Love

I could feel the emotion in these words as I chatted with my daughter.....

My daughter: "I love Ella so much." 

Me: "Now you know how I feel about you and your brother." 

Words cannot adequately describe my love for my children, and for my first granddaughter, Ella. I am eager to welcome my second one at the end of the summer.  

Aria, Nannie already loves you too!

Happy first day of your life, Ella Grace. 

Nannie loves you sooooo much and can't wait to meet you in person soon! 

oxoxox

Who would you be now?

 Today my sister has been gone for 25 years, and yet there are times when it still seems like yesterday.  Yesterday, that I was sitting along side her bed in the hospital, listening to her labored breathing and wanting to breathe for her. 

Some of my greatest sorrows are that she never had the opportunity to become who she might have, and that she never got to really know my children, or her two nephews and the niece who is named after her. These are my greatest sorrows, yet they are not the only ones. 

My greatest sorrow is that time is blurring my memories of her and that she may one day fade away and be completely gone from me. 

I can remember coming in late one night after babysitting and finding her on her bed in the room we shared, crying because "she had no friends."  I think she was in middle school, such a difficult and transitional time in any child’s life.  I remember sitting next to her and putting my arms around her while she cried, trying to reassure her that she would have friends, and silently fuming that I suspected her peers were making her feel like this.  She was maybe 12 and I was 17 or 18.....we didn't have a whole lot in common, yet I understood her pain having had to live through that period in time myself.  I can also remember coming home late again, three years later, and finding her reading in bed, clutching a crucifix in her hand to ward off evil as she read some scary book, and laughing at her.  By then, she had friends.  

After getting married at almost 21 (way too young I might add), we didn't spend much time together and I have so much regret about that. I was busy with my new life and she was busy going to college at FIT. My mother would regale me with stories of her numerous apartment adventures in NYC, and about her occasional jobs, one working in a little store in the village that sold hand-made glass ornaments and another, managing the life of a woman who was an addict and probably a good 10 to 15 years older then she.  Regina went to NA with her, paid all her bills and generally looked after her.  The store is long gone now, yet I still have the snowflake that she gave me from there and it hangs on my Christmas tree every year.  I have no idea what happened to the woman, perhaps she is long gone as well.

What I do know is that by then, she was very cool. She was one of those artsy people who could pull off short, lavender streaked, blond hair with big earrings and yellow nail polish. She would breeze into my kitchen and sit on the floor with Erin, who as a 3, 4, 5 and 6 year old, just adored her. I am sad that my son, who was a baby when she died, has no memories of her.  He has no memory of her coming into the kitchen while he was crying in his walker, and of her picking him up to comfort him, or of his last visit with her in the hospital when I passed him to her so she could hold him one last time before she left. 

I would like to think that she would approve of the people we've all become, even if it took some of us longer to get there then others.  I would like to think that she would have no patience for some of the ridiculousness that has taken place in our family over the years, just as I have no patience with it.  

I know that she would stand up next to me as a champion of our niece, her namesake, when our brother is being unreasonable in regard to letting her become the independent, responsible, awesome, almost adult that she is.  She would have gone to concerts, soccer games, high school graduations and weddings.  I know that she would have been a major support in my effort to get a new life, and cheered for me and held me up along the way, that she would have welcomed Jeff, Yvette, and Blake into our family and that she would be so excited about the impending arrival of my granddaughter, Ella, and of my other yet to be known grandchild due to arrive in Nicholas' family in September.  

I know that she would have loved our careful and thoughtful nephew, Zachary, and delighted in his desire to play the cello on a street corner with a hat out, and relished the zest with which his brother, Jacob, lives his life as he races up and down the street on his scooter, stopping in to our parents house to eat....... because everything always smells so good there.  She would have just been crazy about our niece Regina, who has followed in her summer job footsteps at the Davis Park Ferry Company and would have encouraged her to be more of a risk taker, although a responsible one for sure.

I know that she would have been an awesome high school art teacher, that she would still take no crap from our father if she felt he was wrong, and that she would have continued to do interesting and thoughtful things with, and for our mother, including shopping, an activity that I am not particularly fond of. 

