when love gets messy and real

(photo not by me but i can't find where i borrowed it from)

i am reading a book for my book club right now, Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan, a nigerian writer. it is an emotionally leveling book of short stories which take place in Africa. i highly recommend it, although be prepared for it to move you. i read an interview with the author the other night. i was struck by this comment that uwem akpan made during the interview when the interviewer asks him about his impressions of life in america:

The rhythm of life here is different from that of Nigeria... [for instance, in america] the thing about old people staying in “homes” away from home blew my mind. 

in nigerian culture, the elderly are cared for by family until they pass away. but in our own youth oriented western culture that is not the norm. i don't mean to say it never happens: my own aunt and uncle relocated to another state, separated from their own routine and community, at a personal and financial sacrifice, to care for my grandfather until he died. but it is rare that we bring our old family members into our own homes to care for them, and it is unheard of to bring someone old, frail, and difficult into our home when they aren't even related to us.

the morning after reading this interview, i got an email from meeghan, a friend of mine who, along with her husband darin and young son, adopted an elderly woman named guinn. i hesitate to tell their story, because it in no way can capture the fullness of how they have served and cared day in and day out for an old (often cranky) woman who is no blood relation. but i think it needs telling.

they have known guinn for ten years and she has lived with them for the last 7 years and the majority of their marriage. they adopted her into their family so that her wishes, to not spend the end of her days in a home, would be fulfilled. 

to love someone like this

in your home

every day

it isn't sexy or temporary or easy. 

love like this means feeding, clothing, washing, wiping, changing another adult. it means enduring hard days with lots of doctors appointments, adult day care, bad attitudes, dirty diapers, and so on. it also means living with three generations in one space, and the rich gift it is for your small child to share every day with someone who is at the end of their lifetime. caring for guinn it is like caring for an infant, except without an adoring sweet face that grins back at you and coos or cuddles. the mess and complete dependence is there, but the sweet moments and small joys are scattered in less frequently. 

but my friends follow the teachings of jesus, and so that is exactly what they do: try to follow the example of how jesus lived. they love guinn the way that jesus loved people: at a cost, even if the person they loved were scorned or annoying or ornery or forgotten or worthless to the rest of the world. 

a lot of people talk about loving radically or following the tenets of the faith they embrace, but most of the time it gets kind of watered down or normalized into something that fits into our schedules or lifestyle. meeghan and darin live what they believe, and they model for their son justice what it means to truly love and care for the world around them, starting in their own home. it has not been an easy road.

in the email i got from meeghan, from the other side of the country, i got the news that guinn passed away this tuesday morning. 

meeghan, darin, and justice loved her with dignity and grace, honoring her life even when she was difficult to love or inconvenient to their life's plans. they brought a stranger into their home and loved her like a grandmother, like a daughter. 

i want to love like they do.

put a ring on it

i've been meaning to post this for a while, 

but my sister in law robyn is engaged! 

(how cute are they?!)

such fun family celebrations- my sister has a baby girl on the way, and now another new member of the family! we got to meet robyn's fiance, chris, over the july 4th weekend, which was so fun. they are so sweet to each other, and it made me excited for their wedding in october (matt will be marrying them!) we got to taste cake with them at one of my favorite east bay treat spots: sweet adeline's. can life get much better than to cake taste at 8 in the morning? not so much.

(listen)

the other day i came upon this video clip of michael chorost, an adult cochlear implant user, explaining what it is like to hear with his cochlear implant. it is very short (less than five minutes) and very clear and concise. i felt like it gave me new insight into what little m feels when her "ears" go on every morning! i always wonder what it feels like for her the moment the magnets go on and sound enters her world. in the morning, little m is often startled after hours of silence; it takes her some time to adjust to all of the sound that appears instantly, even if we are very very quiet. someday i'll get to ask her what it is like...

(and, i noticed that his surgeon is the same exact surgeon at the california ear institute, the fantastic dr. joe roberson, that did little m's cochlear implant surgery!!!) 

here's the link if you'd like to watch the video:

http://www.exploratorium.edu/listen/video/michael/michael_chorost_sub_mov.mov

...deja vu vacation posting

...oh, i know you are all on the edge of your seats, wondering how our vacation concluded. or not. i've been a bit slow, which is why i am not a very good blogger. you know, life happens and hurtles along.

we left beautiful friends and beautiful weather in san diego and headed north, stopping to stay with our friends jeff and jenny and their adorable little munchkin henry. one of my very favorite things is watching little m and henry play together; it is like watching pure, unadulterated joy and curiosity. let's call our vacation what it was: a tour of potential arranged marriages for our daughter, since all of our friends have adorable boys! little m and henry had lots of love time: 

eating snacks, exchanging toys and saliva, reaching out to each other. 

warms my heart, those two.

can you see the love in her eyes?

how cute is this smile?

henry can't keep his hands of my daughter!

and, matt and i had a great time with henry's parents (as usual)...

good talks and food of course, but jeff introduced us to the pilot episode of glee! um, so good. and love watching tv with jeff and jenny because they give fabulously comical and engaging synopsi (is this the plural form of synopsis?) of shows like american idol, so you think you can dance, etc., so you don't have to watch the whole thing. shockingly, matt got sucked in by jeff's quick version, so we watched the whole episode of glee. (i loved it. go watch it on hulu!)

i love our friends. they're great.

matt and i hit all of our favorite spots in our old town, and then hit the road again to deposit our darling little m at her grandparents house in ventura so that we could get away overnight sans our daughter! 

