. . . got the T-shirt to prove it!

I'm certifiably insane by my own standards. If you'd have told me I'd gladly pass up sleeeping in on the Saturday morning of my first no-obligations weekend in a while, I'd have raised my eyebrows. If you told me that, instead of sleeping in, I'd be voluntarily traipsing up and down city hills in sub-freezing temperatures, I'd have been thinking about having you committed.

But I guess I'll do almost anything, within reason, to have the t-shirt--a size small--and to be able to fit into that t-shirt.

There weren't a lot of us hardy souls this morning running or walking in the first-ever Run/Walk for Books. But I was there--lived to tell/write about it (walked 4K in 40 minutes 14 seconds)--and brought home the proof!



Let's see if I can say the same after April's longer, higher, tougher Cooper River Bridge Run/Walk . . . I would have gladly rested on my Grace Memorial (1994) and Silas Pearman (1995) laurels/t-shirts, but there's this new bridge . . .

3-28-09 FOOTNOTE (from Wikipedia, b/c I couldn't find the 1995 t-shirt ["get over it," right???]): With entrants exceeding 8,500 and a new 7,000 meter walk added, totaling over 10,000 participants, and tighter restrictions on weight on the Grace Bridge, in 1995 officials returned the Bridge Run to the Pearman bridge, with all three lanes being used, as traffic to Charleston could now be diverted to the Don N. Holt Bridge near Daniel Island on Interstate 526, which had opened in 1992.

third wall . . .

We as adults have too many walls. I know they are often meant to protect us, but I am finding letting them fall can leave you vulnerable to the occasional attack, and I’m sure will lead to some pain. But I also find that without walls, the radiance of the world around us can finally reach us – as the warmth of the sun can only do when you are outside.

I have this thing about walls . . . so this piece in today's email from a family member touched quite a chord . . . Walls--inside and outside of me. Walls I touch. Walls I build. Walls I let down, only to rebuild, piece by broken piece, to wall out the pain, to shelter the memories I want to hold close . . .

Almost two generations ago, when poetry was my release, my healer, I penned these concluding thoughts . . .

End?
Not end.
Third wall awaits,
But where?
I did not know--
Two walls suffice for weary eyes;
Four walls is house and home.
Third wall is deciding.
When?
Tomorrow.

I could not have better predicted my life . . .

to be happy about today . . .

62. 5.5 years since LASIK and still seeing 20/20. . .

and my reading vision is pretty remarkable also :-)

So maybe doctor's visits aren't all

frustrating

jumpthroughus

hoops

???

psyching out the lotus focus . . .

OK, here goes!

Confession time . . .
Three weeks of Wii Fit and I am sooooo addicted.
The powers inside the balance board can read my mind.
I'm hopelessly unbalanced!

I may have to admit defeat in the Soccer Ball heading game. Deflecting a ball in full motion with my head is not a sacrifice I can wrap my brain around. Every instinct in my body says DUCK!!!!

I've arrived at level 8 (for beginners) in Table Tilt (navigating Level 5 is my nemesis most other times). After many, many, many unsuccessful attempts, I am now a Ski Slalom amateur . . . sometimes. Navigating my Mii-in-a-Bubble up the river seems do-able. Sometimes my penguin Mii celebrates amateur status in catching fish without falling off her iceberg (too much). Walking her across a Tightrope is a save-for-later.

And, thanks to my persistence, in the face of unbalanced verdicts, yesterday I unlocked Lotus Focus.

Let me just say that, when all else fails, I turn away from the Balance Games to Yoga--and some of the Strength Training--Wii challenges to boost my self-image. I'm pretty good (aka trainer or master)--naturally, it seems, since I've had not a single "how-to" lesson until now--at Yoga. And I know enough about Yoga to recognize that this Balance game is essentially a Yoga thing and therefore a way to progress, in Balance, beyond unbalanced and the occasional amateur status.

Just figuring out how to get my bottom and legs lotus-positioned (well, close . . .) and balanced on that small balance board surface was tricky--even at 5'5", with a bull's-eye perfect BMI! My first four attempts--two at 27 seconds followed by two at 32 seconds--were unbalanced.

I've figured out that my weak(est) area--this has been lifelong challenge which LASIK has lessened but in which I still need major brain training--is orienting myself in space. Rapid onslaughts of visual stimuli (like those soccer balls and foreign objects) rattle my composure. Managing my reactions to auditory stimuli, on the other hand, is a relative strength.

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooo, on the fifth attempt at Lotus Focus, I closed my eyes (except for the occasional peek) and sat and sat and sat some more until the game ended itself.

180 seconds of sitting still enough to be a

Lotus Focus CHAMPION

I have arrived!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

of Yo-Yo Ma and Robert Frost . . .

I wasn't prepared for the emotion. The parallels between our new President and my childhood hero, JFK, were evident, even without media input. While I might only vicariously understand what it means to have an African-American inaugurated President of our great land, I could, those long years ago, appreciate firsthand, as I watched Kennedy's inauguration with my Catholic boarding school classmates, what it meant to have a Catholic inaugurated President of our great land. I am still that true child of the '60's who welcomes change, bites her tongue (but not as often as she should), eschews to-do lists, boundaries, routines . . . And who is moved by the music of language, the language of music.

