Early Morning Musings

I've been occasionally aware, these past few weeks, of that peculiar feeling of the days slipping by without my really being fully part of them. It comes partly from being pulled in so many different directions—of being truly concerned about and involved in so many emotionally heavy and time-consuming areas: church, my parents, friends, our support group, our AHG troop, the classes I teach. And, of course, my family.

Everything these past several months has been focused on our oldest: college, job, Eagle Scout, graduation. Tomorrow Randy's family comes in for Jesse's graduation, and the graduation blitz begins: rehearsal, pictures, graduation itself, then the graduation party. Cleaning, ironing, cooking meals, baking, gathering items for his display table—these are all things I have to do.

But beyond the doing, beyond the sitting in the living room chatting with people, beyond the practicalities of finding the tassel and figuring out how to pin on the cap, beyond all that doing is the elephant in the room: my child is graduating.

It hits me at times like last night, when Randy, Duncan, Laurel and I played frisbee in the backyard. It hits me on evenings when Jesse is at work and just the four of us are eating dinner together, with Duncan moving into Jesse's spot at the table. After this summer, it will just be the four of us, all the time. Our family dynamic is changing, and even though it has been evolving over the past year, especially since Jesse has been working, the fact still hangs over me.

Yes, I'm happy that he's graduating. Yes, I'm thrilled that he's going to college. But once upon a time, he was a little blond boy in yellow rain boots on a bright red tractor. And that's why I have to keep busy.

Linked to Tuesdays Unwrapped at Chatting at the Sky

Monday Memory: To War

(A repost from 2008, in honor of Memorial Day.)

In 1951 my parents drove from Illinois to California so that my father could go to war. My father had already fought in World War II not even 10 years before, leaving college to enter the army at age 18. Now my father was a college graduate, a husband, and a father, and he was off to Korea.

My parents speak of this time with great fondness. They'd been married just a few years, and their lives were wrapped up in James, as we all are with out first child. It was a great adventure to drive across the country, to visit the Mojave Desert and the Continental Divide, to touch the Pacific Ocean. My mother was sending her husband off to war. It is what women did.

My mother and James flew back to Illinois when my father shipped out, and my father was in Korea for a year.




Here is a picture that my mother sent to him in Korea, near the end of his tour. James is wearing an outfit my father sent that was purchased during R&R in Japan.

My father is 85 years old now, my mother 83, and James will be 60 in July. In the evenings when my parents tell stories, though, they remember every detail: the rickety hotels, the sound of the ocean, the sifting of sand between their fingers.

"Wordless" Wednesday: Soaring

A Look At 100 Boys That Join Scouting

12 will receive their first time religious contact
5 will earn their religious emblem
2 will enter the clergy
18 will develop hobbies which will last a lifetime
8 will enter a career based on Merit Badges work
17 will become Scout volunteers
1 will use Scouting skills to save the life of another person
1 will use Scouting skills to save his own life
28 will continue lifelong hobbies started in Scouting

2 will attain the rank of Eagle

I'm going to move on from this; I really am. I know my posts in these past few weeks have been soaked in Eagle. But I'm just so darned proud of my son, and I'm so happy that at last, it's over! Graduation, which is coming up in 10 days, seems like a piece of cake compared to the Eagle Scout ceremony. My biggest regret is that Randy's family couldn't come see this. In retrospect, we wish we had encouraged them to come to his Eagle Scout instead of graduation.

But everything else about the day was perfect. Almost everyone that we invited came to the ceremony—thus we had some people even standing in the back, because who knew 100 people would be there? Even our college friends who live 2 hours away came for the event, which really, really touched us. My father, who got his Eagle in 1941, gave Jesse the Eagle charge. I didn't break down weeping, although I did have to get mad at the camcorder a couple of times to ward off the tears.

I loved hearing the positive things that the speakers—his two Scoutmasters and the overseer of his Eagle project—had to say about my son. I know that he is polite, respectful, and honorable, but it's nice to hear other people say it. One of the best things I did prior to the ceremony was make a photo book (on Shutterfly.com) documenting Jesse's Scouting journey from Tiger Cubs all the way up to Life Scout, including several pages of his trek to Philmont Scout Ranch. We had the book on the table and asked people to sign it as a guest book of sorts. That is such a treasure to us, and I imagine will be to Jesse in a decade. ;-)

And now, moving on to graduation…

Linked to Just for the Joy of It, Wordless Wednesday and 5 Minutes for Mom

Easy Board Pictures

I used to make such cute things when my kids were younger and I had more time. I came across these pictures that I made for Duncan's room many years ago and are now stored under his bed.

