JourneyLeaf: Life a Page at a Time

Green Room Before and After

Before...

 

And after...

Outside

The warm summer evenings are such a pleasure...

 

 

 

House Surprises

I've moved twelve carloads of things to the new house already.  My knees are already complaining about all the trips up and down the stairs.  It doesn't dampen my enthusiasm, though.

One of the best things about moving into a new house is the constant discovery.  When I need a break, I wander around in the yard.  I knew we had a crepe myrtle, but it hadn't bloomed yet.  Finally it began to blossom and revealed itself as my favorite color of crepe myrtle -- watermelon!  

 

And we own hydrangeas!  How I love hydrangeas!

 

I found a lovely patch of rosemary that will be a lovely start for my herb garden.

 

There's a gingko, which will turn gold in autumn and the Bradford pears will turn burgundy.  There's also a Japanese maple, which I'm guessing will be some sort of shade of red.

 

And then there was this little surprise.  I  wondered why the sellers left a dead fern hanging on the front porch.  It turns out there is a lovely bird's nest in it.  I clicked a photo and then carefully hung it back.

 
Aaaaaaand then there are the not-so-good surprises.  One day this week I pulled things out of the closet to take to the new house.  Once my sewing machine was removed, this huge brown spider came swaggering into the hallway.  The photo really doesn't do it justice.  (Insert shiver here.)  Thankfully, Eli was too busy eating breakfast to see it and Brian hadn't left for work yet.  My hero dispatched said spider with a combat boot.  (I know spiders are good for the planet.  And I leave spiders alone when they are outside in their natural habitat.  But when they come into my habitat...)

 

Thankfully, the good surprises far outweigh the creepy!

 

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Rituals

Summer Joys #8 -- Rainy Evening

It started pouring rain in the early evening.  Eli and I considered going out to enjoy it, but then thunder started to rumble.  Sigh.  Time to make supper anyway.  But in between making the tossed salad and the fruit salad, I snapped some photos through the window.  

 

 

I played around with my camera settings, changing between high shutter speed to stop the raindrop action and slow speed to enjoy the misty blur.  (The raindrops jumping off the smoked glass top of the landlord's patio table looked amazing, especially with the green grass below it filtering through.)

 

At very high speed, photos become grainy.  Hmmm.  Between the woods in the background, window reflections, and spattering raindrops, the images look like abstract paintings.  Spiff.

 

 

 

Exploring summer joys to soak them up...

#1 -- The Beach

#2 -- Ice Cream

#3 -- Seafood

#4 -- Sudden Rain Shower (and playing in it!)

#5 -- Thunderstorm at Sunset

#6 -- Lemonade

#7 -- Early Evening Light
#8 -- Rainy Evening

 

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Summer Joys #5 -- Thunderstorm at Sunset

Summer Joys #1 -- The Beach

Summer Joys #7 -- Early Evening Light

Quiet Rainy Day Landscapes

The Beginning...

 

The house is now ours.  We closed last week and got the keys on Monday.  Work begins in earnest now -- packing, repainting, and moving.  Yet it is so gratifying. 

 

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Warning: Bumpy Blogging Ahead...

Summer Time Kaleidoscope

Summer Joys #7 -- Early Evening Light

 

 

 

 

 

Exploring summer joys to soak them up...

#1 -- The Beach

#2 -- Ice Cream

#3 -- Seafood

#4 -- Sudden Rain Shower (and playing in it!)

#5 -- Thunderstorm at Sunset

#6 -- Lemonade

#7 -- Early Evening Light

 

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Summer Joys #3 -- Seafood

Summer Joys #2 -- Ice Cream

Summer Joys #5 -- Thunderstorm at Sunset

Summer Joys #6 -- Lemonade

 

One of my regrets about living in California is that we never had a lemon tree.  We knew lots of folks who had them and plucking a fruit for some fresh juice or zest while you're cooking just sounded so nice.  Luckily, my friend Sara shared her lemons.  We used them several times to make Gentle Lemonade.  Mmmm!  So good and nicely balanced.  Click HERE for the recipe.

