fox in socks

Ever since Annalise began to crawl, she gravitated toward the many (many!) books in our house.  She was pulling them off shelves and flipping through them almost immediately.  And when she started walking a few months ago, there really was no stopping her.  To the books she would go.

Of course, I can't describe the elation I feel about this.  When asked what my daughter's favorite toys are, the answer is usually "books, Minnie Mouse, her caterpillar pull toy, and books."  She's fascinated by the sound pages make as they are flipped. She likes her board books, too, for chewing mostly, but also the bright pictures - she's started pointing at them and saying "dat?" to get answers from us.  Need a distraction during a diaper change?  The mini board book collection she has is perfect.

In the last couple of weeks, she's started searching for specific books and putting them in our hands to be read.  The two most popular are "Sleepytime with Rory" by Chris Friden and "Fox in Socks" by Dr. Seuss.  

I know from personal experience that repetition like this is great for the budding reader.  Yes, she's far away from that stage, but this is all instructive in one way or another for her tiny mind.  Who knows what wonders in literature lie in her future, all because she started out by asking us ("Dat-da, dee?" or "Mum-mum, dee?")  if we would read her favorite books to her again and again.

So no matter how many times we put Rory to bed with Flicker, or how many beetle battle puddles my tongue trips over, I'm happy to comply with my daughter's requests. 

third fencepost

Once upon a time, I was a Girl Scout.

I have so many fond memories of my 12 (!!) years in Scouting that I could honestly dedicate this blog to little else.  Mom came up to me one day, right at the beginning of first grade, and said to me and my friend Oni, who stayed at our house sometimes after school, "How would you girls like to be Brownies?"  And I remember jumping up and Oni jumping up and both of us giggling and excited.  We definitely wanted to be Brownies!

Mom was my troop leader all through Brownies.  Then we moved to Missouri, and I joined a Junior troop there for the short time we stayed.  Then it was back to Oklahoma, and I was an active Junior there, too.  Camping, cookie sales, crafts, all-nighters with dear, dear friends.  There are so many stories there.

When I crossed over to Cadettes, however, well, that was when the fun really started.

Cadette Troop 121 on one of our
many adventures

Not many girls stay involved once they hit junior high.  I joined a Cadette troop that was, I believe, no more than seven or eight strong at the beginning.  It was the best possible troop experience I think anyone could have.  The leader was a young woman, a teacher, named Leanna.  She was living at home with her folks, Barbara and Bob, who were also really involved in Scouting - both Girl Scouts and, until their son was no longer involved, Boy Scouts.  Barbara and Bob served as co-leaders.  

"Ladybug" at Camp Kate Portwood
in Altus, OK, spring 1994

We were a camping, crafting, cookie-selling kind of troop.  If there was something we could do, we did it.  I learned a lot about leadership, about friendship, about teamwork - this family of Girl Scout leaders taught us all so much.  

Barbara, or "Ladybug" as she was affectionately known, was a force to behold.  She was the consummate volunteer, and she loved kids.  She loved showing us what she knew, whether it was camp cooking or sewing or skits or songs.  She was a wonderful woman who helped show me a bigger world, and I remember her with a lot of love.  

Barbara, and Leanna, were incredibly influential women in my life during a period where it was difficult to find connections.  Adolescence sucks, as I'm sure you'll all remember.  Being a Girl Scout, in that troop, with those ladies (and my wonderful friends, especially Keri Dawn and Juanita), was life-altering, in the best ways.  

A postcard from Our Chalet in
Switzerland, dated October 2000

Barbara kept in touch over the years - I got the occasional postcard from overseas adventures, from trips she and Bob took to visit friends or do Girl Scout things.  I got Christmas letters and sometimes other notes. And then, after a long period with little contact, we reconnected over Facebook.  You can't tell me social media doesn't serve a greater purpose - being back in touch with Barbara and Bob and Leanna, while it hasn't been extensive contact and I haven't seen any of them in nearly twenty years, has been incredible.

Fifteen months ago, Barbara went to the doctor for an eye exam, and came out with a diagnosis of brain cancer.  She was given eleven weeks to live.  She beat the cancer back with radiation and chemo and a ton of prayer from warriors she knows literally all over the world.  But the Lord called her home this morning.  I found out from Leanna on Facebook while I was, ironically, doing something the two of them taught me to do - leading a meeting of women.

