Crab in the Sky

Without intention, the last couple blogs have a theme: birth…celebrating birthdays.

I happen to be surrounded by Cancers. Married to one, grandmother, sister, brother, step-sisters, nephews, brother-in-law, close friends, all born under the Zodiac of the Crab. Then oh, yeah, seven years ago today, I gave birth to one.

I don’t know a lot about astrology, only a few stereo typical basics about most of the twelve signs.  I don’t buy into this whole recent thing about a shift changing us all so we are now a different astrological sign.

You are what you are. You can’t change how you were born. The stars were aligned a certain way and that’s it.

Yes, we evolve. Yes, we grow. You bet opportunities to change constantly present themselves.  Absolutely. But there is so something to the natural order of it all.

My son, my big hearted, emotions on his sleeve, incredibly passionate, over the top compassionate, loving with all he’s got son, is the way he is and I wouldn’t change a thing.

No shift in the star line up can adjust his wiring – for that little boy is wired to love.

Be it the forty stuffed animals on his bed, his sister who he worships, his dogs (even the one who went to Heaven when my son was just 2), his friends, strangers in the park, horses at the race track, his mama and papa…this boy loves with every part of his being.

These children come into our lives wired to be who they are and it is our job, our birthday gift to them, to step out of the way and let them do just that.  Let them shine like the stars they were meant to be.

by J.G. McGlothern

Monday’s Random Thought: Affect

Today is the anniversary of my husband’s birth. If his birth never occurred, I would be here, just in a different place. Very different place I’m sure.

I still would have danced at the wedding where I met him, just alone, or with someone else.

We all affect each other. The stranger, the mailman, the teacher, the groom’s man at the wedding who asks for a dance.

Whose day will you affect today? You may not ask someone to dance, but you may step out of the way so they can hear the music. Or if you listen and hear the tune, you too may dance to your own rhythm enjoying the gifts from the one who brought you out to the dance floor.

by J.G. McGlothern

Raspberry Memories

She made the best pie crust, grew roses and every kind of berry in her garden, hung her laundry to dry when her brand new clothes dryer worked fine and spied on me with those blue eyes through the passenger rear view mirror of grandpa’s 1965 forest green Mercedes Benz.

Maria Theresa, known as Resi, would have been 109 today. My grandmother spoke sternly to my grandfather in her native German tongue but wore a smile to the rest of the world. At night she would let me brush out her waist length snow white hair after she undid her braided bun. Every summer I stayed with my grandparents and felt like royalty. Sipping ice cream floats every afternoon in the lawn swing, my legs barely touching the grass. Their acre and a half was my kingdom. Day dreaming under an apple tree, running through the sprinkler, wandering through the garden snacking on snap peas and strawberries.  

I can’t eat a raspberry today without tasting those summer days at grandpa and grandma’s house. The minute my nose whiffs the sweet berry and my lips feel its softness I remember everything: her perfect posture, down comforters, German potato salad, school shopping trips to the mall, her hugs and extra helpings of food when I told her I was full.

When I was in college and visiting grandma in the hospital after her stroke she gave me a gift. Always giving gifts, even when a stroke had taken her voice and ability to move. Grabbing my hand and placing her wooden crucifix in my palm she wrapped my fingers around the smooth wood.

No, grandma it’s yours. It had been in her unaffected hand all these days in the hospital. But grandma wasn’t someone you could say no to. I left the hospital clinging it tightly.

Grandma fully recovered and lived many more years. Her hair no longer in a braided bun but short and permed, living in an apartment then a nursing home. But now when her memory floods my being, I think of her hanging laundry, standing at her stove, bending down in her garden, handing me the brush to run through her hair or smiling at me through the passenger rear view mirror.

Happy Birthday, grandma.  You helped make me who I am today and I feel your presence like the sweet smell of berries on my lips.

by J.G. McGlothern

 

Bring It

The final bell will ring in an hour and 20 minutes.

Bring on the lemonade stands, reading in our pajamas past noon, grass stains, and kick ball in the park.  Bring on the swimming until we are shriveled prunes. Popsicles, sand in our toes, our hair and all over the car.  Too many hot dog dinners, going to the movie theatre and being blinded by the sunshine when you walk outside. 

