Brick by Brick: Rebuilding the Broken

 Many of you may have grown up with the well known taunt meant to throw your tormentors off guard : "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."   "Nyyaahh!"   The angry reply wasn't effective enough without a tongue aimed in their direction.  Most of the time it was meant for my brother. The one I can not see anymore. The one who I have the most memories of growing up together. The one I hoped to be there for many years to come. The one who always remembered my birthday with a hand drawn card or keepsake beyond just a phone call.  The brother who tormented little sister the most, became the one who understood me best. I still tell myself (in his voice) what he always said to me during the rough times - "Hang in there."  Like my son Nathanael, my brother was a man of few words, and if you were blessed with a conversation, it was so very special.  On days that I have trouble getting out ...

    There was a time when pies were my nemesis.  For years, I just couldn't get it right. They were ugly, sloppy, burned, and generally not very appetizing.  I felt bad every time I served one, yet I continued making them.  I suppose I considered it a duty - A rite of passage, perhaps.  Only great cooks can make a prize worthy pie, right?  My mother made excellent berry pies, lemon and pumpkin, too.  My mother-in-law could whip up just about any pie imaginable and they were amazing.  I thought if I could just figure out all the mistakes at the same time, some day, a perfect pie would pop out of that oven...  So, year after year, season in, seasons out, I attempted still another pie. (My previous tries were actually edible, just not very nice eye candy - more like fruit soup, or occasionally paste).  In my defense, all great cooks never write down every precise step in the ba...

It has been said that "A funeral is not a day in a lifetime, but a lifetime in a day." Some of you may know, that when everyone else is quick to put away the black suit, and brush the dried flower petals off their shoes, to go on about their daily lives - how quickly they forget that tomorrow and tomorrow, I will still be lovingly caressing the wrinkly t-shirt, and pressing the white rose in the scrapbook, opening the pages day after day, hoping against all reason to find another memory of my son that wasn't there before. By the time the rest of the world has all but forgotten the sorrowful day when I laid my son to rest, I must daily remember to preserve the very tiniest details that make up the whole of Nathanael. Time moves on, and leaves those memories further and further behind. There will be no more memories of our son. It's a daily custom, the first thing I put on my neck is the locket holding a photo of my son. The locket is tarnished, the photo fadi...

 Many little girls dream of being a princess. The fairy tale lives inside of us. We can't help but hope our storybook will be as lovely as Cinderella's happy ending. I was one of those little girls once. But I didn't like Cinderella's story, I didn't like how she was treated. The part about the Prince Charming taking me away on a white horse sounded pretty nice though. When real life is encountered, it usually ends up looking quite a bit different than all those childhood dreams. Maybe for some of us, it doesn't even come close to your adult dreams. It might even feel like a living nightmare. The life you had all planned out, seemed to have so many bumps in the road, that you can't find your way back. Or perhaps all your hard work finally paid off, and life was starting to make sense. You had your castle built tall and strong.  The moat surrounding your fortress was protecting your clan.  The knights were bold and...

There's nothing like the love of a Grandma. The joy they bring to a little child's heart in everything they do. There's nothing like the joy on her face watching everyone open their gifts at Christmas! This is my mother-in-law Joyce. The last Christmas we had together was fifteen years ago. I think of her often. How she loved every single one of her many grandchildren. How I miss her. How we are so different because of the joy she left in our hearts. In this picture, she is comforting my daughter, while Nathanael is hamming it up for the camera as usual! I am recovering from surgery, after losing our second baby. She would do anything for the grandkids, and for her entire family. They often babysat for us, whenever we needed them. It didn't matter that they lived on the other side of the state. It didn't matter if they were in the middle of harvest, or the middle of a snowstorm, they would get there as soon as possible. That's what Grandmas (an...

  I love brick houses.   They are classic, strong, beautiful, and stand the test of time.  If time and cost weren't a factor, and I were to build a new home, I would choose bricks for the whole structure, and not just the front entry for looks. No more maintenance to repaint or replace, no rust, no rot, no peeling or warping.    It would take longer to build than a wooden structure, one brick at a time, but the painstaking process would be worth it in the end. It could last my whole lifetime. Unless disaster strikes. Depending on where I chose to build, it could be a tornado, an earthquake, or a hurricane. I have no control over the weather, or what it destroys in it's path. It wouldn't matter how nice everything looked before. That brick house is going to be a mess. Everything left in shambles, it's extremely difficult to pick up the pieces. It's time to rebuild that pretty little house. Maybe this time we will use rocks, or stucco. It doesn...

In my fight against my own immune system, I have had to rethink so many priorities. It wasn't very long ago, these type of questions weren't even in my vocabulary. I was feeling poorly for a couple years before I had any doctor appointments. I just chalked it all up to "this is how it feels to get old". Except I got the accelerated version. The limited edition. Like a video game, where if you earn these points you can get to the bonus round. I have been racking up the points since birth and didn't even know it. It just so happens, in all the years of medical emergencies and rounds of testing,(and frankly, just living) no one ever thought to look for leg discrepancy. No one ever connected the dots. But all the wear and tear on a body trying to balance on an unbalanced core, equals pain. Lots and lots of pain. So when my hands started aching, and rashes continued to rage, those were the missing dots that helped point to the right direction. Just li...

Old Faithful.   The Covered Wagon.  Ol' Girl.  Our Grand Caravan has many names, because she has held so many jobs through the years.  She was a transport for family, friends, strangers, and acquaintances.  She has been a moving van, garbage truck, construction delivery, camping bed, adventure carriage, rescue vehicle, recycling bin, veterinary kennel, cycle transit, and a mud-racing pod. When we needed to carry lots of people, that was the ride of choice. You could fit a lot of little people in that one! It had so much space. But if we needed to move mattresses across county lines, or perhaps bring home lumber for repairs, that was another story. We couldn't fit everything in even if we put the seat backs down, or drove two vehicles. There wasn't enough space to carry anything that big. Something had to go. So we took out all the unnecessary seats. We had to get down to bare essentials.    That'...

When I used to serve up a dish to my small children, I would try to guess how much to scoop out for each one, by how much I knew they could eat.  If the little ones saw big brother getting more than she/he, invariably the cry became - "He got more than me, Mommy!" - "Yes, dear, but you already have enough. Clean up your plate, then, if you're still hungry, you can have some more."   Or on one of those days that every mother dreads... when the kids just can't seem to be nice to each other and tempers flare and Legos fly... you must resist the temptation to scream as loud as they are, and still get across your point.  We count to three (for my own sake) and loudly proclaim (remember, it's already noisy in there)   - "Enough! Leave little brother alone!"    I will exit right here, so you don't have to hear the rousing retorts - "But Moooom, he won't share his toys!"......  Just close the door gently ...

I hate Saturdays. No more songs. No more celebrations. No more Saturdays. The day our lives changed forever. A day so dark, it torches my spirit. Like the coals in the bonfires we will not be sharing anymore. It has taken me 2 1/2 years to not burst out in tears when I feel the sun going down. When all the lights burned out in a split second of time. And it's not even October right now. But Mother's Day is looming in the corridor and I can feel it's steely grip around my heart. A day of celebration and pride for all the good things mom has done. Mocking me. I can't let it take me down again. I won't go there. I refuse to let the torture take over. Taunting me. I must carry on for my son. I was a good mom. I did all that I could.  I love Nathanael. I love all of my family. We have so many great memories together. We were a team. We can do this together. They have my back, and I have theirs. When one is weak the others stand strong. WE ARE A TE...