On the Occasion of Your Twelfth Birthday:

                                        On the Occasion of Your Twelfth Birthday:

                                                                       A letter to my son

Let me first say what all adults say, even though it is rhetorical and slightly ridiculous; “I cannot believe how big you are getting!”

  Yes we all say things like that because one day you are a blip on the ultrasound screen and the next you are asking for the keys to the car, which thankfully we have not yet reached that point yet.  We are amazed at how quickly you children grow and seem astounded by your progress.  We should be more surprised if you didn’t grow or perhaps shrunk but instead we marvel at your age, your size, the changing squeak in your voice.  Forgive us and indulge us, sometimes it is all a bit to take in.

  As I reflect on the day you were born I would like to state for the record that you took your sweet time.  Your desire to not leave where you were comfortable seems to have stayed with you.  I am sure if we had realized how much you love video games we could have coaxed you out sooner with the sound of X-Box blipping and bleeping but who knew?  And I suppose I should take some of the blame, if I had paid attention in that class I might have learned something about giving birth but as it was your dad was too busy commentating his way through his distress and I am sure by now you know him well enough to know taking a class with him probably isn’t the best idea.

  I remember holding you after you were born and crying when I realized you were all mine and the responsibility knocked me flat, that and a hormone surge that could have lit up New York City.  I remember your new baby smell and I remember when that went away and was replaced by new baby poop smell.  But it was all okay because you were sweet and loveable and mine.

  You did not come with a manual, neither did your siblings, but in your case it has been hit or miss.  You were a brave soul to be born first.  Your dad and I have made a few mistakes along the way.  We probably shouldn’t have listened when we were told “Baby Mozart” was good for your brain.  I am pretty sure that advice was wrong.  I should have fed you more vegetables and fewer chicken nuggets.  I could apologize for these things and many more.  Like the day you fell down the stairs, or the day I yelled at you for hiding in the closet eating cat food because I thought someone had come into our house and abducted you while I was in the bathroom.  Since you were only a year old I probably should have toned down the yelling a bit but fear can make a person lose sight of reality.  Or the afternoon I spanked you for biting me.  The sight of the blood dripping from my thumb rendering me temporarily insane, but I was sorry even as I placed the steri strips on my wound.

  You were “a rascal” as your grandmother called you.  You ran without stopping, you talked without taking a breath.  You knocked down blocks and chased the cat.  But in all that and even with parents who had no manual, you have continued to grow.

   You have scraped your knees and fought with your brother.  You have exhausted us and worried us.  You have made us proud and brought us joy.  I am not sure what you will remember from your childhood.  Our memories will never quite match up. You will remember your life as a child, I will remember it as an adult.  I will remember holding your hand and reading you books.  I will remember when I yelled or had to punish you.  I will remember when I slept on your floor when you were sick and held the “throw up bucket” for you.  I will remember my tears of joy watching you in your first play.  I will remember hugging you when you were hurt because someone said something that made you feel bad and telling you to be the bigger person, even though I wanted to punch the little bugger myself. 

  What will you remember?  I am not sure but I hope you remember that I slept on your floor and wiped away your tears.  I am hoping you won’t remember the times when I flailed my arms and yelled, “Are you kidding me!?”  To be honest boys are a mystery to me.  Your behavior at times perplexes me.  I am not sure why you would bring a frog into the house to see if he could climb the stairs.  Or why you would let the tub overflow to see where the water would go.  Or why you thought the Little People could be flushed down the toilet and appear somewhere else.  It all remains a mystery.  And as you get older (as you are bound to do) the mysteries continue, like why you think standing in the bathroom while the shower is running constitutes a shower.  Or why you think cleaning the bathroom doesn’t mean cleaning the toilet.   

