Whole Again

Another page in stages. I am learning to be sloppy and more free.

Definitely channeling the work of Roben-Marie Smith and Tina Jensen.

Oh the joy and beauty of this.

Also this girl. This girl!

 Home from sophomore year, just turned twenty, my favorite person.

I gave birth to my favorite person.

We laugh at nothingness often.

She's Gone

I keep playing that Daryl Hall and John Oates song "She's Gone" in my head.

Allie moved to another state. My little girl moved away.

That morning felt like I was going to a funeral.
I don't mean that in any glib way, I have been to many. Too many.
I didn't think I could get out of the house.

 We drove her car. Drove away from Oklahoma.

I tried for her not to know how devastated I felt. She seemed fine.

I left her there. Looking at her with her pillow under her arm took me right back to that first day of school. She was so mad that I wanted to stop and take a picture.
That was a big day too but dammit she still lived with me.

But now, college...There she went. Swallowed up by all the other kids.
So ready. So excited.
Leaving her on that college campus, I went to the car and bawled. 

I didn't cry until I felt better, I bawled until I felt worse.

I got on the train to come home, head pounding. 
The four and half hour train ride became six hours. Misery. Truly.

This guy got me through that ride.

Away from Allie. Home to my husband.

I felt like I had been beaten the next morning.

But something started to happen...

a shaky effervescence came over me.
My loss, my grief means that Allie gets to start her wonderful life.

What I Didn't Expect

I had hoped my baby would be healthy.

We didn't know she was a girl until she appeared in the world 18 years ago. Healthy.

I had hoped she would have all functioning parts.

She did.

I had hoped she would have a good functioning brain. 

I feared the retardation my brother has.

She had good function.

Once all the parts were here and worked, I hoped she would like to learn and love to read. She did.

Once I realized how much she loved school, I expected she would graduate high school.

She did.

I expected good grades. She got them.

I hoped she would make it through sober, intact, emotionally healthy.

She did.

What I didn't expect is the friendships.

I hoped she would make the kind of enduring, necessary, epic friendships that I have, that have kept me alive at various lows.

She has them.

Such close friends. Friendships that are nearly decades old now. Already. Whew.

Love. Laughter. Expectations. Limits.

I didn't expect it. But she has them.

Well done sweet girl...

Uh, Yeah...April

I finished my April Photo365 at the beginning of May but I had a bicycle accident since then wherein I hurt myself, and worse, my friend who also went down with me. I broke my hand, which is an inconvenience. Also my right underarm needs attention I can no longer give it.

So many people are suffering.
I just heard a 41 year old friend who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that has metastasized to her liver. Her daughters are 11 and 2. 

So I am feeling healthy and lucky to be sure.

I did break the fall with my hand and face and have some gnarly pictures to share soon.

Meanwhile, announcements have been sent and my girl graduates from high school early June. So many feelings, memories and thoughts. I am typing with one hand so

It must suffice to say how proud I am with the friendships she has formed. They will be important through out her life. Mine kept me going. I even had a bike wreck with one recently after which she said there is no one she would rather get road rash with.

Allie has that, thank God. Thank you God.

When my face was pre-gravel, I posted this April Favorites video.
God hates vanity I'm pretty sure...

18 Cakes

It took 18 years for me to make this album.

It is my daughter's story of birthday cakes over the years until this one, her 18th birthday.

I will share a few pages here.

I used all the invitations that I found in a box I moved out of mother's house.

I also found a note mother left me. She knew I would be the last person to go through her things.

I have cried, smiled, laughed, cried...

That's what it's like to raise a healthy child that lives to celebrate all these birthdays.

I realize I am lucky.

Yet, there are clouds that pass over and tell me she is leaving.

And I grieve that.

And everything is going like it's supposed to.

And I celebrate that.

Suz said she has room in her heart for sadness, its the depression that she doesn't want to fall into to. I get that.

