A Photograph of Emotions

I was surprised to receive this photo in the mail the other day from a distant relative. My dad’s cousin, Marilyn, pictured three from the right in the front row sent it to me with a lovely note about recently receiving two copies of the photograph and thought I would like one. She mentioned that she wasn’t sure of the year, which led me, the youngest in the photo, to quickly try to figure out. 

My train of thought went something like this….my parents were still married, so it had to be before 1985, my brother looks the same as a photo I have seen many times over the years of him after an accident that happened in the early part of summer 1984, but his leg cast is off, my hairstyle matches that of my 4th grade school photo, taken later in 1984. Must be 1984! 

The train then switches tracks….wow, that would make me just a year older than my daughter is now and my son just a year older than my brother was. 

Next track….oh my G-d we are ALL in the same photograph! ALL meaning my mom, dad, brother, sister and I. This may very well be the only photo I have of us all; my mom was always the one taking photos and my dad was never quite fond of being in photos. 

The train, remaining on the same track veers…oh my G-d we are ALL smiling! Of course my parents aren’t next to each other, but we are ALL smiling! 

After analyzing this photo deeper it occurs to me that this one photo, possibly the only photo of the five of us shows my family just as it was/is. My sister, the firstborn, has her arm around my mom, touching her, laughing, showing how close the two of them have always been, friends. My brother, in the middle, just as in birth, is a balance between our parents, trying not to rock the boat. Then there’s me, the baby of the family, sitting on my dad’s lap, smiling, happy to be with him, happy he is there. 

Not only is a picture worth a thousand words, but many emotions as well. What a gift to have arrived in my mailbox, many miles and years away.

A Parent’s Legacy

On Saturday I ran a half marathon. It was my fifth one, but each race is different. It had been a year and a half since my last half marathon and up until 11 weeks ago I had no plans to run another race of that distance. But than I heard about this race and what it was all about. Before I tell you the name of the race, I want to share with you the cause; because the catchy race name is not what drew me in. This inaugural race was founded by the daughter of a man who committed suicide two years ago. All money raised would go to a local organization/charity by the name of “Joe Was Just Joe,” named for another family’s son, who also committed suicide. http://joewasjustjoe.com/index.html The organization spends its money and time toward educating teenagers and young adults about suicide prevention. We’ve all had bad days, but imagine, and maybe you don’t even have to, if that day was so bad, or one of many so bad days that you believed the only thing that could make you happy again was if you were dead. 

People ask why I run and the answer is always the same. Because I can. Because, I have legs, because I am healthy, because I want to be healthier, because I feel great when it’s done, because I want to be a positive role model for my kids, and all kids, because I’m alive. Honestly, I run because I can. Because my body and mind are able to. So, on those training days I didn’t feel like running, because there are always days like that I thought about the cause of the race I was training for and I thought about how depression makes the simple task of getting out bed feel like you have a ton of bricks sitting on your chest making it impossible to get out bed. I ran because I could.

After spending two weeks on the injured list and not running, due to bruised ribs, and feeling a cold coming on the night before the race, I woke up early and went to run for all those whose lives were lost to suicide. I thought about the people who fought through depression by lacing up running shoes, or those who were running their first race or first half marathon that day and I showed up at the starting line.

I could tell you about how my knee started hurting at mile 8, or how I almost forget to pin my race number on, but instead I want to tell you about the woman I ran beside for just a short while whom I will always associate with this race. The back of her shirt said she was running in memory of her father, who likely had committed suicide. She motioned that she wanted to pass me and I said, “Go ahead you have more inner strength than I do.” She replied, “I’m not sure about that.” I smiled and said, “Your shirt tells me you do.” and she smiled back. I caught up to her just a few steps later and asked her if she minded if I asked her a question about her dad, she nodded. I asked her is she thought her dad would be proud of her or think she was crazy for running a half marathon. Now, this may sound like a rude question to you, but many people who do not run think runners are crazy, especially long distance runners. She smiled and said “he would be proud, definitely proud” of her. She then went on to share with me that he lived in La Crosse and was a runner who had run on this very same trail many times. I said, “Yes, he would be very proud then.” She said many of his nieces were running as well. My comment was, “It’s his legacy.” She smiled and her eyes lit up, I think she liked the sound of it. We went our separate ways, but she left me thinking about my own mother and how I consider her writing to be her legacy and I thought about how I hadn’t posted to this blog in a long time and for the next mile or so I thought about how I wanted to get back to writing more; for my mom. After the race was over I saw several people wearing a shirt that matched hers and they piled into a van (or SUV) with a Minnesota license plate…..they honored her dad by driving to run a race near where he lived to run on the same ground on the same trail he had run years before.