  So as your life is truly just beginning and mine is reaching its half-way point ( yes I could very well live to be 90 so please be prepared), I am painfully aware of how few years we will actually spend living together but joyfully aware of what lies ahead, where you can go and what you can do.  My hope is you will go and you will do.  That you will take the opportunities that come your way.  I hope you will forgive us for our mistakes and realize all of what we have done and will continue to do is because we love you.  Just as I don’t understand you I know you don’t always understand us.  Why we limit your video game time or make you fold your laundry.  Why you have to do the dishes or clean the bathroom.  Or why I stand behind you whispering, “say thank you” .  Someday it may not all seem so mysterious. Then again   you and your siblings may have a good laugh at my expense as you sit around having a beer and imitating me…”Remember when mom used to (fill in the blank).”  That is okay; just remember what goes around…

  

   And when I am old and my face is lined with deep creases, you may come to realize many are because of you.  I wouldn’t change a single one.  Each wrinkle, every crease tells our story.  My life is happy because I am a mom.  My life is complete because I am your mom.

Happy Birthday

Never Give Up

  Most mornings when I am awake early enough I pile our 108 pound puppy into the truck and we head off to the woods for a trail run.  Now that the weather is warming up and the sun is up nice and early this is not a difficult task.  At least getting there is not difficult, sometimes the actual run is a bit of a challenge.

    Our Ellie is not much of a runner. Of course she is hauling a large load and has a good deal of fur so some mornings it is probably down right uncomfortable.  But she has a terrible short term memory so when I lace up my sneakers she has forgotten yesterday's run and she starts to get so excited she drools and nudges me to get me moving faster.   She pants all the way to the park.  We get there and she leaps from the car, paws flailing.  She runs to the nearest tree and takes a long sniff, tail wagging. Moves on to another tree, tail wagging, sniff sniff.  She runs all out for about a mile or so then she loses steam.  Unfortunately for her I spend the first mile cussing myself out for getting up so early and complaining to no one in particular because, well there is no one there to listen, about how out of shape I am until mile two when the adrenalin kicks in and then I am good for a couple more miles.

                             

And she's off!

  Poor dog.  She forgets this.  After her mile she slows down and sometimes stops altogether and looks at me with those big,beautiful, sad eyes just dripping with a longing you can almost feel in your soul. Mostly it is a longing for food and water, which she doesn't get until we are done, something else I think she doesn't remember.

  Each time we run she chases whatever wild life makes enough noise or is close enough for her to catch their scent. Sometimes it is some unsuspecting squirrel and sometimes it is a deer and most times it is at least two deer we come across as they quietly nibble on grass, enjoying the serenity of an early morning feast.  Which Ellie rudely interrupts by the thunderous roar of her paws hitting the ground.  Of course my sweet dog cannot catch deer.  She tries and sometimes I lose sight of her because she is focused and determined and lost in the woods.  Eventually, though she realizes the futility of her chase and emerges from behind a stone wall or some bushes and trots along side me until something else catches her attention.

   I love that about her. I love the tenacity she shows each time she takes off after the deer.  They are so much faster than she is.  I am sure if she ever got close enough and one kicked her there would be serious damage but she never gets close enough.  They bound gracefully over the stones walls and hop through the vegetation like ballerinas performing a well rehearsed routine. And Ellie, well she just charges.  She doesn't seem to recall from the previous morning that she wasn't able to catch that deer.  It doesn't even faze her.   Somewhere in her wiring she is told to chase and she goes.
But even better is her ability to just move on when it doesn't work out.  She sidles up to me with this attitude  of  "oh well, I wasn't that interested anyway."

   That is a fabulous attribute.  Being able to go after something day after day, losing day after day and yet shaking off the disappointment to try another day.  There are many famous people who have succeeded even when faced with rejection and failure, over and over again.  J.K Rowling was rejected by 12 publishers.  Stephen King's first novel, "Carrie", sound familiar?  Yes it was rejected 30 times.  He even threw it away and his wife pulled it from the trash and encouraged him to try again.

    Albert Einstein was considered mentally handicapped by his parents and teachers in his early life because he didn't speak until he was four and didn't read until he was seven.  Bet they felt a little handicapped when he won the Nobel Prize.  Walt Disney was fired by a news editor because he lacked imagination and his first animation company went bankrupt.  http://getbusylivingblog.com/famous-people-who-found-success-despite-failures/

   Martin Luther King got a C in public speaking.   Do we even know who that professor was?