And, so, there is happiness and there is sadness, like most beautiful stories...

Dear Daddy...

October 3rd is my dad's Deathday. October is full of anniversaries, his death, my dead brother's birthday, my own. I was thinking how I could easily get drawn down into at least melancholy, at worst depression. Its been 13 years but I've feeling so close to dad as I finish up mother's things following her death in April. I have been so quiet. Living slowly and with purpose. There has been loneliness too.

Its pretty easy to live a life of gratitude when there are good days. It is easy to be grateful for beauty but what about pain? Ugliness?  Death? It is far more challenging to, say, look at the beaten, bloody body on the cross and feel grateful. Its easier to feel shame. Recently, God told me pretty clearly 'gratitude transforms pain into joy.'

Looking directly at today I am thinking about my father's influence in my life and wanted to say a few things about daddy and feel grateful...

He adored me. I was his beloved. I knew it, everyone knew it and I loved it. Everyone should be adored by someone and he was mine. The last day I saw him, 2 days before he died, he patted me sweetly on the shoulder, cooed to me and called me "sisto." God how grateful I am for that.

He was a feminist. He taught me I could do anything. He worked for the city of Oklahoma City in the 1960s as department head over Personnel Services under Mayor Patience Latting. He loved Patience Latting. She was the first female American mayor of a city greater than 250,000. Dad spoke so highly of her, always calling her by her full name. I grew up with Patience Latting as an icon in our home. I am deeply grateful for that. Turns out she was at the same facility mother lived. I was too intimidated to introduce myself to her.

I grew up going to flea markets with dad. The old school grungy, dusty kind. He had a booth of mostly military related items. I spent Saturdays roaming trash and treasures while he maned his stall. One day I saw this book in his booth, I was about 14, I guess, The Influence of Women and Its Cure from 1936 by John Erskine. Its filled with suggestions about how to keep women and their ideas from spreading around. Dad said he figured a feminist would come by and get all over that book. I told him "one just did," snatching it up.

I am so grateful my father was a feminist. Some of you may have to look that word up. Let me tell you, it changed everything.

He told me I had a good brain. There were no limits on my brain. He told me to look around in class and know I would make the A if anybody could. I do believe in my ability to think and learn. I had such crappy self esteem otherwise but my belief in my brain was the great grappling hook that kept me alive and kept me going.

I am so grateful he gave in confidence in my intelligence. That is a profound thing as the younger sibling of a brother with such severe disabily from retardation.

I am a Sooner. I was raised on Sooner football. There was Jesus and Barry Switzer and some days not in that order. I am a second generation Sooner, we have 5 OU degrees between the two of us.

Thank you for OU, dad. I still love college. And the Sooners...

Daddy gave me my first Nikon when I turned 16. It was a very expensive Nikon F2 SB he bought second hand from a local family owned camera shop. I remember my photography teacher being miffed about this great camera in my hands. I don't know how dad knew but he made sure I had the tool that became a life long passion. The Nikon I use now came from the same shop, the same Epperson's from which I bought my daughters first Nikon last Christmas.

I am so grateful dad helped me find photography early in life.

It may have been the dead birds I collected, but he knew I needed to study science. He started early on telling me to major in a hard (not soft) science and to complete my terminal degree before I got married. I did get my BS in Zoology and MS in Microbiology and another from the Physician Assistant program. Part of the failure of my first marriage is quitting my PhD program ABD (all but dissertation). Shoulda' listened.

Thank you dad for recognizing the biologist in me. I have such a passion for it.

Dad left work for the city and became a college professor which was his profession the majority of the time I grew up. When I became an adjunct professor of biology he sent me a card that said Bravo! and Congratulations! and he wrote inside "on the occasion of your first faculty position."

Thank you for paving the way to academia and teaching. It is one of the constants in my life.

Dad knew me so well. He pointed my in my own direction. Thank you daddy, I am so grateful for that. I miss you so much.