Oh and the name of the race? Mini Donut Half Marathon, named for Oly who according to his family (the organizers of the race) was at his happiest when he was making and selling mini donuts.

Love Story

Twenty years ago on January 28 I met my husband, I was a nineteen year old college sophomore. Twenty years ago on Valentine’s Day I had my first Valentine. I wasn’t sure what to expect with our relationship being so new so I had low expectations. He gave me a card and we took a walk, he on his crutches with a sprained ankle, around the pond behind my dorm. My room overlooked that pond and every spring ducklings were born and raised on that pond. I loved that pond. I vividly recall spending time alone mourning the death of my maternal grandfather while sitting aside that pond when he passed away in March of my freshman year after a short battle with stomach cancer.

Twenty years ago in late March of that year I went home for Spring Break and was told by my dentist that I needed to have my wisdom teeth removed after returning to school. I was crushed, not only because I had never had surgery of any kind, but because I felt lonely. College was 1,000 miles away and I had no car and zero knowledge of oral surgeons in my college town. 

I had no choice but to ask him, after he insisted, to drive me home post surgery. The days following the removal of my wisdom, a little over two months from meeting my first Valentine I decided I wanted to marry someone like him. Our relationship was new and I was 19 years old so I didn’t think it would be him! The moment I fell in love with him was the night I asked him to bring me a banana, my first solid food following my surgery, from the dining hall. After dinner he hadn’t come. I was disappointed and annoyed. Why ask if he could bring me anything from dinner if he wasn’t go to?! Then an hour or so later after the dining hall closed he rang the bell to my room from downstairs. I went down to open the door only to see him holding an entire bunch of bananas! There were none in the dining hall that night, he said, so he went to Walmart, at least a 15 minute drive from campus and bought me an entire bunch! What a guy!! Up until this point in my life I’m not sure I knew his “type” existed, at least it hadn’t in my life, not in the form of a boyfriend anyway.

So, here we are twenty years later with two respectful, compassionate and empathetic kids, going strong and I woke up sick as a dog on Valentine’s Day! (I never really met a sick dog, but for a lack of a more descriptive phrase I’ll use that one). My daughter wanted to bring me breakfast in bed with a get well card, as she had when her dad was sick the weekend before. I had no appetite and the idea of toast, as my husband suggested, sounded like swallowing sandpaper on my already sore throat. I told him, however, that bananas and strawberries sounded good. A few minutes later this amazing daughter of ours carried in a tray with sliced bananas her dad, my amazing husband, cut into hearts and strawberries she cut to look like hearts. 

This Valentine’s Day marks the year I have exceeded the years of having a Valentine versus not having one. 

That pond, humorously named Palmer “Lake” is now filled in and more University buildings sit atop it. My husband and I’s love has lasted longer than that pond. Twenty years later he is still my Valentine and has blessed me with two little loving Valentines, leaving me never to be Valentine-less again.

Meet Tiffany

In 1977 my parents built their dream house. Just before I turned two years old we moved in. My mom bought a Tiffany light for this 1970s color-schemed house. In the kitchen for ten years hung this red, orange and marigold yellow light over the table that sat on a linoleum floor of similar colors surrounded by marigold yellow appliances. 