   There have been many things I have given up on because I thought they were too difficult or simply because I didn't think I had what was required to succeed. Piano, gymnastics, flute; the list goes on.  Even college. Although eventually I tried that and it worked out just fine.

    A few days ago I was taking a walk with my oldest and he told me math is too hard for him.  I get it. To be honest math is one thing I gave up on years ago. I would rather stick a sharp object beneath my fingernails then take another math course, ever.  But this is not something I wanted to share with my 11 year old.  At this point he has a lot of math ahead of him. And of course I don't want him to give up on things the way I did.  If he gives up on math he may just give up on anything that is a challenge.

   So I simply said, "Math is not hard," ( author's note...it is okay to lie to your children when it is in their best interest.)    " Really nothing is hard unless you tell yourself it is.  Then once you have done that you may as well pack it in.  It is all about your mind set.  Set your mind on accomplishing something and you will, eventually.  Some things just take more effort than others."  I then patted myself on the back because I thought that was rather profound.  My son ,however, said ," Nah, it's just too hard."

   I switched tactics and told him about Ellie's deer chasing, how she keeps trying without giving up.  I am not sure how much of that sunk in because he smiled and  said,"She's funny."

   So he isn't wired like our tenacious dog.   Most humans aren't.  It takes practice and determination just to become determined.  Dogs just do, which works great for them.  Ellie will keep trying to catch the deer.  I am doubtful she ever will.  I am hopeful she won't. I am not sure what either one of us would do if she managed to catch one.  And my son will find his way through math.  I will keep repeating the same mantra to him until it sinks in, until he hears it in his sleep, until he is saying it himself without even realizing he is saying it.  And then, hopefully, he will be a little like Ellie, wired for success and ignoring failure.
   
                                                        

And she's done!

Six Degrees of Seperation...and Shakespeare

   I find it fascinating to see where people have come from. I don't mean geographically, although that can certainly be interesting but where people descend from or more to the point, who they descend from.  Because the reality is we all are here because two people fell in love, were betrothed, or were arranged to marry before they were potty trained.  After watching a few episodes of "Who Do You Think You Are?" I was hooked on how far back genealogy could go.  After seeing Cindy Crawford get traced all the way back to Charlamagne it was just too much for my curiosity to sit idle and just wonder.  So I hopped onto a free trial of Ancestry.com.

  It wasn't as easy as they like to portray, at least not for the slightly attention deficit, energy depleted mothers of the world.  Or just me.  The little "leaf" didn't always pop up and sometimes when it did it gave me information on other people because they had a name similar to one of my people.  I know on my mother's side that her grandfather came from Sweden in the 1890's and settled in Chicago, because isn't that where all the Swedes settled?  He had several siblings he left behind so I am pretty sure I have some distant relatives just waiting to welcome me to Sweden. I wouldn't mind finding them.  My great-grandmother, his wife, on the other hand is a mystery to me.  She met and married my great-grandfather in Chicago and followed him to New Britain when he finished seminary.  My mother's mother's people I know nothing about and there were no leafs to help me out.

  So I moved on to my father's side.  I managed to find an ancestor of my grandmother's, a Stephen Blazier who was a carpenter living in Georgia in the mid 1800's.  But I lost the trail from there.  I was kind of excited I got that far since my grandmother was never one to talk much.  Most of my conversations with her were one-sided.  I talked, she listened.  I like to talk and she was a good listener so it worked out.

   A few months ago one of my cousins on my father's side sent me an email inviting me to view her family tree on Ancestry.com.  I looked at the page she had sent and she had not gotten past our mutual grandmother.  So I emailed her and told her about my Georgia find, feeling quite proud of myself until she emailed back that I needed to click on individuals to go back farther and she had traced us all the way back to the 1300's in England on our grandmother's side.

  I was so excited I could hardly sit still.   I was so impressed she had managed to trace one line of our family so far back.  She told me it had helped that she had been sick in bed for a couple days because honestly I think you need to devote yourself and hours to just reading hand written censuses until your eyes water and blurred vision feels like the new normal.

