Make New Friends but Keep the Old

Sometimes a little insanity is in order. This weekend we made a manic, somewhat last minute, ridiculous visit back to my alma mater. We didn't have any extra vacation days so we did the 14 hr drive in just a weekend which was really a lot of driving but was also really (sometimes life is incomprehensible!) exactly what needed to happen. The theatre club that my close chums and I helped found was celebrating 10 years and that was enough excuse for me to step up and insist on going.

I have recently decided to make a pretty directly clear life choice about friendship and important events. Somehow I became the girl who is too far away and too busy to come to anything her old friends are doing together and I hate it. I am determined to stay connected to old chums, attend those key events (weddings, baptisms, dedications, reunions, anniversaries...etc.) and whenever I am in town, I'm going to make lunch dates.

My beloved college theatre director and instructor.

When I moved away from my home state I was elated about the idea of a clean slate. I love the idea of creating yourself and the yawning possibility that exists in new friendships. And who doesn't like the hope of undoing old reputations and forging a newer, brighter image? While all of that is delicious and inspiring and wonderful, I accidentally lost touch with lots of old friends, missed a lot of wonderful opportunities and didn't have the nerve to try to meld the old me with the new one. I'm over it.

Not that I am saying I'm fearless, I'm just saying that I have come to understand that old friends and new friends both matter for different reasons, that old me and new me are still both me and both important, that relationships and connections are the feeders and safety net for essential, healthy human life and that I want my life to be one wild, spinning, knotted, weave with threads of all colors and strengths....and that meant that I needed to go to Michigan, come hell or high water.

I came home surer than ever that I'd done the right thing. There were screeching greetings with old friends, hilarious recollections, abundant warm words, more hugs than I can count, lots of long-waited-for introductions (hello husbands!), dress-up fun with my sister Foxy, sweet niece and nephew portraits, verbose and longed-for conversation (hello immensely long drive!) and a lot of coffee... It was one of the rightest things I've done in a while and so inspiring that I can hardly wait for the next chance!

My sister is a wizard with eye make-up. Isn't that beautiful?

Ash Wednesday For Mommies

Image by jezobeljones via Flickr

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the holy Lenten season. I accidentally slept too late to attend our parish's Ash Wednesday service and receive ashes but, I did enjoy a special morning prayer session, thought about ashing myself (but chickened out), listened to high, ringing Gregorian chant and took the kids for a soothing drive during naptime. I needed some thinking space.

Image via Wikipedia

We went winding our way up the road, slow driving, silent radio, windows cracked, just looking to see what we saw. I brought my pruning shears and clipped some feral forsythia and then stopped again at the side of a little marsh and snipped a bouquet pussy willows and thought of the pussy willow tree leaning over our late-condo unit.

I parked the car in an ancient New England graveyard and unrolled the window to breath a little of the early spring chill. I called my sister and talked to her, digesting parenting maxims and our latest epiphanies and spiritual development. A bluebird flew past and landed in a tree directly in front of me. I've never seen a bluebird in my life. I have to say that the idea that it might be a sign, crossed my mind.

They are doing The Stations of the Cross at our church every Friday and I am toying with trying to go and take the boys. I know it sounds a little nuts to take children through something so somber and mature but, I am not sure I could find a way to go without them and I think there's something good about showing children that life includes death and sorrow and heaviness. This is real and in many ways good.

I am still not exactly sure what I am giving up for Lent. And yeah...here we are on the first day already. I have considered giving up the comfort of my pillow but I honestly think it might not be much of a sacrifice since I occasionally sleep flat on the mattress for part of the night anyhow. I have toyed with different food penances and am not sure I have anything very solid there and I am not sure where else to go with my mental train of thought but I am still praying and waiting with open hands for something I can release. Letting go can be so good.

Related articles

• Lent for Dummies (chicagonow.com)
• The Liberation Of Giving Up (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• Ash Wednesday Observed (trinityhawaii.wordpress.com)
• Kids ask: What's Ash Wednesday? (dsgnmomonline.wordpress.com)
• Your Educational Guide to Ash Wednesday (badlandsbadley.wordpress.com)
• Ash Wednesday: Why Ashes Are Applied in The Forehead (analuzcastro.wordpress.com)

Road Stories

One of the really fabulous things that happened when A's mom was visiting us this past weekend was storytelling. I have mentioned before that we have a little tradition of using long drives and boring times in the car when the kids are wiggly and nobody can be good anymore for storytelling. I am a pretty verbal person so the notion of telling tales together for fun is pretty appealling. There's also something in my that connects the concept to my Native American ancestry. I can trace my relations back to a genuine chief's daughter and I imagine hopefully that my predilection for the spoken word has some connection to old times around tribal fires and huddled evenings amongst the furs in the wigwam.

