"Call me right when it happens."

This is what I told my mom just now.
My grandmother is slowly passing away in my mother's living room.
She's certainly old (94) and definitely ready.
But it's always hard to say good-bye for real.
:::::

I started writing this poem about my grandma when I was homesick and living in Switzerland back in '03 and finished it just right now:::

a muffled whistle and a jigsaw puzzle,
and a book I could always read again.
a tire swing and a parfait pie,
an alligator cup in my hand.

dominoes and skip-bos,
and American Movie Classics.
you bathed me and you sang to me,
growing up, as i was fragile.

a bloody toe in a baking pan,
the shovel of disaster.
lots of love and forgiveness,
wrecking trucks in the pasture.

snapping peas in patio rockers,
picking pecans with my hands.
rollerskating, driveway circles,
infinity in our hands.

you were blessed to be loved twice,
by two kind and loving men.
i am hurt to think you gone,
but richer to have you mine.

~~~~

i hope she understands how much it all meant to me.

when you were 12

A friend of mine, Allison, once said when trying to figure out your life's vocation you should think back to what you were doing when you were twelve::

What were you interested in?
What were you dreaming about?

Me? I was listening to my "French at a Glance" cassette tapes like crazy. Repeating my numbers, une a dix, over the sound of the shower, listening to greetings while falling asleep and designing quizzes on my bedroom floor for all the nouns and adjectives in between. Later it was German words and phrases taped all over my college dorm room and car and then came Spanish with a little Bengali, Russian and Nepali in between. SOO, as daunting as it has been to choose just one field of study for grad school (Linguistically Diverse Education aka "ESL"), I'm thinking this has been a subject that I have consistently been interested in since I was at least 11 or 12 so it should be safe.

~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~

Recent Encouragement: maybe this is a sign::: So far this summer I have had kids in my group who speak: Hebrew, Korean, British English, French, Swiss German, German German, Afrikaans and American Sign Language (that's right no Spanish, the camp's in Boulder not Denver). So, I have just loved getting the kids to teach the others some key phrases for fun.

We have finished four weeks with Avid 4 Adventure and I am really enjoying it. I have great co-workers (especially the husband), which makes all the difference and the kids are kids, which is always fun and exhausting.
~:~
I have so much.
I am grateful.

Our Neck of the Woods

So, life update::: Matt and I are working for Avid4Adventure (an outdoor educational summer adventure day camp) in Boulder, Colorado.

and we are living in the National Forest outside of Boulder in our tent.

I've always dreamed of living in a tent for a season

and it's working out great
livin' the dream, trying to live a good story.


so, here are some of our sights so far:::

Elk grazing in an Aspen meadow

mother and cub looking both ways before crossing the road

crossing the road about 20 yards in front of us



big momma

From Brokenness to No Regrets

ok, this is a bit of a heavier topic, but it's life and sometimes we need to talk about the harder things (and i juxtapose it with a happier poem of life and love). I ran across this first poem on the movie Into the Wild, and in Anne Lammot's book, Bird by Bird.

This poem must be close to the hearts and minds of children from broken families. The thought process goes like this: i can't imagine how my parents were ever in love or how they got together, but I'm glad they did because otherwise i wouldn't be here.


I Go Back to May, 1936 (by Sharon Olds)

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~

Excerpt from Everything is Illuminated, (completely fascinating work of genius)

"The Book of Recurrent Dreams"
The dream of falling in love, marriage, death, love. This dream seems as if it lasts for hours, although it always takes place in the five minutes between my returning from the field and being woken for dinner. I dream of when I met my wife, fifty years ago, and it's exactly as it happened. I dream of our marriage, and I can even see my father's tear of pride. It's all there, just as it was. But then I dream of my own death, which I have heard is impossible to do, but you must believe me. I dream of my wife telling me on my deathbed that she loves me, and even though she thinks I can't hear her, I can, and she says she wouldn't have changed anything. It feels like a moment I've lived a thousand times before, as if everything is familiar, right up to the moment of my death, that it will happen again an infinite number of times, that we will meet, marry, have our children, succeed in the ways we have, fail in the ways we have, all exactly the same, always unable to change a thing. I am again at the bottom of an unstoppable wheel, and when I feel my eyes close for death, as they have and will a thousand times, I awake.


~~~ this is a more beautiful perspective of what it could be like to look back on marriage after decades of together-ness and this of course is what I desire

i have to mention this...

We had an RV for a week, it was only a week, but it sure was jam-packed with stress and anxiety, cleaning, re-upholstering and planning and dreaming, a little bit of excitement but mostly over-shadowed by the threat of a possible break down. Anyways, here are the photos of the RV we had for a week:

We were planning on living in the RV this summer, but we didn't have the time to get it ready engine-wise to drive to Colorado... so we had to pass it on.

our dear little Minnie Winnie, that was ours for a week

the dining area before reupholstering

After reupholstering and our first and last romantic dinner in the driveway of my mother's house. The marathon-sowing-weekend was a little frustrating for an amateur seamstress but a lot of fun at the same time

we could've been so happy in here

~:~:~:~:~

oh, well, for now we're traveling in the Subaru back to Denver, we're in Durango today and there just happened to be a lovely street festival - I've only been here twice and each time we were greeted by a sunny eco-chic festival with locally brewed beers and good eats. oh, how i love your Durango ways. and we found lovely camping outside of Pagosa Springs.


downtown Durango


oh how i have missed the Rocky Mountains.
thanks for the American flag camping chairs, Aunt Beryl.