28 December 2010

Family Photos


Ending the year and starting the new one in the rain forest of Trinidad surrounded by the ones I love most deeply in the world. The lush environment pictured in the background is my daughter's front yard. We're training together to run in a half marathon and run further into the rain forest 3 days a week. Other times we take walks or hikes to lovely destinations (more photos to come). So much beauty to see, hear, touch and even taste in this fertile, bountiful place.





Don't we look happy with the grands? Besides gaming (in a house without TV or high speed access) and voracious reading, the older one (8) has found Monopoly and it feeds his surprising entrepeneurial sprit. The younger one (4 1/2) loves fashion and design (in a house without TV or magazines) and her new status as student which has meant daily reading and math "homework". As my daughter says: "a fashion diva and a business man, can you imagine two more unlikely outcomes from me and their father while living in a tiny village in the rain forest"? The answer is a resounding "no"!
But they're happy and healthy kids doing what they love and throwing themselves into whatever that is whole heartedly. I celebrate their differences and am grateful to be part of nurturing them. To say nothing of playing with them! It's a great way to start the New Year.


May your New Year be filled with warm companionship, family joy, playful moments and places of beauty.

24 December 2010

Merry Christmas to All

I'm in dial up land and it's excruciating! Every single blog I follow downloads soooooo slowly and the comments! On the other hand, I'm with my daughter, her husband and the 2 grands, so my heart is happy in most important ways. Hopefully, I'll even have a family Christmas photo to post soon (if I can!).

But, I wanted to wish each of you a delighful Christmas filled with joy and love. You enrich my life and expand my horizons and I thank you, fireinds of the blogosphere!

20 December 2010

Holiday Fun from the Caribbean

Barry, my quiet, soft spoken co-worker came to work with his car decorated like this:



And the back looking like this:



But he was most pleased with how it looked at night:



Part of the fun of all this was how incongruous this fabulous car is when owned by quiet, unassuming Barry! It's a show stopper for sure.
Happy Holidays to all of you from the Caribbean!
May your dreams come true and may you do something unexpected and delightful.

17 December 2010

Their Map

This is in respose to Theme Thursday's prompt, "map":

She watched him as he slept.
She never tired of his face,
remarkable in its change over their 37 years together,
the warm familiarity of it despite the lines etched there.
She thought of them as the map of their journey.
There are the lines from his easy smile that lights up his face and her heart.
There are the lines from his worry about their daughter when she was sick
near death and so very tiny.
 There are the lines from his grief when they lost the baby
and he feared for her life as well.
There are the lines from his fierce love,
arrow straight and true, uneeringly true, a thing to be relied on she knew.
His face, their map, chronicles their story, reminds her how far they've come,
it guides those who take time to read it. 

16 December 2010

Water From Your Spring




Water From Your Spring

What was in that candle's light
that opened and consumed me so quickly?

Come back, my friend. The form of our love
is not a created form.

Nothing can help me but that beauty.
There was a dawn I remember
when my soul heard something from your soul.

I drank water from your spring
and felt the current take me.

Rumi

14 December 2010

Views From Antigua

My favorite church in Antigua, old, still used and lovingly kept.


English Harbour where I lived for 2 1/2 years. It has an historic Georgian Dock Yard and many visiting boats in the winter, currently including the Maltese Falcon, the world's largest sail boat. In juxta position to the above church, it's an intriguing, sleek, futuristic looking thing.



The little cottage at Crossroads where I've been staying for the last 5 1/2 weeks and for 3 1/2 more days (but whose counting?) until I go to Trinidad wherein waits my husband, daughter, son-in-law and the grands. Oh joy, oh bliss! Let the holidays begin.

10 December 2010

Views From Home

Gathering fog creeps across the valley seen from our balcony.




Fog, rolling clouds, and snow on the mountains.




And a sunset so bright that it shone right through the clouds lighting them up from within.




Ahhh, I think I know how those clouds feel.


(Photos care of my husband, still in Italy, sending me a taste of home.)

09 December 2010

Beauty and the Beast

Look closely. It's a neon caterpillar, like something out of Alice in Wonderland. It was just outside my door.



I'm frustrated with the lack of ability to make changes to my photos, can't crop, enhance or anything else since there's no program on this (work [after hours]) computer. Does that mean I've become a nerd?
But yesterdays evening sky was lovely.

06 December 2010

Happy Birthday, Daughter

In the moment before my daughter's full birth, after her head was delivered, and just before the next contraction to push out the rest of her, my doctor played a mean trick on me and said: "In your heart of hearts, do you want a boy or a girl?" "A girl" was my immediate response. And then she was born and my deepest dream, that I didn't know I had until that moment, came true. I'm sure I would have fallen equally in love with a boy should he have been born but it was Kelly that gifted my life. I have loved being her mother, not just the mother of a daughter although that zings through my body in its importance, but this daughter. Kelly Marie.

Her birthday is tomorrow and I've been in this funky kind of mood- being alone, missing John, longing for family together time and realizing the year is ending and it's time to take stock of my life. So I've been doing some of that. And Kelly was talking to me about her struggles over what the next step should be in her life. She's a good communicator that way, and lives so on purpose. I love that about her. And it seemed familiar. It made me realize that we cover some of the same ground again and again as we age, not in circles but more like a spiral ascending.

We follow our dreams, our spirits urging. We live our lives fully and with gratitude and then we stop every once in a while and take our inventory. How am I doing? Have I slipped into unhealthy ways of being? Am I doing what I need to do to grow? Have I grown bigger than my environment can hold and I need to find another? Or do I need to expand to fill the bigger environment that I've built? Am I being of service, giving of myself in ways that excite me as well as help others? What's the next way to do that?

Questions of a 34 year old daughter, a 64 year old me and, in our family, a 94 year old father. Questions that honor our responsibility to be true to ourselves and to love one another. I'm glad to be sharing this search with Kelly. She makes my heart happy. I hope for her a happy heart, too.

02 December 2010

Happy 94th, Dad

My father just celebrated his 94th birthday. He lives in Boston so I called him to wish him Happiness. He's sharp as a tack and asked me about some current events he had read of in his news magazine. I had no clue because he's better read than I am about all that.

So I changed the topic and asked him how he was feeling:

"Oh, I'm slowing down quite a bit and I don't like that at all."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Dad. So, what are you planning to do for your birthday then?"

"I'm going dancing at a resort in New Hampshire for the weekend. You know that band I like? Well, they're playing and invited me to go and come back in their bus. I'm their oldest follower."

Does that mean my father's a groupie? At 94?

He went, he danced, he had a great time. You gotta love it!

Happy Birthday, Dad.