These were so very easy to make; you could use any sort of book but we choose the Mr. Small theme because, well, we're the Smalls. I just bought very inexpensive copies of the Lois Lenski books The Little Fire Engine and The Little Train and decided which pictures I wanted to use. I then cut those pictures out of the books. It's nearly a sin, I know, but I have "real" copies of the book for reading. I found two boards in the shed that had been part of a bookshelf or something once, so they were already stained. I made "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish" pictures likes this years ago when Jesse was little, and for those I painted the board glossy yellow.

After cleaning the cobwebs off the boards, I just got my bottle of Modge Podge and decoupaged on the pictures and text.


I love to find projects that I once made. It reminds me that I really can come up with inexpensive decorating ideas all on my own—that I don't have to go buy new stuff at Target just because it's easier. And that's just one of the things I love about summer—time to create, paint, and make our home a little more us.

Linked up to Making the World Cuter Monday

My Eagle

Photo by Lynn Freeny

My Eagle. And that's really all I have to say for now.

Linked to Tuesdays Unwrapped at Chatting at the Sky

Shoe Collection

I couldn't help but notice our shoe collection this morning. In fact, I had to be wide awake in order to navigate this obstacle course through our living room and dining room without stumbling…



We do actually all have shoe baskets or shelves in our rooms, as well as one by the back door.

And yes, Dr. H. would like you to know, at least one pair is mine.

Hometowns: Upstate New York, East Tennessee

I have two places that hold the title of "hometown," two different worlds, two different slices of Americana. From Wikipedia:

1. Geneva is a city in Ontario and Seneca counties in the U.S. state of New York. The population was 13,617 at the 2000 census. Some claim it is named after the city and canton of Geneva in Switzerland. Others believe the name came from confusion over the letters in the word "Seneca" written in cursive.

2. Blount County is a U.S. county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee. Its population was 105,823 at the United States Census, 2000. The county seat is at Maryville, which is also the county's largest city. It is included in the Knoxville, Tennessee, Metropolitan Statistical Area.

I was raised in western New York, which, unless you live in New York, is known as "upstate" (because everything not in NYC is upstate). I grew up in a neighborhood in the city of Geneva, but we moved out to live on our lake property when I was in 6th grade. This was the view I awoke to for many, many years.

Geneva is a small, largely Italian-American town. When I was growing up, it had dirty streets and run-down buildings, just like everywhere else in the 1970s and 80s. Now it's been cleaned up, and the lake shines like diamonds beyond the row houses and carefully placed benches along Main Street. It's a beautiful place.

Last summer my parents sold our house there. It still makes me get weepy to read this post, called House. I've written a lot about Geneva on this blog, and I noticed that I always call it "my hometown." Here's something I wrote a couple of years ago while visiting my parents:

There's a curious dichotomy of familiarity and strangeness that invariably comes with being in the city where I spent the first 18 years of my life. Not much has changed in my hometown—or rather not as much as one would expect in the past 24 years. Of course I've been back annually in those 24 years since my parents still live here, but in the area where I live now, a whole lot can change in the course of a year. I can't even imagine the number of retail stores, restaurants, and subdivisions that have gone up in Blount Co., Tennessee in the past year. Here in Geneva, I've noticed but one building (Pudgies Pizza) bulldozed down and a Tim Horton's has gone up across the street from Dunkin' Donuts. I think I counted three new houses on a little cul de sac on Snell Road. That's about it.

Seneca Lake looks the same as always. There are the familiar sails of a regatta on weekend mornings (or "ricotta," as Duncan says) down by the Yacht Club. The hum of weekend boaters and the small lapping of the waves on the beach. Voices calling out from docks to houses. In town, Main Street looks just as it did when I walked on it three decades ago, tossing newspapers onto front porches with Lisa. The Baltimore-style row houses still look sharp and historic; the lady-of-the-fountain still gushes water on Park Place. Nothing's changed at the colleges—Hobart and William Smith—except maybe a new sign or two. …

But with all these familiar things, I can't shake the feeling of being a stranger in my hometown. My friends mention people and I search for the memory of a face. I can't help but feeling now and then, erroneously, I know, that lives have stood still for those who have remained here. I know that is a completely false perception, but it adds to the strangeness of coming back to my hometown.…

Dr. H. always says my New York accent comes back for a brief appearance after a trip to my hometown. I started hearing the upstate nasal twang about 15 years ago: the incomplete "r's" and the harsh vowels. Upstaters are way toned-down from downstaters, but there is something there, for sure, something fast and a little hard. I am missing the gentle cadence of the south. We have just over two full days left here before we head back to Tennessee. The next time I come back to Geneva, I'll be a full-fledged visitor, assuming that my parents will have sold their house here by then. I'm ready for that, I think. I'm so far from the girl I was when I lived here that I can't even conjure up more than ghosts of emotions. There's no question where my home is now.