All day long, as I was out doing the things that I feel Girl Scouting, and especially Barbara Thompson, taught me to do, I thought of her, and her laugh, her irrepressible optimism and good attitude.  Her encouragement, her determination, her giving spirit.  

We learned a song, my last summer in Troop 121, that has been in my head all day.

"I've been sitting here thinking about leaving,

Just when I wanted to stay the most.

So I went outside and left a piece of my heart

Buried by the third fencepost.

When tomorrow morning comes

I'll be smiling

Though I might feel a little down.

Though my body's leaving,

I'll still be around."

Rest in peace, my dear, dear friend.

going forward

I am at a crossroads.

This blog has actually been a few different things since I started it.  Way back when, it was a pretty tame "cooking" blog.  And it was a "musings" blog.  Then, during my mother's last summer, it was a blog for grief.

I have no idea what it is now, except an empty blog.

Life, lately, is as expected.  Messy and busy and noisy, routine but unplanned, mostly without structure.  That's about to change - I'm taking on part-time work as a kind of IT efficiency guru two days a week, and thus begins a pattern for Annalise's toddlerhood.  I spent the better part of last week researching child care options and preschool - preschool! - and woke up Saturday thinking, when did this happen?  When did we become parents?  That is, undoubtedly, not the last time I will think that, and it certainly was not the first.

Is this worth writing about?  Maybe.

Going forward, this blog may just stay here as is, a kind of testament to making it through the last year and a half.  I would like to say I have an idea for continuing - and I do - but whether I have the time and the real motivation to do anything remains to be seen.

The funny thing about writing professionally has been that my own, more personal writing took a serious nose-dive.  Anything I wasn't, am not, getting paid to write languishes.  That's sad.  That's really sad.  It makes me think of how people in deep academic study find that they no longer read for pleasure.  The act of reading to learn eliminated the thirst to read for no reason at all.

Does the act of writing for profit eliminate the need to purge oneself of an overabundance of words?   I wonder.

For now, I hit "publish," and see what else may come.

one year

In thinking about what to post, I found myself dwelling on this odd fact of today.  It's August 19, and it has been one year exactly since my mother passed away.

I thought today might be an emotional wreck of a day; I thought maybe I'd find a way to commemorate it beyond writing, in what I cooked for dinner or what I watched on television or what I read or something.

But it was a very typical Sunday.  We got up for church, took the longer route home, played with Annalise, took naps and watched sports.  Coincidentally, the Yankees are playing the Red Sox tonight and they're winning - because Mom would not have it any other way, of course.

I haven't been melancholy or really even sad, and I wondered why.

Not that it took much to figure that out.  August 19 has the fact of Mom's death - but other days have the distinction of being the really terrible days.

September 9, 2008 was the day she sent me an email confirming that she had ALS.  Mother's Day 2008 was the day I knew that she did.  I think those two dates stand out as the absolute worst for me; those were the days I knew I was losing her, because there is no coming back from ALS.  Not yet, and maybe not ever.

Thanksgiving 2008.  The last time Mom and I went shopping together - we went to the mall to find Christmas stockings for my house

Christmas 2008.  The only time Mom ever got to see my house and spend Christmas with us in Austin.

January 12, 2009 was the last time she sent me an email - it was to ask if I could find her a Texas flag for her garden and to ask what I wanted for my birthday.

In November 2009, Mom went to the hospital for pneumonia for the third time in two months, and didn't make it out until January 2010.  She coded upon arrival at the hospital and Dad had a huge fight with the doctors over whether to take Mom off a ventilator.  She had to get a tracheotomy as a compromise.  This was the start of the final decline - she had at least one stroke during that time, and she also had problems with dementia.  When she came home in January, she never left her bed again.

March 3, 2010.  The last time anyone told me that Mom laughed.

July 27, 2010, the doctors told Dad they thought Mom had lung cancer.  Then in August they decided maybe she didn't.  Then, when she passed, they confirmed that she did.

