Liam is 19!!

Wait. I remember typing, "Liam is 6!" And now you're not. Now you're a college student. I can't believe I've been blogging that long, logging birthday after birthday. Think I'll ever type, "Liam is 30!" Arrgh.

 I am happy to say we've fixed the garbage bag suitcase issue. No matter. You wore it well. 

You got to see your sister one last time before she took off for the Canaries in early September. It was a good summer, with both of you home.  The best.

 Drawing your sister!

We had a seriously good Sasquatch sighting.

Because we're always Squatchin', eerwhere we go.

 We had crazy baby jays to play with for a little while. I absolutely love how you let Josie Jay whack away at your phone. You know how to move around wild birds, which is not much at all.





And you let Phoebe paint your toenail red. Not many about-to-be 19-year-old guys would do that. Nor could most people I know put up with the hammering of a curious young blue jay. You're something else, Liam!



Now Josie's off in the wild doing whatever jays do in the fall--stashing food everywhere, hammering acorns open. Thanks for letting her practice on you.



I thought for your birthday post I'd collect some of your favorite things. Pumpkins. The smell of a freshly opened pumpkin. I understand your poor son has gone downhill since this family portrait was taken. Well, mine hasn't! He's only gone uphill.

Speaking of favorite things, I promised I'd cook you a turkey for Thanksgiving. I found the world's smallest turkey (only 10 lb!) and, inspired by Canary Islands cuisine, I'm going to make a

Ter-What-the-**cken! Can't wait!

 

I'm so thrilled you're thriving at WVU. Making lookalike friends! Have you thought of doing a Liam and Finn podcast? You could speak in Irish accents. PS Finn thank you for taking Liam clothes shopping at the best places. A collegiate rite of passage.

 

Speaking of accents, I ran into someone near and dear at Warren's IGA yesterday. It's Ma and MOM!!

(Aileen works at what was once Liam and Phoebe's elementary school, and all the kids call her Mom.)

We took this picture for you. If she isn't the best I don't know who is.
She told me Sarah has qualified for Olympic trials!!!! Can't put enough exclamation points after that!

 

When I showed her my most recent photo of you (the one below), her knees literally buckled and she said, "Can that be the little boy who wore the cape around his neck?"

"SO HANDSOME!!"

Hailey and Liam, all dressed up for Roomcoming!!

I assured Mom it was indeed that little boy, just stretched out a bit, with his imaaaaagination intact.

It wouldn't be a Mompost if there weren't something embarrassing in it. Just another service I offer.

Home's waiting for you. Just a week! It's not going to look like this any more; the leaves will be gone.

 

So I took some pictures so you could see Marietta in its best dress.

 This enormous gingko reminds me of you. All yellow hair, piled high.

 With the first really cold night, all those leaves will come tumbling down at once, like so many gold coins. Good thing that doesn't happen to your glorious coif after a cold night!

You love to kick through fallen leaves. Here you go.

 

When you come home we'll take a walk in town, see what we can see.

We'll kick through the leaves and go out for Indian food.

More favorite things: I found you a doggeh in Ecuador. His name is Mashi Amigo. His owner wanted to make sure I used his last name. But of course.

He had a very boopable nose.

I couldn't bring him home for you but I wanted to.



Also found a coatimundi. Probably a really bad bet to sneak into the suitcase, so I refrained. Besides he wasn't quite tame.

Photo by Kim Beard





Also found the world's smallest bat

 

which turned out to be a moth after all, but how do you like that??

You've always loved good-smelling things, ever since you were a chunky little monkey.

So yesterday I dug up a present for you--the last tuberose, still trying to put out a bloom spike in November. It's a pink one! I pulled it into the greenhouse. Let's hope for the best!

We'll sit down there and have a cup of tea under the twinkly lights and you can tell me all about WVU and what it's like to take four art courses at once.

I'm deliriously happy that you've found good friends to be with, to care for you at WVU.

 Hilda, Liam and Hailey

Hilda, Mikayla and Hailey, at their first (searing hot) WVU football game.

Juan/Buan, flautist extraordinaire! @the_magicflute on Insta.

"Hang with the cats who have soul." -Geepop

I'm ridiculously proud of the way you've honed your art chops. "Sticktoit-iveness" is my least favorite word, but you've got it, son.

It's good to keep an eye on your process. Thank you for posting your work on Instagram.

 

 I love to see those pictures develop right before my eyes!

 

The one on my studio wall is ever my favorite.

 

We did Parents' Weekend, just not like we were supposed to. We hiked Raven Rock and you told me the entire plot of The Nun, complete with scene framing, and I found myself thinking, "Is this kid going to be a filmmaker?"

We took a slefie with mountains.

And a complete stranger, Steven Ondash (@sjo.photo on Instagram), captured us looking at the slefie. Caught the love, he did. Thanks, Steven!!