There are so many emotions attached to that little city on the lake, but for me, my home now is outside the Smoky Mountains, just south of Knoxville. On a rainy day like today, the view from my front window looks like this:

I write a lot about our adventures in the Smoky Mountains. We call it our big backyard. I love the South. I love the people and the climate and the slow pace of life. I love the wild abundance of green and the softness of the people.

For tourism, well, 8 million people visit our area each year. Besides the mountains themselves, we have Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge and all the attractions there, from Dollywood (which really is fantastic) to outlet shopping. And we live just 15 minutes from Knoxville, where you can find pretty much anything to do. Dr. H. is a professor at the University of Tennessee, and football season around here is just an amazing thing. The whole area becomes a sea of orange, and those who support other schools are enemies, pure and simple.

Two hometowns, two places that live in my heart. But if I were given the ultimatum—pick one, and live there forever—the choice would be easy.

I'm not budging from where I am now.

Linked up to Kelly's Korner

Thursday Miscellany

* Is this Thursday? I'm strangely calm, considering we have a Big Event happening in just a few days. But maybe this is Wednesday.

* No, it really is Thursday. I know because I took my Dad to the oral surgeon today to have four teeth pulled. I love my Dad. I've never before been in the position of being a caregiver for him. When he had angioplasty 15 years ago, I lived far away and my brothers were there with him. He's always taken care of me, but today I got to drive him and wait for him and pick up his medicine later.

* I do remember once when I was in high school and my mom went away for a week to visit my grandmother. I supposed I cooked for my Dad that week. But what I really remember is him cooking supper for me: a corned beef hash, egg, and cheese sandwich. It was strangely delicious. I can't quite imagine eating such a thing now. Is corned beef hash still even sold?

* Today I made a few dozen chocolate chip cookies and a bunch of cheese straws in preparation for Jesse's Eagle Scout ceremony on Sunday. Thank you, Carrie-from-high-school, for the cheese straws recipe! These are ridiculously delicious. Jesse said, "They taste like Cheez-its." He's absurd.

* I mailed out graduation invitations yesterday and today. Got Jesse's honor cord in the mail. This, for those of you who don't know your graduation lingo yet, is a golden cord that an honor student can wear drape around his/her graduation gown. Because, well, why not?

* Randy and the kids got me a pair of telescoping loppers for Mother's Day. All I really want to do is to be outside pruning trees and lopping away inappropriate shrubbery.

* But first, more cheese straws, more cookies, and supper. Is it weird that I plan to reward myself by getting to prune for 30 minutes or so this evening? Ah well. I come from a long-line of horticulturists.

Wordless Wednesday: Little Scout, Big Scout

(Photo by Lynn Freeny)

Countdown to Eagle Scout: 4 days.

Linked to Wordless Wednesday and 5 Minutes for Mom

Dancing with Exuberance

I confess. I am often bored by ballet. I really, really want to like ballet; it seems like it should fit my quiet, literary nature. But honestly, I usually want to tear my hair out when I watch it, whether it's professional ballet or just a local recital. I truly would be happy never to see The Nutcracker again. (Forgive me, readers, whose daughters dance their hearts out in pretty little pink shoes!)

I'm sure it would be different, however, if my own daughter did ballet. Then, I am quite sure, the whole world of ballet would be magically transformed for me. I would see the story of Clara and that creepy nutcracker dude in a whole new light and be delighted each December to watch it again and again.

Luckily for me, my daughter has consistently chosen international dance. I love the fast-paced dances, the bright colors, the billowing dresses, and the exuberant faces. Everything moves so quickly in these recitals that I never have a chance to fidget or bang my head against the chair in front of me.

Truthfully, I want to run up on stage and join them in their exuberance. I suspect, however, that my daughter would never get over that mortification.

We're all done with recitals and performances for six more months!

Linked up with Tuesdays Unwrapped at Chatting at the Sky