Starry Sky Ranch

dad

 

If you've ever felt a steadying hand such as this on the back of your bike, I hope you are celebrating that gift today.  For everyone has a father, but not everyone gets a dad. : ) 

above all

 

"But above all preserve peace of heart. This is more valuable than any treasure."

- St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

 

a gift

 

"Being comfortable in your own skin and content with your own company is a magical gift to yourself and everyone in your life."

- Patricia Alexander

there were books

I sat on these pics thinking I was going to pull together all they represented, all that I felt looking at them.  I realized however, that this story is probably just too big to be contained within the pages of this blog.  This epic journey doesn't sum up neatly in 4 or 5 paragraphs.  I can give you the highlights at least and they begin with this picture. 

Once upon a time there was a boy, a beautiful boy.  And he needed to stretch and move and reach and learn and push past the limitations imposed by his condition. (Spina Bifida)  So his mom and dad set him on this blanket every day and enticed him with words and pictures.  He grew stronger and more determined to get to those stories himself.  Before long he was rocking, then crawling, then sitting and holding books by himself.  So our story began...

 

By four, he knew all his letters and had been a regular at library story hour for years.  We had only this grand plan: check out a few books from each section of the children's library every week.  So there were animal books and poetry books, fairy tales and cookbooks.  The Caldecott list was in the diaper bag.  Books by educational pioneers and reformers like Marva Collin's inspired and challenged the cartoon-y twaddle the local preschool offered.  Alternative medical books made their way into the book bag as well.  Those educated us and helped us to help him.  We read and read and read. 

 

By five, he was reading independently, thanks to copy of Alphaphonics another library mom shared.  Following that success there was a big box of first grade materials from Calvert School with his name on it.  He devoured that too and became an official homeschool student.  This proved to be a critically important choice because this busy, happy boy found himself in the hospital part of nearly every year.  His mom would find herself housebound periodically with pregnancy complications.  There would be a few of those too. ; )   And there were the relocations due to military life, 13 of them during his childhood.  

 

Despite all those odds seemingly stacked against success, school went on very consistently if non-traiditonally.  It was soon clear there was no reason why math had to be completed at 9 am.  Or at the table.  So books were read in lobbies, on hospital beds, at hotels, in the car, and on the way to sports practices.  When pain prohibited reading otherwise, they were read aloud. We adapted, adjusted.  We read.

 

Words and images filled his heart and his mind and carried him far beyond his physical confines. In one medically challenging high school year he devoured 32 books - Jane Eyre, Frankenstein, Up from Slavery, 1984.  Every week another novel, another continent, another era, another world. 

 

College came.  There were more challenges.  There was still that dogged determination.  All those magical words which culminated in a cum laude English degree, with much loved courses in poetry and short story composition.  

 

This is where we found ourselves on a warm Saturday morning in Denver.  I squeezed in close to catch him passing by in procession and my eyes welled.  All around me were people fanning themselves and idly texting, waiting for the endless line of graduates to snake their way through the grounds.  I could no longer see anything more than blue satin swirls.  In my mind there was only this picture of a beautiful baby boy on his blanket with his books.  There was hope and fear and worry and needles and anesthesia.  There were the two of us, reading Pearl Buck in a hospital room in VA one year, me fighting early pregnancy nausea and him recovering from surgery, coming in and out as I read.  There was a boy and his Dad maneuvering a chair through off road paths in Rocky Mountain National Park.  There was the crashing of wheelchairs against one another during basketball games. I was deluged with memories and the sudden realization that he did it, we made it. Against crazy odds. 

I can't possibly explain to you what that meant to me. To him. To all of us. 

 

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers."

- Charles William Eliot

 

Life and Learning lately

 

Saw a lovely quote by the Lambert's of Five in a Row fame this week:

"We're not trying to do "School at Home." We're trying to do homeschool. These are two entirely different propositions. We're not trying to replicate the time, style or content of the classroom. Rather we're trying to cultivate a lifestyle of learning in which learning takes place from morning until bedtime 7 days each week. The "formal" portion of each teaching day is just the tip of the iceberg. "

~Steve and Jane Lambert

no time for more than random snaps then...

