This was taken in April 5 years ago, when my older grandchild was 2 ½.
Posted for Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #91: Simplicity
Category: Family
This Is the Future
Posted for Lens-Artists Challenge #83: Future.
Waiting
For the turning of the tide.
Life is filled with longings, hopes, dreams, and waiting. Always waiting it seems. When my husband and I were young and newly married, it seemed we waited a lot. Waited for the next pay check, waited to start a family, waited to be more financially more secure. Waited for things to be easier. We didn’t stop living, but we were so conditioned and focused toward working toward a future goal, a better life, that I think often we didn’t savor what we did have in the moment. We were happy and deeply in love but were always looking forward, forward, to when times might get easier.
But I wonder now, a year after my husband of 44 years has died, if we also lost a little in the process. This holiday season, I have been missing him terribly and thinking back to those early years together when so many things seemed like a struggle that we sometimes forgot to live in the present. I think back now and wish that I could have appreciated a little more then, what was then.
On this Christmas afternoon just past, as it stretched into the fourth night of Hanukah for my young grandchildren, my heart was aching for those early years of marriage and children and hope. Yet the sorrow was vying with the fact that I knew that I was in the process of making new memories with them. I hope they will remember the Hanukah/Christmas that I began to teach the 7 year old how to use a sewing machine and helped the 4½ year old make a unicorn purse and string a heart necklace.
I hope that they will remember. Because now it seems that time is moving in reverse. I used to dwell in the future. But now if I dwell too much in the past, I will still not be able to fully live in the present. Surely there is a balance to be had, of looking forward and hoping, while holding onto the memories and love of the past. And not losing either.
The tide comes in and nourishes the seaweed on the rock, then temporarily withdraws, allowing the seaweed access to light and air. It seems so simple when looked at like that. But it is anything but simple. It is, in fact, a complex ebbing and flowing that has taken eons for nature to perfect. How do I learn to manage that, keeping the delicate balance between holding and letting go?
Riding The Winter Thermals
Crows are joyous birds.* Here they are a dusk, having joyously ridden the thermal “Breath of Winter,” and are trying to settle down for the night, all the while calling and squawking and speaking their mind from tree to tree, in a last family discussion before sleep.
*There have been flocks of resident crows in the Lake Merritt area of Oakland for….. I don’t know how many decades. Every morning the flocks wheel around our 22 story building and spend the day in the general area of the lake. Come dusk, they reverse the pattern, flying off to their roost for the night. Because of their constant presence, I have started to learn a few things about crows. This huge group of flying crows is called a river of crows. They are highly intelligent, and live in large close knit family groups. While they do not nest in colonies (each mating pair builds an individual nest), the whole close knit family works together to forage, defend their territory, and care for their young.
They do not sleep in their nests other than to raise their young, however – they roost in trees. And according to Audubon’s Where Crows Go At Night they have “a giant avian slumber party. Gathering in a park or woodland, they land in a tree, then scuffle and shuffle and squawk, filtering down through the branches.”
And “scuffle and shuffle and squawk,” I can tell you, is exactly what they do. Their carryings-on can be deafening.
Posted for K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge: Winter’s Breath.
A Boy and His (Shared) Dog
I am finding myself somewhat nostalgic and sad lately. The daylight is beginning to fade sooner and sooner, and while fall is usually my favorite season, September 2 marked the first year anniversary of my husband’s death. So I have been looking through family pictures of late, and went searching for these, as they are among my favorites of the past year – the first year without my husband of 44 years. While the post itself is far longer than six words, the title is exactly six, so I hope I can still use the Six Word Saturday hashtag.
I have written before about the fact that my good friends, Martha and Arthur, and I share our two dogs. Theirs is Teddy the Labradoodle and mine is Zoë the Miniature Schnauzer. When my husband and I returned to Northern California three and a half years ago and moved into our retirement community (St. Paul’s Towers), the grandkids were just 1 and 3½. Teddy was bigger than the 1 year old, obviously, but he was also awfully big for the 3½ year old. About a year ago, when they were 3 and almost 6, the two of them decided that it was time for them to start walking the dogs instead of just accompanying me when I walked them. So they became the walkers, and I became the accompanying and supervising person. The 3 year old was still rather scared of Teddy, but was comfortable walking Zoë. The almost 6 year was adamant that he wanted to walk Teddy by himself, without me holding on to the leash. Here is the result: he walking confidently on ahead with Teddy last February, when he was fully 6+ a few months. My granddaughter, Zoë, and I are lagging behind, in a perfect position to capture a photo.
Walking the Dog at Twilight
Posted for Six Word Saturday. Well, at least there’s exactly six words in the title. 😉
CFFC: Fashion
My Feet and My Four Year Old Granddaughter’s Flip-Flops
My granddaughter thinks her flip flops are the height of fashion because they are PINK (her favorite color), and they have stars.
Posted for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Fashion.
Zebra's Child 