchen table, drinking my coffee and surveying the scene of the backyard, I caught a glimpse of purple in my peripheral vision. Wha? I'm used to brown out there, not purple. A closer inspection revealed that in fact, my dead plant had resurrected itself. There were new shoots and blooms springing crazily out of the dead dry soil. As if the plant did not accept dying. As if it didn't understand dead plants don't regrow.

Lately, I've been feeling a little like that "dead" plant. My roots can't get enough water and my blossoms have faded. I haven't had the energy to turn my face toward the sun and I'm waving the white flag. Just this morning, I was shaking my fist at God and all His people whose lives seem to be falling right into perfect place while I seemingly spin my wheels looking for a way out that won't reveal itself. The house is falling apart, school fees are overwhelming and it just seems too much.

After my little pity party ended, I marched that plant back out front, to the flower hanger, with it's blossoming white friend. They looked so cheery and purposeful. So resolute in their return to life. That plant reminded me to hope. That plant wasn't dead. Some old dead bits needed to be removed and the new growth isn't all big and showy. But it's brave, and new, and tender, and...there. And I will rise again and there will be a solution and my roots will be refreshed and I will be ready for the next heat wave.

New Goodies

Here is my fashion model, modeling a new embroidery design. I love this design for all kinds of reasons, and on all kinds of embroiderables. If you've invited one of my kids to a party this summer, most likely this was the gift. Pick your letter, pick your colors. I love dots.

This is a piece of vinyl that I cut Abby's name out of. The vinyl is lightly adhesive and sticks to the wall in the kitchen, showing through my fun new pain color. Also? You can see that I have written with chalk on this little speech bubble. It's her new weekly home calendar.

Cool, right?

Accident Residue

A few weeks ago, our 11 year old suffered a minor injury in a very unminor way. She fell from the slide at the pool and passed out in the water, in the arms of her friend. I have not written about this event because, frankly, it scared the crap out of me. You will forgive the crude phraseology since it truly is one of those scenes that unfolds horrifically in slo-mo every time it comes to mind. To top it off, every single emotion that was crammed into that incredibly short interval from fear to comfort overwhelms me on an annoyingly regular basis.

Cut to today...weeks after her fall, and surely over a span that would allow her newly inhibited mother to have healed. Right?

Tubing on the lake always makes me nervous. It reminds me of learning to drive with my dad; the most important lesson he taught me his favorite and most oft-repeated lesson was that he was less concerned with what I was doing and more concerned with what "the idiots" around me were doing. On special occasions, those idiots made the transition to even lower life forms than I feel it's appropriate to admit here. I will say I learned some colorful language from Pops.

Back to tubing...so on the lake I watch all around us, cutting a wide swath with my mama bear eyes, trying to ensure no other boat comes within a football field of my precious cargo. And the kids know their cues: how to signal faster, slower, okay and stop. The girls, 9 and 11, were cruising along happily today while their father, my husband, sped about trying to create wakes for them. And then he flipped them, much to their delight. And my subsequent horror.

The boat dropped from under me, my heart thumped inside me, desperate to make sure they were fine.

They were fine. They loved it. They were laughing. I felt stupid. Although I did notice a look on the face of the 9 year old. She felt what I felt; I am certain. She looked about for her sister in a panic, wanting the same confirmation I wanted. I needed to know, and so did little sister, that the big girl landed safely in the water, did not hurt her head, had not passed out, was not bleeding from anywhere....

And in that moment I knew we, my middle child and I, were still not free from the trauma of that day. The one who was injured remembers little of her accident. The rest of us will not soon forget what we felt on that day. I suppose time is the only eraser for the erratic and consuming emotions, and my desire, my goal, is to make it okay for the sister, and for me, to talk about it as much as possible.

Which is why I finally wrote about the day my girl was hurt.

Up and Coming

Last night, as the 5 YO could not sleep from inexplicable ear pain, and we fruitlessly tried to comfort him, I wrote a gorgeous post. I mean. Gorgeous.