  She also mentioned that she traced our grandmother's side back to a woman named Agnes Webb who appeared to be an aunt to William Shakespeare.

   William Shakespeare!  To be or not didn't even matter, just the idea that we had some watered down relation to the Bard was enough to make me want to order new stationary with the Shakespeare crest.

                                                             
    So I started clicking away on individuals.  If we begin with my grandmother who's maiden name was Blazier, her father George was the son of Stephen and Anne( Delevan) Blazier. Stephen was the son of Stephen and Thuressa (Wilson) Blazier.  Which makes them my three-times great-grandparents.  Still with me?

   Then we find Philip Blazer( not a spelling error, the spelling of the name changes.)  Phillip(1773-1854) married Ann Lewis and this is where the fun begins. Bear with me!  Now if we follow Ann's line, which would be my four times great-grandmother, we find that her line began in England. Ann was the daughter of Jacob Lewis and Catherine (Freeman) Lewis, who it would appear might have died either while giving birth to Ann or shortly thereafter as her death is documented in 1776 the same year Ann was born.

    Jacob (father of Ann and my five times great-grandfather) was the son of Thomas Lewis(1715-1763), who was born in New Jersey, in Colonial America and Ann Dandridge(1715-1808), also born in New Jersey but her older siblings were born in England.   Ann Dandridge ( who if I am doing this correctly would be my six times great-grandmother) was the daughter of John Dandridge ( 1655-1731) and Bridget Dugdale. Both resided in Oxford,Oxfordshire,England until their immigration to America. They are my seven time great-grandparents. From here we follow the Dandridge line.

  And here is where it would help if either I or my cousin was someone famous then the producers of "Who Do You Think You Are?" could sweep in and fly us off to England where we could perhaps unravel the mystery of why John and Bridget immigrated to America. But whatever their reasons if we still keep going we find William Dandridge(1613-1638) married Ann Boiling.( Not Ann Boleyn because that would be another crest of arms and I would be claiming rights to the throne or perhaps I would just keep that to myself after all.)  This makes them my eight times great-grandparents. William was the son of Sir B. Dandridge (1580-1604) and Elizabeth Webb, my nine times great-grandparents.

    Still with me?  Hang in there the end is close!

  Now we follow the Webb line.  Elizabeth was the daughter of Richard Webb and Agnes Webb, my 10 times great-grandparents.   Now Agnes seems to have been a Webb prior to marrying Richard(most likely they were cousins) so when we follow her line of Webbs we see that Agnes was the daughter of  Sir Henry A Webb (1510-1544) and Grace Arden(1514-1539). These folks are my 11 times great-grandparents. Sir Henry had one brother and four sisters.  His sister, Abigail, married Richard Shakespeare.  Which would make Richard my "uncle" 12 times removed or perhaps many ore times removed, at this point I would need professional help. They had a son named John , who I suppose would be a cousin 13 times removed.  John Shakespeare, who if I am following my own line correctly becomes a cousin 14 times removed, married Mary Arden and they had a son named William.  TA-DA!

   Confused?  Yes so am I.  I am still not sure I am calculating this perfectly well.  I will be seeing my cousin in March and I am hoping we might find some time to view the lineage.  What is remarkable as I was researching all the work my cousin did, was the realization that last names start to appear more frequently the farther you go back.  Meaning there was inter-marrying of cousins.  While I was trying to figure out if Sir Henry and Grace Arden were indeed my 12 times great-grandparents I came across several articles explaining lineage and ancestry.  The website Olive Tree Genealogy was very helpful.   The article linked here is what made me take a closer look at the last names.  It explains that if we just doubled our great-grandparents back 10 generations we would have potentially 1024 ancestors and if followed all the way back to Charlamagne it would be an astounding 281 trillion, which is impossible.  http://www.olivetreegenealogy.com/misc/ancestors.shtml 

   I think it is fascinating where we come from.  And each great-grandparent comes with siblings who marry and have children.  And this is only tracing back my grandmother on my father's side.  My father's dad, it appears had his beginnings in Germany.  While I was researching all of this my husband peered over my shoulder and saw that my great-grandfather had married Lucy Ann Totten.  "We have Tottens!"  He exclaimed.  I just nodded and made a mental note to add that the growing list of things I probably should have found out prior to saying "I do."  But the reality is he and I could be cousins several times removed; several, several times removed.  He is also competitive, which I did know ahead of time and wants it to be stated that our children also descend from a very famous radish farmer from Germany, which is why he loves to garden.

