This Loving Precious Presence.....

...left just before Thanksgiving.
She was not mine, but I loved her and I had taken care of her on several occasions.
She belonged to my son, daughter-in-law and my grand daughter. She was energetic, loving, caring, funny and always ready to take care of her family.
Her family misses her. I miss her. There is a huge void in the house.
She is not able to be there to greet her loved ones. She will no longer be able to race around, to be the silly thing and loving being that she was.
She was brought down here to be buried with other loved animals that we have had.
I salute you, Maddie Dog, or Dish as you were sometimes called.

Samantha loved you. You were there before she was born. You kissed her face. You loved her and guarded her. My favorite story is this one about the both of you:

I was up at my son's and daughter-in-law's taking care of Samantha and Maddie. Samantha picked up a picture of her father and Maddie. Sam says to me: "Gamma, I just love my Daddy and Dishy, I just love them so much."
I say, "I know you do Sam. I know you love Daddy and Dishy."
Samantha: "I just love them so much, Gams."
I say, "They love you too, Sam."

Samantha says to me, "Do you know which one is Daddy, Gams?"

Humor in loss ...a dog from the pound who gave her whole being to her family...a loving and wonderful presence...a being who loved and was loved...a gift to a small family..and to me.

Rest in peace, Dishy and know that you were loved. My heart is heavy. I miss you and you really were not even mine.

Best

A One Act Play....

....in which our heroes, the pumpkins, give their lives to become Jack-0-Lanterns.

It's a long play, never destined to be on Broadway, but always in my heart.

Watching a father's and mother's loving hands; careful attention given to a just four year old, who declared on Friday with abandon and glee, "This is my first day of Halloween School!"

Best

Summertime....Family Gatherings...

Here is my mother's family gathered on the front steps in Hawaii where they all lived. I really don't know if this was taken in the summer, but it does remind me of family get togethers that so often occur during this time of year.

Not many smiley faces here, but I think that not many people smiled in the photographs of years ago. I know they were a fairly happy lot, albeit somewhat serious about life, religion and the rules of society in the early 1900's.

I love how all of the little girls in the front row have all brought their dollies. My darling mother is right there down front, the one on the left next to the cutie with the little white hat. The boy on the far right looks as if he has had it with all of this nonsense. (click on the pic. for a better view) It's either that, or he had just received quite a scolding from one of his formidable aunties.

Wherever this summer takes you, I hope it is filled with family, fun and love. Just remember to "Say Cheese" when that camera goes click!

Best

An Early Christmas Gift

Our three year old granddaughter spent the weekend with us. She came down Friday evening with her Daddy. Mom stayed at home to have some R and R after her final exams. A well deserved rest for her, and a gift for us.
Samantha was a Busy Lizzy all weekend. We went for a walk on Saturday, she helped carry some plants in the nursery when she wasn't making mud pies, "feeding" the maples by putting spent leaves in the pots, and hitting every mud puddle she could possibly find.
Inside, she was "cooking", grocery shopping, arranging my Christmas bears and working on her Project. This project consisted of heavy stock paper, every sticker I could find, and random pencil squiggles on the paper.
Her enthusiasm for everything knows no bounds. Her pride in her accomplishments and joy of just Being is contagious.
My wish and prayer for her is that she can hang onto her enthusiasm, pride in her accomplishments and her sense of wonder for life. I fervently hope that the rug of childhood is not snatched out from underneath her too soon.
I know that before we turn around, she will care about what she puts on in the morning, she will be cognizant that her headbands she now wears backwards on her head are not "cool", and that she will soon begin to compare herself to others and may feel she comes up short. Someday too, she may want to be somewhere else rather than with her grandparents.
I am keeping safe the memories of these times we have. I am going to remember always this weekend when she declared, "Gams, you are hilarious!", or "Gammie, you are my best friend!"
I am going to keep the sight of her hugging her Poppy and the memory of her draping pieces of my yarn all over her Daddy's head in a safe place.
Thank you, Samantha, for the gift of you. We are blessed.