 

 

We moved back to Georgia last year and imagine my surprise one winter's day while taking a walk when I looked up to see a small lemon tree in a neighbor's yard.  North Georgia gets too cold for lemons.  How did they do it?  The next time I saw my neighbor out gardening, I stopped to ask.  With a laugh, she invited me up the driveway to see.  The lemon tree is planted in a large plastic pot that sits on a wheeled coaster.  On frosty days, she just rolls the lemon tree into her garage!

Oh, the pang of regret, wishing I'd brought some California lemons back east with me!  Then came time for my husband to take a business trip to the Bay Area.  A quick text message to Sara and soon familiar, dear lemons were on their way.  We used them to make lemonade for a family party, carefully saving the seeds to plant.  In addition, Sara sent us some cuttings.  Those poor plants traveled over two thousand miles in a suitcase, their ends wrapped in damp paper towels and aluminum foil.  It took them several days to reach me, so I wasn't sure they'd stand much of a chance.  But I got them a big pot and some good quality organic soil.  To prepare the cuttings, I snipped off the ends, giving each a fresh, diagonal cut.  I let them sit in a vase of lukewarm water overnight to make sure they were hydrated and then dipped each cut end into Bontone brand rooting powder before planting.  I found them a spot with partial sun and made sure the soil didn't dry out too much.  In the first couple of weeks they lost a lot of leaves.  Then the remaining leaves started to perk up.  A month later, I can't promise success, but they are looking good.  

Between the seedlings and the cuttings, we soon hope to have our own lemon tree even if it may be a while until it is large enough to bear fruit.  My neighbor says her small tree, about three feet high, produces enough lemons that everyone in her family gets a lemon meringue pie for Christmas.  Now I'm daydreaming of batches of lemon curd and lemon tarts.  And, of course, lemonade.

 

Thanks, Sara!  And thanks, Brian, for carefully ferrying my potential lemon trees home!

Local buddies, I may be successful and end up with more lemon trees than I can handle.  Let me know if you would like to adopt one when they are bigger.

 

Exploring summer joys to soak them up...

#1 -- The Beach

#2 -- Ice Cream

#3 -- Seafood

#4 -- Sudden Rain Shower (and playing in it!)

#5 -- Thunderstorm at Sunset

#6 -- Lemonade

This post is linked to The Magic Onions website's Friday Nature Table as well as Creative Friday on Natural Suburbia.

 

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Mysterious May

Many Thanks

Yesterday I wrote about my mother's death from AIDS.  Two decades ago I didn't know about the World Wide Web, but I would have been astounded at the thought of announcing the manner of my mother's death so widely.  I'm glad society has grown and is different now.  And, despite the pain and loss, I'm glad I'm different now.  

The Web is such a good reminder of what we often forget -- that we are all interconnected.  It was an incredible experience during my mother's illness to feel a disconnect at such a vulnerable time, that our family was nudged outside some hearts because of fear or the judgment that AIDS was God's punishment and therefore must have been applied to us for some reason.  When your heart is broken open, it reveals a rawness you didn't know was there, but it also allows new experiences and ideas to flow in.  In such a state, it makes quite the impression that some church or long-time friends vanish but the flaming gay guy in your art class murmurs, "Oh, Baby Girl" and enfolds you in a huge, heartfelt hug.  It makes an impression that there are people who quietly appear by your side when you need help the most.  It rewrote my understanding of religion, my stance on politics, my definition of friendship, and the idea that kinship must contain blood ties.  A while back songwriter Jewel penned a lyric that said, "We are God's hands."  Add the idea that balance is essential and that sums up what I learned most deeply after my my parents died.  I have a long way to go and a lot more to learn, but I'm grateful to be on this journey. 

