Forever and ever and ever. Amen.

I don’t believe in forever anymore.

 

“Forever and always.”  “Forever and ever and ever.”  Used to, that was the ultimate way to seal the deal.  But things happen.  Circumstances unforeseen come along and slap us down.  Situations change.  And forever isn’t forever anymore.

But is that a bad thing?  I don’t think so.  Because if the good things don’t last forever, neither do the bad.  Yes, the ice cream is sweet and cool and delectable.  But if you don’t lick fast enough, it’s a sticky, melted mess.  It doesn’t last forever.  You enjoy it while you have it and remember it when it’s gone.  (If it’s Better Batter from Maggie Moo’s, you remember it a long, long time.)

It’s the same way with the bad stuff.  It hurts a while. It hurts bad.  It hurts a long while.  But it eases.  And something takes its place.  And there are new ice cream flavors, like Blue Bell’s Kooky Kookie.  (Yum).

I read a book this week which included this passage about waves.  “Bad things are like waves.  They’re going to happen to you and there’s nothing you can do about it.  They’re part of life, like waves are part of the ocean.  If you’re standing on the shoreline, you don’t know when the waves are coming.  But they’ll come. You gotta  make sure you get back to the surface after every wave.”  -- Look Twice by Lisa Scottoline. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said it too, a longer time ago.  
"The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands.
And the tide rises, the tide falls."

When things go off the course we’ve planned, we have choices.  We can adjust the sails or we can sink in our misery.  But life does indeed go on.

And I think it’s just all right that forever isn’t forever any more.

Cupcake in a jar. The only way to fly.

Even if they won’t let you on a plane with one.  Thanks to Rebecca Hains who tried to take a Wicked Good cupcake (from Wicked Good Cupcakes, a Boston area cupcake bakery) on a plane and was stopped by the TSA, I am now a part of the this cupcake-in-a-jar craze.  I never knew.

Being the good former newshound, I saw “Cupcakegate” on my Google page and was intrigued.  Didn’t care so much about the TSA’s stand or the ensuing argument, but boy, was I interested in cupcake in a jar.  What was this all about?

It’s all over the internet.  There were ideas and recipes and pictures and blogs and more ideas.  I had to jump in.  So I started to amass materials.  Turns out there’s the Mason jar debate.  What size?  Quilted or plain?  Did I need a dozen?  Who has the best price and do I want to brave the craziness there.  I went to my mother’s cupboard and found several jars of varying sizes.  Perfect since I could try them out and who needs 12 anyway?

My daughter Shannon and I dedicated Sunday afternoon to cupcaking.  (She has this crazy idea that I can make something worth looking at and we should start a cupcake bakery ourselves.)  Anyway, I got cake mix, two kinds of frosting – one for filling and another for frosting.  I wasn’t going for the fully homemade rigmarole until we decided this is a go.   We got out bags, tips, made labels, cut fabric to tie the spoon on.  The whole shebang!  We made cupcakes, red velvet.  We were advised not to use the cupcake papers because they left lines on the sides.  After considering scraping the cupcakes out of the pans, we decided lines add character. 

We made cupcakes, peeled off the papers, sliced them in half.  Dropped one in the smaller jar.  Fit perfectly.  Hooray.  Dropped one in the bigger jar.  Jar too big.  Cupcake rattled around.  Hmm.  Manning the icing bag, Shannon piped in the cream cheese frosting we were using for filling.  I put in another cupcake bottom.  More filling.  A cupcake top.  A buttercream frosting swirl.  We repeated the process until we filled the six jars I had scrounged.  Four were precious.  Two, not so much.  We did the only thing good bakers would do…ate the evidence. 

And was it delicious!  And neat, too.  No cupcake paper to dispose of.  By the way, you eat a cupcake in a jar with a spoon.  And it has a top in case you can’t eat it all.  (No danger of that!)

We’re now fans of cupcakes-in-a-jar.  They’re cute, they’re tidy, they’re fun.  And the only way to go.  Just not on a plane.

Look out! It's me in the red Mustang!

WARNING:  I’m going to rant.  I know.  I’m an English teacher and writing should be cohesive, circular, coherent.  But I’m going to rant.

Some people think they’re all that.  OK.  They can.  But then, some of them think they are all that in a motor vehicle.  That is not so OK.  And they all drive big, white SUVs.  No, not everyone who drives a white SUV falls into this category.  But in my experience the aforementioned “people who think they’re all that” (colloquially referred to as PWTTAT) do.  The big ones…Excursion, Expedition, Suburban, Denali, Tahoe, Yukon, Armada…the list is extensive.

