Parenting at Both Ends

The other day, I read a post from an anonymous mother looking for advice in getting her infant son to settle to sleep. It was taking 15 minutes of patting his back and cooing in his ear each time, she complained.

I wanted to tell her to stop complaining and enjoy it because some day – far, far sooner than she thinks – she’ll be begging for each 15-minute segment of holding him and shushing him to sleep.

I know this because tonight my oldest will graduate.  I will watch her walk across the platform to collect her diploma. On Sunday, she will turn 18. A few months later, she will head off to college, never again to be wholly mine.

I swear she was a baby yesterday.

The years whipped by faster than I thought they would. Phases I thought would last forever proved as temporary as the bubbles she used to blow in the backyard.

The struggles, the celebrations, the losses and triumphs that at the time were so vivid and overwhelming seem to blur from the speed in which they flew by. I blinked and she grew up.

But I’m getting a do-over of sorts.  When she walks across that platform tomorrow night, I’ll be sitting in the audience, holding my infant son – her spitting image – on my lap.

I get the chance to see the same smiles and the same impish gleam in the same big eyes in living color and not Kodak color.

 I get to savor those milestones and phases with the knowledge from hindsight of how fleeting they actually are.

It’s a strange thing to begin with one child at the same time you are wrapping up with the first, simultaneously parenting at both ends of childhood. You see the fruits of your labor in one while planting the first seed in the other. Reassuring and daunting, all at once.

I won’t complain when, like Monday night, I am up until 12 a.m. until 2:15 a.m. trying to get him to go back to sleep when he wants to socialize. I’ll hold him and marvel at his rosebud lips and long lashes. I’ll pat his back and stroke his chubby, dimpled hand and store the time away in my heart.

Because tomorrow he’ll graduate.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Jen

'Tis the season of thankfulness. All month, I’ve read the many things my friends have given thanks for each day, and contemplated my own state of gratitude.

This year, I’m thankful for something rather odd, something I never thought I’d ever admit to being, much less thankful for. Take note, mark it on your calendar, burn it into memory, because it’s that unlikely an admission and you won't see it again v. I’m sure Mr. Hat will be hauling this out for years to come. Ready?

I’m thankful that I WAS WRONG.

Better said, God was right. As always.

It isn’t the first time He’s taken my well-laid plans and altered them. By “altered” I mean laid waste to, annihilated, completely obliterated. I never get that “still, small voice,” but rather the 2'x4' upside the head. Hard.

And back in March, that two by four was shrunk to one little stick 6"x1” – a little white stick one pees on. 

After 17 years of fertility treatments and sheer negligence that produced nothing, one doesn’t expect it to say “pregnant.”  I gave up any hope of seeing that result 12 years ago and happily adopted to complete my family. My family was made complete six years ago, with the adoption of our son. All three kids were finally in school all day.  Everyone could carry their own gear, zip their own coats, feed themselves, pick up after themselves (even if it does take lots of badgering). We could go out without having to hire a babysitter or take kids with us. It was a brave, new, wonderful stage of life – and we loved it.

So, I wasn’t at all happy to see that word. Nope. I cried – and it wasn’t tears of joy. I ranted. I contemplated jumping from the roof. I swore a blue streak – a few blue streaks. I cried some more. I panicked a lot. Why now, after all those years we would have welcomed this news but went without? Suddenly, I identified with a whole new side of Sarah, beyond the years of ache.

So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?” Gen 18:12

And so began eight months of denial, discomfort, health complications, tears – and a good deal of laughter. It really was just so ridiculous at my age, when menopause was more likely than pregnancy. My oldest was beginning her senior year; surely one shouldn’t be shopping for colleges and layettes at the same time. I felt like I was the amusement in God’s sense of humor.

Then, as suddenly and surprisingly as it began, it ended in an emergency c-section a few weeks early.

They handed me this unbelievably tiny little thing, with a nose the size of my fingertip and a mouth equally small. His cry, when he cried, was also tiny, much like a slow leak in a helium balloon. He looked at me with these steel blue eyes, pursed his little lips into this adorable little “o” the size of a Cheerio – and suddenly it was all OK. More than OK.

It was perfect. And wonderful.

I confess I spend a good portion of each day just staring at him, loving him so much it hurts, overwhelmed with the feeling of unbelievable gratitude to have him. Sure, I knew in my head that when he got here, it’d all be fine and I would be glad. But I find I underestimated just how thankful I would be. Sleepless nights, being covered in spit up, changing countless dirty diapers aren’t dimming the wonderfulness in the least.