The second huge thing I learned from late-in-life orphanhood is that our appreciation of the world around us matters.  The root network sustaining each of us, holding us up, is made of people and their love, but don't underestimate the little root threads closing up the gaps.  Those root threads are our gratitude and enjoyment of this world.  Stopping to smell the roses sounds cliche, but it matters.  Cooking a yummy supper matters.  Snuggling with your sweetie matters.  Making time for a walk in the rain now and then matters.  Burying your nose in a child's soft cheek matters.  Watching the clouds form on a spring day matters.  I believe each enjoyable instance that registers in our brains becomes a wordless prayer of gratitude and grounds us in everyday life.  Sometimes I think every blog entry, every scribble in my journal, and every click of my camera shutter is a prayer of thanks.  I have made some missteps and mistakes in the past twenty years since my mother's death, but I have not failed to appreciate being here, being alive.  Have you ever wondered...what if your piece of Heaven is made up of the things you stopped to appreciate while you're down here?  Crazy idea, I suppose, but one that I do think about.  And it sure does help with finding Heaven here and now.

Here I've written on and on, completely off track from what I intended to say right off the bat -- thank you.  Thank you to each person who stopped to read my previous blog entry and thought about my mother with compassion for a moment.  Thank you, especially, for those who wrote a comment or posted on Facebook, left a voicemail for me.  I even got a bundle of gorgeous flowers, picked fresh from the garden by a friend to cheer me.  I am deeply blessed by wonderful family and friends.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

 

 

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My Mother Died of AIDS

My Mother Died of AIDS

June 2013 

Two decades ago today, my mother died of AIDS.  Two decades ago, there was a huge social stigma, and it still gives me a pause -- and a rush of gratitude -- to be able to state the truth so publicly now.  Society has largely changed and I have changed.

Mom was a nurse and got the virus through an accidental needle stick to her thumb.  At the time, she didn't tell anybody about the incident.  My father was battling lung cancer and she later said she just couldn't believe the worst could happen.  But after my father died, we all knew something was wrong.  Although mentally and spiritually Mom dealt with my father's death well, physically she kept losing weight and felt terrible all the time.  Five months after my father's funeral she finally got the results of the comprehensive battery of tests from her doctor.  She had the HIV virus and it was already active, moving her into what they call "full blown AIDS."  The "Triple Cocktail" had just been developed, three drugs in conjunction that seemed to work wonders helping victims survive.  The drugs were too harsh for Mom, though.  The cure was worse than the disease and after alarming weight loss and multiple hospitalizations, she had to give them up.  She lived one year after being diagnosed.

It was a different world then.  Courageous people like Ryan White as well as celebrities like Elton John, Micheal Jackson, and Liz Taylor were trying to make a difference, but nobody quite knew who to trust for information about how the virus spread.  I remember running errands a few days after my mother's funeral and I managed to cut my finger while doing a recycling drop-off.  I didn't notice it until I rang the doorbell at the house of some family friends, arriving to drop off a now-clean dish from a funeral casserole.  "Oh, come on in and let me get you a Band-Aid," the lady smiled.  Then her face froze.  She looked down at my bloody finger and I knew she remembered afresh that I just finished taking care of my AIDS-stricken mother, helping her die at home under hospice care.  "Tell you what, you can wait right here and I'll go get the first aid kit."  She pulled the screened door firmly shut between us.  While she was inside, I got back in my car and drove away.  I didn't blame her.  She was just thinking of her family's safety.

We got the "back away" treatment a lot.  I actually saw neighbors hurry away in the grocery store, hoping we hadn't seen them from a distance.  Although my mother was a church regular for many years at a conservative congregation a few miles away, it no longer seemed to matter that she'd always volunteered for the church nursery, for children's Sunday School, for Vacation Bible School.  When she was dying, she ceased to exist.  To be fair, she wasn't as regular in attendance during the whirlwind years of nursing school and my father's illness, so many may not have even known she was sick.  As a whole, though, it was stunning how quiet and scarce those folks became.   At any rate, the Presbyterian church we attended many years before stepped into the gap.  Friends mom had barely seen in over a decade came with meals and offers of help.  They didn't ask how Mom got AIDS.  They didn't care.  She was a friend and a human being and she was in need.  Likewise, the Episcopal church across town that we'd never attended had an AIDS ministry and sent volunteers to give us weekly breaks.  Thanks to them I was able to finish my graduate school classes that semester, giving me a much-needed distraction.  Members of the LGBT community reached out to offer comfort, connections, and help.  When I think about all those community kindnesses, I still get misty-eyed.  In their honor, I made sure to pay it forward.  I regularly donated platelets as well as volunteered at a hospice house and with Kate's Club, an organization for kids in grief.  I promise to always carry on the spirit of volunteering.  And I no longer regret that death and grief changed my address book.  I learned a lot about friendship, community, and nurturing your network.  