 

jump

(my gorgeous soldier son)

(a daughter, a son, and a beautiful fiance-in-law ; ))

They say you can't go home again.  That's obviously not completely true.  People do that all the time.  What I think people really mean is that you can't turn time back.  That if you do go back to a place that was yours, way back when, it can never be the same.  That part is sorta true.  That isn't bad news though. 

My oldest daughter and I traveled back to Colorado last week. It was my first trip back to the States in three years.  That's a long time to be out of your country. It's a long time to miss your old friends. A long time to live on a different continent from some of your children. It's just a long time.  

Was it different?  No.  Yes. The roads, the cars, the whole driving on the right side again. The houses and stores that have popped up. The altitude, the weather, the sheer scale of everything.  All such a shock to the senses.  Then, though, there were old friends, great food, and talking late into the night with my kids who are not kids anymore.

Was it awesome?  Definitely. 

Could I live there again?  Sure. 

Would it be like it was before?  No. 

That isn't bad news though. 

We watched the movie Ten Years last night.  While that isn't a ringing endorsement necessarily, there was a line at the end that hit home.  One character had moved overseas in the years after high school and wasn't sure he would be coming back again.  His friends, still nostalgic for days gone by and not entirely at peace with where life had taken them, thought that was so very sad and asked why?  He said he had loved that town.  He loved moving to the new place.  And he was pretty sure he would love the next thing in store in his life too. Why look back (with either longing or regret) when you can look around and look ahead? 

 I feel that way too, and that isn't because life has been so exceptionally easy. It hasn't been. There's no pity party there.  Just being frank. It's been tough. And I'm not completely sure it's going to be a whole bunch easier in years to come.  But in life, like in photography, we always have a choice about where to focus.  In life, like in photography, it is critical to nail your focus. It all gets fuzzy when you don't. It's hard to see things the way you should.  Could. 

I loved living there. I truly did.  I would love living there again. I love living here too. I think all that has a lot more to do with the decision to love than the particular place in question. 

If you've read these pages for any length of time you may have figured out I don't take leaps of faith so well. Sometimes I leap and then completely freak out mid-air. There were a few moments of freaking out before boarding that plane, while negotiating flight changes, when my heart was stretched across a very wide ocean with kids who need me on both sides of it.  

It was still a good idea to jump. 

along the river Ouse

 

"How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice..." 

- George Eliot

 

 

April showers bring...

Flowers don't worry about how the're going to bloom.  They just open up and turn toward the light and that makes them beautiful. 

- Jim Carrey

That's my thought for the moment.  Actually I have a lot of thoughts at the moment but that one sums up. I am reading Joyce Meyer's The Battle Belongs to the Lord this month.  She says,

"I believe that the devil assigns demons every morning to sit on each of our shoulders and whisper in our ears,'What are you doing to do? what are you going to do? what are you going to do?'

It is so liberating to say, 'Lord I don't know what to do, and even if I did I couldn't do it.  But, Lord, my eyes are on you.  I am going to wait and watch for You to do something about this situation - because there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.'"

Ours isn't the worrying about how.

We just have to turn toward the light to find beautiful. 

 

 

 

What's your super-power?

 

About a year ago I took pictures of this awesome family to hang on their father's (husband's) hospital walls. It's been a big year. There was a valiant battle with a rare sarcoma.  There was loss and there has been grief.  There have been good days and bad days. And now there is the moving forward again into future that looks very different from the past. 

We tend to think of heroism as the leaping-of-tall-buildings sort of events, but the more you live life, the more you come to see that the greatest battles happen behind the scenes with little fanfare. The true heroes?  They are the ones who win the daily battle of putting one foot in front of another, who can look an uncertain future in the face and say, "I am coming anyway."  Some mornings you can rise up with great courage and face the day.  Other's you just manage to raise your hand to say, "Present." But on you go.

