Puppy Love Redux

My first crush was on a little red-haired boy named Tommy, an ‘older man’ of four.

I’ve confessed before to bopping his sister on the head with a toy truck when she got in the way of my ‘pursuit’ of him. Over the years, I carried a torch, no matter how briefly, for other boys until I met the one who made me hope the flame would never be extinguished.

Many factors shape who we become as adults, including previous loves, likes, and the more than occasional passing fancy.

What prompted this introspection was a good friend’s musing about her child’s upcoming first date. She wasn’t sure whether to be proud or cry, knowing the first heartbreak is the natural next step.

As parents we want desperately to shield our children from heartbreak, while at the same time being keenly aware that love and loss is an integral part of the growing up process.

My favorite scene in the movie Jaws, which in 1975 was my first official date, takes place at night aboard Robert Shaw’s boat. Roy Scheider listens as an inebriated Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss swap fish stories and compare shark bites.

One upmanship takes over and Dreyfuss shrugs out of his shirt, indicating his chest and the greatest wound of all:

As Hooper, he says: “There. Right there. Mary Ellen Moffit broke my heart.

Not long after, the Great White chomps Robert Shaw’s Quint in half. Somehow I think a broken heart is more easily mended.

Sure, sometimes whether you’re a teenager or an octogenarian not even diving into a pint of Ben & Jerry’s can cure what ails you.

But we can take something valuable away from each time we’ve loved and lost. Even though I didn’t marry one, I gained a life-long affinity for redheads from my pre-schooler crush on Tommy F. in that Detroit suburb back in the 60s.

If you don’t open your heart to the possibility of loss, how can you know love?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

So long, summer

All week I’ve looked high and low (well, the Google search engine equivalent) for just the right poem, quote, or even song lyric about the end of summer and the advent of autumn.

Yes, I know fall doesn’t ‘officially’ start until September 23^rd this year. But c’mon, don’t we all mentally shift seasonal gears when Labor Day rolls around?

It seems like only yesterday, or last week at least, that my younger son and I were sitting around the dinner table talking about the end of school. Actually, it was mid-May, and summer loomed full of promise and possibilities.

After a brutal winter and blustery spring here on the prairie, we were all ready for summer. And our weather was nothing compared to the conditions that socked the mid-Atlantic and Eastern seaboard regions. Those were Mike Tyson-esque punches that kept on pummeling. Like all years, 2010 so far has been rife with highs and lows.

I won’t go into the lows because I’m trying to veer from my usual more maudlin ‘fare’ and write a humorous funny blog about saying ‘so long, summer.’

But one thing I learned all the years my mother and I wrote romantic comedy for Harlequin, is that true humor requires pathos to balance it out...just like life.

Crying over the bad and laughing at the good sometimes morphs into tears of laughter and smiles of sadness.

In bidding adieu to August, I’m reflecting on the highs and lows of the season about to pass…even if not officially.

Saying at least nobody died does a bit of a disservice to June and her sisters, July and August. But after a sad winter, I tend to categorize things that way.

This summer did have Herculean highs, along with several tail-dragging lows. But isn’t every season like that? Isn’t that what life is all about?

We cherish the good times and mourn the bad, and life moves forward.

Just like the calendar.

Trees

“The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree” is a common expression around here.

Whenever I mimic my mom’s behavior or one of my sons reaffirms his parentage, I utter that expression. I’m curious about the origins of that saying and should put my friend Holly Jacobs on it. She recently enlightened me on the meaning of ‘getting down to brass tacks.’ Romance writer Holly, an Erie, PA resident, and I ‘talk’ via e-mail every day and have for years. Without her boundless optimism, I’d be lost.

Originally I’d planned to blog about a story I read in this morning’s Omaha World Herald about a storm that felled the ailing chestnut tree Anne Frank gazed upon while hiding in the jam warehouse in Amsterdam.

Three springs ago on a trip across the pond, I gazed at that sickly tree and tried to imagine my sons unable to go outside for two years. When they were little, I couldn’t imagine them going more than two minutes without going outside. Last fall, I wrote about Anne and her father.