I drive a little red convertible Mustang.  We don’t threaten anybody, except maybe a VW bug.  Even so, I can keep out of the way of these mammoth machines.  But when it comes to one of my grandchildren, all bets are off.  When the driver, invariably in a hat, zooms in and around us in the little cars to get the prime spot, in the parking lot or on the interstate, it starts me off on a tirade.  People who know me fear the tirade.  It doesn’t stop.

My son is a cop.  He was previously a paramedic.  He is used to driving emergency vehicles in the way that such vehicles are driven, aggressively.  He also drives his truck that way.  He knows how.  I used to have a truck.  A big, green Nissan Titan.  I loved it, but I couldn’t back it up worth a darn and had trouble parking it.  This Mustang isn’t great at toting stuff, but it turns on a dime.  I digress.

PWTTAT zooms in the school zone at more than the recommended 20 mph.  PWTTAT backs up like it was the red Mustang.  (There is a black Hummer that also fits this description).  What are these people thinking????  Children are here.  Children dart in and out of cars.  Children are small and sometimes not easily seen.  Children escape from the parent’s grip.  Children are precious, even when they are not my grandchildren.  And what are you doing here, PWTTAT?  You’re picking up your children.   They are precious too. 

So slow down and quit driving your big, white faux cop car/ambulance.  You’re a parent.  You might have places to be, but they are not as important as your children or my grandchild.

And a red Mustang is way cooler anyway.

My favorite people call me grandma!

I’m a grandmother!  Actually, I’ve been a grandmother for two decades since Ashley just turned 20 and is recently married.  Kayla is 12 so I’ve been practicing  grandparenting  for a while.   But since three-year-old Daniel blew into town, my grandmother flower has bloomed!

I had two wonderful grandmothers myself to serve as examples.  Grandmother was the textbook definition of a perfect grandmother.  She was an old-fashioned grandmother who told stories, let me sit in her lap while she sewed, got down on the floor and played Go Fish! with my cousins and me, made clothes for me and my doll, and loved me.  I was the first of her six grandchildren and the only girl, so I was special.  But Grandmother made all of us seem special.  She lived eight tortuous hours from Fort Worth so I only saw her a couple of times a year.

Gammy was very different from Grandmother.  She lived in Fort Worth, also, so I saw her all the time.  I was her only grandchild and she spoiled me.  She took me to her bridge parties where I sat in a corner, ostensibly reading a book, but watching all the ladies.  She picked me up from junior high on those “embarrassing days.”  She drove a white Thunderbird in which I took my driver’s test.  After my grandfather died, I spent Friday nights with her.  We went to movies and ate on trays in front of the television.  She was always there.  As I grew older, it made me tired.  I didn’t know it then, but she was also the perfect grandmother.

I’m somewhat of a mix of the two.  At first I thought only to strive for the example set by Grandmother.   I adored her.  I bake cookies, play games, snuggle in the big chair, knit caps and indulge at the grocery store.    I play checkers and Parcheesi.  However, I drive a red convertible Mustang, sing with the radio and watch the Twilight movies.  I know Justin Bieber.  I show up at parades, ball games, band concerts.  Kayla spends many weekends with me.    I’m always there.  If Kayla spits in a pond, I’m going to be there to see it!

I didn’t think I’d ever get to know Daniel since he lived in Florida.  However, circumstances brought his family back to Beaumont.  Daniel is autistic.  He doesn’t talk, but his non-verbal skills are sharp.  He lets me know what he does and doesn’t want.  He spent a month with me every day before he started school.  At first, it was all “Grandmother” for me.  We played with trucks and blocks and I sat in the little chairs.  (oof).  I served lunch on the Mickey Mouse plate and tried to get him to eat.  (ugh).  I tried to read books and play puzzles.  (aargh).  Then Daniel started school and “Gammy” kicked in.  I pick him up from school every afternoon in the red Mustang.  He knows me and the red car.  He climbs in the car seat himself now.  I sing “The Wheels on the Bus” and “Rawhide”  (rollin’, rollin’, keep them doggies rollin’).  We go home and watch Special Agent Oso and Little Einsteins. I watch him play with trucks and climb on the furniture.  He gives me “high five” for cookies, one for each hand.  He runs around the house and I chase him.  We have a ball.

I’m finding my own place now.  Part “Grandmother,” part “Gammy” and mostly me with a little dash of the comic strip "Lola."  Since I retired, “I have time.”  I spend a large part of it going from one grandchild to another.  Sometimes, I meet myself coming and going, but I’m trying to carry on the mission and keep the memories alive.

I’ve worn many hats in my life thus far.    This one fits the best!

A tale of two???

