There are lessons to be learned from water, specifically hurricanes and droughts.
Something that is life-giving and necessary for existence can easily become destructive when it gets out of balance. Too much or too little and that which we usually welcome we start to fear.
We feel helpless because we can’t control, we can only react.
When WordPress (the platform I use for blogging) announced last week that the Daily Post feature would be going away I have to admit to feeling abandoned.
This is part three of a three part series featuring a tour of the valentines I’ve made in the years since I graduated from college. This links you to the first post. This links you to the second post.
Which brings us to 2010 and a move back to Louisiana, which inspired that year’s valentine. Let the good times roll!
2010
We moved down the street the next February and no valentines were sent so this was included in the next year’s mailing. I suppose it’s 2011, after the fact.
This is part two of a three part series featuring a tour of the handmade valentines I’ve made in the years since I graduated from college. This links you to the first post.
Some years the valentine making process is easy, some years it literately draws blood, as it did in 2000. It seemed appropriate that the message that year was literal as well as figurative. Sometimes love is difficult and can hurt.
2000
The next year I constructed a valentine that was transparent, with each side different, yet the same, reflecting the many layers of love within each of us….perhaps also a statement about how we change, depending upon the angle we’re viewed from.
2001
My city has been gray and the skies have been full of rain this past week so because today is Valentine’s Day I’m taking you on a tour of my heart instead of on a tour of the place I live, as this week’s photo challenge suggested.
Back in 1981 I was living in San Antonio, going to graduate school while my husband was learning how to fly airplanes for the Air Force in Del Rio. I can’t remember why but one day I wandered downtown and had my portrait taken at one of those “old-time” photo studios. I don’t remember much about that day or why I did it but apparently I was left with pictures I then needed to use.
Enter Valentine’s Day. I do recall sitting down at the dining room table in the apartment I shared with another student and making valentines with a sewing machine, construction paper, doilies, stickers and those photos of myself. I mailed them off to a few of my professors from college and the former classmates I had addresses for.
1981
Straight and simple, we all lead layered lives.
There’s the life we lead in public. The life we present to the majority of the people that know us. In short, our Facebook life. The majority of the time it’s a filtered life of highlights, funny moments, celebrations, shared causes, and occasionally a request for good thoughts or prayers.
Which brings us to the layers beneath that public life, the layers we so often mask over or try to hide…..our concerns and our trials, our misconceptions, the deepest hurts harbored in our hearts, the crosses we carry.
Therein lies the real truth of who we are and what makes us.
Being a parent is an amazing thing but it comes with all sorts of responsibility and long term commitment.
You have to keep them fed, warm, safe, and educated in the ways of the world and God. Teeth need to be brushed, clothes need to be washed, meals prepared, homework completed, prayers said, books read, and little bodies tucked in each and every night.
Being a grandparent, however, is the best role a person is gifted with in life. It comes with all the love and fun but not nearly the angst or the pressures of day-to-day life.
These are the loves in my life. They call me Juju and they call their grandpa Lolo.
They are one love…times three, each one with a very distinct personality, a wonderful combination of their parents and the two families from which their genes originate.
We had a little impromptu photo session this morning for this blog. When I envisioned it on the plane to Houston yesterday I had expectations of lovely photographs of these three siblings together, perfectly dressed and posed, all looking at the camera, all smiling.
Yeah, THAT didn’t happen!
And really, why would I expect or want that?
Butt pictures are what they had the most fun with. And, the fact that we used the word butt.
And isn’t that the best part of grandparenting? I get to throw all the expectations out the window and simply revel in how much fun it is for little people to stick their butts up in the air and giggle until they collapse in a heap on the bed.
One love…times three…equals fun.
Four years ago, after their first date, he wrote on his FB page “Sometimes everything is perfect.”
Fast forward to November 21, 2015 and she writes “I knew the moment I saw you four years ago. And now we have forever.”
A month ago they were two young adults, finding their way in the world as young professionals. They defined themselves as a daughter and a son, as Jeff’s sister and as Jimmy and Steven’s brother, as Conner’s aunt and Judah’s, Xander’s and Maddie’s uncle, as Alex’s girlfriend and Kayla’s boyfriend.
Now that is all eclipsed by “as an engaged couple.”
The planning has begun and their lives are now in the best kind of transition.
They traveled to our home for the Thanksgiving holiday and this proud mom, who is a photographer, but not necessarily a portrait photographer, was more than willing to attempt their engagement photos with some of our favorite DC memorials as backdrops.
We couldn’t be happier to be adding another beautiful, intelligent and genuinely kind daughter-in-law to the two we already have in our family. I may have only given birth to sons but I’m no longer going to be outnumbered…the score is finally even!
Some change is brought about deliberately and with much thought.
Other change just happens.
Thirty-eight years ago today I married my high school sweetheart. In many ways it seems like yesterday. In many other ways it seems like we’ve been married forever. I hardly remember who I was before I said “I do.” A very large part of who I am is because of him and we’ve grown into who we are now, side by side.
When I was in high school I worked at a Frisch’s restaurant as a car hop and then as an inside waitress. Every night the same elderly woman would come in and sit at the counter. When I got engaged at the ripe old age of 18 she lectured me continually against getting married so young. She also spent a lot of time telling me how quickly time would pass.
I didn’t believe her and came to resent it every time she would tell me yet again how the years would fly by.
Here I am. And yes, they have flown.
The changes came, and looking back, I pretty much missed them.
Change can sneak up on you and suddenly you wake up, closer to 60 than 50, and married almost four decades. I’m hoping the changes that come in our next thirty-eight years together are kind to us. Happy Anniversary Jim!
(Click here if you’d like to read last year’s anniversary post.)
Ahhhh…..love. We know it in so many ways.
We first experience it unconditionally from our parents. Many of us still remember the euphoric feeling of a new love. If we are so blessed, we find it in the all-consuming miracle of our children. If we’re lucky enough and work at it diligently we know the love that many years together matures into. Friendships encompass love. We love our sports teams, our favorite foods, a well-worn pair of jeans, cities we’ve lived in, and certain songs.
My newest love is watching my husband in his role of grandfather. I watched him change when he became a father but I wasn’t prepared for the transformation that took place when his grandsons came into his life.
We had the pleasure of having our first grandson live with us for his first twelve months and very early on Jim earned the title of “Grandpa Loco” from our daughter-in-law. It was quickly evident that there was nothing Jim wouldn’t do for Judah, to include buying the best baby backpack available and taking him on long walks through the woods. There was no line Jim wouldn’t cross when it came to this baby. He was a crazy-in-love grandpa.
LoLo and Judah, February 2009
When Judah started talking the hard c sound was difficult for him to pronounce and so Jim became Grandpa LoLo or simply, LoLo.
February 2012
The feeling between these two guys is mutual. When we Skype Judah is happy enough to talk to me but his face literally explodes with happiness when LoLo appears on the computer screen. If Jim is TDY we have to warn Judah before the Skype call goes through that his grandpa isn’t home. Advance notice softens the blow.
And, if the relationship between one grandson and his grandpa isn’t enough, there’s always his little brother to double the love!
LoLo and Xander, May 2012
The bonus is that all of this causes Grandma JuJu to fall in love with Grandpa LoLo all over again every time she sees these guys together.
pauses&clicks 