I should have known that having my plans thwarted would be this wonderful. I've been here before. In being deprived of the ability to conceive, I was moved to adoption, a thing I’m so privileged to be a part of. I’ve known for years I’d have been robbed of something so awesomely marvelous if I’d have had the biological kids I’d planned on. There it is again – my plan, exchanged for something better.

So this season of Thanksgiving, I’m tremendously thankful: for miracles, survival, sanity, coos, a sacrificial spouse, a six year old who adores being a brother, a rosebud mouth and tiny fingers, supportive friends, thwarted plans, a God who knows me and my needs so much better than I do...

...for being wrong.

Ten Years: Remembering Mom

Ten years ago this evening, I was cleaning the bathroom when the phone rang. It was such a mundane task to be in the middle of for such a life-changing, earth-shattering moment. The call was that one you dread, the harbinger of sad tidings, loss, and life as you know it irreparably changed.

Mom had just had a massive stroke and was en route to the hospital via ambulance. What followed was a frantic, confusing night in which she never regained consciousness and ended with us tearfully bidding her farewell. We were surrounded by her friends and ours, covered in their prayers, comforted with their hugs, but still hurting tremendously all the same.

She wasn't "officially" my mom. She was my husband's. But when I married him - even well before that - she became heart and soul my mom, too. Ever supportive, always encouraging, she loved us equally and loved us well.  We had a common love for gardens and flowers and had just spent the day before together in our annual "April's here, let's get plants" shopping ritual.

When she became a grandmother, she did that even better, if that can be. She adored her grandkids. Her house was well-stocked with toys, playrooms on both levels. She was a ready and willing babysitter. She was the one ensuring the kids were taken out for frequent special outings with Grandma and Grandpa. Photo album upon photo album was filled with hundreds of pictures of Matthew, Cate, Alyssa, and Ben. She didn't get a chance to fill an "ablum" (one of her quirky pronunciations we miss) with pictures of Gracie, who joined our family on Mom's last birthday, barely a month and a half earlier.

Tonight, we'll have dinner and whisk off to conferences for a grandson she never met. She'd have loved him and his funny ways. It grieves me to think of the friendship they would have had and that he'll never get to enjoy it or her, him. He'll never know what it was to spend the night at her house, play in her garden, or walk the boardwalk at the beach with her, Pronto Pup in hand.

Above all, Mom loved her God, passionately. She volunteered for hours in the missions office and elsewhere at church. She had a large bulletin board with a map surrounded by pictures of the missionaries she prayed for every day. She opened her home every week for years to a group of teens wanting a place to have Bible study before school. She studied her Bible and worked hard to live up to and by its words. So we know that while her death was such a great loss for us, it was a tremendous gain for her.

When we left her bedside for the last time, one of us mused about the gardening she'll be doing in heaven, looking forward to the day we see her again and get to stroll through it with her. Outside my kitchen window is a rosebush she bought on our last trip to the garden center together on April 25. It was supposed to a smallish carpet rose, but it's so big now, far bigger than it was supposed to get. Its canes are eight or more feet long and it can barely be contained or trained, and sets new bushes where its canes touch the ground. I look at all that growth from that tiny little bush and think of how much her garden in heaven must be like it after all this time: lush, full, rampant, mature.

I look forward to seeing it with her, to again walk side by side, discussing each plant's attributes as we used to, with our kids nearby, laughing together. Until then, I walk through my own garden, filled with plants from her earthly one, and contemplate how to remember her to my kids, soon to be three now who didn't get to know her. There's such a lot to remember and share.

Which means there's also so much to miss. And I do. Every day.

So, Happy Heavenly Birthday, Mom, with all my love.

The Day the Heartbreak Stopped

Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines Him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving. 

~ A.W. Tozer. 

March 8 is an auspicious date in our household. It is the birthdate of Mr. Hat's mother. It is also, less significantly, the date our naughty Cat Hat was born. 

But most importantly, it is the day that saw the end of years of heartbreak. Ten years ago today, Grace came home.

For seven years, we had tried to expand our family. We made charts, endured tests, hoped the drugs would work. We contemplated and debated adoption, unable to see how it would ever be financially possible. 

Then one day, a baby fell from the sky, into our arms.

