Garden Fairies

Memorial weekend is usually a pressure-cooker of plans and we are on the go either hosting or being hosted. After all, it is for families the official first long weekend of summer. Not this year: this year we found ourselves with absolutely nothing scheduled. Really: a weekend free to do anything at all??

The weather was sunny and perfect and with it so many options, and it seemed like it might be a non-productive type of weekend full of almosts. We almost drove to Yosemite because when was the last time we were there, I mean really. We almost went to the jazz festival which runs at various venues all over town but we like Old Town for its quaint buggy rides and wooden plank sidewalks and you can play dodge-the-metermaid. We almost went visiting and almost played Tripoley and almost went to the coast.

Any Other Way

It's really soothing and healing to have friends you can count on. I mean by that people who have hung out long enough for you to realize who they are and appreciate the fact that they have. My brother visited yesterday, a man of unique perspectives and a heart so big you can see it on the outside. He and I met through his brother, like a hundred years ago, and developed the friendship over the ensuing 30 years and when his brother's and my marriage dissolved we kept each other on as friends. I essentially won him in the divorce.

There are other friends like that, relationships with beautiful patina and dents and dings from the decades of active use and counted among the people that matter. One of them is always on my mind when I go to sleep at night, a time for quiet prayer and wishes of safekeeping.

Light Givers

I've not been myself lately and I am praying about peace and forgiveness to get relief from old weights I thought were buried and gone.  Nothing is happenstance and, for those that believe that, there are always lessons to learn or solutions to find, because sometimes a lesson takes a few times to take.

Some believe we are the architects of our own lives and help create foundations for those around us, some we love but also some we cannot see, all of us intertwined by chance or design or whatever you want to call it, and what I believe to be God and his Grand Design who knows much more than I what my purpose is and my contributions will be.

A Sadder and Wiser Man

I've been neglecting this blog with starting up a travelog (http://bushtreks.blogspot.com/) that is so much fun bringing up-to-date that I start looking through the dog-eared journal which has pulled out from the cover and torn up on one edge, and I think of all the places it went, and when eventually I do write it needs a few pictures for emphasis and there I go, weeding through the glorious thousands and before you know it the day is gone.

But today is about what it means to have the upper hand which isn't always the gift we think it is. And that life is really about taking the high road because that's the scenery you want around you.

My Ex works with our daughter, but he didn't know that until recently and found out quite by accident when the situation moved from quietly tolerable to 'in-'.

Outreach in Rwanda

Jana and Dave have been traveling on an outreach through their church to help stabilize and improve the lives of residents in a little town in Rwanda.  Here are some of her stories.

5/21 Saturday Afternoon in Kigali
We arrived last night having been fed on our hop from Nairobi to Kigali with our first taste of Rwandan food. Maurice and Jean Pierre greeted us, familiar and welcome faces. Our first change came immediately.

Our hotel was booked so they had found us other accommodations. We are now happily installed in The Diplomat Hotel, which I am finding very comfortable, even by U. S. standards. It's quiet, serene and centrally located. We went out into town with Maurice and his 4 kids. Our first stop, however, was at a walk-in clinic because Richard, his youngest, is ill.

A walk-in clinic here is nothing like it is in the US. An unpaved, pitted dirt road takes you into a space crowded with vehicles all parked randomly & blocking one another. Maurice disappeared for 10 minutes and came back w/paperwork that looked like a medical chart. We went into a plain covered concrete patio area where there were 2 doctors' offices, Generalists. A very tall, thin Rwandan doctor in a familiar white lab coat disappeared into one of the rooms. His nurse (?) came out and gathered Richard up and into the doctor's office. When I peeked in all I saw was a large bare room with a metal table and a small bed. Several minutes later Richard reemerged with his dad having received the good news that it was only a cold, not Malaria.

A Show of Cards

I was cleaning out the file cabinet -how long has it been, I wondered? - there are things in it dating back to the Middle Ages (my children's middle ages). Anyway in it was the most amazing letter. Most everything from the cabinet seemed to be old pay stubs and insurances I no longer have and it was in the heaping shred-it pile. But I was wrong.

I came across a letter from a high school friend with three young children and a loving husband and every reason in the world not to be dying of cancer in her 40s, but she was. She had been fighting it for nearly a decade, on two continents, a particularly elusive strain that was beaten back only to appear somewhere else and attack on another front.

Pop

Life is good: that's the consensus here after a weekend of visiting Pop and Arlene. After all his years of purposeful living, and age related health issues, he keeps at it.

Pop lived his life on the docks of San Francisco as a Longshoreman, and hard work that began long before he could complete school. Physical work can't help but wear down a man, that and raising six boys. I love to see the twinkle in his eye as he tells stories or teases one of his sons.