Anyhow, it sure does the trick for my small boys in the car. They stop wiggling and they listen astoundingly. There is far less fighting and far more giggling (if its that sort of story) and as a bonus, they've learned a lot about moral truths, the exploits of their relatives and the beauty of the spoken word. They know how to build suspense, how a good story begins and ends and on the sly I sometimes catch them spinning little story worlds of their own behind the bookcase, in amongst a labyrinth of Lego or snuggled down in a pile of pillows, giggling away on their bunk beds. Story is contagious and powerful and clearly special.

Ru is in the habit of asking for stories whenever the drive we're taking appears longish and even though the answer isn't reliably "yes" he  tries to get the story mill grinding. He asked in front of A's mother and I hastily explained the idea while planning on shutting him down for sake of adult conversation and instead she beamed and said, "Oh! What a good idea! Lets have some stories!" She was not only a good sport, she was a fabulous contributor. I told her that the core plan was the relate real life stories, with an emphasis on our own familial past (our childhoods, our parents, our grandparents, ancient family lore...etc.) and she dove right in with all kinds of magical tales about her children having tension filled adventures, her brother's wild exploits in nature and the time a turtle tracked paint all over her childhood basement. Wonderful stories that I hope I can remember well enough to repeat and repeat so that they become a part of our canon.

Have you sat and told the stories of your own adventures or the high times of your distant relations? Its a great thing to relive all the incidents, but even better to tell it to a small eye sparkler who will stop breathing for the tense bits and giggle-shriek over the embedded jokes.

One more day!

Well, today was the beginning of the end of our California trip. We made it as far south as we're going and tomorrow we backtrack up the coast from San Diego back to Los Angeles and dip our toes into Hollywood, Beverly Hills...the insanity of the glitzy world that has created American cinema and then cool off with a fabulous cousin-heavy BBQ (Latin style I hear....carne asada all round!!! Wooohoo!!!). I am really looking forward to this big reunion. The downside of living across the country is that when the family starts rapidly expanding (which seems to happen with impunity in this stage of life) there's suddenly about twice as many people and most of them are people I don't know. Blast. Am making it a goal to get rid of strangers and fit names and vague relationship titles with real individuals and personalities.

                              Ru thinks this cousin and I are unspeakably twin-like...waddya think?

Today we had what sounds like a more low-key kind of day but, honestly, it was one of our most hard core plans so far. We got up and had breakfast with our kind cousinly hosts and then the plan was:

• See Mission San Juan Capistrano
• Eat an In n' Out burger
• Go to the San Diego Zoo

That's about it. But, remember people...the San Diego Zoo...is...um....immense. We were there for about three-ish hours and we didn't even see half the exhibits. We picked what we wanted to see before we went in and just hit the star attractions on our list and breezed past the rest. Sanity requires this approach. Truly. 

The zoo was great though. We had zero meltdowns and A was very gracious and handled both boys completely on his own so that I could just walk with the camera and take my time. I stopped, a lot. I drank a lot of water. I went really, really slowly. And I made it...after we left and I got back to the car I fell asleep instantly and was comatose for about an hour but hey...that's healthy!

The animals at the zoo all seemed pretty happy, some amazingly so...which always makes me feel good. One of the things about zoos that often makes me cringe is the sight of some magnificent animal (often admittedly, endangered in their native space), pacing obsessively back and forth across the space of their, clearly too small, concrete cage floor. There wasn't a lot of that at the SD Zoo. I think it helps to have the climate to create real rainforests for the animals to live in and not lean so exclusively on concrete and plastic substitutes. The orangutan came right up the glass, palms against the window and stared each visitor down thoughtfully, cocking his head and looking in our eyes before loping off, the big male gorillas were taking lazy naps in the sunshine right up against the window and the mama and baby sat happily in full view for a good while too and the flamingos had built themselves nests and were pridefully standing up from time to time to let us all see their giant single egg on the mud mounds where they incubate (super cute). But there was the polar bear, pacing mournfully in front of the door in the back of his cage where his keeper comes and goes, bellowing over and over in wretched misery. I wished I had a big block of ice I could give him. I wonder how much the California climate causes those guys trouble and how much was some other cultural concern. Hard to know as a bystander why the animal appears unhappy. Captivity sure isn't all its cracked up to be, even if it is in some cases better than extinction. All that to say, the zoo was really a fabulous experience and the boys trekked through very energetically...like I said, we didn't have even one meltdown point which is saying a lot for a two year old who is totally off his schedule and being asked to run non-stop. They even kept going through their normal nap-time.