A friend in another state was housing a girl at the end of her pregnancy, a girl who suddenly, finally realized adoption was the best choice for her child. Remembering our desire to adopt, they called us, touching off a whirlwind as we sought to cram a process that took months into just two weeks, which was when she was due. When we got the call she was in labor, we drove an entire day to get there, the whole time feeling indescribable excitement.

They put this darling little bundle in my arms. This little, tiny thing with big brown eyes, a shock of dark brown hair, rosy cheeks and rosebud mouth. My son was beautiful; he looked just like that picture by Bessie Pease Gutman. For three days, we held him, loved him, planned for his future.

Then, just as suddenly as he came, he was snatched away. His birth mother learned the limits of his father's rights and beat a fast path home to Virginia. I never got to say goodbye. Instead, I came home to a ready nursery, piled up shower gifts, and the antique wicker bassinet in which I once slept trimmed in blue ribbon. I didn't get cards of congratulations; they were messages of condolence.

It was a while before we dared to dream again. When we did, we looked in Mexico, Afghanistan, and China. Three times, we started the process to adopt from China. Three times our process was sidelined. Clearly God had some other direction for us. 

We began our plan B late summer of 2001: domestic, transracial adoption. It was terrifying to trust the domestic process again, but it was clearly what God had in mind. Our only child, a tiny little autistic girl, enthusiastically begged God every night for a sister, asking Him to give her brown eyes, brown arms, brown legs.

In late January 2002, we got THE call. She was here! She'd be ours. We visited her in a temporary foster home, bonding with our new daughter, cooing over her gigantic cheeks, counting the days until she could come home. We swapped out the blue ribbon on the bassinet with yards of pink; she was coming home tomorrow.

And then it happened. On Valentine's Day, our hearts were broken again, as her birth mom came to claim her. It was just as heartbreaking, but this time, I at least knew I would survive. Another ribbon-tied bundle of condolence cards and pictures joined the first in a drawer, the only proof I have that for too short a time, I was a mother to two others.

Two days later, another little girl was born. I didn't know until the week after. We were so afraid she'd be lost, too, that we didn't visit. We couldn't bond and lose again.

Court day came. We got on our coats to head to the agency, breathless with anticipation that this might just actually work this time. Miss Hat was bouncing with joy. 

We headed to the door. Hands on doorknob, the phone rang. Not today. The judge wanted to see more effort to find the birth father, so he would have the chance to assert his rights to her. A man who abused her birth mom, who disappeared and was never a part of her life or pregnancy, stood between us and a dream fulfilled. So again, we waited.

A week later, on March 8, 2002, I was on my knees, while a woman I'd never met stood before a judge in another county, voluntarily relinquishing her rights to this little girl. I begged God for her courage and the judge's common sense. I begged Him not to let this fall through again. 

And then the phone rang again. It was done. She was OURS!

Her sister nearly crashed through the door of the foster home in her excitement to finally meet her baby sister, this baby she'd prayed for for years. The foster mom, Mama Pat, met me at the door with the most beautiful baby I'd ever seen and put her in my arms. 

There really aren't words to describe how that moment felt. My heart hurt, tremendously, but for once, not with breaking. It hurt with bursting gratitude and joy. Seven years of ache and many thwarted plans had finally met their end with this tiny little thing in my arms. Here was a gift of such tremendous worth I never could deserve it: Grace.

Ten years later, Grace is an energetic girl who lives her life in extremes; there's no middle ground for this child. She's wild, quirky, entertaining, and talks incessantly. She's brought tremendous joy and lots of laughs. She's also given us lots of frustration and challenge. There are days I want to quit. But at the end of the day, it's all OK, because...

SHE'S STILL OURS.

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First Christmases

I will never forget my first Christmas as a mother.  It was full of the usual poignant moments, the handmade Christmas dress, the "First Christmas" ornament.  But it was the most ordinary task in the middle of all that celebration that became the greatest memory, because in the middle of it, I was so profoundly struck by what that First First Christmas was.

Of all the elements and activities of the season, my epiphany came while I was changing my baby's diaper.

Wiping her little bottom, it hit me like lightening what it really meant when Christ came as a baby.

Not as a shiny, giant, glowing God who is instantly feared for His power.

Not as a grown man who one day showed up in town, offering parables, miracles and grace.

Not as a verbal child, able to make himself understood.

He came as a baby.  A human baby, the most helpless creature on earth.

