A Reminder

I was reminded this week that it has been a full year since we welcomed home our son-in-law and his troops. A year since we paced in anticipation of their arrival, since we waved our flags, made posters, held the hands of the 'wives' and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters. A year since we stood in the hangar and let the emotion of that day wash over us and spill into the air in the form of cheers and tears.

In this year, this very full year, so much has changed in our lives. Events have occurred, the holidays came and went, the seasons changed, jobs
changed, transfers happened and new
life was started. We breathed again. We relaxed. They were home and they were safe.

The wars continue, their controversy spelled out daily in the news, the arguments over whether we should be there or not go on and while we care, while we want it to be over, want everyone home, I am embarrassed to admit that it became somewhat distant for me again. Distant in the sense that those soldiers I know personally are not in danger, they are away from the front lines, they are home.

My complacency was shaken, shaken violently a few weeks ago when we received word that someone was injured, injured beside others who were killed, someone who means a lot to one of our soldiers, someone who by the nature of her relationship with one of ours, means a lot to us.

The sacrifice our soldiers make for us, their selflessness, their willingness to leave all they know and love and bear the burden of freedom overwhelms me and I am grateful once again.

Unexpected Time

When you live on the coast, when the ocean and the tides are such an intrinsic piece of your life, you often take the rise and fall of the tide for granted and before you know it days and weeks have passed and you have barely noticed the salt in the air. Tonight we not only noticed, we breathed it and lived it and as I write this my body hasn't fully recognized the fact that it is solid earth under my feet and not the rise and fall of the swells of the ocean.

Today was supposed to be a quiet day at home, a day of puttering, a day of doing all those tasks and chores that need to be completed but take time to do. A day of weeding the garden, mowing the lawn and finally getting all the laundry washed, dried, folded and put away. Instead, an invitation to spend the day on the ocean brushed the chores aside and replaced the tasks with time and sunshine and laughter and family.

It is hard to describe the ease of our time with family. Our time with those who know us so well, have known us for so long and love us no matter what we say or do. Those who have a history with us, a history filled with time and events and people and love and laughter. A history filled with each other.

Today was a day that began as ordinary and ended filled with the extraordinary. With moments on the ocean and then beside a fire. With time together with those we love. Time that lets us know we are connected and loved. Time we are fortunate to have. Time we treasure.

Please Pull For Service

Today I took a step, not a giant step a little step, a step back in time. Back to a time when fall approached and school was about to start. Back to a time when my mother took my sister and I to get school shoes at Roy's Shoe Shop.

Roy isn't there any longer but when I pushed the door open, the door covered with signs and stickers that indicate the store hours, handwritten on cardboard, the bells above the door and the aroma of old leather, shoe polish and some mixture of cements and glues ambushed me and I was drawn into the shop as if through a tunnel that led to a time machine.

Across the floor, past the vinyl covered chairs with the silver arms and above the counter the string with a handle made from the piece of a shoe mold holds a note that reads, "Please pull for service". I hadn't thought of that sign for more than forty years but when I saw it, when I held it in my hands an tugged on it, the sound of the bells at the other end of the string, the bells that hang in the working part of the shop sounded the same as they did when I was a little girl and my mother was the one to pull the cord. They sounded like my childhood.

The man who came through the door wasn't Roy, or Roy's long time assistant (I never learned his name) but his smile and approach were similar to Roy, a shy smile, an unhurried walk, calloused and black/brown stained hands, an expert inspection of my shoes in need of repair.

The orange ticket, handwritten with a Bic pen, is my ticket to return again to my past. It is my assurance that I can go back again, that I can walk in to that place, step back in time. I don't really care that the shoes I left there will be repaired (they aren't all that comfortable anyway), what I care about now is that my orange ticket will take me back there, take me through those doors and back through time to my childhood.

Beauty

Even after living my entire life (so far) in Maine, I am not tired of how beautiful our state is. Every morning I get on the interstate and as I round the corner the view never fails to please me, it does not lose its beauty. My parents appreciated Maine, too and passed that to me.

When we were kids, my sister and I would sit on the rocks at Two Lights with our parents and watch the waves for hours. On rides, either family trips or Sunday drives, we'd point out the horses and cows, or count the birds on a wire (I always claimed to see birds on a wire whenever we played Car Bingo.....we didn't need a DVD player, we had windows) and watch the forest or ocean pass. In Rockland with our cousins we had the boats in the harbor, in Winter Harbor with the Billetts we had the ocean. And now, every morning I have the ocean, the forest and a variety of pine trees, birds and meadows that I count on to start my day.

So when people ask me if I mind my hour long commute every day, I think of Mackworth Island in Casco Bay and how it appears to float on the ocean in the morning sun, the bald eagle that overlooks the wetlands from his perch in a tree at Exit 43 and the stand of pine trees at mile marker 41. I hold these images as close as I hold the images from my childhood and say I don't mind the commute at all. And then, with those thoughts in my mind, I think how lucky I am that tomorrow I get to make the drive again.

Reunion

I don't necessarily have the fondest memories of High School, achieving the height of 6 feet in Middle School (or Junior High as it was called at the time) didn't lend itself to strong feelings of security. But tonight, 38 years post graduation, I sat with more than a dozen of the 'girls' who share that past with me, that past of homework, tests, finals, teachers, leaving campus for lunch, boys, sports, boys and boys. We sat together in the evening sunshine and talked of what was, what has been and who we are now, now that we are the parents and grandparents. Now that we are comfortable in our own skin, in our lives.

We talked of then, of who was who and we talked of now, of jobs and husbands and children and grandchildren and 'what was his name' and 'didn't she marry...' and 'whatever happened to..', but mostly we talked of time, that sweet measurement of life that moves faster than we thought it could.

I don't have the fondest memories of High School, but tonight I built a memory, one that will become a fond one. One that picks away at the other memories, those that aren't so fond, one that brings to my life a group of women with lives rich and strong, lives filled with people and jobs and friends and memories. Lives well lived.

Grammy Time

I seek moments of joy in my life and the good news is that I find them. I find them in the ordinary days, the ordinary actions of our family. I find them in the moments when we're together doing ordinary things. I find them in the routine and rhythm of our days and again in the special moments, those special times when we're together. I find them in my grandchildren.

A Nudge

I have been nudged. You know the gesture, the communication that has no need for words because the people involved know what the other is thinking and confirm it with a physical connection, a touch, a nudge. I never gave nudging much thought before this but now recognize it for the intimate sign it is, the gentle message it sends from one to another. The level of 'knowing' that rests in it. The direction it gives. In my case, the nudge pointed me back here.

I miss my mother still. Sometimes with a passing thought that brings a smile, other times with overwhelming grief that twists me with the intensity I felt in those first hours after her death. Not knowing when which moment will occur is the difficulty with grief.

My life is different now. Much has changed. Some of it is simple, a new job, a new role, a new grandchild on the way, a new boat. But much of it is harder to explain. Harder to grasp. I am not who I was and I wonder what she would think of that.

On a TED video (if you haven't seen TED.com check it out, great speakers on any number of topics) a speaker challenged the audience to try something for 30 days. Anything for 30 days. It could change your life, he claimed, or, if not you can do anything for 30 days.

What does a 30 day challenge have to do with my nudge? It's simple...I will post.

What will you do?