Mission San Juan Capistrano was good too, although I think I liked Carmel-By-The-Sea most. There was a lot of pretty sculpture in the Carmel mission and although it was smaller it seemed more intimate somehow and less production style. San Juan Capistrano had a lot more going on in their space:  a tannery, a wine press, olive pressing, herb gardens, a hospital...etc.etc. That's all once upon a time of course, today there are just a lot of docents everywhere, explaining loudly how this pit was used and what that stone area over yonder was called. It was still pretty, still had historic gravity, a beautiful chapel, lush gardens...the whole package but, somehow it was just, not quite as romantic as my first introduction to the mission idea had been.

Stopping in Santa Barbara to Catch Our Breath....

One of our three guide books we thumb through daily on this trip says something to the effect of: "Santa Barbara--- A town blessed with astonishingly perfect weather, a gorgeous setting and the most beautiful local government building in the country!"

And then we got here and it was blowing, and grey and extremely chill...(maybe 40's or low 50's?)...with the whipping itself into a bitter froth. We hiked from our hotel through the downtown and found the courthouse closed (albeit very pretty on the outside) and did a little high wind browsing of the central shopping area and promenades. But, who cared that we hit our first chilly weather on the trip here in SB and who really had their happiness hung on the interior of the local courthouse anyhow? We were there to eat and see my cousin, the fabulous and incredibly wonderful chef at The Hungry Cat. Wow. We just asked him to throw us his favorites off of the menu and we were seriously blown out of the water. I know that my sentimental clannish feelings color things a tiny bit but, truly people, this will go down as one of the legendary meals of my life in my memories. He sent us wheeling through fresh oysters, chilled prawns, battered artichoke hearts, some of the sweetest crab I've ever tasted, elegant and tender halibut, oyster mushrooms, asparagus and among many others a cheese plate of ultra-stunning quality and a luscious bread pudding/creme brulee. So delicious. And people, truly, words fail me...I am so extremely proud of my clever, knife wielding cousin that I could just burst. He is the American Dream. Reaching for, succeeding, and soaring higher on the wings of his own raw ambition. I aspire, people, I aspire.

Besides our stellar dinner tonight, we've also driven past acres of farm country, carpets of strawberry plants as far as the eye could see and artichokes, lettuce, broccoli to boot. Produce, as far as you can squint. That was Salinas and a few other scattered, dirt black river valleys that we soared through. Lovely places to drive and drive. So green and lush and full of production in the the botanical sense. We toured the Steinbeck museum in Salinas (recommended!) and we both remembered how much we loved his books and how much more there still is to read that he wrote! More tomes for our couple reading list. Steinbeck is wonderful roadtrip reading. Somehow cozy to stand there amongst his personal effects and quotes and think fondly of the man. Note to self: Must make sure A reads Grapes of Wrath. I do like Ma Joad.

We've also been through Big Sur now, that inner artist contemplating, hippy magnet zone of lush redwoods, dripping forest and winding snaky highway, ribboning along the coast. (Not what I was expecting, I thought it'd be much drier and more rolling plains kind of stuff) I did like Big Sur.

We also wandered through our first mission in a lovely little burst of sunshine and warm weather. My idea of what a mission is will probly always reference my experience at Carmel-By-The-Sea. Mmm...wonderful. Missions (or at least this one) are these glorious little cloistered, holy places, with fig trees, rose vines, tumbling nasturtiums, quiet gravel paths and stunning gold leafed silent chapels where candles flicker and you can smell incense from the not so distant past. A and I both wish we could re-create a piece of that in our backyard if/when we get that tudor we're still mulling over.

So, that's the latest...California is still beautiful, still surprising us and our idea of the state is broadening by the moment. Tomorrow we will be hugging my cousins in person and starting our good times with much shoulder rubbing and progeny introducing fun. Am really looking forward to that! Now, I'm off to wake up A and figure out if there's a way to turn on the heat in this hotel room so I can quit sneezing and start snoozing. Sweet dreams all!!!