My intent was to write about my appreciation of trees, my love for my children, the irony of moving to a state (Nebraska) that is the home of Arbor Day yet lacks trees, my 7^th grade science project in Sault Ste. Marie on Dutch Elm disease, and the universality of a parent’s love for a child and the horrors inflicted on all of humanity by evil.

Kind of an overwhelming agenda.

Instead, I will just murmur a quiet thanks my babies are growing into fine young men. And I’ll remind myself the most important part of holding on is letting go.

School Daze

It seems like only yesterday husband, younger son and his grandma and I were sitting around the dinner table talking about how many days til the end of the school year.

But it wasn’t yesterday, it was mid-May. Suddenly mid-August has rolled into town, offering a reprieve from the blistering 90-degree heat just in time for the start of school tomorrow.

My younger son, Andrew, was conveniently born 15 years ago today, his birth allowing his father to miss an all-day faculty retreat. I was glad at the time baby and I could accommodate him.

Tomorrow said son starts his sophomore year of high school. Thirty-five years ago I was a sophomore in high school. Today in the frozen yogurt shop I experienced a moment of sheer horror. It dawned on me I was closer in age to the elderly gray-haired couple at the counter than I was to the two sweet girls who looked like they could be Andrew’s classmates.

As I scrutinize my neck (a la Nora Ephron) for loss of elasticity and peer under my eyes at the fine lines staring to web out (apparently visible only to me, according to my husband, but there nevertheless!), it has occurred to me I’m missing the point.

Especially lately.

Time marches on. We wouldn’t want it not to. I’m think I’ve forgotten my central theme here, that of holding on and letting go.

Not only do we have to let go of our children, we need to let go of our youthful image of ourselves.

That doesn’t mean we have to become stodgy. Some of the most youthful people I’ve ever known have numbered many in years. Conversely, I’ve know those younger than me whose attitudes were ancient.

We have to treasure each moment and turn a myopic eye to the mirror.

Cha-cha-cha-cha-changes

I hate change. Not pennies, nickels and dimes or sweeping move across the country change... just the new shoes/new glasses/ getting used to lovely new computer blues....

Trying to cut down on words of late so won’t belabor the point, but suffice it to say we moved a lot when I growing up. Not excessively but enough. I went to three high schools and two universities. Over the course of my life, I’ve lived in five states.

When my husband and I moved to Flagstaff, Arizona from Iowa more than 20 years ago, the move literally made me sick.

Or so I thought.

True, I was getting used to high altitude living. But what I mistook for abject unhappiness turned out to be stomach flu.

I threw up, felt fine, and loved our five-plus years there.

Later, two-year-old in tow, we moved to a university town in West Virginia. It rained every single day that autumn, a fact I’ve blogged about before. I’d take toddler Erik to the park in the drizzle and wonder how on earth I’d ever meet other moms and make friends.

I just had to have faith.

Big changes I seem to sail through after the initial nausea and need for an umbrella. Moving to Nebraska was a little choppier for me but only in the job department. The prairie grasses of this state differ enormously from the Great Lakes of Michigan, my beloved birthplace. Still I lump these places into the category of ‘Midwest’ and feel like I’ve come home.

It doesn’t hurt that we’re close to western mountain ranges, another love.

But getting used to a new computer or even a new pair of shoes throws me. Is it my discomfort with the unfamiliar or am I that set in my ways?

Isn’t moving across country ‘unfamiliar’? Or changing elementary schools or high schools or jobs or states?

I don’t know the answers. Usually when I commit words to paper--rather screen--for this blog, I have some idea of the outcome, the destination, the denouement.

Maybe big moves are an exciting chance to start anew, and small changes are just annoying.

Or it could be having the soul of a makeover artist and the personality of she of the Princess and the Pea notoriety?

I do know we are who we are. We adapt, we morph, but we never fundamentally change.

Especially when it comes to change.

New Year’s Resolutions in July

Better safe than sorry, I always say…herewith my New Year’s Resolutions in July.

