Storied Gifts: Storied Observations

The Swift Kick of Hope

While I was away we experienced the arrival of our first grandchild. It was a whirlwind adventure that took my daughter-in-law on a heightened birthing adventure, and sent my son racing back from business out of town to try and make it in time.

Thankfully all turned out fine and the little nucleus of a family is adjusting together. Their baby girl arrived a few weeks early weighing almost 7 pounds and all three of them were there for the birth. I am not a baby obsessed or child focused person, but I find myself happily looking at her. .. for hours. I realize it is probably that grandparent mindset kicking in, but I also think that because I don't spend much time (really none) with small children, I'm caught up in her charms.

That said, I admit to having had a bit of an attitude toward those grandparents who absolutely glow in adoration for their grandchildren. As I've listened to them gush I wondered, "How can you be so happy given the state of the world? There is violence that never stops and the planet is being ruined and may not sustain this future generation you're so excited about."

And even though I know it isn't fair and that being positive if preferred to being morose, I've judged these joyful, exuberant, doting grandparents as "crazy," even bordering on "selfish" because they couldn't seem to look beyond the end of their grandparent noses.

Now there is this reality, this new child named Athena Lulama. Athena for the Greek goddess of wisdom and Lulama which comes from her mother's South African language of Tsonga and means moral. I look at her and I'm transfixed. How could I not be while looking at beauty?

I love this photo of Athena taken by my daughter. Athena looks so determined, with all the might of her six days of life outside of her mother's womb she is demanding to be taken into account. "I am here. I deserve my chance to try."

And so little girl I will dare to hope because you are here. I'll be be your grandmother, your support as you take your turn at life and do all that I can to help you while I'm here. In your swaddled and delightful presence you provide me the kick in the butt to optimistic for the future.

Posted by Sherry on May 02, 2013 at 07:34 PM in Just My Stories, Storied Inspirations, Storied Observations | Permalink | Comments (3)

Making Beauty

Life can be sloppy so it behooves us to find the beauty in it. I'm thinking a lot about beauty today, the ways it is present, and those places I help nudge it along. I find beauty in:

Nature

People

Words

Music

Art

Food

Work

Architecture

Pets

Home

I enjoy the beauty of home but would like to create more order of the stuff in the spaces there. I was particularly inspired by this photo collection of 40 Inspiring Work Spaces. Unfortunately, my present office leans more to William Blakely's but I wouldn't mind a bit of E.B. White instead.

Where do you find beauty? Where do you create it?

photo by purplemattfish

Posted by Sherry on April 22, 2013 at 10:44 PM in Just My Stories, Storied Inspirations, Storied Observations | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yard Work

I was going to start out by explaining yet another cop out post but then I realized not everything I write will be carefully thought out. Sometimes life is just happening and I'm posting about it.

It has been a hectic few days. Now all I really want to do is hang out with a beer and some A Dong.

I mentioned the other day that I'm thinking about getting in shape, to do something about my elastic misshapen self. In the meantime, I just hired a guy 15 years OLDER than I am to rake my entire lawn.

This was no small project either as I didn't rake last fall, so it was a packed down mulchified leaf-dom mess covering a carpet of re-emerging creeping charlie.

Hopefully I'll get it together on Monday and get to walking so that next year I'll feel more like raking.

In the spirit of finding a physical outlet, I'm looking at all those Adult Summer Education classes and perhaps considering an exercise class . . . for elders. Yikes.

photo by Pete Hindle

Posted by Sherry on April 21, 2013 at 06:01 PM in Just My Stories, Storied Inspirations, Storied Observations | Permalink | Comments (0)

Glory Days

You know that bit about the guy with the beer belly sitting up to the bar stool regaling nearby listeners of his great days on the football field? Well, I think I officially have become THAT guy. It ratchets up more with each realization that there are things I can't do like I used to do.

I'm not physically the gal I was (who did not care or pay attention at the time) and can't just do some stuff without feeling the pangs that my body is older and out of shape.

I'd like to get more committed to health (I walk three times a week now in good weather) but I'll have to find a path, a real sustainable path. I don't think it can be taking supplements or kickboxing in gyms with tons of other folk, or avoiding everything white. No, I need to find a gradual but moving forward path to maintaining and improving what I have.

I'll think and explore. In the meantime, at least I have the walking routine for the summer and can walk with Bruce floating in my head.

photo sphilip1225

Posted by Sherry on April 20, 2013 at 07:54 AM in Just My Stories, Storied Inspirations, Storied Observations | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sing It Willie Nelson

Mostly because I can't stand watching anymore coverage on the news, because I'm in a waiting mode, and also because when I woke up for the third time this morning there was sunshine outside . . . sing it Willie!

photo hiromama

Posted by Sherry on April 20, 2013 at 06:52 AM in Just My Stories, Storied Inspirations, Storied Observations | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wrench is the Tool of the Day

I know that's how it goes but it still gets me. I'm puttering along with a "plan" and then life happens. It's all good and fine, this change of plans. I can't be public about it on websites or elsewhere which kills my little blabby self.