The Creator of this...

the Provider of this...

came as a baby who had to cry for food...

a baby who couldn't control his own body and soiled his diapers, sitting in it until someone noticed and could take time to change him.

He chose humility on an unimaginable scale so that He could not only be my sacrifice, but understand my daily struggles, great and small. To know what it was to be a puny human.

That's love. A love so far beyond anything language could explain that it required such abject humility and sacrifice to express it.

A love for me. A love for you. Love given despite His knowing what we would be and how little we would deserve it.

So as you purchase and wrap the Christmas gifts for those you love, and as you open their gifts to you in turn, I hope each piece of tape and ripped paper reminds you of that First Christmas gift: a love for you so wide and broad and high and deep, it can barely be comprehended.




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Countdown to Thanksgiving Day 22: Baileys-Free Holidays

The other night while watching TV, there was a commercial for Bailey's Irish Cream in which this lady drags a bottle through her houseful of odd party guests in even odder situations.  Mr. Hat remarked, "This doesn't make me want to buy this product at all." I suggested the effective ad would feature the woman at a family holiday gathering surrounded by all the family members who otherwise annoy, despise or avoid each other.  She would take a sip of her Baileys and suddenly be surrounded by pleasant, sparkling guests as a tagline says, "Baileys Irish Cream makes everything better." That, I think, would work.

I jest, but we hear so much this time of year of family disfunction. There are classics like "Christmas Vacation" based on this seasonal phenomena of gathering with people you don't particularly like and sometimes outright can't stand just because it's a holiday, you're family, and therefore togetherness is mandatory. So they groan and head off to Mom and Dad's or Aunt Jane's, spending in misery what should be a pleasant celebration.

Fortunately for me, this is not my reality. Having grown up together, my husband and I have families who were already acquainted and friends. We have healthy relationships with our parents and siblings. There might be the occasional scheduling hitch for these grand events, but we can all gather in the same room and end up with nothing but laughter and good conversation. We often fold in my brother's in-laws, too, with the same happy result. I could, if I chose, drink Baileys at these gatherings for the taste and not the bracing.

I'm lucky - and I know it.  I also feel blessed that, barring my sister and her family, all in our family unit are within a half-hour drive of our home. We don't have to make choices about which family we'll see this year, knowing we won't see the other family until the next one.  Having once upon a time lived away from them all, I treasure the proximity.

So as I enjoy our TWO Thanksgiving feasts on Thursday, I'll be grateful as I pass along the turkey instead of the Baileys.

Countdown to Thanksgiving Day 21: The Giant Hamster Wheel

OK, I know.  I'm late AGAIN!

And that's because, well, life this time of year is busy, full of the mundane but at increased volume.

As I was preparing to fall exhausted into bed last night, I was reflecting on how mundane it all is.  Get up and dressed, wake the Alpha and Omega kids, get them out the door with Mr. Hat, chug coffee, greet Ms. Grump, goad Ms. Grump to get ready for school, drive her there, come home, pick up, chug more coffee and catch up with friends on Facebook and/or blogs, shower (if I'm lucky), work or run errands, eat, work some more, fetch Alpha and Omega again, drop them off at home, get back in the car five minutes later and go get Ms. Grump, come home, muse about dinner, stall about dinner, start dinner, split up squabbles, help with homework, get them all in bed...  It's like I'm stuck on one giant hamster wheel, running and running, getting no further.

But you know what? My child isn't fighting cancer. My spouse isn't eking out his last days of life. We aren't unemployed, wondering how to pay for necessary groceries and heat. We aren't scrambling to find housing because we're being foreclosed on or our landlord has made other plans. We aren't laid up, trying to recover from surgery or wounds. I'm not fighting for my life in a divorce. I'm not single parenting. These are but a handful of terribly real struggles my own friends and acquaintances are enduring.  There are millions more people living in war zones and land stricken with famine.

I'm thankful for mundane.  It's a GOOD place to be.

So I'll just keep running and running...

Countdown to Thanksgiving Day 20: UN Midwest

This afternoon, I ate lunch with my family in a corner of a large room at our church, looking over 15 other tables with seven to eight people at each.

Each table was diverse in age and race, the room ranging from newborn to 50-something.  We all had one thing in common: adoption.  This room was full of parents who made significant financial and emotional sacrifices, biological children who made room for more, and children who were once orphans or at-risk.