Here’s to letting go… of rules, and shoulds. Here’s to making new rules, like ice cream twice a day if you want it and give mama an extra kiss.

I want to embrace childhood. Mine and theirs.

As a friend shared recently, I want to really get to know my kids this summer. That sounds just as good to me as sun on my face and an ice cold ice tea in my hand…bring it.

 by J.G. McGlothern

Monday’s Random Thought: Yes

Often saying no to someone else is saying YES to yourself.

If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, guilty, like crap when you have said no to someone, remember you just said YES to yourself and that is worth gold.  It’s like a free pass. Riding the roller coaster three times in a row and not get queasy.

by J.G. McGlothern

Like Father, Like Daughter

When our daughter has something on her mind, something making her sad or confused, 7 out of 10 times she’ll go to her papa. No one can hug her and hold her in those big arms like her daddy.

All like her dad, our Margaret, keeps her feelings close to her sleeve, loves sweets in the morning, plays defender on the soccer field with a demanding presence.  She farts like her dad too. Poor thing. Middle of the night I’ll hear a sound through the walls coming from her bedroom, then without skipping a bit, next to me, I’ll hear my husband. Both still sleeping. Same sound.

When I tell them in the morning, my hubby smiles big, That’s my girl. Margaret giggles with a secret joy that she shares yet another thing with her papa.

They say when a child is around six or seven they start to emulate, watch even closer and cling more to the parent of the same sex. Our son will be seven next week and although our Simon is a mama’s boy, lately watching and playing sports with dad is more appealing than being with mom. Margaret, edging closer and closer to age 10, still prefers papa.

Even with a mentally ill father who didn’t work past my turning 4 years old and it was my mom who raised me as a single parent most of my growing up years, it was daddy I wanted. Those big arms can hold and protect like no other.

There is all this scientific reasoning out there why girls put their daddy’s on a pedestal. I haven’t read it. I just know that nothing makes me happier than seeing my little girl beaming as she holds her daddy’s hand, kicks the soccer ball with him or rips one through the wall…just like her daddy.

by J.G. McGlothern

Pin-up

My mother-in-law doesn’t drive. But boy does she get around. This seventy eight and a half year old rarely calls for a ride. She takes the bus everywhere. Volunteers here, volunteers there. Meets friends. Does stuff. Not one to sit too very long on her comfy couch – except when it comes to one thing. Horse racing. The lady is addicted. She even has a horse racing channel.

Yesterday visiting in her living room, a photograph on her couch caught my eye. A beautiful stallion. Oh, and there was a horse in the picture too. My mother-in-law had just received in the mail a pin-up calendar of jockeys. Twelve photos of jockeys posing sans shirt or unbuttoned all the way. What was going on over here?

I love discovering new things about people you have known for a very long time. It’s like opening a window you thought was stuck.

Not only do I have a politically active and world knowledgeable mother-in-law who travels, reads everything under the sun, knows what is going on in the world, takes the bus all over town…she has a calendar of half naked men hanging in her house.

The calendar profits go to permanently disabled jockeys, she tells me.

Of course it does.

by J.G. McGlothern

Monday’s Random Thought: Sweet Love

My son’s new favorite song is the Burt Bacharach song the Carpenter’s made popular when I was young…What the World Needs Now. Nothing sweeter than his little voice singing right there on the toilet, during breakfast, or walking down the hall. He’ll see me, either in need of a cup of coffee or a nanny and come over and wrap his little arms around me and sing the song he learned at school:

What the world needs now,
Is love, sweet love,
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.
What the world needs now,
Is love, sweet love,
No, not just for some but for everyone.

And it’s true more than a cup of extra strong French press or a nanny…sweet love, just a bit of it is all I need…at least until the hot water is ready.

 by J.G. McGlothern

Below Surface

My friend bought me a pair of goggles. A belated birthday gift, my Thursday swim partner told me, handing over my first pair. She a long time swimmer, noticed I didn’t have goggles. Never really knew how to wear them. Never really needed them because I swim on the surface mostly. Pretty much a breast stroke girl and if I do the head under water version, I just close my eyes. The occasional back-stroker who can gaze up at the sky, or in this pool’s case, the ceiling. I am the chica who got over the fear of water for the most part, but still swims mostly with my face out of the water.

