So quiet. Distant sounds of laughter and voices, and the sloosh of small waves brushing against the pier.
Hand in Hand, Sunset Stroll
September 4, 2009 at 10:54 am (California, Friendship, Photos, Seeing the world)
Grandma would be happy. Or maybe she would kick our asses.
January 21, 2009 at 9:57 am (California, life is short)
I really didn’t know how much I missed home until I went back. I don’t really have a home anymore, but California really felt like home when I got there. Mostly because my family is there.
We moved away three days before I turned 14, and I haven’t been surrounded by that family since then. Later I became part of another family, and life moved on. To go back and be surrounded by my Mom, my brother, my Aunt and Uncle and my cousins, just like it used to be when I was young, was just what I needed to help me say goodbye and let go of my Grandma.
We had a graveside service for her. Just a small one with a handful of us there. Simple, short and comforting. The hardest part was watching them lower her casket into the ground, knowing she was in there. Oh, that was hard.
Back at the house later, we hugged, and smiled, and laughed, and talked. We looked at old family pictures and made fun of old family hairstyles. We connected, and we remembered. With smiles and laughter. Grandma and Granpa both would have loved that.
Except for one cousin, we were all there. I think they both would love that they brought us together too.
I’m glad I had 4 days of family. I wish I had more. Four days of talk, memories, pictures, facebook, scary movies, food, wine, catching up and good fun. Oh, and dirt biking.
They say everyone handles grief in their own way, right?
Rhode Island Red
September 15, 2005 at 8:40 am (California, Kids, let me explain)
One evening when the Boy was four and the Girl was five I made chicken for dinner. It was probably one of those pre-roasted chickens from the grocery store, whatever. As the kids sat at the breakfast bar and I served up their meal my son looked at his plate with dawning horror. Up his eyes came to mine and he asked in a sick whisper, “Mom, did somebody kill this chicken?”
I could actually see the lightbulb go on in his head while mentally he put the word “chicken” together with the idea of an actual chicken.
I know what he was asking. He wanted to know if this meat on his plate was an actual carcass of a dead animal because – Oh. My. God. – this used to be alive! He wanted assurances that this was just not true! He wanted to believe that we are not that kind of cruel! He wanted some kind of comfort that this was artificial chicken meat made out of something without eyes!
For a split second I tried to come up with a nice, smooth way to break it to him oh so gently that, yes my boy, it is a real chicken but it didn’t suffer and, and, and… How to save his poor sensitive innocence? So I said:
Of course they killed it, you don’t see it running across your plate do you?
