A (Mostly) Grownup Party

How I wish I captured more photos to share the beauty of the gathering we hosted this weekend.  Five of my nearest and dearest friends (my “Women’s Group” or WG for short) invited their families to come celebrate our group and all the love and support we’ve given one another over for more than a decade.

There was an incredible vegan, mostly wheat-free feast of hearty healthy salads, burgers and “sausages,” grilled corn on the cob, and desserts to die for. I guess that pretty much explains why only a few photos were taken…  I was too “busy” eating, socializing and having fun!

Peggy, Stephanie, Bonnie, Erika, me, and Pam

Our Women’s Group is comprised of 6 women between the ages 40 and 60 and we came together 14 years ago to create an "intentional community." In the mad rush of today's world, we all found ourselves yearning for a place where we could slow down, relax, connect, and find meaning and support outside of our jobs and immediate families. For nearly 15 years, we have met twice a month over a shared meal in a structured format to celebrate, share, grieve, eat great food, talk, laugh until it hurts, weep until it feels better, and simply be. We’ve seen each other through so many important milestones and transitions:  new jobs, lay-offs, moves, marriages, divorces, births and deaths, children and grandchildren, the adoption and sad passages of beloved pets, and all those little moments in-between that ultimately matter so much. Stephanie, Bonnie, Peggy, Pam and Erika have become my extended family and I am so grateful for their unique perspectives in this sacred circle.

It brought such joy to look across our patio to see Stephanie's mom and Pam's mom chatting and laughing. And what fun to watch my son run around the yard like a wild man with Stephanie's three nephews while my girl quietly enjoyed the company of Erika's darling daughter.

A blurry bye-bye from Erika's adorable daughter and my sweet Sara (look, matching waves)! I can only hope that they grow up to have friendships as deep and fulfilling as I have been blessed to find.

Is she a super little cutie-pie or what?!

Friendships can come and go throughout life, but we are deeply committed to one another and to the concept of community and what this community brings to our lives, and our group has certainly stood the test of time. There's no doubt that we'll grow old together, watching life unfold its mysteries.

Kids and Boxes: A Love Story

Taking “Reduce, Re-use, Recycle” to a whole new level, my kids are crazy for boxes. Small ones often get wrapped up as mock presents, paper folded in every direction and held together with excessive tape, delivered by my silly little ones, brimming with anticipation for my (over)reaction when I open it up and discover an old toy or sometimes a lovely balled up piece of paper.

"Momma, we have a puh-rise for you."

"Just what I've always wanted! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"

Medium-sized boxes are perfect for endless games of “Delivery Guy” complete with many doorbell rings. There is a point at which I think I absolutely cannot take another DING DONG but when I open the door and see their faces looking just as excited as the first time and hear their goofy “special delivery” voices, I give in and we do it again.

Big boxes are in a whole other league. Much to my husband’s chagrin (hi Honey, hee hee), I have taken to casing out the neighborhood for Sears delivery trucks and pestering neighbors for their appliance boxes. Refrigerators are the best for obvious reasons, they are huge! The last fridge box we scored stuck around here nearly 6 months (again, much to my husband’s chagrin … sorry, Dear) but it wasn’t just collecting dust. It was decorated again and again, danced on, hammered on and cut up, arranged lengthwise for tunnels, upright for walls, and sideways for sliding… and that is not all… oh no, that is not all we can do with this box (sorry, too much “Cat in the Hat” ). Anyhow, this big brilliant box transformed into a super-sized puppet theater for Sara’s birthday and a “blast the bad guy” beanbag toss game at William’s superhero birthday. Twenty-some preschoolers at that party got the better of this box finally so it was unceremoniously laid to rest in our recycle bin. Poor box, looking back on it, I bet it could have had at least another 3 happy months with us. Sigh…

