make a wish

but not until after you've tasted the icing . . .

whose Webkin???

boy cousins

holding on. . .

21 months and counting the days . . .

until her second birthday!

reflection: The Last Lecture

I read it cover to cover between dinner and bedtime, alternating tears and laughter, laughter and tears.

So many connections--and not just the pancreatic cancer diagnosis at 46 (the author's, Daddy's):

• Places: Kimberly's Carnegie Mellon and Jamie's UVA (they were there at the same time . . . did their paths ever cross?) and even eastern Virginia and Chapel Hill


• Ideas: artificial intelligence and rocket science


• Obsessions: Star Trek (my brother's collector passion) and Disney (my office mate's collector passion)


• Bringing three beautiful children into this world of ours


• Winning the parent lottery: a WWII military father we love to quote and a mother who unerringly keeps our cockiness in check--parents who paired frugality in possessions with riches in learning.


• Being "a doctor but not the kind who helps people"
  

The chapter that opens with the dreams of an 8-year-old that summer man first walked on the moon is bittersweet. My first child, Daddy's wanting to live through that same summer (he did), a husband shipped off to war, moving home, growing up overnight, locking away childhood dreams. . .

But parallel dedications (his book, my dissertation) acknowledge our belief in the value of dreams. His childhood dreams and those he hopes his children will create. My father nurtured my dreams; my mother molded in me the courage to live them. And we have come to understand, this author and I, that the greatest good we can do in our limited time here is to enable the dreams of others . . .

I could have used his wikipedia story on Monday when introducing a group of colleagues to wikis. I'll give them his book instead.

And make time to dust off my locked-away childhood dreams, the few that haven't worked their way back to consciousness, to realization.

Thank you, Randy!

April in Paris . . .

. . . is a rose. I bought two of them (yes, two bushes full of promise) today. One because today is Kimberly's birthday :-) Two because April (more likely June or July) in Paris is a someday dream we share.

This new for 2008 marvel has been on my musthave list since the first Jackson and Perkins rose catalog arrived in my mailbox last winter. The clincher, though was its parentage--yet another child of Pristine.

I seem to have a thing for "P" roses. Peace (but I have finally admitted I don't have what it takes to keep Peace alive). Promise (no longer available for purchase at any price but it's my personal icon on this computer). Any rose that's pink (which is why I decided to salvage Ultimate Pink today). And Pristine (see last summer's bloom above) . . .

Brigadoon, J&P's rose of the year in 1992, is another of Pristine's offspring.

13 springs ago--one of the more confusing, more difficult springs in my life--I bought two roses: Brigadoon and Pristine. Container-bound their first three, maybe even four, seasons, they became the anchors for my first rose garden here.

Too many other roses to count, to remember, have struggled and lost heart and hope and life in this too shady, too rootbound garden. Yet Brigadoon, a tiny shell of its former self, and frail but determined Pristine live on . . . touching my heart with their hope against hope against hope. . .

so many connections . . .THE LAST LECTURE

Alice Storytelling was the turning point.

Kimberly tried to talk about Randy Pausch's inspirational celebration of life just a few weeks ago . . . We looked at each other--my thyroid-cancer-survivor child-heroine and I, daughter of another brave man who lost his battle with Randy's nemesis when he was Randy's age. We looked at each other. . . and moved on to safer thoughts, thoughts that would not drown us in memories old and not yet old enough.

I have run away from death and dying since losing Daddy, losing him the day Kimberly, his first grandchild, celebrated the six-month anniversary of her arrival in our lives.

But the connections were much too powerful this time. The Carnegie-Mellon connection--Kimberly's and Albrecht's alma mater. And Alice Storytelling, reminders of my own brief, unintentional-yet-intense love affair with artifical intelligence, the LISP parser, Kimberly's following that whimsical lead of mine into her own cognitive science major at CMU. Not that either of us continued down that particular road. But technology--the technology of storytelling--courses through our veins even now.

And the rocket on the cover of Randy's book? Man first stepped on the moon Daddy's last summer on our Earth. Jamie, his grandson and namesake, majored in aerospace engineering. His greatgrandsons are growing up even now with stars in their eyes, solar systems on their ceilings. Astronauts have signed books on our shelves, pictures on our walls. . .

I've downloaded Alice Storytelling--to unzip and explore another day perhaps. I smiled when I read it came with no support, to use at my own risk. Sentence-combining software memories, the stuff of which a PhD was crafted all those years ago on that whimsical path of mine. I'm not afraid of Alice, not at all. Maybe not even of dying, so much . . .

I've ordered Randy's book, two days in print and already backordered at Amazon.com.

I will read his book. I will celebrate his life. I will hope, when my turn comes to let go of the light, to make the most of that experience too. . .

April showers . . .

Strange week . . . I'm feeling a little like the weather tonight--drizzled. Just enough of a question mark in my life--maybe a fork or two in the road ahead--to make finishing seem more important than beginning.

I think when I look back on this year I'll smile at the organized butterfly I've almost become. Taking stock isn't a bad thing, even if doing so much of it all at one time feels a little out of character.

And there's still time for play. I finally succumbed, after a couple of months of the free daily online jigsaw, and bought a set of 50 digital puzzles yesterday (and have already completed 4!). And Kira should have plenty of whatever that Webkinz currency is called now that she's addicted me to Cash Cow, versions 1 and 2! Still trying to figure out the Monkey game . . .

But there's more to life than playing on a virtual playground. I'm playing in real time with the "babies" Saturday morning so that their daddy can finish his kitchen renovations (speaking of which, but that's 1,001 and counting on my priority list so I won't go there, yet).

Michael doesn't know it but he's about to get introduced to the virtual playground too--his very own first Webkin (a beagle like his Lucy and everyone's Snoopy) and other birthday secrets. Shhh, don't tell him! Can't believe he's almost 4 . . .

Also on the weekend's agenda: planting more roses (they keep appearing on my doorstep, but I'm not complaining).

Off to spend the day with a real author tomorrow, the third time in a month. Am I jaded or what?

One day, maybe, I'll take that fork in the road, the writingabook path. Or maybe not. . .

Definitely drizzled tonight!