  So think of the possibility this presents.  The world feels smaller with all the technology we have.  We can skype, facetime, instant message.   But the truth is the world has always been small.  In some way we are related to more people than just the cousins on our mom's side or the crazy uncle on our dad's side.  We are all a tribe.  Perhaps that is why when we find someone who becomes a great friend there is more to it than just two people who have stuff in common.  We could have DNA in common!

 As I went back through our family history, Shakespeare notwithstanding, and the reason I gave the breakdown of all their names and dates was to give a visual for the people who came before me. The people who contributed to my love of writing, reading.  Perhaps that is why I have an unyielding desire to see England.  Or maybe that is why I love tea with cream and sugar.  Or maybe it has nothing to do with it because it is so watered down.  But I do believe I am the result of all those who came before me.  The people who made all the right choices that brought me to this day.  Because you see if John and Bridget Dandridge did not leave Oxfordshire, England then their daughter Ann would not have married Thomas Lewis and my story would not have begun.  Of course the same could be said for my mother's grandfather who came to America from Sweden.  I have not been able to follow his line back...yet.  But I am feeling a cold coming on...

Me and my sister with our grandmother,Helen Blazier Drake, our link to Shakespeare.

   

     

What I Learned from Not Writing 50,000 words in a month

 A friend inquired recently how I did participating in National Write a Novel in a Month (otherwise known as NANOWRIMO).  She asked if I completed my novel and I had to reply "no".  I told her I wrote 14,000 words and was still writing and she offered her kind support.  14,000 words is better than no words , which is what I accomplished the previous two years that I signed up.  And it is more than I have written since I was in high school.  In high school I started my first novel between junior and senior year.  Over the summer before my senior year I spent each summer night hunched over my grandfather's old electric typewriter banging on the keys, going through tons of white-out;my Sony Walkman playing Micheal Jackson, because he was still kind of cool then and not quite as weird and well, white.  I started writing Chapter One and completed 60 pages single spaced.  I was very proud of myself.  I still have that manuscript.  It is a little tough to read now since it would appear that I was drowning in a sea of V.C. Andrews novels at the time and could possibly have become her ghost writer.  It is drippy and sappy and harsh but we all have to start somewhere.

    In my senior year I took a creative writing class.  My teacher,  Mrs.C., was slightly eccentric, enthusiastic and carried her own writing filled notebooks around with her.  It was her best advice to always keep something to write with close at hand.  I have more notebooks than I care to admit to.  Pretty journals and regular style notebooks, leather bound or paper bound.  Not all of them filled but mostly filled or on there way to being filled and some just contain lists of things to do.  I even love to write lists.

    A few weeks into the class I approached her and asked if she would consider reading something I had written.  She smiled and exclaimed ,"Of course."  Then I dropped the 60 pages on her desk with a thud and her smile faded, only slightly.  She regained her composure and asked what I had written.  I explained I had spent the summer beginning a novel, half expecting her to laugh at me, but she didn't.  She took my 60 pages and tucked them into her bag and returned them to me the next day, complete with corrections and praise in red ink on every page. She also wrote a note I have kept to this day, encouraging me to clean it up and submit it to a publisher.  I never did because shortly after that amazing confidence boosting note came a visit with my guidance counselor who, in one fell swoop undid all of the wonderful things Mrs.C had done.  She cut me off at the knees with a curt reminder that my grades weren't that great and getting into a college that offered journalism was a long shot.  She also wrote that down for me so I wouldn't forget, but I managed to lose that piece of paper.

