rose of the week/month/year/decade/andbeyond?

I think it's been at least two years, if not three, since Brigadoon bloomed for me. Just last year I noticed that much of the bark and wood at her base had splinterchipped away. Natural aging, I guess. What more to expect of a rose that spent her youth containerbound before being tucked away in a deeply shaded, treerootbound, oft-neglected rose garden?

I took a picture of her single bud this spring, fully expecting that it might not mature. Was I ever wrong, in just this week when I needed a gentle reminder that miracles happen all around us every day of our lives . . .

7-11

When I was little, I thought convenience store was a fancy name for the seb'm-leb'm down the highway. This birthday year, 7-11 has taken on a whole new meaning!

the no-longer-seven . . .

and the just-turned-eleven . . .

5 more things to be happy about . . .

I never asked my daddy why he loved baseball so. I just knew that I didn't, especially after he died during the World Series and didn't get to see, this side of heaven, who won.

I thought of a million and one excuses on the way home from work today--reasons not to be at a baseball game tonight either.

Wouldn't have missed it for the world!

Mason may accomplish what his great-granddaddy never could--make a baseball fan of me :-)








More things to be happy about . . .

21. watching someone you love earn the game ball

22. celebrating someone's personal best

23. knowing that the top of the inning comes before the bottom of the inning

24. soaking in a spring evening on the sidelines

25. paying forward a free movie ticket



My son-in-law (oops, I stand corrected--it was my daughter :-) asked me tonight who won that long-ago world series. Here's the answer, courtesy of Wikipedia:

The 1969 World Series was played between the New York Mets and the Baltimore Orioles, with the Mets prevailing in 5 games to accomplish one of the greatest upsets in Series history, as that particular Orioles squad was (and still is by some baseball pundits) considered to be one of the finest ever. The World Series win earned the team the sobriquet "Miracle Mets," as they had risen from the depths of mediocrity (the 1969 team had the first winning record in Mets history).

A delighted Met fan held up a sign after the Mets won the final game: "There Are No Words."
The 1969 World Series was played October 11-16. There was no game on October 13, 1969. Maybe the teams paused too, on their way from Memorial to Shea, to honor the passing of a man who so loved their game . . .

OK, Daddy, were you going for the Mets or the Orioles? Knowing you, I'd suspect it was the underdog team. Glad that somewhere, that week, in the world of things you loved, a miracle happened . . .

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. . .