Who would you be now had you been able to live your life? 

Memories of you are like gems that sparkle in the sunlight. 

I miss you every day and I will love you for the rest of my life.  

Excuses, excuses.....

I really have been neglecting this blog over the past few years.  I guess that's what happens while one is busy living the new life they've made!  

I've started probably 20 to 25 pieces of writing.  A paragraph, a half a page, a full page, but nothing has been completed.  I could send writing to the Long Island Advance and have had an offer to write a piece with a friend who writes for an online newspaper,  yet I have not been motivated to do so. I think partially because I'm just too tired by the end of the work day, and even more so, by the end of the work week.  I'm hoping that will change though......and that I can find more time to spend writing.

Thoughts about America from an Englishmen

I received this email from my very good friend Will this morning. Will is an older gent who lives in Wales and who has seen a good bit of the world in his lifetime.  I have to say, much of what he said I agree with.  It's almost difficult to explain to people who don't live here, how stupid-crazy things have gotten in our country.


From Will: I was sat watching TV last night in my studio with next doors cat satting on my lap when I was just so over come with tears running down my cheeks. What I saw was so tragic that I couldn’t even get it out to tell my wife later. It was all about the homeless in the USA. People living in storm drains in Las Vegas and tented cities in the Mid West and the most tear jerking of all was this field in the dark of night where thousands of cars and people parked up to wait for a huge barn to open its doors at six in the morning for free medical and dentistry care. An Englishman it seems runs this operation and if anyone deserved a knighthood it’s him! What a wonderful man!


How can the richest country in the world treat its poor so appallingly? Billions are spent every day on wars and corrupt countries and yet your own people starve and are homeless.


It seemed the answer was “Welfare makes people lazy and not prepared to stand up for themselves.” The most prosperous countries I have ever been in like all the Scandinavian ones and also Switzerland, are wonderful places to live because all the people are so well educated, not because of money in their bank accounts; it’s all a matter of outlook on life. How they view and respect others.


What I want to see from any Politian in the entire world is for him to say to the people “This is what I am going to do. This is my one point plan and till I’ve ticked it off my list I shall not waver nor falter from it. Only when I have accomplished it will we move on to my next task.”


It’s all just hopes but one-day just one honest man will come forward and do just that and live up to his ideas and promises.


Susan- Yes, wouldn't that be a breath of fresh air....

Birthday # 54

Yet another birthday will arrive at midnight and my new life is moving along.  My children are doing well, my parents are still here, I have great friends, a job I like, and even with a small amount of serious family drama going on, my new life is wonderful....and I'm so grateful to have been able to make it happen! 

Pashtunwali vs Sharia

I find that I get annoyed when people say things about the Koran,  Islam, or Muslims, that lump all the people of this faith into the "stoning women" category.  Therefore, I thought I would post this so that we could all be better educated.....

From the book Captive: My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban, by Jere Van Dyke

"In brief, the main tenet of Pashtunwali is honor. All other tenets -- hospitality, revenge, right of refuge, inheritance, marriage, divorce, and all forms of punishment --- stems from honor. It goes to the heart of what it means to be a Pashtun. A man has no tolerance for anyone who attacks his personal, family, or tribal honor.

Pashtunwali demands blood vengeance, contradicting the Koran, which states that a man must not kill another Muslim. A man must never let an insult go unpunished.  Sharia, or Islamic law, on the other hand, is interested in arbitration, settling a dispute, paying blood money for murder."

This is the really interesting part......

"All men are equal under Pashtunwali, and noble, but if a man looks at a women with the slightest slant, demeaning her honor, it is grounds for murder.  Courtship and romantic love are forbidden. A man and a woman who elope lose respect. The family can retrieve its honor and status only if they kill the elopers. The woman must die first. Nowhere in the world are they safe. Male and female are stoned or buried alive.  Under Sharia, adultery must be witness by four people. Under Pashtunwali, a rumor can end a woman's life."

Pashtunwali is obviously the more fundamentalist brand......the brand that the Tailban practices......

Food for thought....