Happy Birthday

The birthday boy is pictured on the left.The one on the right is his brother, another one of my all-time favorite people.
I have read on a number of blogs how mothers are amazed at how time passes so quickly...in the blink of an eye. Don't I know that!
Birthday boy, I know that you have forgiven me for leaving you at kindergarten, those many years ago, when there WAS NO school that day, when I got half way home and the light bulb exploded in my head!
I know that you have forgiven me the day I took my time coming out to check on you, the day your little brother kept running into the kitchen to tell me you had fallen off of your skateboard. Three times he ran in and three times I said I was coming. Your brother finally yelled, "MOM, Kevin's fallen off of his skateboard, and he is lying in the BUSHES!" I went out to find you and, sure enough, there you were in the bushes with a broken arm. My only excuse is that you were a tad bit overly dramatic in those days.
I have forgiven you for breaking my tail bone when you were born. You won't remember, but the rubber donut and I were inseparable for a year.
I have forgiven you for having to listen to your first grade teacher tell us that in all of her years of teaching, she had never had a child like you in her class. This was not uttered with a smile on her face.
I have forgiven you for your thirteenth year, something best forgotten and filed away under "teenager" self-absorption.
I love you with all my heart, I love you for your integrity, your sense of loyalty, your "hard work" ethic, and your unstoppable sense of humor. I love you for your constant affection for your parents and your true love for that other special guy up there in the picture.
I know I am a few days late in writing this, but my pride in you is absolute and the joy I receive from having you in my life knows no bounds!

Oh! p.s. Sweetie, I've also forgiven you for taking my BRAND NEW Le Creuset frying pans into the back yard, building a little camp fire with pine wood and cooking some hamburgers. I also forgive you for encouraging your little brother (in the above picture) to make, as he whispered in my ear one time, "Frank Phone Calls".
And I forgive you both for taking the Hungry Jack refrigerated biscuits and placing them on a red hot burner so that you could watch them explode.
(If any readers are tempted to call Children's Services over my neglectful ways: it's too late to do that.)

Dear Reader,

I have one more Thanksgiving snippet to share. This is a short accounting of a man and a cat and a Thanksgiving turkey.
The man was my Uncle Angus, whom I have briefly mentioned before. He was my Daddy's younger brother. His true name was James, but for some reason he was known to many as Angus. In truth, Angus suited him much better than James. My sister and brother and I adored him. He is a difficult man for me to describe. Not a teddy bear type, perhaps more of an impish nature and one who never lost the twinkle in his eye. He and our aunt lived on the other side of the island of Oahu where we were raised. They had no children but they did have a cat and that cat's name was Available Jones. (He once had a dog called Binge, and years later one he named John the Baptist.) I don't really remember Available Jones as I was too young at the time, and it probably was prudent that Available not be left alone in the presence of such a small child. Considering his behavior, he must have been a formidable animal.
Apparently at Thanksgiving, my aunt opened the refrigerator door and Available Jones spied the turkey resting on the top shelf. In one magnificent leap he managed to straddle the turkey. He proceeded to help himself with determination. My aunt could not remove that cat from the turkey. He was so aggressively possessive that he probably consumed a greater part of it before he calmly removed himself to lick his chops and clean his paws.
I would venture a guess that was just one of many of Available Jones' transgressions, because shortly after the turkey debacle, Uncle Angus made a cage of sorts, packed Available in the cage, and left him on our porch for the Humane Society to pick up. My sister is convinced that the cage was purposely made in a flimsy fashion so that Available could escape. Escape he did. I believe that he eventually found his way home after several weeks. It's unclear what happened after that, but the conjecture is that Uncle Angus took Available Jones to a nearby military base where he was adopted. Given his tenacious personality, he was probably promoted to Second in Command.

Best!

S Is For Siblings

Here we are, the three of us...years and years ago.

My sister: who can still play almost any musical instrument she comes across...
who spent hours with me when I played with my doll house..
who held my hand when we walked to the movies.

My brother: who is one of the funniest, quickest people I know...
who called me PeeWee to annoy me...(he still does)
who used to tell me, "Heads I win, tails you lose."*

The two of them convinced me that there was a ghost in our attic. I knew with certainty that I was that ghost's main target. I still remember my dreams about him. One in particular that even then had a theme...a name. It was The Red Shoes nightmare. The ghost came and got me out of bed. He threw me over his shoulder and carried me up to the attic where my entire kindergarten class was assembled. We were all commanded to dance, to dance until we fell senseless and exhausted to the floor. I don't remember how long it took me to truly understand that there really was no ghost. He was certainly fodder for some bizarre dreams!

I still have that chair that I was sitting on for our picture. It was my grandmother's and the fabric covering the seat is worn, torn and faded. I just can't bring myself to recover it!

Best

*It took me years to figure that one out. Not too swift here!

L Number Two...For Lena

Lena was my maternal grandmother. She left Downs, Kansas to go to Hawaii where she met and married a young man who had sailed out from Prince Edward Island. I remember my grandfather but I never had the privilege of knowing Lena as she died several years before my birth.
I am so fortunate to have a good collection of little pieces that she crocheted. She was obviously very accomplished. There are some lovely, and to even my untrained eye, exquisite bits. It is almost as if she were practicing and expanding her repertoire of skills as they are so varied. It's wonderful to hold something that she held and she caused to grow with her hands. I'm disappointed that I did not appear to inherit this talent that she so strongly possessed and enjoyed.
L is also for learning. I have been practicing some rudimentary crocheting in my attempts to make a granny square to my liking. I have also been learning the ins and outs of my new printer. I'm thrilled to have a new one that doesn't eat paper, jam or just refuse to work...but I am as slow a learner with this as I am with granny squares. Some of us will always be taking "The Little Yellow Bus". That's me!