Robert Frost and I share a birthday, but he was part of me long before I knew that. Today, as I watched Obama's inauguration, my woods were filling up with snow. I live the litany of miles to go before I sleep, of promises to keep. My roads, too, diverged in a yellow wood. Like Frost, I have almost always taken the one less travelled by, choices that have, indeed, made all the difference . . .

My clearest firsthand memory (the others have been multiply revised by time and media replays) of Kennedy's inauguration is of Frost reading his poem. I forget, until reminded by a Google search or other prompt, that the poem he read--that he recited from memory, actually--was not the one he wrote for that occasion. That the sun on the snow that January 20th morning forty-eight years ago was too much for his frail vision .

[Robert Frost Reads Poem at JFK's Inauguration: January 20, 1961
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/jb/modern/frost_1 ]

It wasn't the poetry who touched me today. It was the music. Just a few short months ago, I discovered (and blogged here about) Yo-Yo Ma's version of Simple Gifts. Yo-Yo Ma was/is my new favorite musician, courtesy of his rendition of Gabriel's Oboe which seriously challenges Galway's version as one of my all-time musical selections . . . As with Frost all those long winters ago, I was, today, witness to a performance that is sure to ring crystal clear in memory long after the sights and rhetoric of the day are overwritten by time and media replays.

'Tis a gift to be simple,
'Tis a gift to be free,
'Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
It will be in the valley of love and delight.

Mama and the 7 grandbabies

the faces of me . . .

or what family and colleagues saw in me this Christmas . . .

created in Wordle, btw . . .

toy train memories . . .

When Jamie was a baby, Christmas was exquisitely simple. Santa's elves actually carved and sanded building blocks and crocheted colorful bags, by hand, to hold them. Even the ornaments on the tree (yes, including popcorn and cranberry strings) were handmade. Does anyone remember the recipe for the ornament dough???

The train table and trains, projects eternally in progress/process, came later. But, Jamie's first Christmas, I discovered a song in my books of Christmas carols for the piano that was to be forever linked to those precious Christmas memories of his babyhood. I could even play the song on the piano then--and for most of his childhood years . . . Not now . . .


I found our song today. Twenty years after my baby boy and I discovered "Old Toy Trains," Roger Miller gave that song to the world.

Where was I that Christmas of 1995 that I missed this . . . ? I remember attending a middle school Christmas concert (my last year as a teacher) and, in spite of my first and only abcessed (knock on wood!) tooth, discovering both solace and delight in the music. I remember that at midnight that New Year's Eve I was home alone, assembling one of those eternal jigsaw puzzles (on the table I de-puzzled and lemon-oiled yesterday ), and consoling (via landline) my broken-hearted middle child, also home alone on New Year's Eve . . . But Christmas I don't remember at all . . . 1993 had gifted me with Patty Larkin's "Good Thing" from Angels Running and James Galway's rendition of "Gabriel's Oboe" (on tape--no CD or mp3 for this one but the YoYo Ma version is even more awesome!). 1994 had eased an achingly lonely Christmas with David Lanz's Christmas Eve. 1995?

I purchased two copies of the mp3 today (the Roger Miller version--many have followed since)--one for my Zen V Plus and one for Jamie's iPod. Making new memories with an old song. Michael is into toy trains too :-) . . . or at least he was last spring . . .



I also purchased the acoustic guitar mp3 version (from Christmas Innocence by Peter Groenhof). There's my Seagull in the entryway to dream with and two grandbabies, Mason and Campbell, taking guitar lessons . . .

I have seen . . .

the littlest angel!

[insert picture here]

When I was four, a little angel--four hours old--presented himself to the venerable Gatekeeper and waited for admittance to the glorious kingdom of God. While "Little Angel" was not to mark his earthly resting place until our Daddy joined him in eternity, James Michael left his mark among us. I named my son James Michael--and Jamie named his son Michael.

When I think of Jamie and Christmas stories and childhood, I think of Charles Tazewell's The Littlest Angel. It was their story, a connection of sorts between the brother I was never to know and my son, his precious namesake.

I laughed through the tears last night as Michael, just a month younger than that four-year-old Littlest Angel . . .who presented himself to the venerable Gatekeeper and waited for admittance to the glorious kingdom of God, tumbled into my mind's image of that story.

From the story [and last night's children's Christmas pageant]:
His halo was permanently tarnished where he held onto it with one hot, little, chubby hand when he ran, and he was always running [into the communion rail (OUCH!!!) because all he could see was his proud family in the audience]. Furthermore, even when he stood very still, [when he was singing?] it never behaved like a halo should. it was always slipping down over his right eye . . . [uh-huh!!!]
Or over his left eye . . . [Amen!]
Or else, just for pure meanness, slipping off the back of his head [yes, it did!] and rolling away down some golden street just so he'd have to chase after it [according to Michael, who's heard The Littlest Angel at least twenty times!," his halo never slipped lower than just below his chin :-)] !

Head over halo. I have seen that and more!

I've never once read the story--this morning is no exception--without tears spilling over the beautiful ending . . . There it shone on that night of miracles, and its light was reflected down the centuries deep in the heart of all mankind. Yet, earthly eyes, blinded, too, by its splendor, could never know that the lowly gift of the Littlest Angel [a box which held his earthly simple pleasures] was what men would call forever,

"the shining Star of Bethlehem"

To my three generations of littlest angels . . .

thank you!

today's 2 B ;-) ~

61. chasing a patch of rainbow on a cloud-studded December horizon