Ice dreams

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blessings, dreams, fairy godmothers, ice skating, Olympics

If an Olympic fairy godmother could wing her way to me and grant my wildest wish, I would ask to be a figure skater. Gliding across the ice, leaping and turning, looking so delicate while being so strong…not just hearing the music, but BEING the music…such are my Olympic dreams.

The reality of ice skating for me is so very different. I have done it — long ago — and have the memory of a very spectacular fall, a bloodied chin, black and blue hip bones, a sturdy friend who skated out onto the ice and carried me off, to remind me that ice skating is not among the gifts I was given.

But as I watched the free program tonight and saw the competitors — some at the very beginnings of their careers, some singing their swan songs — I remembered, too, the brief shining joy of amazing freedom on the ice that afternoon at the Lodge Pole Ice Rink nearly fifty years ago.

Thank you, Lord, for letting me borrow that feeling just for a moment, and remember it forever.

Following a dream

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blogging, dreams, followers, Louisa May Alcott, Photo Fun With Fawn, random musings, utopian ideas

When I was a young girl my heroine was Louisa May Alcott, because of the amazingly real stories she wrote about the March sisters and their family’s adventures. I wanted an attic corner with a cozy couch where I could write my stories without interruption, and maybe even make a bit of money along the way. My admiration for Louisa grew as I learned more about her real family and how her hard-working mother (the inspiration for Marmee) spent her life trying to support them while her father tried out his various utopian schemes and thought “lofty thoughts” with his similarly minded utopian dreamer friends. Louisa’s writings, especially her “pot-boilers” written under a pseudonym, also helped keep a roof over the Alcott family’s heads.

I dabbled a bit with writing along the way, collecting more than a few rejection slips for my poetry, and serving as the newsletter editor for every non-profit I ever joined. My writing career was seemingly going nowhere.

And then a few years back I discovered blogging. Not that I ever thought I would do it, really, but I watched and thought and thought and watched, and finally tried my hand.

Trigger’s Horse came into being as a vehicle to share my “random musings” with whatever friends and family were kind enough to read them. I have been stunned and humbled every morning to read email notifications of new followers, and am developing lovely online relationships with some of them. By tomorrow morning Trigger’s Horse will probably top 900 followers, a number which leaves me breathless!

And my new baby, Photo Fun With Fawn, which debuted yesterday, has two whole followers today. I am so tickled! One is a Trigger’s Horse follower who jumped over to take a look, and the other is a total stranger. I won’t be posting daily there, but am shooting for three or four times per week.

So as far as dreams go, this one has sneaked up on me in many ways. And as dreams so often do, it has enriched my life in many unanticipated directions. And in doing so it has legitimized my love of words and the thrill of seeing them in print.

I have often heard people ask, “Well, if your dream comes true, then what will you do?” My answer today is, “I will just continue living in this dream, and seeing where it will take me.” Dreams don’t go away when you achieve them. They grow and expand and refine.

I hope you will stick around and dream with me.

Olympic dreams

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bobsledding, dreams, figure skating, hockey, personal best, television, Winter Olympics

We spent this evening watching the incredible spectacle of the Winter Olympics’ Opening Ceremony. We tried to explain the Olympic tradition to the girls in a way they would understand, so that they could relate to why some of the athletes were crying as they entered the arena behind the flags of their respective countries. We talked about dreams and hard work and hope and passion.

I must admit that I prefer the Winter games over the Summer ones, probably because the figure skating is my very favorite — except for the ski jumping that looks like flying, or the bobsledding that leaves me breathless, or the speed skating, or the hockey…and this year the WOMEN are getting to play hockey, too!

I will watch a lot more television over this next two weeks, and the girls’ cartoons will have to take a back seat. We will share the victories and heartaches of the world’s citizen athletes, and be reminded once again that people share the same hopes and dreams, no matter what country’s uniform they wear.

Blessings on these young athletes and the dreams they follow. May they represent themselves and their countries with grace and courage as they dig deep within themselves to perform better than they could even imagine.