(the 4th of july)

last year on the fourth of july i was holding my 3 month old out in front of our house when my elderly next door neighbor, who did not realize that little m was deaf, said, "she's going to be up all night with all the noise around here." 

i smiled and nodded, knowing full well that even in our neighborhood of oakland, full of countless illegal and loud fireworks that start in mid-june and continue until all hours on july 4th, my daughter would sleep right through it. she wouldn't hear a single firework go off, even with her powerful hearing aids cranked up. i went inside and cried, and every firework that exploded last year (and there were many) pierced my heart as a reminder of the fresh pain of little m's deafness. i cried a lot that night. little m slept all night long, oblivious to all of it.

as i write this, it feels like i am stuck in a war-zone somewhere, as fireworks have been going off for hours and hours on a pretty constant basis. we are talking big, huge, loud, super illegal fireworks. i swear it sounds like bombs are going off in the street in front of my house. to say it's a little crazy would be an understatement.

and my daughter is sound asleep. she, of course, can't hear any of it.

but earlier, before she went down, while her implants were still on, she heard fireworks. she looked up in the sky in the direction of the sound. she heard so many of the loud blasts that i think she was a little scared and startled. 

my baby is full of joy and delight whether her implants are on or not. she laughs and observes and soaks in the world even when her ears are silent. but it is a gift that she can hear. this year, as the fireworks exploded all around our house, i had tears in my eyes (shocking) - tears of gratitude that little m can experience the noises all around her, and that i get to be a part of the journey.

fast friends!

last week we went to fairyland with little m's friend from school viv, and her mama, hannah. hannah is one of my blogging friends! i think she is a pretty amazing mom; her sweet vivian is the cutest, with such charm. little m only has a couple of receptive words (spoken words that she actually understands the meaning of), but vivian is almost two and has tons, so it was so fun to hear hannah talk to viv and have viv understand respond! (something to look forward to someday!)
little m and viv may be on different journeys, but they are both quite tenacious beauties, with lots of personality and they both have parents that love them a whole lot!

it was a gorgeous oakland day, and even though a lot of fairyland is aimed at little kiddos who are somewhat older than m and viv, they loved every single minute of it! and, they got along swimmingly. the best part of fairyland is that it is an old school pre-disneyland era spot, and many of the exhibits are sweet sweet sweet. it's a charming, non-product-placement kind of spot! little m and viv very patiently enjoyed the day and each other while hannah and i as we chatted away about life and our experiences.

little m was really into watching the ducks,

but she wasn't quite tall enough to look over the fence so she had to peek through the holes

(the girls)

(happy)

today, july 2nd, is my mom's 60th birthday.

(happy birthday cornelia ruth)

she deserves a party, 

but instead she is up past midnight as the hour strikes her birth day, 

baking cinnamon buns for those she loves, 

because that is the type of woman she is: 

she serves others without complaint and because it gives her joy.

she is a woman of faith, wisdom, beauty, and perseverance.

she is a mother, a pray-er, a writer, a teacher, a lover of truth, hope and beauty, 

a pilgrim, a friend and a sister. 

she loves words, going on adventures, children, integrity, music, a good leather chair, brand new journals, vanilla ice cream, talking on the phone, clean kitchen floors that have been scrubbed by hand, maine, coming up with theories on just about everything and watching radiant sunsets.

she will sidle right up to you, put her arm around your shoulder, come in close, and ask you how you are...how you really are, and then she will listen.

she will wake up at 4 in the morning to make you a pie or cinnamon buns because she heard that you like them, and she knows you've been having a rough week.

she will go completely out of her way to do you a favor or give you a ride or extend you some kindness.

she will treat you as if you were one of her own children.

she will eat leftover apple pie for breakfast.

she taught me that there are more important things in life 

than being concerned with the surface of things, 

that what matters is living with integrity regardless of who is watching.

today i celebrate my mom, 

and the richness of her character

and

 the way she has walked in grace and courage throughout her 60 years.

xoxo

(little m making the "daddy" sign)

little m loves her papa. 

often we will be in the middle of playing or reading or snacking, and she will start signing "daddy." um, hello my darling sweetpea, mommy is sitting right in front of you!? but i get it; i like to hang out with her daddy too, and could pretty much do it all the time. so, you know, i empathize. and, every time she signs daddy a little part of my heart goes crunch, because i think of how her face lights up when she sees her daddy and what a wonderful it is to my daughter that she has such a good dad. it is pretty cute how often she does it, with this earnest searching look in her eyes, as if he will suddenly appear if only she signs for him.

love it.

{today}

today was a good day:

no reason in particular.

thankful for...