I've heard reports that many young people are cavalier about the HIV virus now.  Because the drugs are working so well, many no longer worry about catching it.  That makes me want to cry.  If they only knew how utterly miserable AIDS is -- wasting away to skin and bones, too tired to sit up even if your hip bones didn't feel too sharp for you to tolerate the pressure.  Social stigma or no, it is an awful way to die.  It still breaks my heart to think of Mom enduring it day after day after day.  Finally, on this day twenty years ago -- a damp, sticky morning with a hot sun already on the rise -- it was a relief to let her go.  And then came the crushing realization that the woman I loved so much was gone for the rest of my lifetime.

Not a day has gone by that I haven't missed my parents.  They were lovely people -- kind and warm and lovable.  You don't realize what a shelter your parents' love is until you no longer have it.

If I had a nickel for every time I wished my parents could have met my husband and my son, I'd be a very rich woman now.  Mom would have been a fantastic grandmother.  Quite simply, she made the world a better place.  I think about all the volunteer work Mom did to build the community around us -- senior citizens' center, public elections, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, PTA, my elementary school, and more.  For years she used to deliver Meals on Wheels to the homebound.  As some of her clients were moved into nursing homes, she began visiting them there.  For a few of them, she was their only friend and visitor.  With more than one, she sat with them as they were dying so they wouldn't be alone.  (Which to this day makes me hang my head because she died alone.  I'd been holding her hand for over an hour, but stepped outside for about ten minutes of fresh air.)  

My mom was a do-er and the champion of underdogs, but she was funny too.  Once we were living on Skidaway Island for the summer and took a wrong turn in the car, ending up at a guard shack posted at the edge of an upscale golf course and housing development.  The guard gruffly told us to turn around and go back the way we came.  The next day we went back, this time with cold soft drinks and snacks to give to that poor guy in his sweltering shack.  Remembering his baffled face, Mom, my brother, and I laughed like banshees all the way back home.

Ever notice what a hodge-podge flood it is when you think back on someone now gone that you adored?  Mom loved Peppermint Patties and cherry pie.  In fact, she had an unbelievable sweet tooth so that even now I can't look at jelly beans or gumdrop orange slices without thinking of her.  She didn't give a fig what people thought, so she'd clap her hands in church to the music even though her teenaged daughter would be cringing next to her.  (Go, Mom!)  She adored emerald green, cowboy boots, lace blouses, and dancing around the bedroom to the Pointer Sisters while getting dressed.  She loved art museums and salad bars.  She would cheer for any football player on televison who made a touchdown regardless of their team affiliation.  She baked cookies on rainy days so the house would smell good when we came home from school.  Although she only went to college the first time around to get her "MRS" and largely flunked out, she later overcame a learning disability to make straight A's and get into nursing school.  She taught my brother and I how to make root beer, turning out 144 bottles of home brew in mismatched pop bottles topped with beer caps -- each one quite the conversation piece with the neighborhood kids.  She could do an awesome imitation of Snoopy doing his happy dance.  When I was in high school and had a broken jaw, she left the hospital at the end of visiting hours when I shrugged and told her I didn't need her, yet cheerfully reappeared by my side at 3AM when I was crying my eyes out -- and she never made mention of it afterwards.

So here's to my mother.  She was the best.  And she is sorely missed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click HERE for a follow-up post.
  

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Many Thanks

Technicolor Stripes

Eager for some writing time, I sent my guys out for a few hours.  When they returned hours later from Chuck E Cheese, they were not empty handed...

   

 

 

 

 

 

I admit it.  I was a little horrified at the prize Eli picked out with all the tickets he won at Chuck E Cheese games.  With diabetics on both sides of Eli's family tree, we try not to make sugar an everyday occurance and avoid food coloring when we can.  On the other hand, we don't want candy to become magical and forbidden fruit.  Sigh. 

An interesting read:  "Junk Food is the New Normal."

 

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