It really was déjà vu all over again.  Baseball legend and unwitting humorist Yogi Berra’s statement came true again last night.

Reference a previous post (scroll on down) to my big, black Lab-mix Manny’s bark marathon about a month ago.  He barked and barked.  I banged on the window.  He barked and barked.  I raised the window and yelled.  He barked and barked.  I brought him in.  It happened again last night, in the same three steps.  Add in, this time, I have a cold and needed all the sleep I could get.  Turns out that was nearly none. 

My grandson, Daniel, turns three this week.  He is bright, intelligent and smart too.  (nod to Yogi, here).  He does everything busy, inquisitive, truck-loving little boys do.  He just doesn’t talk.  He is autistic. 

By coincidence, Manny’s birthday is somewhere about this time too.  He is also three.  He should be more mature.  He digs holes.  He chews things…garden hoses, (déjà vu), dishtowels, my crochet projects.  And he barks. 

I expect you are thinking that I wish they’d trade.  That Daniel would talk, and Manny wouldn’t.  Not so.  The right combination of therapies will unlock Daniel, and he’ll let us know what’s on his mind.  I am absolutely certain he understands everything we say.  He just isn’t ready to comment.  And for Manny too.  He barks in the daytime at things he sees, and people don’t bother me much.  He barks in the nighttime at things he sees or thinks he sees.  And I feel safe.  Sleepy, yes, but safe.

Happy birthdays, boys.

I have a little garden…

Isak Dinsen had a farm in Africa.  I have a little garden on the side of my house.  Not a vegetable garden, not a flower garden, but a private little garden with an assortment of things I like.   Growing as best they can…hydrangeas in pots (my very, very favorite), ferns, elephant ears, begonia, ivy crawling up a trellis and a pitiful attempt at herbs.   There are stone cats and frogs and turtles peeping through the foliage. 

This garden is in that usually wasted space on the side of one’s house where no one ever goes.  It begins even with the front of the house and ends at the back with gates to the front and the backyard where the heathens play.  We enclosed the space as a private place for Clemmie, my elderly and blind dachshund, when we put the pool in.  Turns out she was the first one in the pool anyway.  But it’s Clemmie’s garden.  Clemmie is gone now and two pretenders to the throne occupy that space… and me.

Inspired by the Pier One commercials last summer for “Wonderland,” I have been diligent in trying to keep the garden going.  The drought hasn’t helped.  The herbs have died and been reborn more times than I ever expected.  But the garden is the one place I have faithfully watered.  The grass patch grows well there, the ivy that was down to one small sprig after last winter’s brutal cold is back and thriving, the fern’s tiny fragile frond screamed at me on the way to the trash can and showed me by reviving itself.  Encouraged by nature’s industry, I brought in a wicker loveseat, table, wrought iron trellis.  It’s a pretty place. 

I worked outside today.  My backyard is a series of gopher holes courtesy my large lab and his companions.  The cinch bugs have formed their crop circles.  My lackadaisical approach to watering shows.  It’s not Home and Garden.  But as I opened the gate to the garden, the sense of calm and serenity was physical.

There’s a lesson here.  We can be neglectful and lazy or just too busy.  We can be extreme in our tempers as Nature has been with us this year.   But there is in us, a tiny spark, like the sprig of ivy and the fern frond, that will endure.   We must be careful not to give up too soon or throw it away.  A little love, faith and water can work miracles. 

A little rain would help too.

While my heart tends to wander…

While my heart tends to wander, Jesus always finds me.

I’m a thief.  I’m also a Facebook freak.  I love to look at random people’s pages and see what they have written about themselves and look at their photos.  People I don’t know, but who know someone I do know.  Thereby, there’s a connection, of sorts.  That’s where I came across this statement.  It was this person’s religious view.  And it was so true, so to the point and so real, I had to steal it.  And, of course, since I don’t know the person, it didn’t seem appropriate to attribute.  So I’m a thief.  Hopefully, God understands why I had to do it and forgives.  I’m sure He does since it applies so forcefully.

My heart does tend to wander.  As does my attention.  (Yes, I’m the person who stopped emptying the dishwasher to go clean the mailbox.   The same one who pulled down the attic stairs on my head because I was watching something in the street.)  But back to the wandering.  I have all the good intentions in the world.  I come out of church every Sunday full of plans for the week, the month, my life.  They disappear like vapor after lunch.  Oh, I remember them and regret.  Sometimes I make lists because I like to cross things off.  All too often they just get transferred to other lists.

Lucky for me, Jesus does always find me.  And I try again.  And I get one thing, maybe two, done -- things that are for Him, things for someone’s benefit.  It keeps me going.

Thank you, Jesus.