• my healthy body that got me through the class at the gym that kicks by bootie here + back again
  
• playtime, snuggletime, sillytime, storytime, bathtime, and all-the-other-time with little m. i love being a mom from the first moment i see my daughter in the morning until it is her bedtime, and all those in between parts too. and then, at night, i sneak into her room (which isn't that hard, her being deaf and all, and not able to hear me) and gaze down at her lovingly and in awe. i adore her.
• sunshine and ice cream and fun visitors that just drop by and red painted toenails and tanktops and strawberries and clean dishes and finding old photos.
• my beloved. oh, i just love my husband and even though he thinks i totally take over the whole bed (i kind of do) and make him stay up too, too late (i for sure do) and i talk to him when he's trying to read (it makes things more interactive) and do things the roundabout and least logical way (um, yeah, that too) and am a complete and total handful (guilty), he still loves me too. i am his favorite and he is mine.
• blowing bubbles in the warm july sun on my front stoop. (i'd love to call it a porch, but, well, it just really isn't large enough to even pretend.)

what are you thankful for today?

sweet treats

this is the plum tree in our backyard right now, loaded down with sweet and juicy little plums. someday 

i want to have lots of fruit trees in my yard, 

so that i can just run outside and pluck a pretty little treat off of a branch 

and then 

treat myself to another!

come over and pick some of our plums! 

(they are delightful)

(and so are you)

eat your greens!

(an ode to fruits and veggies)

i am so not on vacation now, but it's fun to recap the glory days of two weeks ago...and i have been sloooow to upload photos, so here we go: belated blog posts. 

on our way out of san diego, we stopped at not one, but two, fantastic spots! 

first, we stopped off for breakfast with xuchi, a friend of mine from art school. (xuchi and her husband josh are artists and in addition to being great people, both make absolutely beautiful work.) 

we got to hang out in her overflowing garden + even got to sneak a peek at her mom's garden next door, which, if we are being honest, is more like a farm.

(the largest basil leaves i have ever encountered)

m made friends with mingus, one of their dogs

i think xuchi slips steroids into her water supply (oh wait, there's a word for plant steroids- it's called fertilizer), because her veggies are out of freaking control huge and beautiful. (matt was very jealous, although he contained his envy well.) i guess that's what a garden looks like if you get sun all day long and have really good soil. 

little m happily chows on fresh green beans.

we harvested some stuff to take home with us

mingus lazing in the sunshine. 

my poor animal loving little m; 

this is the closest our daughter will ever get to having a pet - visiting one at a friends' house!

i love succulents now and forever

like i said, xuchi's mom's garden is like a farm. i'm not kidding. 

i think you could practically order a csa box from her.

m continued with her grazing.

eventually we parted ways with our friend, her dogs, her garden, and her cute little bungalow.

we headed north...

and on the way stopped off at chino family farms... an epic farm stand which supplies fruits and veggies for restaurants such as berkeley's very own chez pannise and for commonfolk like us.

we perused the produce which is laid out like little treasures (and priced accordingly!) and picked at the height of ripeness daily. it's almost too pretty to eat! but eat we did, laying it all out on the hood of our car and snacking away. little m popped cherry tomatoes and strawberries like they were candy nuggets. she charmed the workers so much that they gave us some other vegetables for her to try. our brief visit was pretty delicious and nutritious.

there really isn't much better than fruits and veggies that have just been picked and that are still warm from the sun! 

it was absolutely perfect.

i heart vacations!

last week matt and i went on vacation. so fun. 

the best, really... i mean, seriously, what could beat amazing friends, sunshine, food, no work, long drives (which = long talks with my favorite person), more time with my husband (aka aforementioned favorite person) + kidlet, the beach? 

we started out in san diego, visiting our dear friends kimmie, jeremy, and their bambinos amos and eli. we felt so special because kim and jeremy took a day off of work to hang out with us! 

kim and jeremy's kids were at their preschool, so their/our friend malka, who is amazing (& who knows asl fluently as well as how to delight a child for 8 hours in a row) watched little m for the whole day so that the grown-ups could cavort about san diego. i'd like to think that m learned some new signs. and that malka learned how to wrestle a cloth diaper on a squirming one year old. all i have to say is that one of the best feelings is knowing that the person watching your child likes her almost as much as you do yourself. it was a huge gift to play all day with dear friends minus kiddos!

(ah, sand between my toes)

speaking of favorite people, this is one of my dearest soul friends.

the boys hang by the water while kim and i kick it on the sand

at a certain point we had to return to our little darlings. 

of course, they are such cuties that it wasn't so bad to come home and snuggle them up.

i am determined to arrange a marriage between my daughter and a suitable mate. 

here are two very strong contenders.

(i kid, i kid)

hours of fun on the porch

little m likes being the only girl and hanging with the big kids!

we usually eat a lot on vacay, and this was no exception

yummy breakfast pizza at bread and cie

(so good)

we kind of ate a lot of really good food, so this is just representative of all the yumminess.

and then, to top it off, we talked a lot.

about life.

around a firepit, on the couch, in the kitchen, on walks, 

at coffee shops, in the grocery store, on the beach.

what can i say?

it was glorious.

i want to be on vacation again already.

lucky for you, i have more to recap, 

so we can keep pretending it's vacation for a few more posts!

xo my friends

have a good monday!