Best.

Kaleidoscope of K

...totally unrelated K stuff.
I have pictures of my new kitchen (well, it's a year old new) but I can't find them on my computer! So no pics to look at. I do love having cabinets that close, that look nice and that don't have 26 years of yuk on them. I appreciate an oven door that closes all of the way and actually opens fully so that I can get a casserole in and out of it. I like having a sink that hasn't rusted so much along the edges that it's rising up out of the counter. You can get that picture I'm sure!

K is for my first born, Kevin. There were times when I wasn't sure I would survive him. Perhaps I should have paid attention to the fact that he actually broke my tail bone during his entrance into this world. I should have taken that as an omen. He pretty much challenged every dang thing that came along. Well, he's all "growed" up and is a joy to be around. I am very lucky to see him almost every week day as he works in the nursery. He's funny, he's good with people, he's a wonderful father and I just love being with him.

K is for Kitcat...my cousin Clodagh. When my grandfather left Ireland in the late 1800's, he brought part of his family to Hawaii. His sister Lily married the Rev. Kitcat and they went to New Zealand. I vaguely remember Auntie Lily. I do remember Clodagh because as a wee girl I just thought her name was hysterically funny. I was also fascinated by her because my Uncle Angus used to refer to her as "the eyebrow raiser" (he also called another relative "flannel brain"). Anyway, Clodagh would come now and then to visit us in Hawaii. I would perch on the edge of my chair and be mesmerised by those active eyebrows. They were like fuzzy woolly bear caterpillars which moved across her forehead with every word she uttered. Alas, I am sure that the Kitcats of New Zealand are no more. I am sure that Clodagh died 40 years or so ago and I know she never married. Here's to you Clodagh Kitcat. You were something else!

J Has To Be For...

my husband. We met in college, had our first date on a Friday the thirteenth.
It has been quite a journey all these years. It has certainly not been all sunshine and roses. There was a time in the 70's when I would have gladly slipped ground glass into his coffee or flesh eating bacteria into his clean laundry....but, we have survived and evolved. It's been well worth some rocky roads.
I love so many things about J. He works incredibly hard. He is enthusiastic and "digs life with big shovels". We are polar opposites in many ways, but we have learned from each other through the years. He has always encouraged me to do whatever I have considered doing. He has supported and helped me to be more independent and to appreciate and recognize my strengths. He has been a fantastic father to our two boys. He is positive, funny and very up-beat. I love him and wish that we could have 40+ more years of toodling down this road we've been on, holding hands, but letting go now and then so that we can have our "separateness together".
J...thanks for the journey. It continues to be the trip of a lifetime.

"Out of the tree of life I just picked me a plum.
You came along and everything started to hum."

Another Entry to D..

I have a very short entry to the letter D.
When I was an eighth grader, my beloved brother left Hawaii to go to school in California. I was bereft, I was in mourning, I couldn't imagine life without him.
My sister had been gone for several years...I was alone and I didn't know what I was going to do without my brother whom I adored. Enter a cousin whom I had never met.
Dan was the son of one of my Daddy's favorite cousins. He had survived horrendous things during the war in Korea. For some reason, he came to live with us. He had been a graduate of Stanford and, I think, just needed a place to be and call home.
He was my savior. He gently guided me through algebra, through geometry...he was my substitute brother, he was the one that allowed me to be silly and outrageous. He called me Bubbles, which I loved, because it affirmed and granted me the chance to be silly..to be, in my limited way, wild.
He still lives in Hawaii. He has Alzheimer's now. I will forever be thankful for him, I will forever love him and remember with joy how he helped me through such hard times. I will forever think of him and will probably be angry and unaccepting that he and his family are having to deal with this terrible disease. I love you Dan and I will always thank you for what you did for me.