Then, sleep came to all of us and with it went my lovely little vignette. I wish I could remember what it was to be about. I got nothing. Not even a clue...could have been community, Bible Study, self-talk, finding my niche...who the heck knows.

Since I want to keep my writing mojo going (or to get it started....) here is a little list of goodies I've been working on. Pictures forthcoming...someday.

Totally cool vinyl wall speech bubbles with a cutout of my kids' names. The coolest part is? I can write on them with chalk. Chalk. I know! So each kid has a bubble on the wall in the kitchen and their weekly schedules are posted and updated. And? And? The wall color shows through where the names are cut out. Totally.

Next up I have the cutest oilcloth monogrammed mini yard/garden flag. Is there no end to the cute? Pray tell me no! The one I made for our yard is a big background of black gingham, with a smaller cut of hot pink lace on top of which sits an even smaller slice of black dots boldly emblazoned with a hot pink L...you know for our last name.

Putting the Sweet in Sugar Lake

The Lake. Sugar Lake. A tiny little patch of happy in Pennsylvania where our family has had a cottage, this cottage, for 109 years. I can still see my bare feet, blackened from the hot tar from the road, running up those stairs, a stinky hot mess of a kid loving her summer.

When I'm there, when I think of it, images float into my mind. This is what I see.

• Playing Trivial Pursuit on the screened porch
• Tin cups in bright colors
• Fighting over who would get the turquoise towel
• Carving our names into mushrooms Grandma found with us.
• Wearing my first bikini
• Swimming in the lake, standing on old inner tubes, playing king
• Eating all my favorite foods, nary a thought to my waist line
  

Makes me smile.

Now I live 1000 miles from this childhood idyll and being there is worth ever hard earned mile. My joy comes from two sources. The first is simple remembrance. Some people who have enjoyed the cottage are no longer living, some I haven't seen in over 20 years. The whole family doesn't always get there every summer but no matter who is there, we still, ALWAYS play Trivial Pursuit. Walking in the slamming back door into the kitchen is entering a family museum. My dad's high school art work, my aunt's books, old fishing rods. Even the curtains, made by hand by my great grandmother, still hang.

I'm awash and downright glowy with nostalgia. I've smeared vaseline on the lens of history and only the beautiful remains. But whatever.

Because the second source of joy in being there is watching my kids. Five of the seven cousins scrambled around the yard all day and well into the night on July 4th. The ambled from one activity to the next; from art on the porch to swinging, races in the yard, smoke bombs, fishing, bug catching. The whole bit. They wake up and play. All. Day. Long. And they go to bed tired.

It may sound like I'm romanticizing a pile of wood and glass and nails. Maybe I have. Nothing wrong with a little childhood idyll.

Make New Friends and Keep the Old?

photo credit: Simon Howden

Remember that song? My kids learned it in kindergarten. The song asks us to make new friends and keep the old, one is silver and the other gold. What if the old friends are also the new friends?

I found myself asking this question all day Tuesday and into Wednesday. My family loaded up the car and hurtled from Tulsa toward Pittsburgh, PA (City of Champions). Since this trip is over 1000 miles, we stop on the way to presevere parental sanity and some semblance of routine; usually we stay at a hotel with a pool. But this year, after reconnecting on Facebook with a long lost friend whose home was almost a midway point, we planned to stay with her.

My emotions jiggled inside me; I was nervous, excited, anxious, giggly, happy and curious. I met Kristin when I was 19 years old, almost 20 years ago. We had an intense friendship over several years of college and wrote and spoke regularly. Then we graduated, married, had babies and lost touch. I wondered during our drive to her house what seeing her again would be like.

I knew the big chunks: kids, marriage, struggles, the usual. But did she still love music? What was her husband like? How about her kids? Would we have anything to talk about? Would my husband feel totally out of place?

Turns out, Kristin, like me, is different than she was all those years ago. And strikingly the same. Thoughtful, intelligent, deliberate and kind. I honestly can't remember what drew me to her in the first place, but I do know what draws me to her now. So I find myself with a brand new old friendship. One that I hope will grow.