 Hurry home, beautiful boy. We love you and miss you like crazy here! Keep shining like the comet you are.   Happy 19th Birthday, Liam!!

 Love,

 Ma

These Grand Ohio Skies

 

 My entire trip home from Ithaca, all nine hours of it, was a sky show such as I've rarely experienced. Since I've bewcome such an avid iPhone photographer, I truly believe I appreciate clouds more. It's sort of like hunters say they love and understand deer (or whatever they're stalking) more because they hunt them. I see a magnificent skyscape, and I start plotting how best to capture it and keep it for myself. I watch for breaks in the hills and powerlines, good places to pull off, clear spots in the traffic. I'm stalking these clouds.

As breathtaking as the skies were in New York, Ohio had her cloudscapes all dressed up and waiting in the wings. And out they danced, one after another.

I have an absolute thing for anvilhead cumulonimbus. I adore this shot, with Ohio's omnipresent and iconic orange barrels standing watch. Really, it's time to take them down. They're a summer thing. It's like the buzzards returning to Hinkley. Summer comes, and ODOT rolls out the orange barrels to squeeze our already narrow highway passages down to one lane and make us all slow down to 55. That, or get ticketed. Which we do, we do.

But it was to get even more surreal, when a car bombed my next shot of this incredible autumnal landscape. 

 I was pulled over, just shooting away at these perfect hills and this killer sky. I wondered about everyone else, hurtling along. Were they experiencing an advanced and heightened state of rapture as was I?

The particular strength of the iPhone camera is its ability not to be so overwhelmed by bright sky that the land color and detail is lost. I remember so clearly my disappointment with my early Canon film camera, and later my Rebel, for its one-or-the-other approach to sky and land. A professional photographer explained it this way: Either you take your exposure on the sky, and capture that, with the land going completely dark, or you expose on the land and lose the sky, all its whites blown out. Later, I got a Canon GS-11, followed by a GS-12, and it was obvious that Canon had been working on that particular problem. I'm a little chagrined to say that the iPhone has rendered my blocky little Canon GS obsolete. I can actually do more with the iPhone.  Somehow, the iPhone knows that I want to capture both land and sky in perfect exposure. Sure, I have to do a little fiddling sometimes in post processing, which I never had before digital cameras came along. I'll sometimes open up the shadows on the landscape in iPhoto, but I do precious little fiddling. The iPhone 4S camera captures it all. And I love it for that. That, and the fact that it's always with me. No moment, no vista, goes unrecorded. Yay.

I kept my eye on that anvilhead,  rolled on a little farther, and BOOM there was the dilapidated barn and silo just waiting for me. All I had to do was compose the shot. Holy cow. Yes. Ohio is beautiful. You coast-huggin' people ought to give it a chance.

This experience only reinforces my contention that making a habit of photography makes us much more sensitive to beauty. It turns us into artists and composers. More importantly, it turns us into true appreciators. And the best part is you don't have to have "talent." How many times have I heard, "Oh I wish I could paint like you. You're so talented." Well, having started out as a kid able only to scribble, I believe that talent is more or less equivalent to hard work, and yes, we have to work and study to learn how to paint. We can't just wish it into being. On the other hand, anybody can paint like this, because we all have eyes, and almost everybody reading this has a cameraphone these days.

There were some very special things happening with sunbeams, brilliant green hills, and dark clouds. I started shooting through the windshield as I often do when seeing something amazing.

 

Rolled down the window and went for the unencumbered shot.

And boom! there was a green hill, and a beam spotlighting it, pointing to I don't know what. I always love the dark clouds that cross white ones, the violet-purple ones marching along the horizon. It all makes me want to get out of the darn car and walk those hills. It also makes me want to paint them. I have a fantasy where I chuck it all and just start painting watercolor landscapes, using these ephemeral photos as inspiration. It's nice to have a pipe dream. It's cuddled up against the one about having a specialty mail-order greenhouse growing odd little plants that I love. I think the growing would be a lot more fun than the order fulfilling. Maybe I could grow them for someone else who had an established business.

Soon, I came to our exit (these were all taken along I-77 South in Ohio) and I raced along our ridge to catch the last sunlight on sugar maples.

It's all so ephemeral, so quickly gone. I have to roll around in it while it's here, this light, these leaves. 

I'm thankful for sugar maples and cerulean skies, for slanted evening sun, for whatever basket of beauty the day brings.

By the time we reached The Three Graces, the light was gone, gone like the moa is gone. Color drained out of the landscape. The Graces all decided to go with understated Homecoming gowns this year. They didn't want to upstage each other. Red Maple (left) took it easy, as did Sugar Maple (center). And even gaudy Tupelo (right) decided against flaming red, her usual choice.

 

Whatever they choose, they're perfect and always beautiful.