What Gets Me Through

Over the years, I've come to realize that this blog is not just my journal. It's my family's journal. 

I don't write as many posts as I used to, and when I'm otherwise occupied, I may not be able to get three posts out in a week (always the goal). I try to make what I do manage to post worth reading: for me, for my family, and for you. There is a good bit of perfectionism going on, because a writer has to satisfy herself first, before opening the door and putting it out for readers. 

When my blog is the only writing I'm able to fit into an overstuffed life, I try to make it good.

Corey and Phoebe returning from the Meat Pile, where he's put a trail camera set to snap away for a few months.

Note Meat Bowl.

I've just finished a cool book by Elizabeth Gilbert called Big Magic. It's about kindling one's creative flame. Shila gave it to me for Christmas. I'm savoring it slowly, munching on a few chapters at a session. It's full of underlined passages, exclamation points and notes--signs that its message is sinking in. I hope to pass some of that good fire on in talks and workshops in 2017. 

For years, I've been collecting quotes from writers. One that's sticking with me lately is by poet Grace Paley. 

 "The best training is to read and write, no matter what. Don't live with a lover or a roommate who doesn't respect your work. Don't lie, buy time, borrow to buy time. Write what will stop your breath if you don't write."

Come on, Mether.  You need to walk faster. I am not going anywhere without you, not even home.

Write what will stop your breath if you don't write.  OK. I choose to live in gratitude, because living any other way is not an option. And the thing that's keeping me focusing on joy of late is having Phoebe here with Liam for a month's midwinter idyll, she fresh off 6 months away, first in San Diego and then Panama. Bringing Corey into the mix for ten days kicked it up a couple notches, and carried me through a hard time. I don't like to think of where I'd have been without the kids around to talk with, laugh with, feed,  be fed by, photograph, and watch. 

The hard time included mid-December surgery (nothing scary, but painful) complications (painful, inconvenient, but healing nicely) and, for good measure, a case of shingles, blossoming right through the surgery site (ow ow ow. Ow!).  Happy New Year! You're grounded for a month! Maybe two. Shingles: We'll get back to you on that. We like it here, gonna hang around awhile. Basically, the shingles virus, which has been sleeping in my spinal ganglion since the day John F. Kennedy was shot, woke up and raced to the torn-up tissue at my surgery site to have a great big party. Recognizing the suspicious blisters, we caught it within 40 hours with Acyclovir, or I shudder to think what I'd be going through. Followed up with a vaccination once the vesicles dried up. And now I'm bathing it in apple cider vinegar, and that seems to be getting through. Anyway, it's not fun. If you haven't had a shingles vaccination yet, please get one. The government has just bumped the age limit for getting them down to 50 (it was 60). The vaccine will cut your risk of developing shingles by 51%, and believe me, that's a percentage you want on your side.

As is my wont, I like to wait to see how things are turning out before saying anything. A month in, I can see that things are going to be OK. I'm still weak, still don't feel like hiking, much less running, and I'm struggling to catch my mojo, which has wandered off through the muddy winter woods, walking faster than I can right now. I can see it from here, though! 

Back to better things. I don't mean to fawn on these kids, and I try not to embarrass them. I just mean to celebrate all the good they bring to my life. It makes me happy to get out in nature with them and shoot with my telephoto, as if they were frolicking deer (my usual subjects when I can't get any humans to frolic for me). 

More from that rare sunny New Year's Day walk!

Liam waits in ambush.

Corey and Phoebe pause for a little canoodling in gorgeous sidelight. Liam, bombing the photo.

We all read Reader's Digest. And laughter IS the best medicine. Dr. Liam is in the hizzle! That kid has all his dad's funny, with his own odd twist. I can't get enough of him.

He climbs aboard a tractor, the bigger twin of our old Massey 35. I think about how very different this strapping lad's life would be if this were 1917, or 1957. He might have to know how to run that thing, know all the implements, know what a PTO is, and what needs to be done with it. He might need to know when the hay is ripe, and what the weather will be doing in the coming week. Nowadays, hardly anybody needs to know that stuff, it seems. I still want to know that stuff, still want to hang out with people who know. I wonder if he ever will.

We double back to check something out and little Mr. Set in his Ways Chet Baker wants to head for home instead. So Phoebe carries him.

Good boyfriend: loves family dog

Chet's getting triple the love he usually does.

Love keeps us all going.

Phoebe and Corey spot and catch a New Year's Day bullfrog! Who's ever done that in Ohio? That frog should be sleeping in the mud.

Maybe he wanted some of that love, too. Ah, the blues in this photo, and the reds.

If all this weren't enough, there's music, sweet sweet music. I captured three of Corey's fiddle tunes on video, and I wish I'd recorded all of them. Suspect there will be other chances. I love the communication between Corey and Bill, whose backup guitar style is likely something the old-time music world hasn't seen. But it works so well! The synergy between these two musicians is palpable. Yes, I'm glad to have these videos. I go back and watch them, listen to the music flowing out of those guys, and remember how it feels to have an old-time band in your own kitchen, with the cauliflower sizzling in the pan.