Fear not, washers and dryers don’t live forever and last week I intercepted some boxes while visiting a neighbor when her new ones were delivered (I haven’t been stalking her or anything, really). The kids were delighted (husband, not so much but he is an extremely good sport). Standing in these more squatty boxes then tipping them over was the favorite sport at first but today the kids drew windows and doors on so I could cut out their requested architectural details. Earlier, their game of Delivery-Guy had morphed into “Bad Guy Who Wants Your Money” (oops, guess I’m not always kind about the solicitors who come to the door) and they got a huge kick out of Momma calling the cops and pretending to arrest them. Therefore, said boxes were transformed into jails, later into houses, and who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Good Dog

“Happy” is his name.  We call him “Happy Dog.”  My mom named him after her faithful childhood companion and the name suits this lovely canine boy beautifully too.  Mom also says she named him “to remind people to be happy”...  It’s working.  

You can’t help but smile as he prances along seemingly aware of his cuteness, alert and curious, ready for the next ball to be thrown.

My Mom adopted him about a year ago and he quickly became a beloved family member. He has taught my animal-shy children (don’t know where they got that) to turn their fear into affection and delight toward dogs… (or I should say, at least toward dear Happy Dog).  Happy brings happiness.

Happy dug himself a little hole in the sand to stay cool at the beach

Sara admired his fine digging skills

Thanks, Mom… I get it now

I’ve always known my Mom loves me, never had a doubt about it. How much my Mom loves me, however, I don’t think I could truly grasp until having children of my own.  Nor did I fully appreciate all her efforts, enthusiasm, and exhaustion over the years until having kids myself (and I’m sure this appreciation will deepen even further once our kids are teens).

Tomorrow is my dear Mother’s birthday and it’s hard to know where to start when expressing my love, gratitude, and admiration of her. As a grandmother, she is generous, playful, involved, positive, affectionate and supportive. As a mother, she was (and still is) downright incredible.

Yes, that is a dove on her head... on vacation in California, my brother decided to put birdseed on her head.  Naturally, Mom thought this was hilarious and loved that the moment was captured on film.

My parents raised me and my brother in remote Glacier Bay, Alaska, until we were 7 and 10 respectively. When I say remote Alaska, I’m talking inside-the-boundaries-of-an-isolated-National-Park-remote and so many of the parenting “tricks” I use now to get a little break here and there simply weren’t available to her. She couldn’t swap play dates with friends (no other kids in the area), she couldn’t let us watch PBS Kids or pop in a DVD to keep us busy while she made dinner (no television), she couldn’t ask a family member or neighbor to watch us for a bit (family was on the east coast and we had no neighbors), it wasn’t easy to send us out to play on our own (black bears roamed through our back yard pretty regularly, not to mention the weather which was rainy or snowing about 10 months of the year) and she couldn’t even take us to the local library or a store for a change of scenery (no library and absolutely no stores—she actually had to order our groceries by boat—can you imagine?!) As I list these things, I realize I’m making the lack of so many things sound like a problem but it was quite the opposite. Living there and growing up there was absolutely ideal, it just took an extremely creative Mother to make it that way.

Smoked salmon, pine needles, cedar bark, sticky alder, and homemade bread are the smells of my childhood. Black bears, endless forest, snow-capped mountaintops, eagles, massive glaciers, enormous blue ice bergs carrying baby seals, and pods of Orca whales are the images I recall. Walking in beach grass taller than me, picking beach strawberries, salmon berries and wild blueberries, hearing the unmistakable sound of humpback whales’ exhalations, and witnessing the incredible sight and sound of a calving glacier are among my memories. Lucky:  that’s what I consider myself, very lucky and immensely grateful.

My “luck” continues to this day. I know I will never have to worry if my Mother is bored or lonely or somehow not thriving. She is enthusiastic and full of life like no other. She is an avid painter and potter successful in local galleries on the Olympic Peninsula (visit http://claythingsplus.blogspot.com  to see what she is currently working on—yes, my 76 year old mother is also a tech-savvy blogger!) and her work is remarkable. I could go on and on… and another day, I probably will.

Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you so much. Thank you for everything.

Mom and me on a recent trip to the beach. No birdseed in the hair but plenty of sand.