Category Archives: family

Flowers and Love for This Mother

church, family, love, other gardens, people, , ,
My Favorite Rockrose

I have loving gifts and greetings from my dear children all around me today, though I didn’t have any of them present in the flesh. My husband’s taking me out to dinner soon to celebrate — and this morning it was wonderful to be in church, and hear a homily about the Samaritan woman, whose heart was open to Christ and who became a missionary of the gospel.

Cerinthe grows like a weed.

After the Agape Meal that we always have after the service, we heard a guest speaker, a priest who helped translate a recent book about Elder Paisios of Mt. Athos, who reposed in the Lord in the 1990’s.

One thing Father Peter said that impressed me was about the different perspective that an Orthodox ethos gives a person. He said that in Greece, for example, where people are raised with this background, even if they are not currently living out a Christian faith, they may unselfconsciously have Christian ideas about some things.

Bearded Iris

Modesty, for example. Here in the United States, the concept of modesty carries for many people connotations of old-fashioned or conservative, but when someone raised in a culture infused by the church thinks of modesty, he thinks immediately of Christ’s mother, the Theotokos — a person, and not a concept. What a blessing God gave me in this word on Mother’s Day!

Before church, and afterward, I couldn’t help but stop to take pictures of the flowers that I no longer have the job of caring for. Pearl sent me a vase of flowers for Mother’s Day, which I have on the table nearby, and God gave me these as well, just a few examples for today of the beautiful gifts he has given me my whole life through, including that of the experience of motherhood, the gifts of five children, and soon-to-be eleven grandchildren. What can I say about this except that it is astounding?

A (probably belated) blessed Mother’s Day to all of you!

I Met The Bard at La Casita

family, history, poetry, ,

Not long after I met my husband, I spent some time with his family at their cabin in the woods, a humble place called “La Casita.” Later on we took our honeymoon there, and over the years we often visited with our children, using the little house as a base for exploring the redwoods and the beach.

On the knotty pine walls were various odd and antique-y pictures and hangings, things that were too tattered or for some other reason didn’t fit the decor of people’s everyday homes, and one of those was a framed verse by Robert Burns.

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some would eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.


I was charmed by the little yellowed plaque and the thought behind the verse, and always thought that I would like to embroider it to post in my own house. I never did that, and when the cabin was sold and the old hangings became available for the taking, I didn’t even take them. I think that verse had lodged itself in my mind and heart so firmly that the original sighting was superfluous.

Today is the birthday of the poet, a good day to hear him giving thanks and to say about him “let the Lord be thankit.”

Rain Songs

family, music, nature, water, , ,

Rain is falling and I’m happy. Recently I refreshed my memory bank of rain songs by means of the recording, “Rainy Day Dances, Rainy Day Songs,” by Patty Zeitlin and Marcia Berman. We used to borrow an LP from the library when the kids were little, and the songs have lodged in my mind forever.

On the recording there was also an instrumental tune, “Over the Waterfall,” played on the hammered dulcimer. I can’t find anything on YouTube by the musicians who gave us this collection that so blessed my children and me, but I did find a similar, simpler rendition.

I loved the silly dancing and singing we did to songs like “I Don’t Care if the Rain Comes Down,” “Windy Day,” and “Why Can’t I Play in the Rain?”

I bought my CD copy of the album from the Bullfrog Ballades site, where you can also hear samples of the songs. Today I’m having a lazy day being thankful that God is watering the earth again, as I let my thoughts slosh about in rainy images like this one of me (on the left) with my sister a long time ago. If you can’t play in the rain, perhaps a puddle will do.

Ida’s Letters – And who was she?

family, history, , ,

Ida was a great aunt of my husband’s, whom I met once when she was old and senile, but cheerful. 50 years before that she had traveled from California to Panama and Peru as a missionary, and the gifts she brought home long ago have decorated our houses over the decades and made her name a household word. Like this carved gourd:

Recently I came into possession of several packets of the letters she wrote home from 1919 to 1922, when she was in her early 30’s. I am spending many hours of these winter days typing Ida’s words into computer documents so that this little bit of family history will be accessible to whoever is interested.

Ida wrote to her mother as she was preparing months ahead:

Florence Fletcher is making me a couple of skirts and a dress and I have enough waists and underclothes. You know things mildew down there so I’m taking only just what I need and no more. I’ll have to hang everything that I possess in the sun every week so I won’t want a couple of trunks full of things. Picture me dressed in white every day, just like a real lady. When my corset covers wear out (I have 6 good ones) you can make me some more.

Now don’t worry about me. I’ll get some fish berries and flush and won’t even be sea sick. God will lead me there safely or he never would have called me to go so you just rest easy in the Lord because that is all there is to do.

The night before she departed from San Francisco:

My war stamps will bring me $42.90. I had to wait 10 days so they (post office) are going to send me the money. My ticket will be $114. The fare is $152 with a 25% discount for missionaries. So you see I have plenty of money…. Sent my trunk to-day and to-morrow a.m. Sat. I go up to the city on the 7.20 train. I’m taking my rattan suit case and then 3 suit boxes done up in heavy paper with a shawl strap. Have practically all of my clothes with me.

She makes me laugh out loud, the funny way she relates her responses to the people and culture she encounters. And I admit that some of my laughter is over her less-than-charitable opinions which I would be unkind to publish. But here’s a fairly innocent clip from Panama, less than a month after she’d left home:

I’m sick of cockroaches but I do have many in my room. But ants and cockroaches have complete possession of our kitchen. Our girl is so shiftless and it doesn’t seem to be any body’s business to make her clean up.

There is no such thing as wall paper here. It wouldn’t stay on the walls – too damp – Nearly all the houses are ceiled, sides and all and painted in a most hideous shade of bluish pea green. The kind that makes you crazy. They are strong on red too. You’d think it would make them hot to look at it.

I like the spirit of someone who writes things like, “Don’t worry about me because you know I’m always happy anywhere and I sleep and eat like a brick, as per usual.” So I’ll likely have more expressions of her verve to pass on as I go along with Ida on her South American adventure.