Krissie and her kids are doing just that.  We took another set of family pictures this year to mark where they are now and how they are moving forward.  Every detail was symbolic.  They wanted to wear their super hero shirts to document their quirky side as well as their overcoming.  And there is another shirt on Krissie's lap, the one Rob wore last year.  I am grateful for the erratic weather we were dealing with because I didn't have time to really process that as I was shooting. I can tell you that working on them afterwards was tough.  

Barbara Bloom says:

"When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful."

This is what strikes me this year.  Their family suffered a great blow, but if possible they are even more beautiful than they were.  

So, what's your super power?  Are you struggling with illness, a wayward child, a lay-off?  Have you moved - maybe again and again - to a new place where you are just another face in the crowd?  Are you buried under laundry and diapers? Behind that chatty Facebook wall are you slaying dragons all those "friends" are unaware of?

Then let me ask you this?  Did you get up today? Did you get cereal in some bowls? Did you shower? 

Awesome!  You're a super hero too. Here's to all of us.  <g>  Keep up the good work. 

of dust and dollhouses

 

Once again I attempted Bath pictures and they got eaten up. It's a bad idea to try to do much online in the evenings here.  Our connection speed drops quite a bit and becomes downright erratic when others in the area get online.  Maybe tomorrow there will be time.  I feel like I say that a lot and then there isn't, but that's ok too.  

It's funny because when the children are little there is so very much time spent supervising, guiding, helping.  Days go by without many free moments at all. Now many of mine are long past needing that sort of input by me, but still there are texts, emails, and catching up around the kitchen island when we all return from work and activities.  And those are the very best parts of the day. We have become a community and I love that.  Though in a community this size you can expect that at any given time some people are sailing along and some need encouragement and someone might be struggling.  That's pretty much how it usually is and it keeps you on your toes. 

We had a freak wind storm this morning which got our day off to a running start. Just after Allen and Alannah headed to work it kicked up.  A loud bang caught Aidan's attention and he noticed the trampoline had flipped over and up onto the side of the house.  Fortunately it missed all the windows but it was quite impossible to move it with the wind at 26mph.  The boys held it in place until we had a pocket of calm when we could get it to the fence and tie it down. 

In the distance we could see the dirt clouds building.  Our farm was a higher piece of fen land and never was underwater as so much of the surrounding area once was.  However, it was sort of like the beach, you could say, and some of the fields are still very sandy.  They are ideal for growing the carrots and beets they plant here.  But at times like this, after the last harvest and before the next, the wind wrecks havoc. 

It was all much better by soccer time.  And the wind did not trigger my car alarm multiple times like it did during the game the night before.  ThankyouGod. 

What else?  The littles have been making heaps of progress academically though in surprisingly short spurts during the day.  In between there is a LOT of dollhouse play for the girls and throwing of footballs in imaginary games for Brendan.  Still, they are learning so much.  I have had them together for some things.  In photography-speak they call it batch processing. <g> They are both reading like mad.  B is reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to me.  Tess is moving into the short chapter books he just moved out of.  Both are learning cursive.  Both are working through  If You Lived in Colonial Times (and the other books in the series) Both are soaring through the Strayer Upton math. So fwiw, these are all hits. 

The flowers came home with a man who is concerned about some tests of mine that came back with a little hitch requiring more tests. Hopefully nothing.  Probably nothing. But sort of hanging overhead until they are "for sure" nothing, if you know what I mean. 

Speaking of news, its been a big week hasn't it?  Much sadness and scary stuff playing out on screens.  We tuned in the other night when Boston was unfolding.  We sent the little ones to bed but one of the boys was all curled up next to his dad so I left him and his older brother to watch with him.

 It soon becomes apparent that although the news is ON 24 hours a day, there isn't really 24 hours of breaking news.  There is about 7 minutes of news on a continuous loop.  So we watched and we turned it off.  Between us and our facebook feeds we have the gist of what has happened since.  It's enough.  We know to pray and we are.  But we can easily forget that kids are not tiny adults.  There is nothing good to be gained by letting that continuous loop of disturbing news and sensational images become the background music of their lives.   So in their world there are dusty clouds and dolls to dress and soccer nets.  Just as it should be. 

Wishing you the same.