Homesick at home.

What do you do when you are feeling homesick, yet you are home?

I mean, I am in my house and I have my amazing, loving, entertaining, keep-me-constantly-on-my-toes grandkidlets sleeping close by. That is wonder-full!

... and yet they are sleeping, and I am not.

I guess that too much of my heart isin't home.

Barbara and Donn are in Wyoming, Amber and Kirt are in San Fran, Bob and Ryan and Matt and Elli are in Dallas at the TX-OU game, and last, but very much not least, Brad is in Boston.

I am feeling like the feeling you get when you hear the BoDeans sing, "Far Far Away From My Heart".

Sigh.

Atlas Winks: I would turn on the TV but it's so heartbreaking ....

I would turn on the TV but it's so embarrassing ....

I made the linked post above on April 2nd without any comment so the lyrics could speak for themselves. The words are even more relevant today after the horrible violence at Virginia Tech. In an I-Tunes interview, Jack Johnson talks about his song Cookie Jar and about how he wrote it after Columbine and how everyone was pointing fingers and blaming all these different factors, when in fact, we are all guilty to some degree. It is a powerful song and I can't say it often enough that I think Jack Johnson is a Genius.

He takes such a soft and calming sound, adds suprisingly simple lyrics and somehow he says the things I have been thinking, but haven't found the words to really talk about. The incongruity of how he says what he says and its ultimate message make his music even more powerful and profound. A lot of his songs - like Traffic in the Sky, Fall Line, Cookie Jar, Times Like These and Gone - share similar ideas about how the materialistic underbelly of our society causes a spiritual disconnect, especially with our most vulnerable of citizens. Such a lovely melody and such simple words to indict us all - that we are all to blame, sneaking a cookie from the cookie jar and then insisting that "It wasn't me." We all share in the blame when we watch the sensational journalism instead of finding intelligent news media. We are all guilty when we let the not yet 17 year old see the R rated violent movie. We all are culpable when we buy the tabloid. We enable pandering to the lowest common denominator by not insisting on better or nothing at all. Yes they are small sins, like driving a gas guzzler or not turning off the lights, but when massive amounts of people let their apathy cause them to do small acts of evil, the ultimate consequences can be devastating.

"It was you it was me it was every man
We've all got the blood on our hands
We only receive what we demand
And if we want hell then hells what we'll have"

God Bless all the people that are grieving the losses from the Virginia Tech Massacre. And God Bless Jack Johnson.

Forty-One Roses: Endings and Beginnings - Part 3

This is what I asked Amber if she would help me with....



It is forty-one roses that we went and picked out at our favorite wholesale flower market. We picked them for their colors and what those colors represent. The darker red roses are actually black roses, they just photographed a deep red and then the flash made them even lighter. The other roses were a true red and white. We also added rosemary from my garden and lavender from Amber's garden. All of our choices had symbolic reasons, and we made the wreath with deliberate intent. For love and remembrance, for dealing with the past, for forgivenes and for letting go.

I first was going to place it on my grandmother's grave. But as I worked on it I realized that I needed to place it in a different location. It needed to go on my dad's grave. So that is what I did. And now I have said some of the things, out loud, that I have waited to say.

And I don't feel the least bit impolite.

Endings and Beginnings -- Part 2

As I said in my previous post, my grandmother's death was more painful than I expected. She was a vital woman, in the best sense of that word. She loved life, lived her life with an enthusiastic YES! at almost every opportunity and challenge. She lived a long life as well. She died leaving a large family who loved her. Children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren were at her funeral and her life was celebrated as well as mourned.

I decided to miss the visitation the night before the funeral so I could stay in Austin to be with our son who was leaving shortly to fly back to San Francisco. It wasn't an easy decision, but I thought if I could have asked her what she would want, I think she would have said, "Celebrate the living before mourning the dead." So that is what I did.

I also asked my oldest daughter, Amber if she would help me do something. I was a bit embarrassed asking, because it might seem weird what I wanted to do, but I am not going to let hesitation stop me any longer from doing what seems true for me. I needed to find some way to let go of my past. I had done all sort of intellectual work on my childhood. All sorts of psychological work and mental acrobatics to try and understand on my own why people had behaved how they behaved. And yet, there was still a sad curiosity I have never been able to shake. A feeling like I was holding out my empty hands asking for more but never receiving anything of weight.

I think that maybe this was because I have always tried to find a way to explain away their actions. To rationalize it. To justify it. But the bottom, the base reality I never acknowledged at a deep level was that I felt wronged and betrayed by the people I trusted the most. I needed to acknowledge that part of me was angry and hurt and that it was wrong what had been done to six year old me. Then I needed to find a way to really forgive it (since you can't forgive what you don't acknowledge) and then finally, hopefully, move on.

Endings and Beginnings -- Part 1

Our son Matt and his lovely girlfriend, Nhu, came home for the Thanksgiving break. We planned not one, but TWO feasts for the time he was scheduled to be here and then, the day before they arrived, we got a phone call that my grandmother had died. They decided to delay the funeral until the weekend after Thanksgiving, but it still didn't give some family members the time to get home as all flights the weekend after Thanksgiving are booked solid.

I took my grandmother's death very hard. This was surprising as I wasn't particularly close with my grandmother. She was my father's mom and when I was six years old, my parents divorced. My dad, for whatever reasons, didn't make seeing me and my sister the priority that it should have been. Since he didn't pick us up on his weekends, and seldom had more contact than around Christmas - we very rarely saw that side of our family. They just sort of faded into the background. I missed them as we had been a very tight knit group who spent a lot of time together and I thought of my male cousins the way most folks think of siblings. For a long time I felt the empty space and wondered what was wrong with me that they didn't make a point of including me more often.

In later years we reconnected and I was surprised to find how much I was like my grandmother. We had so many of the same personality quirks and attitudes about things. We both delighted in conversation and a full house of company. We loved to feed everyone and never wanted to waste time washing up when company was still there to chat with. We loved some of the same weird foods and had the same circadian rhythms. We had the same profile and the same mother lion piercing gaze when our family was vunerable to anything. Family was THE steadfast priority.

Most of the family was her steadfast priority. And that unfinished business is why her death was difficult for me. My father died when I was 16 and I never got to ask him why I was ignored, postponed, abandoned.

I didn't have the courage to ever ask. It seemed somehow impolite and I didn't have the words. I kept meaning to have that conversation with my grandmother - ask her the difficult questions - but it was so much easier and more fun to laugh with her and enjoy what little time I made to see her in my busy adult life. I regret not having the hard conversation. I just never could find the words.