Wow! What a difference. There is a whole other world down there. This goggle vision is also a bit scary. Being able to see the pool drop off like that, from three feet, to four feet, to a couple more steps in between, then all of a sudden you see below how much it has dropped off and you are swimming in the twelve foot end of the pool. Crazy! A bit unnerving seeing the color of the pool down there. Are those stains on the pool floor? What kind of stains? I lift my head back up. A few more breast strokes with my head above surface. I remember to breathe.  Slow, deep breaths. Then back below surface. No wonder my kids swim like dolphins under water for hours.

I catch the movement of the gal sharing my lane, headed in my direction, just beside me. She too is a breast stroke swimmer. I don’t find many of us on these swim Thursdays. She has joined me in the “easy” lane and could really qualify for the more experienced lanes. But looking under water her movements slow down and I see how the stroke can be done without working so hard and asserting great force. Slow and easy. A tadpole, gliding through the lily pads. Women moving through water. Elegant. Gentle.

Above the surface you just see these emotionless faces, focused on getting to the other end of the pool. Below the surface, graceful motion, a whole new way of looking at things. I apply what I have seen from my lane partner to my stroke. With practice, my strokes become effortless. I will never tell her she has helped me develop my technique. I will never know her name, just blue flowered swim suit with white swim cap and purple goggles chica.

A group of us grade school moms have been meeting one Wednesday a month to share stories, reflect on questions that go below the surface. Instead of just the light chatter that comes at school drop off and pick up, we talk about what rattles us, makes our hearts sing.  We share the deeper stuff that can bring up tears and make us laugh from our bellies. The first few meetings, getting to know each other and learning to be comfortable with sharing deeper sides of ourselves we left the goggles off.  Needing to feel out this whole going deeper thing. But now after meeting since September we know how to dive deep and share from the heart. We tell each other how the listening has helped us, how the sharing has inspired us, how going deeper has brought us to another place that was scary at first, but now we are feeling the smile down deep. Not just wearing it on the surface.

As I continue with my laps…I realize…it is worth going below the surface and not just glimpsing, but taking a moment to gaze at the legs, the kicks of color, splashes of form. Seeing how it all comes together.

For on the surface we are just faces moving forward to the other side of the pool. But with goggles, a second glimpse proves there is so much more to see.

by J.G. McGlothern

Rock the Boat

Yesterday on my son’s kindergarten field trip I was in charge of four kids. I had to carry their lunches in my back pack. With my back pack not being huge and spacious, as I fitted them all inside, I inadvertently left one boy’s lunch in the classroom.

I searched the bus, certain it must have fallen out when I retrieved my camera. I hunted all over the Center for Wooden Boats on Lake Union, thinking his lunch fell out of my pack.

The teacher had a second lunch. He was fine.

I felt like crap and was reminded of how our actions affect each other. Everything we do affects others. This lesson is something I am trying to teach my six year old son. For every action there is a complete and opposite reaction, right? Didn’t we learn that in school somewhere along the way?

Earlier that morning before the crack of dawn I gathered at the Mount Baker Boat House on Lake Washington with four mom friends, to try our first attempt at crew. We signed up to learn how to row. All novices. All in our forties. All eager to learn this new sport. It just took one mom to say she was interested and the next thing you know there are five of us standing in a boat house on a chilly June morning learning the difference between a sculler and a sweep, a rigger and a roller.

While teaching us some of the basics, on our first day, the teacher explained how this rowing thing is a team sport and how it is all about working together. If one person slouches in the skull, the others will feel that energy. If one rows perfectly and the others are all off, it doesn’t matter that the one did it perfectly. 

 We affect each other.

 We rock each other’s boats. Good or bad? Yes and no. Rocking just happens.

The kindergartner still had a great time on the field trip. On the bus ride home he ate my carrots and cucumbers, the whole bag, with a smile. Then back at school his lunch was waiting for him.

Another kid may have reacted differently.

We lean to the left and others can lean with us or pull away.  Neither is good or bad, it just is.

Rocking happens and since it is going to happen we might as well enjoy the ride, good or bad. Big waves or small. They’re just waves.

by J.G. McGlothern