Originally I’d planned to blog about last week’s family trip to Colorado. To celebrate their 60^th wedding anniversary, my in-laws gathered their ‘clan’ for an extended stay at a lodge located a few miles from Rocky Mountain National Park.

My husband, our younger son (Andrew), and I joined the throng of siblings, spouses, grandchildren, assorted other relatives, and one brand-new fiancée (congrats Martha and Niels!)

The pictures illustrating this post are from some glorious hikes my husband and I took. I don’t have the heart to trot out a snowman graphic in July.

So far 2010 has been mixed bag, like most years I suppose. The good, the bad, and the sad all commingling. Perhaps I’m doing this year an injustice by listing resolutions with four months to go.

Perhaps not.

Next year I resolve to:

1. Keep the ‘lifestyle change’ momentum going. I welcomed this year with extra pounds, a foray into full-time freelancing, and total bewilderment at being 50. I can close my eyes and be instantly transported back to 15, the age Andrew turns in a couple weeks. Of course I can’t remember two days ago…. However, thanks to the local YMCA programs complete with wonderful instructors and my decision to let go of the word ‘diet’ and embrace the over-used (in our household) term ‘lifestyle change,’ I’ve dropped a little more than 20 pounds.

I fall off the wagon. A lot. There are probably skid marks on my derriere from so much ‘bouncing.’ But I climb back on because I want to be able to hike well into other decades.

2. Find the focus. For years, I had an index card push-pinned to the bulletin board in my home office with the word ‘FOCUS’ printed on it. I always told my reporting students to find the focus in their stories. The card was to help me remember to find the focus in the stories I was writing at the time with my partner/mother. When we moved two years ago, the card became a casualty of the packing. But I’m seriously thinking of making a new one. I need to find the focus.

3. Remember to do things I like, and remember what it is I like to do. That smacks of the self-absorption I vowed not to fall into when I started blogging. But this is about my not-quite-New Year’s- resolutions. Until last week, it had been close to 20 years since I’d hiked in Western mountains. For the few days we were in Colorado, we took full advantage of being able to hike in Rocky Mountain National Park. On that first day of hiking, one whiff of those pines instantly transported me back to the days when I was a ‘new’ faculty wife in Flagstaff, Arizona and joined a hiking group. Our members ranged in age from late 20’s (me) to mid-70’s (amazing former PE teachers who could hike switchbacks around me).

During those years Baby #1 came along and spent a lot of hiking trail time in a backpack, but then we moved cross-country, along came baby #2….demanding jobs, blah blah blah. I’ve always liked to walk but had forgotten just how much I enjoy hiking, truly enjoy it.

So my final ‘resolution’ for the rest of this year, next year, and all the years to come is to remember to enjoy life, embrace the ups and weather the downs, and not stagnate in the dull middle.

To paraphrase the Capra-esque angel Clarence: I really do have a wonderful life.

“Not Quite a List Poem” or “The Dog Days of Blog Posts"

One of the best aspects of having poets for friends is being exposed to many different forms of the genre. List poems especially intrigue me. The poet itemizes something in a cohesive fashion, and the ending is significant.The structure of the words fairly sings. Originally what was going to follow was a list of random thoughts on July, but it wasn’t gonna be in tune.

As an aside, I went to one of those Facebook sites called “I Write Like” that checks what famous writer a person writes like by analyzing word choice and writing style and comparing them to those of famous writers. You paste in a sample of your writing so I ‘pasted’ in the first few paragraphs of my last blog post.

My analysis?

Bram Stoker. Yep, Dracula’s ‘daddy.’ Nuff said. Course my dh points out it’s my old-fashioned style. Tried another piece and got the bard…yes, that BARD…jolly olde England with the emphasis on OLDE.

Pretty much sums up July.

And I did have a pithy (okay, really pathetic) attempt at a list poem that started like this:

July

Fireworks flying forth, parachutes a dud

Friends gathered, food fine….

But I got sidetracked, which is just as well.

Think I’ll stick to prose and leave the poetry to the experts: the poets.

p.s. I just pasted in the first two graphs of this piece for analysis: H.P. Lovecraft.

The End