LOVE: Elizabeth vs. Dorothy

Two takes on love. Both poems resonate with truth. Which is most true? How Do I Love Thee? How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with a passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death. by Elizabeth Barrett Browning To A Much Too Unfortunate Lady He will love you presently If you be the way you be. Send your heart a-skittering. He will stoop, and lift the thing. Be your dreams as thread, to tease Into patterns he shall please. Let him see your passion is Ever tenderer than his.... Go and bless your star above, Thus are you, and thus is Love. He will leave you white with woe, If you go the way you go. If your dreams were thread to weave He will pluck them from his sleeve. If your heart had come to rest, He will flick it from his breast. Tender though the love he bore, You had loved a little more.... Lady, go and curse your star, Thus Love is, and thus you are. by: Dorothy Parker

Sunshine & Warmth OR Snow & Wind?

BOTH. Every place I have lived in the world (and those places are many) it has been said, "If you don't like the weather wait 5 minutes." But it isnt really true. Anywhere. Except in the mountains. This afternoon I soaked in the sunshine while I ate my lunch on the front porch. It was a glorious taste of spring. An hour later the snow was blowing horizontally and the sky was gray. It fell and blew for 15 minutes and then the sunshine took over again and I longed to be outside. The weather changes often here. HOW WELL DO YOU WEATHER CHANGES IN THE CLIMATE OF YOUR LIFE? Change is an essential part of our life experiences. We can fight it but the fight is always in vain. There is nothing as constant as change. Some change is welcome but much is not. My faith tells me that my Father in Heaven will always guide me through life's storms and help me weather those changes. Still I find myself fighting the process. For me the greatest change occured when I began my battle with health problems many years ago. I am grateful for the 'healthy' days, and I fight through the tough ones. It is my personal snowstorm. Some days I fight it. I know that a positive outlook is my sunny day, and that when I fight and grieve I am battling my own personal blizzard, and yet I do fight. Sometimes. Recently I have been fighting. Today's changeable weather reminded me of the futility of fighting... I am looking into my heart and toward my family to renew my resolve to go throught the changes of my life with grace. It is likely that I will forget and fight again. Hopefully the crazy Colorado weather will provide another reminder when that happens.

When kids get their feelings hurt

The hardest thing about being a mom (in my opinion) is that sometimes I must see my children get their feelings hurt and there is nothing I can do. I can only give them a little extra attention and try to explain the actions of other children. It is a situation which I never feel I have handled properly. I saw my ineptitude again tonight. Cora has a friend -- someone she considers her best friend. Tonight she learned that her friend is planning a small birthday party and didnt invite Cora. It sounded as though the friend can only invite 2 or 3 girls. But if Cora could invite only one girl this would be the girl. I saw that Cora was hurt by the fact that she wasnt on the list of three girls invited. How do you help a child deal with hurt like that? I think I do everything wrong. This time I explained that her friend probably knew we would be gone for spring break and so she didnt even ask. But, is that helpful? Or did I make things worse than they already were? And what will happen next year when they all move to the middle school? Will these events happen more often? How do you handle similar situations? What would your response to this particular situation be? And how do you keep your children's pain from becoming your own pain?

Mountain Fashion

My favorite attire is a warm pair of flannel pajama bottoms an a tee shirt. Sometimes they do not even match. I wear a skirt to church but otherwise you will find me in denim or my flannel PJs. When I was much younger I loved fashion. I dressed in all the crazy 80s 'inspired by The Go-Gos' clothes and loved to shop for clothes. My lifestyle was different then. I went out to clubs, and dated boys I knew in the military. Rarely was I home on a weekend. Even week nights I was often out with friends or boys. Fashion played a role in that lifestyle. Now I spend my evenings playing board games, reading books, watching TV. Family activities. And my fashion reflects the crazy weather of the mountains rather than the crazy music of my young adulthood. I call it mountain fashion. :)

Music Memories

When I first discovered the world of blogging (admittedly long after most) I read posts by a friend about the memories evoked by the music of her youth. I loved the series and I have often reflected on those memories in my life. Back in the mid-1970s, when I was in Junior High I fell in love with what I term folk music but is really more appropriately named light pop/rock/easy listening. The Carpenters. The Turtles. Olivia Newton John, before disco. Mac Davis. I owned a all-in one stereo with AM/FM radio, a 'record player' and an 8-track tape player. (Yes, I am that old.) I would put a stack of records on the turntable plug in my massive headphones and stretch the cord as far as possible so that I could sit in my closet under my hanging clothes listening to my music for long stretches of time. Why in my closet? Privacy from my annoying little brother. Feeling sheltered from the world. Hiding from my problems. Getting lost in the perfect, romantic world portrayed in the lyrics of Karen. I sang every memorized word and formed a distorted view of love and relationships that lasted well into adulthood. Aside from that I remember the escape offered by the beautiful, high notes of Olivia in "I Honestly Love You" and Karen in "Close to You". I remember loving the fact that my Junior High teacher chose the song "Happy Together" for us to sing in show choir and that I felt every word was for a cute, blond boy named Doug. When Crystal Gayle sang "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" I cried along with her plaintive words. Mac Davis created a world of expectations for my first pregnancy in the song "Having My Baby". I grew up and learned that life is not a love song, though love does have its own musical soundtrack. I learned that pregnancy is not always filled with only happy moments. I learned that I didn't want to sing about either happiness or heartbreak. I also learned the power of music in my life and each era of my life brought with it a soundtrack (is there a synonym for soundtrack?)which calls forth its own set of memories -- good and bad. I love all those soundtracks and eventually I would love to have a digital play list for each of them on my iPhone. Wouldn't that be fun? What are your favorite soundtracks and what memories do they arouse?

Chilled to the Bone -- what does it mean?

Each year it seems that the three weeks of cookie season is colder than the one before. While I know this cannot possibly be true I also know that tonight was certainly one of the worst I have survived. When the evening's sales were at an end and I returned home my feet and hands hurt so badly I cried. I am not one to succumb to pain easily but I couldn't seem to stem those tears. My teeth chattered, my legs shook and my tears flowed down my cheeks. For the first time (ever?) it occured to me that I understood the phrase chilled to the bone. But as I pondered the idea further I realized that nothing about my life is chilled. I am blessed in every possible way. I have a family whom I love and who love me. I have friends whom I trust completely. I have faith and hope which buoy me even in my times of distress. I have medications and oxygen which allow me to follow my path in life despite illness. I have education, thought, and resources with which I learn. I have it all. So, can I really be that cold? I have decided that the only time I am truly chilled to the bone is when I lose my direction in life.

Quiet in Colorado

Words have flowed from my fingers more slowly of late. I have a monster inside my head which stills my thoughts and creeps into my mind changing my view from optimistic to pessimistic and tries my faith. My monster may not be the same as yours but I am sure that you to have a monster. Mine is named BiPolar Disorder. Some people know it by the name ManicDepressive. I find that neither name shares with you the traits of my monster. And, actually, I have hidden from this monster well over the past 7 years. Unfortunately I have been fighting the battle again this past month and while at it I have often forgotten my friends, fought my family and ignored my faith. However I am taking the steps and winning this latest battle with BiPolar disorder. I don't want to share more than anyone wants to read and I know it would be easy to overshare so I will end this post here. But this is my way of stilling the monster and forcing my words to flow again. I hope you will follow.