the “arnson-goodbye” is infamous. it is an endless loop that strays as far away from “goodbye” as possible. on the phone, standing by the side of the car in the driveway, at the dorm room door, next to the apartment building in boston or a place in the high colorado mountains, the goodbye just goes on and on. the conversation ebbs and swells, the tide of “the leave” determined by how long it will be till “the next time.” i really can’t be blamed, so i hope my children are reading this. it has been passed down through generations; we are all dna-driven to have this longgggg goodbye, this aversion to actually DO-ing it: leaving.
yup. i truly do hate to say goodbye. i come by it honestly. so, now you get my thready-ness, yes?
the image is strikingly beautiful. two men tenderly holding their baby. shared fatherhood. for me, personally, as i have written about before , a hopeful vision of The Boy someday…
but the words “shared fatherhood” makes me also think of people who have been in the lives of my children. in addition to their father, there have been others in their lives who have had impact. i distinctly remember The Boy recalling the day my dad – his Pa – made him respectfully remove his hat at the table; no bones about it…lessons. and i remember the generous message he wrote for my dad’s funeral service. i know there is an unbreakable connection The Girl has to her Pa, the man she bought a sweatshirt (that he adored) which read “smart-ass university”. their paternal grandpa was a sweet sweet man as well, and i know there is take-away from their relationship with him. but when you sort out further – the concentric circles in their lives outside of family – that’s when i must also express gratitude for other people who shared in “fathering” them. their high school band directors, the marketing teacher, tennis and other coaches, private music instructors, talented men who cared deeply about them. even more, they were there for them. in past years i knew that i could count on them for support, for demonstrating what was good, for the love they showered on them.
we walk through life, sometimes unaware of the impact we are having on others. perhaps we need a moment or two to stop and think about all of those people who have contributed to our growth, who have shared in our lives, who have “mothered” or “fathered” us regardless of whether there was a biological connection or not.
father’s day – another day to recognize that we are, indeed, all one family. better together.
shared fatherhood II, mixed media on panel 25.25″ x 40.25″
my sweet momma had a sweet nose. but somewhere along the line my poppo, using a derivative of her first name ‘beatrice’ nicknamed her “beak” and, for a time, all hell broke loose. she railed against his perceived slamming of her nose (which was actually a perky little nose) and was questioning of his continued use of his (now) beloved nickname when it irritated (“irked”) her. “beak” morphed into “beaky” – the name by which everyone under the sun knows and loves her. eventually, she even grew to love her nickname and proudly wore a gold necklace my dad had specially made for her (no, surprisingly, “beak” necklaces are not mass-produced!) our sweet beaky-beaky. ohmygosh, how i miss her.
we have dandelions. ask our neighbors. luckily our neighbors on the west (and our sweet friends) share our love and adoration of dandelions. well, maybe not love and adoration, but they don’t have a terrible aversion to them either. neither of our households competes in what charlie calls “the lawn olympics.” we have old houses and, thus, old lawns. and yes…i have walked around our neighborhood and there are plenty of old houses with utterly rich, dense, verdant carpets. but, alas, that is not us.
we have much to learn about grass. everyone in our circle asks dan, because dan is a lawn god. his grass is gorgeous and cross-cut and weedless. we do have a lot to learn from him. we are glad (but only for the grass reason) that he and gay don’t live next door. but if they did – (and that would be lovely, but only on the east side so as not to displace our west side neighbors) – i am betting that our dandy dandelions would be gone and we would have dandy grass instead.
we have no problem playing. take our sweet boy chicken marsala, for example. you may remember this. chicken was born when we were taking a roadtrip. we had been driving for about 12 hours or so and were talking about what we would have named a child, had we had one together. we laughingly agreed on “chicken”….”chicken marsala.” don’t ask us why; neither of us has the answer. maybe it was road delirium. regardless, chicken has stayed with us since then. we even carried a flat-chicken across the country a couple years ago, taking pictures of him with rest area personnel, at points of interest and with various family members. we joke about chicken and me cantering in the fields and d uses his “chicken marsala voice”, making us go into fits of hilarity.
no matter the age, no matter the relationship – parent/child, brother/sister, husband/wife, boyfriend/boyfriend, girlfriend/girlfriend – playing adds moments of immeasurable treasure.
the choir, ukulele band and handbell players all came to our house last week. it was the end of the year party. it’s a tradition to gather here several times a year to celebrate all the music we make together; everyone brings food (amazing dishes and treats) and drinks (wine and delicious frozen drinks or other concoctions ala dan) to pass. conversation is loud and laughter punctuates everything. dogdog runs out to greet people and revels in the fact that babycat is locked away for the party. we crowd foods onto our dining room table and a variety of other flat surfaces. when we are lucky it is nice out and people can spill out onto the deck and the patio. it is joyous!
many moments during the evening i will find myself just looking around at these dear people…a community…my community…our community…and i will have a rush of wonder and gratitude and great fondness; d and i both love them. they are these faces in our life and it is the love with which they surround us, just like the devoted love in this song, that makes me feel more.
we have had a recurring theme this past fall, winter and spring. last week, while cleaning the burner plates on our old stove, i found a cache of dog biscuits hidden underneath. now, you wonder how that happened? next to our stove, we keep a beautiful pottery tray that judy gave us. on it we keep dog biscuits (“cookies” we call them.) since i have talked about mysterious appearances of dog biscuits before, i am sure you are connecting the dots.
oh yes. somehow those little dickens carried about ten dog biscuits from the tray to under the burner plates. they had little picnics under there, until they realized the weather under there was pretty arid, even acrid, as the dog biscuits turned darker and darker and were burned on the edges. ummm….that could have been a disaster! what on earth is babycat doing all day and night? clearly he is not paying attention!
so, as incorrect as this flawed cartoon may be, it really does make me laugh. babycat needs to take a lesson…a little more cunning could go a long way.
so, we were trying to have a nice backyard. the pond, the deck, the grasses, the hosta, the barnwood planting stand, the old piano….we were headed in the right direction. but then there’s dogdog. he has this THING. every time we let him out and michele and john’s dogs are out, he races around in a circle, digging into the grass that was there, creating a velodrome (kenosha is known for its velodrome, only not this one.) we tried various ways to address this, to try and dissuade him from running around in the circle, from ruining the grass that we had painstakingly planted.
finally, we decided it would be far less painful for us to just embrace it. i went online and ordered an actual highway sign (the european roundabout sign, because he runs clockwise every time and the roundabouts in our country are counter to that.) we planted a few grasses, put up temporary rope to help the grasses have a chance, pounded in our new sign and sat back to watch.
i mean, EVERYbody has their thing. sometimes it’s just easier to not fight it. it’s easier to just, well, laugh.
summer is teasing us….right around the corner, it is gesturing to us and making us yearn for the time in the sun, the time to relax in the hammock, the time to take longer walks, to go on vacation, to maybe do a long-put-off-project. maybe it is the time to learn something brand new. in that case, i have to remind myself it’s the time to put aside the insecurity of not-knowing-how and just jump in with both feet. you just never know what might come of that not-knowing. consider it might even be fun! (watch out d, cause i really want a donkey!)
reverse threading 