He is an accomplished artist and woodworker, with the most beautiful workbench downstairs with every kind of tool imaginable and everything in its place. He enjoys making trivets and beautiful mantles and toy boxes that fill our homes. He loves his boys, their wives, and his grandchildren.

A Hop Skip and a Jump

How do you like being in the Drawing Room? It seemed like a good time to show you more of the house.

I love libraries. You know, one of the best jobs is working in a library. Oh those bindings that crease from books being left open too long, and their sometimes musty woody pulpy smell mixed with dust just drives me crazy.

I heard the library in Woodland may be closing due to budget cuts and there is a vote on the June election ballot. The library that was part of our first date. The Carnegie library in this sleepy little town that can't possibly realize what a treasure it is or they would balance the budget another way.

The Ancients

Techie stuff is really cool and a great waste of a day when there's nothing else more enticing to do, like the windows and bathrooms. I spent this morning writing another travel blog of exciting things and to match up some of the photos. I wish I could still be paid by the hour for it. 

Randy is officially the Photo King. We have literally thousands of photos to sift through, identify and edit. Don't tell him I told you this, but once they were nestled together in files, they kind of look alike. But aren't they just the most wonderful shots? He has an undeniable knack at getting the right picture with the right lighting in the right angle at the right time. Our long walks sometimes resembled a leisurely stroll there was so much picture-taking going on.

To What End?

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia." -- Charles Schultz

This was in my inbox today, sent by a friend who knew it would make me smile. We communicate this way now, friends just forwarding along little jokes to enjoy. I do it, too, when someone needs a pick-me-up or I know their style of humor well enough that it will be appreciated. As I type their name on the forward, I imagine their face as it spreads into a grin as mine had done.

Travel Blog

Why start another blog called There and Back Again? Travel changes us in subtle ways, according to my mother Joy who has traveled the globe with my father at her side. But for us, it was more than an internal shift and subtle dawning.

We decided on a trip where we arranged all the details. We assembled our trip one piece at a time, the Eurail, the hotels, the Metros and Undergrounds and Buses and sights and how long to stay. The process of planning the trip turned out to be a big part of the experience, and I wouldn't have believed that was true.

Travel and marriage share a commonality, that the journey is in letting go both inwardly and outwardly, and by doing that one cannot help but be changed. The research and exploration and immersion into other cultures during these weeks broadened our knowledge, deepened our appreciation, and humbled our hearts.

Says Cesare Paves: "Traveling forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it."

The gift of travel is in being able to see the delicate filament of life that brims and overflows and ties us together. We breathe life into wherever we are, taking the steps two at a time and memorizing routines in the world we know. But there is so much more, around every corner, across every sea, at the top of the mountains and in the rain forests, people just like us living and thinking and eating and loving as far as their imaginations go.

And so the magic of travel is also to be shown how close we are, how much the same, with shared dreams and wonderment. And that deserves its own home, these stories to be written down and remembered long after the details fade.

Whatever life is, it is vast and majestic and richly lived. That is the lesson of travel. That is the discovery we found.
 
http://bushtreks.blogspot.com/ (which is also linked along the side just under our photo)

Loco en la Cabeza

Today in the news was an interesting tidbit. Puerto Rico has this hair-brained scheme to void millions of birth certificates in an attempt to curb identity theft and human trafficking. Somehow they want their five million people to re-establish citizenship and be assigned new tamper-resistant certificates. Birth Certificates created prior to 2010 will be destroyed.

Let's think about that for a sec. A fair amount of Puerto Ricans live in the US. How is it going to work for them as they look for a job, renew a driver's license, rent an apartment, open a bank account, register children for school?

Flowers or Weeds

I was reading a favorite blog this morning about Nat and her husband being unable to sell their house -- which they dearly love -- that would allow them to relocate to a place with a job offer -- so her husband could practice law.

'Somehow despite my uncertainties the days have turned sunny and the air is soft and the lilacs have started blooming anyway. I really wonder about those lilacs. Don't they know? Don't they even understand how insecure tomorrow is? As if they have nothing better to do than turn green and bushy under the sun, unknown future or not?'

Life will go on even when we think our troubles are so big the world should just stop in its tracks and weep along with us. I'm glad this old world has a mind of its own and doesn't pay attention to anyone's troubles. It just keeps spinning along bringing joy and troubles and rainbows and rain. And I especially like that we get to choose whether to notice the flowers or weeds.

No Strings

I came across today a link from aol.com -- the information frontage road to the news. It was an interesting link to a man who has, since 2009, given away $10 a day to random people and chronicled their lives in a blog. His link is: http://www.yearofgiving.wordpress.com/

Altruism improves people. I have fond memories of paying for the car behind me in the line for the bridge toll booth, and once when I let a woman in ahead of me in the drive thru line at Jack in the Box she paid for my entire meal. It feels great every time there is a chance.

