My cousins, Geri and Cheryl, sisters and friends sent me a fun birthday gift!
I just turned 72 and Geri turns 72 in a few weeks, so we are especially close.
Here we are, sitting on our grandfather's knees when we were around a year old. Our moms are sisters! Aunt Geri, Geri Lynn, Grandpa Rivers, me and my mom, Ruth
I posted a photo of myself in my "birthday suit" as a baby in a life preserver. We were traveling to Greece for my dad's assignment at the US Embassy. It was labeled that we were on a holiday to Greece, but in fact we lived there for two years.
Of course as you can see in that picture, I was a baby so don't remember a whole lot about Greece. I was three years old when we returned to the States.
Now I am going to post a passport picture that was taken for that trip. In 1955, children were on their mother's passport, so Carol, Dale and baby me were all in the photo with our mother.
Here's a picture of me now, at age 72!
Journaling by hand while watching TV
Jessica sewing on my mom's- her great grandmother's sewing machine!
I wonder how. They are not the exact same flowers as last year. I saw them bloom, dry up and fade away. And yet here they are again.
I have been thinking about how you can never really go back.
I spend a lot of time reminiscing and remembering the places we have lived. The houses, our home for a period of time but eternal in my memory.
I look at old photos and recognize the blue flowered upholstery and drapes in our [second] house in Chiang Mai. Christmases we celebrated there and friends we had visiting. Small details like the rock garden beneath the stairs and the fence we had built to keep a crawling baby from eating the rocks. Morgan was the baby.
Lots of places. I have decided not to try listing them all here. I think a while ago I wrote about the various kitchens we have had. The rooms and feelings and memories.
Going back. I dreamed about the house we lived in when we lived in Tromsø. When we (Carol and the girls and I) in 2015-eleven years ago, it was almost exactly as I remembered it, The changes that the current owners made did not render it unrecognizable, just different. Familiar. And somehow I realized that that house, in my dreams, was totally different than the reality of it.
I look online at the places we have lived and imagine going back. Just to visit, not to stay.
I ask myself, why? Why do I want to go back? Is it to re-live what was? Is it to affirm that I didn't just imagine or dream it all. Is it to affirm my past?
The two places I reminisce abut are Tromsø, Norway and Perth, Western Australia. I know that the houses we lived in are still there.
But even eleven years ago Tromsø, though very recognizable, is not the same. There are traffic lights and fast food places. I say "those weren't here when we lived here" somehow making it feel like it was better back then.
And Perth. The city has changed. There are more freeways. There's a whole different look to the Foreshore than I remember it. Oh what a great place it was to be and to live. But I am not who I was. The city is not the same. I just want to capture the good parts of my past.
And, as just about everyone who is aging, I want "me" back. I want to be in my 20s again and even my 40s. Have that energy and mobility. Feeling beautiful again.
Am I in my final chapter? I am not currently dying as far as I know. But I am never going to be any younger.
My babies are all grown. Adults. A memory of their babyhood fills me with joy and dreams. And regrest of all of the things I wish I could undo and do over better.
And that's what I mean when I say life is like a river. It flows but the same water goes past and doesn't return. It just keeps flowing.
My UU church held a poetry slam on Saturday. I had no idea what it was, but I decided to go anyway and find out. I took several poems with me that I had written over the years.
Apparently, when I signed up I clicked the button designating myself as a poet. Good thing I had some poems with me.
There were actually only 10 people signed up as poets- me being one of them.
I was not at all nervous when I stood in front of the crowd and read. At the end, all of the poets were invited up on the stage and learned what the judges thought.
Guess what?! I won a $25.00 gift card. A total surprise!
That's me in the purple shirt.
Here's what I read:
My Grandfather’s Grave
In the fifties, my father took my mother to the family farm in Kjorefjord and showed her where his father is buried. He said “there, that’s the hole my father is in” and he walked away. Almost a lifetime later I stood at the foot of that same grave and felt so alive and connected. Here lies a piece of me, or I a piece it, the earth, of him, my father’s father. That same day, I stood in the room my grandfather was born in. I closed my eyes and in my imagination, I heard his first cries. I cried. I was born in that room that day. And at that grave on that farm in that village. I was whole and complete and I drank wine and ate cheese and strawberries under the midnight sun. Home.
