Dahlia Heaven

In the middle of the summer one of my friends posted some pictures on facebook of really lovely dahlias, and when I asked her where she’d taken them she told me of a vast dahlia farm on the other side of Portland.  One day in late August I took myself and my fully charged camera off to spend several delightful hours on the dahlia farm.

The setting was so terrific—acre after acre of blooming dahlias, with Mt. Hood in the background.

I took over 500 pictures.  I was like a kid in a candy shop.  At the end of the day I wasn’t sure which new flowers I should get for next year, just that I definitely needed some!

The Woman I Never Knew

 

We looked through pictures scanned from old slides one day many years ago.   Watched their story from the beginning; wedding pictures, the baby, a growing family.  Pictures of Easter finery and birthday hats and Christmas trees. 

There is a picture of her, this woman I never knew, in a smart blue suit with a jaunty hat.  I cannot fathom who she was or what she was like.  The woman I knew was so different: fretting over window treatments, slowed by health problems, and finally bound to the sofa in her last decade of life. 

In my mind I cannot bridge the gap—between the woman in the suit and the woman I knew. 

Over and over I come back to this one thing.  Whoever she has been in the years I have known her, she clearly once was someone else.  And I cannot wait to meet that person one day.

Change

I’m not good at change.

(Is anyone?  Is everyone but me??)

I know that change is supposed to be good for you.  That you’re supposed to embrace it instead of fighting it and that it can bring good and all sorts of other cliches. 

I’ve been through a lot of change in the last 3 years.  People and places and opportunities that I thought would be part of my life forever aren’t anymore.  I’ve had to learn a new place and figure out how to survive in an endless gray winter and I am still finding my place in this new world. 

Just when it started to feel as though we were on the downhill side of all of this change, Rachel started saying (very strongly) that she wanted to go full time to public school for high school next year. This is what I looked like when I heard that:

Once Rachel started saying that Jared said that he, too, wanted to go to regular high school.  This was definitely not my plan for them—I like homeschooling, it gives us great opportunities, and I’ve felt like there are some specific reasons that homeschooling through high school with a few classes every year at the high school was the best option for them.  At the same time I didn’t want to just ignore their feelings, so I told them I would pray about it.  Because I was certain that my feelings about homeschooling were the right feelings, you know. 

One of the ways I know when I’m getting inspiration is when I have a thought/feeling/idea that is not what I wanted or would have thought of.  And that’s definitely what happened in this case, much to my sorrow.  As soon as I prayed about it, and every time I prayed about it, a gentle thought came into my mind that this would not be a bad thing. 

Sigh…it feels like a Very. Bad. Thing. to me.

Especially because once I had acknowledged in my heart that I was going to need to send my kids off to full time high school, I realized that we needed to ease into this experience rather than just drop them into high school.  Right now they take two classes at the middle school, but those two classes are electives and not academic.  Before they start high school they need some practice at formal academic skills—lecture listening, note taking, and test taking. 

And that is why I found myself meeting with both the middle school principal and counselor on Friday.  Crying in both offices, to my great dismay.  There were other sad things going on in my heart that day, but I also realized at this point how much grief I really feel at the idea of not homeschooling my kids anymore.  Homeschooling isn’t easy, and I haven’t always done a great job at it, but I have loved it.  And just like that, it’s almost over.  One more ginormous change, one more heartbreaking loss.

 

In the movie “You’ve Got Mail” Tom Hanks’ character says that the movie “The Godfather” has the right quote for every occasion.  Ironically, quotes from “You’ve Got Mail” are right for many occasions in my life, including this one.

Towards the end of the movie Kathleen has come to Birdie’s house to tell her that she has decided to close the bookstore.  Birdie tells her that she is making the brave decision, but Kathleen doesn’t think that closing the bookstore is brave.  Birdie tells her that it is brave because she is daring to imagine that she can have a different life.

I guess that I’m getting the chance to work on being brave like that…

Dad’s visit: day 1

In August my dad arranged to come and spend 3 days with us.  I was so excited to be able to show him some of the amazing things around us.  A few days before his trip Ramona decided to come as well, so I got to spend time with both of them.

On the first day we went with Jason to the coast.  We went to the Tillamook factory first—this time the assembly lines were all running and we watched for quite a while.  On one of the lines big pieces of cheese were cut again and again, and then weighed before being sent to be covered in wrapping and heat shrinked.  The finished product was just like what we would buy at the store.

In another big area they were storing cheese to be aged.  HUGE blocks of cheese came up through some kind of chute and then they were guided into wrapping plastic.  Again we watched and watched.  Then we bought delicious ice cream and went and had lunch at our favorite Tillamook taco truck.  (Which now has an enclosure with picnic tables for our dining comfort.) 

After leaving Tillamook we drove up the coast to Canon Beach.

Sadly the tide chart I looked at was wrong and we didn’t get to see the starfish before the tide came in.  But we went to a new place, Ecola Beach State Park, and it was beautiful.  The day was warm and NOT WINDY!!! (So unusual!)  We had a wonderful time.

Things we did in the car on the way to Utah

I like it so much better when Russ comes with us on a trip to Utah, even if it’s a kind of sad trip.  Here’s what we did that day:

• look at all of the beautiful fall colors in the Columbia River Gorge
• take pictures of some of the beauty in the Gorge
• blog (ok I did that)
• talk and laugh
• eat way too much leftover Halloween candy
• play the alphabet game (Jared won)
• sing a song we always sang in my family when I was growing up (see below)
• talk about articles I was reading in Time Magazine
• read a whole People Magazine (so glad I know why JLo got a divorce!)
• watch Godzilla (the kids, not me)
• listened to podcasts
• have lots of fun together!

 

Song:
I used to live in Chicago
In a department store,
Behind the [name a department] counter,
I did but I don’t anymore.
A lady came in for some [same department]
I asked her what kind she’d adore…….
[product] she said,
[product] her I did
I did but I don’t anymore.

So it would go like this:

Behind the hardware counter,
I did but I don’t anymore.
A lady came in for some hardware,
I asked her what kind she’d adore….
Wrench! she said,
Wrench her I did,
I did but I don’t anymore.

Each time the song is sung someone else takes a turn filling in the blanks, and then everyone else sings along with them.  Such fun!

Halloween ‘14

Jared decided that he didn’t want to dress up for Halloween this year but the girls had been planning their costumes for a long time.  They decided to be feminine versions of Thing 1 and Thing 2 and I think it turned out perfectly.  Since the last home football game was on Halloween they all got to wear their costumes to march in.  That was pretty cool—since the girl’s costumes were bright red we could always tell where they were on the field, unlike all of the other games where they looked exactly like everyone else.