FOUR and TWENTY

A friend of mine in middle school had a mother who made the most wonderful pepper steak in the whole world - I mean the WHOLE WORLD.  She was listened to and respected. She used her time productively and raised her family with a lot of heart and spirit. I liked that she was little enough to rest my chin on her head.

One evening while hanging around waiting for the aromas to turn into a meal, I noticed some tattooing on her arm. Back in those days, nobody wore tattoos but Carnies and Navy guys, so I asked what it was. And she simply replied that it was a reminder to her that she was luckier than most. Later on I asked my friend about the markings and she told me her mother had been in a concentration camp.

We continually learned about the Holocaust in school but now I could put her face into the horrific accounts of what happened. She never talked about what it was like to know first-hand about this kind of evil, or how to carry on when it indiscriminately took her family but left her behind. I cannot imagine.

*** 'Evil Is As Evil Does' ***

On this, Hitler's Birthday, here is my prayer:

May God keep us vigilant to recognize and stand tall against evil and be willing to risk everything to eliminate it.

The Land of Opportunity

A friend of mine called the other day and was excited to have found a job. It's temporary, but after 13 months looking for work she jumped at the chance to earn $12/hr. She has 15 years of solid experience as a Bookkeeper. So I did a little calculating and realized she will bring home what she made on unemployment.

Customer Service Smiles

I got a kick out of a joke sent to me today about Noah and the Ark. In it, all the animals were looking out over the hull with concerned looks and Noah was scowling at the bird hanging to the side of the boat that was full of holes. The caption read: The Woodpecker Might Have to Go!

In the early 1970s my mom glommed onto the song by Sammy Davis Jr. entitled 'I've Got to Be Me', essentially promoting our right to be unashamed of who we are. She and my dad had just weathered a difficult breakup and, like we all do whenever something happens that shakes us to our core, some rebuilding was necessary to restore her sense of value.

Go with the Flow

We've been working on a deadline here and sweating every detail, painstakingly gathering reams of information from books and the web to comparison shop. We pour over intricacies of rail line schedules and flight deals, debate the best routes and sights. That's right: it's travel time!

It's fair to say the decision of when and where was accidental. The timing was in consideration of his office and responsibilities there; and the where happened when I noticed European travel was very reasonable while searching for trips to Hawaii.

Once a BIG trip was decided, we first considered a Mediterranean cruise, easiest in terms of maneuverability and comfort. The ship would slide us in and out of ports with day trips. That was all well and good until we realized we'd never actually see Italy or France or be able to wander back streets and shake hands with the good people while leisurely sipping on their world-famous cappuccinos. So that was out.

We then explored an organized tour, one of those eight hotels in twelve days deals and a chop-chop-chop schedule. Although the trip solved the travel and accommodations issue, we didn't want to face being whisked away from the Sistine Chapel for a rigid schedule. So sorry, but no.

We hadn't seriously considered planning our own trip (language barrier, inexperience, etc.) until we had dinner with Jim and Pam who recently traveled to Italy on their own, planned their schedule and even drove a rental car like Italian crazies. By the end of the evening, we were not only convinced we could do it but have a wonderful time in the process.

They've been right so far. This is where logistics intersects with an open travel plan. I'm not exactly the fbtsoyp* kind of traveler, but it's worth a shot. And he has acquiesced to my need for some pre-arrangements so the bones of the trip are in place.

It has been a blast building such a romantic trip together and working in plenty of freedom to use public transportation everywhere and travel throughout Italy by Eurail. Heck, the schedule has even allowed us to wiggle in days in London and Paris. What do you think about that?

So what if we miss a sight or two along the way, just so we gain some lingering mid-days of people-watching and savoring the time together. And for me, the best sight of all will be watching his face discover what the two of us find.

*fly by the seat of your pants

The 'It's All Too Much' blog ... and Miles

Everyone who joined us on the day of our wedding remembers the young man who spoke a toast that overflowed with earnest joyfulness and humor. Well that was Miles.

Miles lumbered into my world through absolute luck. His mom and I became great friends when I became a neighbor when Miles was about 7. In the ensuing years and interweavings of our lives, I became aware of his old soul. Have you ever met someone who doesn't look like they'd be a friend for life, but you know instantly they will be? That's Miles.

Gnarley

Every morning the fitted sheet is off its post and tangled under and around me in a makeshift burrito. Don't make me tell you what horrible reverse-roll actions are required to extricate myself from its grip or the perplexed expression on my face at the total assault of comforter, sheet and pillows. I mean, it's good no one is there.

This has been going on for about 2 months, so frequent in fact that on days I get up and don't see the mattress quilting I count it as a banner day.