Ten years ago, there were perhaps a dozen adoptive families at our church.  Today, we have at least three times that.  Just since January, we have had three families return with new children from around the globe, and two others who will be expanding their families before the year is out.

I'm always overwhelmed with gratitude to see these gatherings getting larger and larger, knowing the stories behind each family unit, and to be one of them.

I sat there, knowing the dismal future (if any) these kids have been redeemed from, and make mental comparisons to their new reality.  They aren't just saved, they are loved.  I watch the spontaneous hugs and kisses these former orphans lavish on their new parents and the affection returned. I see the little ones sitting on laps, arms around their mothers' necks.  I giggle to watch the gentle interaction between older, biological children and their younger adopted siblings.  My heart swells with their sense of security and worth.

These kids have come from China, Ethiopia, Russia, Korea, Haiti, Guatemala, and within the US. Many came as sibling groups, instantly doubling the size of their new families. Some came with the additional challenges of limb deformities, deafness, cleft palates, or serious illness. Some came "healthy" and had serious conditions discovered later, conditions they probably would not have survived had they not been adopted, yet are manageable in the US. They've been harshly abandoned on trash heaps, lovingly turned over to orphanages to save their lives, or sacrificially given in adoption to give them a better future.


All of them needed a family.

And, boy, they found not just one, but two. They also have this church family, a huge group of people who prayed for them before they were known, helped their parents prepare, and celebrated every milestone in their adoption process.  People who will continue to pray for them, teach and mentor them, and encourage their parents. A large group that just keeps getting bigger, changing the world one family at a time.

Countdown to Thanksgiving Day 17: Easy Bounty

Perhaps I should be thankful today for an ability to count or read a calendar, because I can, despite the fact that I posted "18" before "17." I was trying to rush November, as though it wasn't already flying by fast enough. Indulge me and pretend day 18 is really 17 and vice versa.

I often complain about grocery shopping.  I. hate. it.  Actually, I'm not sure there's any possible way to utilize the English language or font treatments to correctly capture just how much I loathe it.

Sale stuff I've planned a week of dinners of is often out of stock.  Other items I've come to rely on for certain recipes are suddenly removed from stock.  The produce department is rearranged every week. My fellow shoppers seem to be in a parallel universe in which they are alone; I can see them, but clearly they cannot ever see me. Cashiers bag my things in completely illogical ways despite the fact I already organize it all on the belt exactly the way it needs to be bagged. And if it fits, they'll cram it in.  It doesn't matter if I have 50 pounds worth of canned goods in one bag.  It's a miserable place to be most days.

But I always leave with several bags of food.  Food I didn't have to grow, raise, butcher, preserve, and in some cases, cook.  Food that's just there, ready when I want it, in quantity beyond my needs.  Exotic and gourmet food beyond the basics needed for survival is heaped up so much that they can't even put it all on the shelves requiring them to keep some in massive back rooms.

Once upon a time, there was a show called "Frontier House" in which modern souls turned themselves into frontier settlers for a social experiment. At the end of the series, they were rated on their preparedness for winter, because for the real frontier settlers 150 years ago, if you didn't personally grow, hunt or raise/butcher enough, you'd die. It was interesting to watch how unaccustomed to the labor and wait these men and women were.

Thanksgiving is a time at which we recall a celebration by pilgrims and Native Americans.  They celebrated and feasted because they were able to raise, hunt and preserve enough bounty to see them through a long New England winter, unlike earlier years and other settlements.  They knew what it was to starve.

Source: www.plimouth.org

Each week, I waltz in and out in an hour or so, loading up my basket with more food than many people around the world get in a month - or longer.  I tote it home, moaning under the weight of the bags that have to be schlepped into the house, and sighing over the task of putting it all away.  Yet, I didn't have to keep a cow for milk. I didn't have to hunt and butcher something for meat. I didn't have to raise wheat, get it ground and then spend hours making bread.  I not only didn't have to make my own cheese, I can buy it already sliced or shredded. Sure, some of us do can, hunt, raise chickens and beef, but it's optional, a "hobby" instead of survival.

It's crazy-easy, massive bounty I so often take for granted to the point of complaint. I even complain about having to turn it into "dinner" each night.

Which makes me realize it's about that time to head to the kitchen and figure out what "sounds good" for dinner. See? We have such bounty we can decide what we're in the mood for.

Easy, plentiful bounty.


