Baby Fletcher came home last Thursday evening and all is right with the world.
Lester and I spent Saturday at Kate & Ed's house and all I did from 10am until 10pm was hold the baby! What a refreshing, delightful, and serene way to spend the day.
Operationally speaking, he really doesn't do much right now - every 3 hours or so he wakes up, hiccups, gets his diaper changed and eats. Then he goes back to sleep. But he is endlessly fascinating to me! The face itself is a miracle; the squints, squinches, wrinkles, the lip puckers, the tongue twisting, yawns, frowns, I could go on and on at how remarkable a thing is a baby's face. And the random limb movements also offer hours of deep pleasure! The arm in the air, the toes spread out, the hand curled, knuckles to the nose, kicks, knee jerks, again, endless surprises in each unanticipated and unplanned motion he makes.
And it is only the beginning! I am blessed to have yet another grand child to take me on this remarkable journey and I treasure every minute of it. I let my eyes soak in his beautiful face, the perfect skin, this flawless and untouched person. And it fills my soul.
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The Smiling Baby Boy
or Ming the Merciless
Sisters?
Says It All
What's Next!
“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” – Anne Lamott
Rose in October
The Middle
When your faculties begin discussing your future amongst themselves, excluding you from even suggestion making, you've reached the middle - a vast wonderland of vague familiarities that were once unmistakably you.
Susan Mrosek
Susan Mrosek
PRAYER
It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and
don't try to make them elaborate,
this isn't a contest but the
doorway into thanks, and
a silence in which another
voice may speak.
Mary Oliver
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and
don't try to make them elaborate,
this isn't a contest but the
doorway into thanks, and
a silence in which another
voice may speak.
Mary Oliver
TO HOLD
So we're dust. In the meantime, my wife and I
make the bed. Holding opposite edges of the sheet,
we raise it, billowing, then pull it tight.
measuring by eye as it falls into alignment
between us. We tug, fold, tuck. And if I'm lucky,
she'll remember a recent dream and tell me.
One day we'll lie down and not get up.
One day, all we guard will be surrendered.
Until then, we'll go on learning to recognize
what we love, and what it takes
to tend what isn't for our having.
So often, fear has led me
to abandon what I know I must relinquish
in time. But for the moment,
I'll listen to her dream,
and she to mine, our mutual hearing, calling
more and more detail into thhe light
of a joint and fragile keeping.
Li-Young Lee
make the bed. Holding opposite edges of the sheet,
we raise it, billowing, then pull it tight.
measuring by eye as it falls into alignment
between us. We tug, fold, tuck. And if I'm lucky,
she'll remember a recent dream and tell me.
One day we'll lie down and not get up.
One day, all we guard will be surrendered.
Until then, we'll go on learning to recognize
what we love, and what it takes
to tend what isn't for our having.
So often, fear has led me
to abandon what I know I must relinquish
in time. But for the moment,
I'll listen to her dream,
and she to mine, our mutual hearing, calling
more and more detail into thhe light
of a joint and fragile keeping.
Li-Young Lee
NPR Topics: Politics & Society
GODDESS
I do much better as a goddess, she said, since my secretarial skills have always been limited. (Brian Andreas)
Pattee's Picks - Best Books I have read
- Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
- Unless (Shields)
- Traveling Mercies (Lamott)
- The Wind in the Willows (Grahame)
- The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (Wroblewski)
- The Mistress of Spices (Divakaruni)
- The Making of A Quagmire (Halberstam)
- The Higher Power of Lucky
- The Ha Ha (Dave King)
- The Fortress of Solitude (Jonathan Lethem)
- The First Part Last (Johnson)
- The Fiddler of the Northern Lights (Kinsey-Warnock)
- The Feed (Anderson)
- The Echo Maker (Richard Powers)
- The Book Thief (Zusak)
- The Age of Unreason (Handy)
- Shame of a Nation (Kozol)
- Science of the Artificial (Simon)
- Poetry of Carl Sandburg
- Playing After Dark (Ascher)
- Once Upon a Distant War (Prochnau)
- Never Let Me Go (Ishiguro)
- Letters to a Young Poet (Rilke)
- Heidi (Spyri)
- Half of a Yellow Sun (Adiche)
- Grace (eventually) Lamott
- Empire Falls (Russo)
- Drop the Rock (Bill, Todd, & Sarah)
- Dinner at the Homesick Resturant (Tyler)
- Case Histories (Atkinson)
- Because of Winn Dixie
- Anything by Alice Munroe
- Any of the James Lee Burke mysteries featuring Dave Robicheaux
- Anne of Green Gables (Montgomery)
- Amazing Grace (Kozol)
- All of the Kurt Wallander mysteries! by Henning Mankell
- Alcoholics Anonymous
- Administrative Behavior (Simon)
- A Prayer for Owen Meany (Irving)
One Day at a Time
TOYING
As she ripened, she toyed with correcting her facial landscape, but decided it would be a shame to lose track of where she'd been. (Susan Mrosek)
Gather out of star-dust,
Earth-dust,
Cloud-dust,
Storm-dust,
And splinters of hail,
One handful of dream-dust
Not for sale.
Langston Hughes
Earth-dust,
Cloud-dust,
Storm-dust,
And splinters of hail,
One handful of dream-dust
Not for sale.
Langston Hughes
USA Map
Peace, Love, Dove
Funky Shopping
The Baby Boy Fletcher
In the Fairy Garden
Baby Boy Thighs!
My Favorite Cousin Karen
The Blues Brothers
The Smiling Baby Boy
Leisure Suit
or Ming the Merciless
Sisters?
Says It All
FAMILY
And in the end...
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Blog Thoughts
When I began this blog I thought that AGE would be a GREAT topic to ponder. As a baby boomer it seems as if we need to redefine each new decade as we reach it. "60 is the new 50" and blah, blah, blah! A focus on age limits the scope of a life and in the end, what is there to say?
I am surrounded by the grace of god and it changes all the time. And in living each day in this grace, I see there are luminous stories, everywhere. Stories like a shaft of autumn light falling as if ashes through the trees; like the world in a baby's eyes; like the lilacs, reaching for the sky in the third week of May.
Here are my stories.
I am surrounded by the grace of god and it changes all the time. And in living each day in this grace, I see there are luminous stories, everywhere. Stories like a shaft of autumn light falling as if ashes through the trees; like the world in a baby's eyes; like the lilacs, reaching for the sky in the third week of May.
Here are my stories.
Coming around again
BEFORE DAWN
I've always liked the time before dawn because there's no one around to remind me who I'm supposed to be so it's easier to remember who I am. (Brian Andreas)