    I resented that guidance counselor for many years but as I have gotten older I have realized that along the way we meet people who are in the right profession and then there are those who are not.  Perhaps she wasn't where she wanted to be.  Perhaps her day had been terrible and listening to one more high school kid talk about what they wanted to do was just that proverbial straw on an imaginary camel's back.  When  it comes down to it, although it is nice to be lifted up and encouraged it is not up to anyone else to create a path for you.  The only thing that kept me from doing what I wanted was allowing my mind to keep replaying that moment over and over again, a constant drone playing in my subconscious.

   It became second nature to talk myself out of writing anything.  It became an internal dialogue that played over and over.  Negative thoughts breed negative behavior, perhaps not directly your own but you bring that negativity into your being and it settles around you, like dust on Pig-Pen.  Negative thoughts have been proven to have an impact on our over all emotional well-being and also our physical well-being.  We can talk ourselves into being sick as easily as we can talk ourselves into being a failure.  When we learn to talk to ourselves in a positive light, to let the good shine through and push the negativity aside we find ourselves with more energy, emotionally upbeat and more fun to be around.  This becomes a wonderful cycle.  The more you feel confident, the more you exude that confidence and the more people will want to be in your presence. When we allow ourselves to fall into negative thinking, when we give credence to things perhaps someone else said to us it drags us down and begins a cycle of bad feelings, physical pain, even depression.

    When I was little I had a record player in my room. Each night I played "A Boy Named Charlie Brown."  If you left the arm off the record player the record would just keep repeating.  Side one was the best part of the story.  Charlie Brown enters a spelling contest and he wins.  His friends carry him home and sing his praises.  I never listened to side two.  On side two Charlie Brown goes off to the city for the National Spelling Bee and loses, spelling beagle wrong.  Oh the irony and the negativity.  He comes home alone and no one meets him at the bus, no one to greet him and tell him he did his best.  I hated that side.  It was enough to make me cry, it made me feel lonely and cold.  So it was side one, over and over and over.  I could recite it for you, if you wish. 

  Just like Charlie Brown couldn't blame losing his spelling bee on anyone else, I certainly cannot blame the fact that I have not yet written the great American novel on an adult from my past.  I can say that I allowed that one negative encounter to hold me in a place that said," you probably can't do it so why try?"  Of course there are those who can be told they can't accomplish something and run right out to prove someone wrong.  I wasn't that person.  I was more like silly putty.  You could write something down and press me into it and it would stick.

  It was after I became a mom and I heard myself saying over and over to my small children," don't say can't , you can do anything you want, just try."  that I started to wipe away those long engrained thoughts for myself.  A conversation I had with my friend and fellow blogger, America's Next Top Mommy, http://americasnexttopmommy.blogspot.com/, brought me to understand that writing wasn't about writing what someone else may want to read, writing was about doing something I loved.  Putting words together, creating an atmosphere, making sense of my own world.  She was the one who encouraged me to start a blog, something at the time I thought was kind of silly and wouldn't be worth it in the long run.  I have been wrong before.  And once I stopped trying to write to please others and once I changed my inner mantra from "I'm not that good at writing."  to "Who cares if I'm not good at it, I love it!"  the more I wrote and the more I just enjoyed the process.

    While I was trying in November to crank out that great American novel I received some of the best advice from one former high school friend, who is a published author,  he wrote on my Facebook page
"Just get it all out, make a mess, don't worry about page 10 lining up with page 96. Just put it on the page. Then you go back and get to work."  It was perfect.  It is easy to make a mess.  It is easy to let the words flow even when they don't make sense.  All this time I really thought I needed to start at Chapter One and work my way through.  So I just wrote whatever moved me and strangely enough I found that I liked what I was writing and liked my characters and wanted to get to know them better.

  Someday I may finish the novel.  Someday I may write something completely different.  I may never do more than write on this blog.  But I am content.  I am content with what I write.  I am content with where I have been and where I am going. I am content that I had one teacher who thought I could do it and I am glad I had the chance to share what I had written with her. For now I will just stay on side one and let Charlie Brown keep winning while I keep writing.