Photos: Microsoft Office unless otherwise specified

Countdown to Thanksgiving Day 18: Baby, It's Cold Outside

You know that weather when you walk outside and the wind takes your breath away because it's so cold? Yeah, it's like that around here lately, and we still have another 30-40 degrees (F) to drop before we're in the dead of winter.  That wind just bites.

Which is why I'm thankful to have shelter. Not just shelter, but a home. A home with heat, a bed with down comforter, adequate clothing and cold-weather gear.

Our house is old, as in "built before anyone ever heard of insulation" old.  And it has its original windows. Heating it to a comfortable level is a challenge most days and impossible on the coldest days, but still, I'm not up under a highway overpass trying to eke out an existence in a cardboard box while the wind howls and the "feels like" temperature is -10F.  No.  I'm sitting on a comfortable couch with snuggly blankets, drinking hot tea or chocolate, listening to the furnace blow warmed air through massive antique vents.

Sure, the plaster is cracked in places and the floor is so out of level that one can shoot a marble in one corner of the dining room and have it circle the room and come right back.  Sure, it requires never-ending maintenance and then some.  But it keeps us dry and warm, which is so much more than many have.

So I'm not going to sit here listening to the wind howl and the furnace activate in rapid succession as it tries to keep up with the cold, and think of all the dollars it costs to keep it running. I'm not going to lament the drafts and cold walls. Instead, I'm going to think just how fortunate I am that I have gas heat to pay for, the means to do it, and that it's just drafts and not full-on chilly winds unchecked in their velocity.

I'm fortunate to be inside and warm.  Because baby, it's cold outside.


Photos: Microsoft Office

Countdown to Thanksgiving Day 16: Travel Companions

This is the 16th in a daily series celebrating the blessings I'm thankful for, leading up to Thanksgiving. While they will portray some of the many -- and random -- things I have to be thankful for, they will not be presented in any particular order by degree of thankfulness. Skewed priorities should not be implied.

A friend should be one in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at once for its justness and its sincerity. - Robert Hall

Being human is often a difficult thing. We give of ourselves to family, employers, friends. We trust, we care, we invest in the people in our lives.

Being a mother is even harder. You do all these things at a sacrificial level and add to the burden the future of these beings you are responsible for. It's your job to take this helpless little thing and turn her into an adult who will responsibly and lovingly give of themselves.

Along the way, those little beings will be beasts. And sometimes, they are extra beastly. And they break your heart, challenge you, and push the limits of your patience, understanding and wisdom.

Which is why I'm so thankful for a group of friends who have my back. These women expand my patience, help me understand, and share their wisdom when mine is maxed out. And when things come right again, they celebrate with me, even to tears of joy.

Even better, they trust me with their own struggles. They let me return the favor of confidence and prayer. They share their joy with me when their things come right, too. It is such a privilege and honor to pour back into them, to care about their journey in mothering, to pray over their kids. They are some of the finest minds and wits I know - and they still think I have something to contribute to them. (Don't banish their delusion, OK?)

We aren't geographically near each other, and it's hard sometimes not to be able to provide the practical help one wishes to give, like childcare in a pinch, a meal post-surgery, a hug and tissues. But I'm so thankful that the miles don't keep us from caring about each other and sharing our struggles and triumphs.

I've still got many miles to go on this road called motherhood. Fortunately, I love the company.

Countdown to Thanksgiving Day 14: Vroom, Vroom

This is the 14th in a daily series celebrating the blessings I'm thankful for, leading up to Thanksgiving. While they will portray some of the many -- and random -- things I have to be thankful for, they will not be presented in any particular order by degree of thankfulness. Skewed priorities should not be implied.

It's after 9 pm - about 12 hours later than I've been posting most of my "thankfulness" series.  

It was a crazy-busy day, half of it spent on the road, which leads me to what I'm thankful for today: reliable transportation.

I got in and out of that van a bazillion times today.  Each time I put the key back into the ignition and turned it, it started on cue.  Ripping down the expressway, there was no shimmy, shake or weird noise coming from the engine.  The cruise control worked, the radio blared, and I got from point A to point B (and C, D, E and F) in comfort and on time.

I didn't have to wait in the rain or schedule a full day to take the bus, which is good, considering one destination would have been impossible to reach by bus.  I didn't have to feed and harness horses; fortunate, because the number of miles I covered today would have taken two or three days by horse and wagon.  I didn't have to jumpstart the battery, stop and fill a leaky radiator somewhere along the way, make sure the muffler was still attached via a jimmy-rigged wire hanger, or change a flat tire.  I stopped at traffic lights and continued again when it was green.

