Joie de Vivre!

This is my five year old about two weeks before kindergarten begins.

Happy.  Alive.  Full of JOY. 

I think he is about the best teacher I have. 

If I can live my life as wide open as he does I think it's going to be one awesome life.

Back to School

This year is special

Kuba's starts kindergarten

Anders is in third



In-ef-fa-ble

INEFFABLE-
adjective
1. Too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.  Indescribable, inexpressible, beyond words, beyond description, begging description; indefinable, unimaginable, untold, overwhelming, unutterable.

My dad is in the hospital.  My 89 year old father is in the hospital, fragile, exhausted.  
It has been ineffable.  

If I could only describe the collision of emotions that has taken place in me as I experience what it is like to have my father, my beyond life size father be so ill.  It is like the assortment of feelings has combined into a new flavor - an indescribable combination of agonizing helplessness, love, and concern all rolled into one.  Truly it is beyond words.  

My family left our vacation one day early and drove to Buffalo last Friday to be with my dad and family.  The boys spent a day with my family and Anna while I went to the hospital.  The boys drew pictures for grandpa which we hung on his hospital walls.  On Sunday the boys got to see my father before leaving town.   I wanted them to see my dad before they left, and luckily there were more than a dozen of us so the spirit was merry and festive while they visited with him.  They each gave him a hug and Kuba left one of his stuffed animal pillow pets for his grandpa - Monk is his name and I witnessed Kuba kissing Monk and talking to him about how Kuba would see him soon and to take good care of grandpa.  I think both boys were glad to see him and my dad rallied for the occasion and even cracked a few jokes.  

I remained here with my sister and spent the week tending to and worrying about my father.    I am typing this from an iPad - and for some reason it is so difficult to type that I will continue and edit this at a later time.  I just wanted to begin to capture just the beginning of this experience.   
All I know is this- and I know it even better now: 
LOVE.    LOVE BIG.  love your parents, your siblings, your spouse, your children, your friends, your community right now.  Give it all you've got.  I sort of think this is the only reason we are on this planet and it's the only way it makes any sense.  

V A C A T I O N

We are one day away from our final summer vacation and I am so excited!  I absolutely love going to the cape with Anna and the boys.  The ocean, the beaches, the sun, the sand, the sky, the rocks, the seafood, the slowness of the day.  We have yet to go in August, so I am curious about the weather.  I sort of need it to be HOT, sunny, and summery - at least during the day.  I don't care what night brings, but that intensity of sun feels divine and I am ready for it.   We will not be bringing technology - so I cannot and will not be blogging until we return.  Good.  I am happy to give it all up for the peaceful thrill of the ocean. 

Courage

My children amaze me.  They are so physically capable and so often fearless.  They can easily climb  high, hundreds of feet off the ground, balancing on nothing more than a wire.  Smiling, waving, and relishing the challenge.  Eager to do more.  LOVING the process.  Honoring their bodies intuition and strength.  They may not be comfortable speaking in a crowd of strangers or performing in front of an audience, but they are completely willing to dangle mid air...using what they trust most- their bodies.  Courage comes in all shapes and sizes. 

Cider

Our apple tree drops its apples early.  Nearly all have fallen now except for the highest ones.  Mostly these jersey apples drop to the ground, bruise, rot, attract insects and get eaten by squirrels.

The apple tree is never sprayed and the apples always have some sort of blight on them.  We throw thousands of them into the compost.  However, this year we seem to have had a bumper crop and the apples are larger and better than usual.  Some years we've made apple sauce, sometimes pie, mostly nothing.  Sometimes we feel guilty about this, mostly not.  Although this year we decided to actually use them and make cider.  We borrowed a press and had the kids work with friends to make the cider.  We pressed about 3 or more gallons and if we can get the rest of the apples off of the tree, we can probably make twice as much.  Anders and his friend Junie worked the hardest.  Kuba and his friend Jasper started out as helpers, but soon turned into players, and started swimming in the water we were washing the apples in.   It didn't matter...the cider was delicious whether you were an apple gatherer, apple cutter, apple washer, apple presser, or just a plain old playful kid buzzing around the process.   

Values

I recently was at a professional development institute on leadership.  One of my favorite assignments was to identify eight values that I navigate my life by.  After lots of thinking and feeling, I identified these eight:  Authenticity, Vulnerability, Connection, Courage, Joy, Creativity, Family, and Love.  They are not in any particular order of importance.  They are all important. Well, I then was asked to cross off five from the list.  I ended up with these three: Joy, Creativity, and Connection.  It was so hard to narrow it down to three, as they all are important to me.  Once I culled it to those three, I had to eliminate one more!  I did.  My final two were Joy and creativity.  Amazing really to go through this process.  It is revealing and clarifying to me  to know how much value I place on both of these personal values.  When I think about my life, my family, my work, my friendships, I think these are a perfect nutshell.  You sort of can't have creativity without courage, authenticity, vulnerability, and connection.  They are all wrapped up in if for me, part of the creative formula.  And JOY...well my family is absolutely full of joy...and that's because of the big love we have.  I made a promise to myself a few years back to live wide open, awake, with full on love.  I think it's how I orient my parenting and how Anna and I both operate.  I liked this experience very much.  It is somewhat like a map....a values map, that keeps me on the right track, lest I stray from what really matters to my heart and soul.