After we moved the decor changed to paisleys and blues and greens, with no place for Tiffany. She was hugged in multiple layers of bubble wrap and moved into the attic. Eventually she and the other contents of the house moved south in 1999. 

Sometime in the early 2000’s my mom came to visit me in my home in Wisconsin. We were in my kitchen surrounded by walls of an updated marigold yellow color and valances hung over the windows filled with crimsons, olive and subdued oranges and yellows. It was at that moment she thought about Tiffany and told me she would look great in this kitchen and she wanted me to have it. I have no recollection of how or when Tiffany wrapped in her bubble wrap blanket moved into my attic. There was no road trip between WI and FL, so she must have moved here in 2009 on the U-Haul truck I drove after my mom passed away. 

Nearly five years later she was moved into a new home and unwrapped to reveal numerous panels cracked and one missing. To put it frankly, Tiffany was in deep disrepair. I knew she had cracks, but had no idea the extreme until recently. To my surprise it didn’t take long to hear about Old Hickory Stained Glass in Onalaska, WI where a man named Bob had been creating and working with stained glass since 1976, around the time Tiffany was likely born. I never met Bob, he was a behind the scenes kind of guy, but my expectations and hope were high. A few months later I picked up Tiffany only to discover she was beautiful! Yesterday she was hung in my new kitchen of the same yellow walls and I am convinced this kitchen was built for her, more so than the one my mom remembered her in.

After 27 years in storage she hangs with dignity and grace, a centerpiece restored by an artist who was able to match her glass nearly perfectly simply because his years of experience rival her age. I was told he was amazed she was still around, these pieces were not built to last he said, he reinforced her and I believe was in awe of her as I was told if she begins to sag he will happily reinforce her again.

Late Mother

My mom died 4 ½ years ago, this is nothing new. She passed on, is deceased, but yesterday it occurred to me she was my late mother for years before she died, all my life she was late for everything.

My Head is All Blogged Up

I haven’t posted a blog in quite awhile, not from a lack of ideas though. My mind has a continual blog running through my mind. How it doesn’t all get typed up is beyond me.

I went to a Volunteer Appreciation breakfast this morning. I love volunteering and I love being appreciated, I also happen to love The Parenting Place (enough to bake for their silent auction two years running now), so I was excited to attend. They had a great inspirational and to me, motivating speaker, which is probably what is leading me to writing tonight. She calls herself a personal historian, you can hire her to interview you, and she’ll write your story, memoir, or family history for you. I love the idea of this, but I’d miss out on the writing portion of the project. It’s true I haven’t written in awhile, and I have missed it.

I think about the power of the written word, especially in its handwritten state and that is the one thing my blog is lacking, but when I began the blog I told myself that I would still try to journal and take notes on my kids’ great words using pen and paper.

Beside the dishes I use every day and the photographs hanging, my favorite inheritances from my mom are the thoughts and words she put to paper using a pen, most often a fountain pen, and later in life the fountain pen she bought during our trip to Australia.

The speaker this morning gave us questions to get “in the mood” for talking about our family history. I didn’t verbally share too much, but I sure enjoyed the thoughts that were triggered in my mind.

Think of a relative who has died who you would love to learn more about. Why do you want to know more from or about this person? What questions would you ask this person if you could and why? A sense of relief washed over me when I thought about the poems, diaries, and journals I have of my mother’s. What a relief that I can read her deepest thoughts and feelings. I guarantee you that before I go to bed tonight I will read some of them. She always liked to ask questions like, what have you learned from me? What do you remember from when you were younger? As I get older I find myself asking those very same questions.

Shortly after her diagnosis of lung cancer I took these questions to heart and collected many stories about her from friends, family and her colleagues and what I came up with was a wonderful book to give her for Hanukkah that year. I treasure this book, especially for the stories from people I have never met, the stories that I shake my head reading and think to myself, yep that was my mom. I am so thankful to not only have these stories for my children, but also to have been able to have given them to her. That book was right up there with in the top 5 best gifts I’ve ever given her; I’m pretty sure her two grandchildren would be numbers one and two.