We took up vigil watching starting last night. I've not had a chance to write a post, but will report back to my mighty band of lovely readers as soon as details are official. In the meantime, we're covered in rain and gray skies, and even though we were wrenched out of our own agenda, it's a pretty cool tool time just the same.

photo by Chris Blakeley

Posted by Sherry on April 18, 2013 at 06:54 PM in Just My Stories, Storied Inspirations, Storied Observations | Permalink | Comments (0)

War Stories

A sleepover, early morning hours when all other topics are exhausted, we are girlfriends sharing our war stories. It's the proverbial swap when everyone is too tired to get up and go to bed, and wanting to keep at talking with nothing left to say. That is when we'd pull up your sleeve or show off our knees and reveal the details of our battle tattoos, our personal scars of past injuries.

I have four that have stuck around over time. Two are for "procedures" not worth mentioning, and one is on my right wrist but I don't remember how I got it. It's a line of about an inch-and-a-half long, a permanent reminder of an incident I don't recall.

The only scar that instantly conjures memory is the one right on the underside of my chin. If I pucker my face just right it rises up so that I can see it when looking at my reflection. I feel its raised surface when I rest my finger underneath my chin.

I've been told we lived in Pennsylvania at the time, 1966, so I was 4 or 5 years old. My mother was driving the car along a mountain road. It was winter. I was sleeping. She had two choices, slide headon into a school bus or take a chance heading off the road down the side of a mountain.

We certainly weren't wearing safety belts in those days. I woke up to the sound of metal slamming onto metal. My limp, relaxed body propelled forward where my face hit into the car's dashboard.

The next thing I recall is reclining on a stretcher in an ambulance, my mother looking down at me while bleeding from her chin. I was still sleepy and wanted to go back to sleep but she told me to stay awake.

From the ambulance I was lifted and rolled into bright light down the hall of a hospital. I remember an even brighter light shinning down on my face in a surgical room, feeling the warm of the light on my face. The doctor said I could tell him to stop anytime and he would.

I felt pressure applied to my chin, tugging, more warmth but not pain. Frightened, I whined for him to stop but he didn't.

It's weird what lingers but the memory stays with me along with that scar.

Do you know your scar stories?

photo by Nohch , certainly not my mountain location but how I kind of remember it looking from my childhood point of view.

Posted by Sherry on April 17, 2013 at 11:18 AM in Just My Stories, Storied Inspirations, Storied Observations | Permalink | Comments (0)

Music History

Listening to a piece of music is an audio museum. Even if I don't know the background story of the melody, I can almost imagine the people that would have enjoyed this music.

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Germany in 1685 and lived his life there as a musician and composer until 1750.

I think about how this music might have impacted the listeners of the day. A person's lifespan was most likely often shorter, but individuals would have spent more time in silence and the rhythmic meditative activities of daily life. Would music have impacted their senses more profoundly?

How wonderful that through a simple click we can be transported back to the 18th century and reminded that even though humans can do terrible things, we also have the capacity to create beauty.

I'm staying in these thoughts the day after the tragic bombings in Boston and all the other sad news of violence throughout the world.

Posted by Sherry on April 16, 2013 at 07:28 AM in Just My Stories, Storied Inspirations, Storied Observations | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cooking and Writing

I'm doing the uncharacteristic thing and cooking a meal. Other than that, I've been writing chapter one of a client's life story. It's Monday, gray, colder than it would normally be for this time of year in mid-April and I could take a nap right now.

Some hours later . . . took a nap only to wake up and discover that two bombs have gone off at the site of the Boston Marathon. A terrible tragedy. Watching the news like most everyone I'm sure.

Hopeful for help and recovery to those injured. Hopeful that the authorities figure out who did this and why.

photo by Steve Rhodes

Posted by Sherry on April 15, 2013 at 09:57 PM in Just My Stories, Storied Inspirations, Storied Observations | Permalink | Comments (0)

Limitless Limits

DO IT. YOU CAN DO IT. JUST . . . DO IT.

We're told to reach, that the sky is the limit. Yet the sky has an end, places where layers turn into something upon something else.

We live in a culture where striving, and in particular winning, are celebrated. Even though, or maybe because we are weighted with the burdens of our flaws, short sighted in our view of ourselves and others.

We celebrate those who succeed in large and small ways. We love the story of try and try again, especially when there is a win at the end.

Our heroes are athletes and entertainers, and those hugely successful in commerce or who just have a lot of money.

But there are other heroes . . . the medicos, the teachers, the leaders of organizations and those in our own lives who we know to be good, better, and best.

We acknowledge our ancestors who survived and thrived. They give us hope and encouragement.

There is what the faithful call a miracle and the superstictious call good luck. Yet are there only a certain number of those? Does a fluke of nature or faith extend our limits?

Can recognizing limits be a good thing? Is that even acceptable? Just asking the question goes against my grain and seems like surrendering.

Are we tethered to our limits, or released by them to expand where we are limitless?

No answers today, just questions.

photo by Kaysha