All of this to say, it's been more than a year.  It's been nearly four years, in reality.  There are too many anniversaries and too many stumbling points, things that make me miss her and hurt that she's not here.  August 19 is the day that she was set free - she no longer had to go through this, and she was released of all pain and suffering and doubt.  She opened her eyes in a better world.

One year.  This isn't everything I want to say, but it's enough for the moment.

hometown

Given that I'm such a fanatic about my adopted home state, it comes as a surprise to an awful lot of people when I reveal that I'm actually from Kansas City.

It usually comes to light because I meet someone from Missouri, and we get to talking about it, going to the Plaza at Christmas and about barbeque and jazz and the hellish commute from the KC airport to whatever suburb they live in.  Occasionally, though, it will come out when we're talking baseball.  

I've waxed poetic about the New York Yankees often enough, but that's a different kind of nostalgia and love, wrapped up in memories of my mom.  The Kansas City Royals were my first love.  You know what they say about first loves.  

I was five years old when the Royals last won the World Series.  And I remember it, in the fuzzy, warm way you remember those formative happy things in your life.  I was obsessed with the game, thanks to guys like George Brett and Bret Saberhagen and Hal McRae and Steve "Bye-Bye" Balboni.  I remember the pride that came with that win, and I remember wanting to be a baseball player when I grew up.  The Royals were my team for a long, long time.

When I was nine, I got to take a tour of what was then called "Royals Stadium" and I made a huge deal out of finding THE SPOT on the bench where I knew my hero, George Brett, always sat.  That summer, my parents took all four of us kids to see the Royals play the Indians - and I remember odd things about that day.  I had told my grandmother that I wasn't so sure the Royals were going to win that day (the Indians had been on a streak, I think) and she lectured me about being loyal to one's home team.  I remember that Bret Saberhagen pitched that day, and that the Royals did lose - and that the pitcher for Cleveland was Greg Swindell, the Texas Longhorn pitcher (my husband and I tracked this down - Swindell only pitched once in Kansas City, and it was that day).  I remember Bo Jackson waving to the crowd, I remember losing my voice cheering for George Brett (because he was RIGHT THERE, at first base), and I remember very clearly the smell of hot dogs and cotton candy and my mom saying repeatedly that we didn't need any of that "spun sugar."  I also think that may have been the one day they let us try it, though.  

You don't forget your first time.

The Royals aren't the same team they were even in 1989.  They've not been much more than a spoiler team, the team you're "supposed to" beat and that might mess up your division lead down the stretch, but they certainly won't be there in October to give you grief.  And I moved on to the Rangers and the Yankees, but the Royals have this place in my heart.  I remember going to an Oklahoma City 89ers game once, and Steve Balboni was there in the dying days of his career, and our whole family was cheering wildly for him, the way you can and do at a minor league game, and we none of us cared who else was on the field that day.  I have a powder blue George Brett jersey t-shirt that doesn't really fit me well, but I wear anyway, and a Kansas City pennant I got at that first game, and a commemorative team poster from the 25th anniversary of that one wonderful World Series victory.  Those are my only Royals relics, because somewhere along the way my Bret Saberhagen Starting Line-Up figure got lost or sold and my baseball cards were scattered to the winds.  

George Brett was a Kansas City Royal for 21 years, his whole career, and when he's on television like he has been in the last couple days, while Kansas City gets its last hurrah, it's hard not to feel a rush of glee and joy and fierce pride, because those boys were tough and they were good and they were so fun to watch.  

While MLB passes through Kansas City this week and baseball fans everywhere are oogling Kauffman Stadium from afar, I'm watching and thinking about all of my family there, and about how baseball and my family are the same thing to me.  I'm thinking of Mom and Dad at that first-ever game, and all the games after.  Mom's in my head tonight - "Michele, there he is!  That's Bye-Bye Balboni!  Stand up and cheer!"

--

A last thought.  Last week, on the Fourth of July, my dad's uncle Patty Joe passed away.  He'll be buried this week in Kansas City.  I miss my Kansas City family, who I never see enough.  The last time I was there was also the last time I saw my great-uncle, when Randy and I went with my grandparents to take him to dinner for his birthday.  Patty Joe was one of the great characters, and he'll be missed quite a lot.