Home again

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dreams, family, granddaughters, heart, home, sisters

Yesterday’s post about “home” seemed to touch many of you. Thank you for your comments and the little bits of your history you shared with me — I love it when my monologue becomes a conversation. Tonight I am celebrating the other side of home: Home is where the heart is. And my heart, more than anywhere else, is here in Visalia with my granddaughters.

Knowing they are sleeping in the next room, hearing them rustling around in their dreams, brings my heart solidly home, and I am so blessed.

I have had the luxury for this past week of living the Great Sister Adventure with Melody, and I will miss her so when she leaves tomorrow. But she, too, is feeling the pull of home, and is ready to reunite with her husband and son on the other side of the United States from California.

My wish for you, gentle readers, is that your heart may find you at home this night, and bring you peace.

Lifestyle schizophrenia

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contentment, Downton Abbey, dreams, family, Hawaii Life, Maui

Tonight I find myself caught somewhere in between the gracious challenges of 20th Century England at Downton Abbey and the paradise that is modern Hawaii Life. Both cultures pull at me so. I love the clothes, the sensibilities, the elegance of English aristocracy. But I would probably find life on Maui to be a much more comfortable “fit” for my life in the here and now.

Since life at Downton no longer exists, and a move to Hawaii isn’t even on my radar screen, I shall continue enjoying the contentment of day-to-day life in Central California, sharing a home with two precious girls, their parents, and the world’s best dog.

But I can dream, can’t I?

Dream time

Tags

dreams, full moon, moonlight

It has been a long day, and there is a full moon shining her light through my bedroom window. This isn’t a time to write…it is a time to dream of fairy folk and unicorns. Sleep well, my dears.

Mothering a daughter

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daughters, dreams, mothers, parenting

When I was pregnant with my first child, I was absolutely positive I was having a girl.  Although we called the baby “McGillicuddy”, in my heart I knew I was having a daughter.  We picked out her first name early on, then squabbled over giving her my family middle name (which my husband hated) or a more reasonable substitute we could both tolerate.  After about eight hours in the labor room he relented and agreed to the family name.  I was relieved.  As we were heading to the delivery suite, the obstetrician asked what names we had picked out for the baby.  I told him.  He said, “But what if you have a boy?”  What a concept!  We didn’t have very much time left to figure it out, but we really probably should have a boy’s name in reserve.  As you have probably figured out, our baby daughter was really a baby son, and the name we chose in a hurry in the delivery room (that of our college room-mate) has served him well now for forty years.

With pregnancy (and husband) Number Two, I had amniocentesis, as I was an “elderly” mother of 35 and my doctor was concerned about my baby’s health.  Besides getting a completely clean bill of health, I was also told my baby was a girl!  I felt as though I had waited a lifetime for a daughter.  This time naming her was easy…a family name from her daddy’s side for her first name, and our precious family middle name, too.  By the time she was born, we were well acquainted.  She had tiny pink flowers on her nursery wallpaper, tiny pink outfits in her dresser, and a mommy who was head over heels in love.

That baby girl turned 29 today.  Raising her was an adventure from Day #1…on Day #3 she visited her first antique shop, along with her grandparents and mommy, and she went to her first restaurant a week later.  She has stretched my brain with her questions, made my heart nearly burst with pride as she earned her Kenpo black belt as a 12-year-old, and then sang her way through high school.  Now she is mother herself, and I often ask “Where did she learn to do that?” or mutter, “She didn’t learn that from me!” as she solves a particularly gnarly parenting issue with grace and ease.  She is such a good mother, and she still stretches my brain as we cuss and discuss important concepts and traditions.

I knew from the beginning that mothering her would be both challenging and extremely satisfying.  What I didn’t realize until after it happened was what incredible friends we would become, and that having her in my daily life would help ease the pain and loss of my own mother’s death.  My daughter is everything I had hoped she would be:  intelligent, compassionate, wise beyond her years, funny, talented, hard-working, stubborn.  And she is teaching these things to her own daughters, too.

The sampler I stitched when she was born bears a quotation from Walt Disney, “A dream is a wish your heart makes.”  Mothering this daughter has been a heart-dream come true.