Tomorrow, more than likely, I'll get up early, put the key back in and give it a turn, and the engine will instantly roar to life, ready for another day on chauffer duty.

And one of these days, it'll take me to a point G, where I can forget about points A-F for a while. Vroom, vroom!

Photos: Microsoft Office

Countdown to Thanksgiving Day 12: Turn, Turn, Turn

This is the 11th in a daily series celebrating the blessings I'm thankful for, leading up to Thanksgiving. While they will portray some of the many -- and random -- things I have to be thankful for, they will not be presented in any particular order by degree of thankfulness. Skewed priorities should not be implied.

To everything (turn, turn, turn...)

There is a season (turn, turn, turn...)

Frankly, that song drives me nuts.  About as much as winter does, which is why I was less than thrilled to see those big, fat clusters of snowflakes falling from the sky and stacking up on my lawn this week.

I'd like Winter well enough if I could stay inside with books, hot chocolate and a blanket, watching the lazy flakes float down, making tree branches lacy and leaving me with a snow-globe world.

Source: Microsoft Office

Instead, I'm driving multiple times a day on slippery roads, praying I'll make it alive to wherever I'm going. And before that, I'm shoveling and salting the 45-degree slope of my driveway four times a day, lest I go sliding out into the five lanes of highway traffic at the end of it.

We get ridiculous amounts of snow in our driveway.

Watching those snow flakes this week, I found myself dreading the five to six months of winter that now remain, panicked that I'll ever make it to Spring.  And then I realized that I wouldn't get Spring without the Winter.

The yellow riot of forsythia...

Source: Wikipedia

The fruit trees in bloom...

Nodding tulips...

Source: Microsoft Office

And without Spring, I wouldn't get Summer.

The weekends at the lake...

Old-fashioned roses...

Walks on the beach...

And without Summer, I wouldn't get the best of all: Autumn.

The glorious colors against a true-blue sky...

The giant orange pumpkins in my father's garden...

The stunning purple asters...

I know there are places I could live where it's Summer all year.  But I'd miss Spring and Fall.  And I've lived where there's Spring, Summer, Fall and a snowless Winter, but the "Winter" is brown, gray and drab, a world covered in mud and dead grass.  Somehow, the snow globe is so much more appealing, even if it means months of white-knuckled driving and whole days spent shoveling.

So, I guess in the end, I'm actually thankful for a proper Winter and its beauty.

Remind me in January, will you?

Countdown to Thanksgiving Day 11: Sacrifice and Service

This is the 11th in a daily series celebrating the blessings I'm thankful for, leading up to Thanksgiving. While they will portray some of the many -- and random -- things I have to be thankful for, they will not be presented in any particular order by degree of thankfulness. Skewed priorities should not be implied.

Once upon a time, there was a young man in a small boat.  He was tasked with ferrying men in arms from their huge ships to the beach, dropping them off and returning for more, over and over again.  He'd spent months practicing how to make the trip, land, deliver, unload, repeat as efficiently and quickly as possible.

That beach was Omaha.  The man was my grandfather.  And many of those men he dropped off didn't ever get to come home.  One died in his arms, trying to disembark.

Source: www.history.navy.mil

My grandfather made it and pressed eastward, eventually meeting my grandmother in Vienna.  He recounted this story once, for a national oral history project capturing first-hand accounts of WWII; it was the only time I've ever seen him cry.

Throughout American history, there are thousands of stories of harrowing sacrifice and daunting service in our efforts for independence, union, and freedom.  There are many currently stationed around the world, away from their families, facing real battle and risk.  Today, on Veteran's Day, we celebrate as a nation those men and women and give thanks for their sacrifice and service.

Source: www.milpages.com

Their families, too, share in the sacrifice as they single parent, manage home repairs, weather illness, and handle other necessities alone on the home front, all the while worrying about their loved one's safety.  And sometimes, they learn the worst and have to endure it.

Source: http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com

I'm so thankful for these men and women and the families behind them.

I'm proud to know that my family and my husband's have served in our military for many generations, in peacetime and in war, when their country needed them to keep peace, protect our freedoms, prevent genocide, and free others.

I'm indebted to them all today and every day, year round.