D=Daddy and The Dear Diary of a Demented Domestic Diva

I can't talk about Domesticity without mentioning some of my Daddy's Disastrous and Deviant Doings. (You may want to have a rest before you read this...it may be long and Dumb)
We used to have a refrigerator like this. It was a behemoth, weighed a ton and couldn't be budged. We lived in a huge old house, the kitchen was immense. My mother wanted the refrigerator moved from one side of the kitchen to the other side. She kept threatening to call a moving company to do so. One day when I was very little we all went somewhere, leaving Daddy to his own Devices. When we came home several hours later, the refrigerator stood exactly where my mother had wanted it. Nothing in it had been removed: the milk bottles were still in the same place, the leftovers undisturbed. My father had attached a pulley and rope to the frig, had gone out to the garage and found a big can of axle grease. He greased the floor and slid the refrigerator across with the rope and pulley. It worked like a charm, except for the fact that it took my mother several days to remove the axle grease.
On another occasion when left alone, my father decided that our yard needed some fertilizer. He had some chicken manure on hand and an old pump. He somehow reversed the motor on the pump and blew the manure all over the yard. This also worked brilliantly except for the fact that he had neglected to close all of the windows in the house. We arrived home to find manure in every nook and cranny and the not so Delicate scent of chicken manure wafting through the rooms.
Now being the Daughter of such a man, you can imagine that now and then, I can indulge in Doubtful and Dodgey Domestic habits.
I have been known to wash chard in my washing machine (no spin cycle) when I had picked so much of it to freeze. I was going nuts rinsing it off in the kitchen sink. The little light bulb went off above my head! Ta Da..it did work.
I've used my handy dandy shop vac to suck up all manner of dried vegetable matter that has been hiding in my refrigerator. That worked too!
I also shop vac one of my Newfoundland dogs. She loves it. That also works well.
This I do not recommend: the Drying of bread crumbs with your hair dryer. It's not a pretty sight when you're done.
I leave you with a poem that's really not about housecleaning, Domestic Doings or brooms, but it's lovely. Emily Dickinson wrote this:

She sweeps with many-colored Brooms--
And leaves the Shreds behind--
Oh Housewife in the Evening West--
Come back, and dust the Pond!

You dropped the Purple Ravelling in--
You dropped the Amber thread--
And now you've littered all the East
With duds of Emerald!

And still, she plies her spotted Brooms,
And still the Aprons fly,
Till Brooms fade softly into stars-
And then I come away--

Best!

The Three F's

No, no! Not those kind of F's. These kind...Family, Food and Flowers.
Last night our oldest grandson spent the night with us and we had his most requested meal: Boney chicken, edamame beans, corn, mashed potatoes, gravy, green salad, strawberries and blueberries. He also requested biscuits, but I drew the line at those. For those of you unfamiliar with boney chicken, it's simply "normal" roasted chicken. When he was quite a bit smaller he'd only had boneless chicken breasts. The first time I made chicken for him he wanted to know how I got the bones in there...hence the boney chicken. It's a standard now! All was yummy, we had an early bedtime after reading some of Paddle to the Sea. It was a lovely evening. Hope yours was too.

Best!

A Father's Day Remembrance: To Vincent

Born in 1906 on a sugar plantation in Hawaii
Mother English, Father Irish
Became a banker and businessman in Honolulu
Married his high school sweetheart
Fathered three children
Loved his family, friends, fishing and working on cars
Great sense of humor, gentle, kind and affectionate

Dear Daddy,
You've been gone so long and I still miss you. I wish that you could share in the joy that is my life. I wish that you could have been a part of my children's growing up. I wish that you could see what wonderful young men they have become and what loving families of their own they have created. I wish that they could have had the blessing of your presence in their lives.
Thank you for being the person you always were. Thank you for taking care of us, for being a loving husband and father. Thank you for your humor, the joy that you had over "the little things", that when added up, become something big..the wonder and sense of gratitude for those small bits and pieces that are a part of each day.
Thank you for teaching me the importance of love in my life, love of family and friends. Thank you for showing me the value of expressing that love not only through actions and deeds, but with words. I do not remember a day going by that you didn't say "I love you" out loud to each of us. I learned that lesson well by your example.
I remember so well you describing one of your friends: "He doesn't have a mean bone in his body." Neither did you.
Thank you, I love you Daddy.
Ellen

Poochie Love

Our Granddaughter spent some time with us last week and through the weekend. She brought her own little "dog" with her and was able to spend time with our, not so little dogs while she was here. It's so much fun to listen to her talk to all three...real and imagined poochies. I love to hear her with her Puppy and watch her tenderly take care of him as she cuddles him, feeds him and blows a whisper on her finger to let me know that Puppy is sleeping. That puppy sure sleeps a lot and is very hungry. He apparently loves being fed. Gravel is the metaphor for peaches, ham, chicken, peas, pancakes, cottage cheese, salad...you name it. She loves our dogs and always seeks them out. When she has to navigate around them (they do take up a lot of room) she always says, "Excuse me" to Cleo or Nadia whom she calls Narnia. She always exclaims to her Gams and Poppy, "Cleo and Narnia are so essited to see me!"
She is fortunate to have a real dog at home who came on the weekend. She worries that Maddie is missing her. Parents, G'parents and four poochies had a great weekend.
Best!