Category Archives: reunion
A slow and beautiful viewing of the world by car, plane and foot
I suppose it was a vacation, my last two weeks traipsing off to Austria to collect my Squink and bring him home and thus bringing back a sense of peace of having him in my close proximity.
It was an adventure, from my departure, to my week with my in-laws (sans their son), the flight back to the EEUU (that is USA, for Spanish speakers) to a week with my mother in a state located in Americas heartland.
Living without your young child for more than one month is a strangely shocking thing, there is the idea that free time will occur, but the truth is, no such luck… if anything there were more demands for my time often coupled with phrases like “… since your son’ isn’t here…”
But, being busy was good, because the truth is that I missed my Squink sooooo much! And the freedom to trot off with friends who are not kid friendly or a wine with friends kind of thing was just not satisfying enough to make up for not having his insight into my daily life.
He came back speaking beautiful German, and considering that I last spoke the language at about his age, I feel like he has been able to bring back some of those skills for me… though I still have to make some pretty amazingly creative sentences to try to communicate with him… I am a bit pleased that speaking with him has brought back some of it, a good thing considering I have not spoken German in about 35 years.
I am also so very fortunate that I trust my mother-in-law enough to trust her with my son for such an extended period of time, though I try not to feel bad that she misses him so much not that he has returned home.
“In the first place, you can’t see anything from a car.” ~ ed abbey (my personal edit: you can, if you must)
As I was heading back, en route to visit my mother on a long trans-Atlantic flight I thought about my upcoming week with my mother… I glanced at the clouds outside and way below the window of the plane, smiling at Squink’s comment that we were flying way above the cloud line… I had noticed that as a very young girl, mentioning that we were visiting my grandparents in Heaven. My mother realized I had noticed this cloud thing and that I had made some connection… what is interesting, though, is that I actually thought Arizona was Heaven… and considering that I visited in Summer… I must have had a broad understanding that Heaven did not necessarily mean reasonable temperatures… and that the living were capable of visiting. I must have been a curiously interesting child.
Anyway, with inner peace restored by the mere physical presence of Squink back in my life, I smiled at that. Squink is rather religious so I wondered if he would have thought the same thing had we traveled as much as I did as a kid.
And there was something so perfect about going to see my mother on the trek back home, there was a ritual aspect to it on some levels; giving him the gift of time with both of his adoring grandmothers.
As such, I took pictures of the journey that Squink and I made, and will have to get those on here for the gentle tale of our pilgrimage home.
“As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow.” ~ A. C. Benson
Very foolish and too terrified to be curious – part 1 14/40
This gentle story started me thinking about people in my past that became formative, that altered, I believe, the path I walk along in life, and many of whom are still a part of my life.
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This is a less swarthy version and less handsome example of what Antonio looked like to me then… This is of a young Ernest Hemingway. |
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This is the one I had, loved it! |
The reflection on the strange incidence of parallel lives in a third world country in the 70’s
It was such a sigh of relief to be able to speak to someone who can understand how real the fear of being kidnapped was, that understands just how wonderful the earthy smell of the soil we grew up on is, who gets as excited about a manicho as I do… some individualized subtleties mixed in with a certain kinship of a shared environment for our experiences.
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Cotopaxi and Rumiñahui as seen from top of volcano Corazón, Gerd Breitenbach 2003, public domain |
And for being given this opportunity alone do I love “The Facebook”
Life redux
Last night was spent with some friends… reacquaintances… no, friends sounds more apropos… discussing unusually small appendages, high school frivolity and insanity and one unanswered question that I promised I would ask and only made one of them do a spit take… and unfortunately not the one it was intended for…
Could I have served too much wine?
Of course, I was a little freaked out when the one who is a counselor suggested I was overly obsessed with small appendage person… of course I am, because never before has one human been so worthy of my obsession with their “beingness” as a source of my intellectual curiosity.
I had a good time, and it is always an interesting process to spend time with people whose source for inter-relations is a shared past… but bringing that past and shared or similar experiences into the present can be a fun journey.. I learned a lot about them, Things I hope I get the chance to discover more about.
It is nice to know that the world does have lovely people, plus how often do you get to meet a like minded soul who loves Latin mass and abhors the hootenanny and liturgical dance gracing the “stages” of churches these days (I say “stages” for that is what their inclusion makes the front of the church). That was cool. Heck, the whole evening was enjoyable, and I hope it is not the last of them.
Tags: friends
I think I may have invented a new blogging genre
Reunion Blogging!
At least I have not been able to find one, except the reunion committee who copied ours because we share the same planner.
I set one up for my high school reunion…
Tags: reunion