Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Ballons 2016!!


The balloons flew again this year!!

I kept my cool in front of the crowds (and my perpetually embarrassed tweens), but deep down I was feeling how this little girl was expressing herself:





I was definitely that creepy lady taking pictures of children I did not know. Nice.

Then I asked some cousins how they felt:

The cousins over four feet tall were looking at their phones and couldn't really talk to me about the wonder of it all.



Look Pops! There was even a black balloon with a Skull and Crossbones flag! Just like your old gang!


I've been in a bit of a slump lately, so it was beautiful to see something lain flat on the ground, stretched and smoothed out, and lovingly urged to inflate with the warm air and fans that workers adjusted and angled just right. With that team, that Village, around the flattened balloon, time after time, we watched air go in, wrinkles disappear...and then FLIGHT.




  
Even Tweety and Sylvester took flight!



The next morning, the balloons came back. They flew in over our morning coffee and sleepy eyes:


They came in over our right shoulders and flew past the bird houses...


...Wings and feathers, air and wind...


As Emily Dickinson noted, "Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings a song without the words and never stops at all."

Thank you, Balloons, for coming every year and reminding us to take flight, to stay up, to keep moving, to claim hope.

Saturday, May 28, 2016

That Time My Husband Had Thyroid Cancer.




Dear Thyroid Cancer,

I search for the blessing in your curse.
You have surprised me in so many ways...next time you are totally NOT invited to my birthday party.

Your diagnosis pulled the blanket back I was using to cover up all the things I did not want to address in my marriage. For that I am reluctantly grateful.
Glennon Doyle Melton and Elizabeth Gilbert remind us that we don't have to "almost die" in order to change things that don't serve...
I wish my husband and I had not had to endure surgery, fear, the Google in the middle of the night, tension, anxiety, more fear, over planning, etc.......in order to change some things (like me speaking up about the things I needed and ways I wanted to care for him).
Srsly, why couldn't we just schedule that on a Monday after cup-of-coffee #2?

Instead we had to have a cough, x-ray, CAT scan, needle biopsy, radioactive iodine pill, and then quarantine.
I'm just gonna say it: you [cancer] are inconvenient, annoying and expensive.
Please go away. Forever.
Love,
Me



Dear Juliette,
I totally get your response to Romeo now!!!!!!
I used to think you were a silly teenager in love. But when the one you love may die, everything in you wants to die too.
I get it: I am a teenager in love, too.
Love is tragic and dear, IKR?
Love,
Me




Dear Meladrama,
How long am I allowed to use your power?
When my husband first learned of his required quarantine (#jealous) my brain went to crazy places.
Instead of being prepared and supportive, I couldn't get a song out of my head: El Muelle de San Blas by Mana.
I ordered a swing frame to plant in our side yard; it overlooks our driveway. I became the widow in the song...waiting in that swing until my husband came home. I would wait until my long gray hair joined the crawling Starlight Jasmine that grows up the swing's frame. Hello, Meh-lah-drah-mah.
Sniff...gag.
(Get it??? It's like Psych (Sike) Dab, but Sniff Gag?? Ha ha 5th grade humor!!)