LEIF AND GRANNY

leif said...

What I meant to say was…
I remember…I remember…her red housecoat;
and her red house-shoes that leaned heavily to the side, reflecting the shape of her feet;
I remember how her feet reflected what the weight of years of surgery and walking everywhere would do;
I remember that in spite of that, she rarely hesitated to walk from the house on Hammond and Spurgeon to the Safeway that’s now gone just so I could play video games;
and I remember acting like a spoiled brat when she ran out of quarters;
I can see her fussing with her hairnet and her hair in general;
I remember when she had teeth;
I remember how clean her home ALWAYS was and yet I seldom saw her actually cleaning, but maybe she did it in the late night while I slept because I remember usually she could not;
I can feel the comfort of that gaudy divan and how she’s the only person I’ve ever heard call it a divan.
I remember those hotcakes and how she would make them anytime I asked, day or night;
I remember the syrup we always used: Griffins;And the sugar toast – I didn’t know it was unhealthy…she was granny and they tasted good;
I remember the gas space heater and how on cold Sunday mornings she would hold my church clothes up in front of it just so I could jump from warm bed to warm clothes;

We played gin-rummy, skip-bo and tri-ominoes and I don’t think I EVER won a game…
I remember growing up listening to Lawrence Welk and to this day I have (shhhh) an affinity for polka-music…I know, right!!!She liked Johnny Weissmuller and loathed being called “Mary-Nell.”
I remember how much she enjoyed Dr. Peppers…but only in the glass bottles.
I remember she could write a book of notes in the margins of the pages of a book, note after note after note. Voice recorders had nothing on her.
I remember being called “Bruce, uh Jason, uh Leif…” and “Leif-a-tater.”
I can hear her telling me to “come love my neck.”
I remember playing bingo every Tuesday night in the summers: when the number caller would announce a number, say g42, the caller would clarify by saying g-4-2.
Every single game, every single night, when the caller would yell i22 and follow it up with I – 2 – 2, my grandmother would say “You do and you’ll clean it up!!”
I guess some jokes just don’t get old…

I remember being told that until the day I was born she just knew I would be born with stripes…and I know that to her surprise and mine it was love at first sight…
I remember never experiencing any of her prejudices she may have had; I guess I helped her overcome herself in ways.

I remember being her favorite grandchild…that is till Jason and Stacey came along and ruined my show…
I remember I named her granny.
When I go to any beach, I will be in Galveston and I will listen for her.
I remember that despite the fact that as I unfortunately “grew up” and that I may have in a way forgotten about her, we were able to enjoy sometime together, on her terms, whether she was “here” or not - if she wanted to talk about the man up there on that wall, that’s what we would talk about, I followed and enjoyed it;

Bibi, I wrote this entirely for my healing. They are things I think I should have said when she and I parted.
I posted them here entirely for you because I know that there is a part of you that is saddened by my apparent coldness and that you must wonder how much I ever cared.
I posted this here in this forum so that your community could share in my contribution to your healing.

I cried today as I sat a thousand miles removed and wrote this feeling closer than ever.

I think that as I a child…she was actually my best friend and I am thankful to you and the universe for sharing her experiences with me.
A bushel and a peck…..

Plans & Dreams

As the giggle goes: "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans".

And this blog needs more giggles.

I can recall very few times when my parents were together that they seemed in sync, connected, having fun. I treasure those that i can recall.

One thing that they loved to do was to wait until my brother and i were in bed [supposedly asleep, but you imagine that, to remember this, i must have sneaked out], was to draw floor plans for the home they wanted to have built. I heard them even laugh one evening sitting at the dining table, heads together, pencils poised to jot down the next idea.

Writing this gives me a warm feeling that i normally do not experience when thinking of my mom and dad together as there were the other times, the hurting, angry times that stand out.

My mom called my dad a 'dreamer' - which of course i take as a great compliment. She did not mean it as one... i learned this after he left and she became very bitter and resentful. What she really meant was he could talk a good game but was slow or absent in the follow through.

While she, on the other hand, did not like a half-a_ _ed job. If she planned it it had better happen.

My dad could make lots of plans and follow some to fruition and let others either go or change into something altogether different.

I got both of those points of view and characteristics. I understand working hard for something only to have it fall apart and being disappointed.

BUT i also understand playing with an idea and having scads of fun just in the creation of the blueprint. Laying out how you'd like to see it.

One of the major things we tried to teach the teachers in HeadStart is the difference in ART and CRAFT.

With crafts there is a specific outcome expected and you can have lots of fun making it happen but it does matter that it comes out somewhat like the blueprint.

Art is a different matter altogether. The fun is in the process.

Sure it helps if it turns out to be worth millions; that never hurts. But no one is telling me my painting has look like the example ... no one is controlling my dream.

And here's a really great thing about the dreamer~artist-> wherever i stop in the process i can say it is done and no one will know i just got tired of messin' with it!! :0)

I know my mom and dad had many plans and many dreams that just did not work out...that is really hard to accept when one is any age.

Chakra gurus say that the development of the heart chakra occurs between 5 and 7 years of age. My dad left for work one day when i was almost 7. He never returned - not permanently...but that is yet another post.

I must have had plans too and certainly dreams. Probably my growing energy-spirit heart was yearning for peace between my parents and love in the new home they were scheming for during those 'good' times.

I have found in so many ways that however i plan it, spirit takes me where i need to be. And i have found a bit of peace and a lot of love along the way.

As John Lennon said : "Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans."

HAWK

I have been blessed with a lovely and majestic reminder of beauty and power for several weeks now on my way to work.

A huge gold chested hawk has been waiting [that's my opinion anyhow] a day or 2 each week for me to pass by. Some days she is circling a small area of grassland. Other days she is on a powerline or post. One day she was on the ground running after something [which i refuse to speculate upon].

Always, though she is either on or above the same patch of ground.

Today she sat on a high branch in an oak tree surveying the scene. She amazes me just by her being....i can not explain how close i feel to her when we pass by .... it is as though she is in the car with me.

Her head is held so regally and her body poised with every muscle at attention and at rest at the same time.

I don't know why i am so attracted to her but each time we pass it seems that we actually nod in spirit to one another and she has deemed me worthy to travel on through her realm and to be on this earth with her.

It does a lot for my own grounding, this quiet acknowledgment of our connection.

Just wanted to share this on-going exchange which has impacted my perspective on the sacred space which each creature holds.

OE

I met OE in june, 2004, when i first attended a retreat at Earthsprings. Even though it was our first meeting he behaved as though we'd known each forever .. and as i am consistently observing we have ALL met before in some form or other.

OE ran to meet us as we got out of the car and he immediately rubbed up against me and began to lick the hand i extended to him.

Perhaps this is the place to describe OE - a big, beautiful black lab. Buddha dog. Guide of the land. Happy - a smile on his face almost always.

OE was the most reverent dog i ever knew - maybe the most reverent being i have met, actually, when i consider how oblivious to sacred life a lot of humans seem to be.

OE would attend circles and ceremonies with a sense of controlled play and a knowing when it was time to just be still and absorb the energy. There ought to be a monument on the land to honor his loyalty, love and grace.

OE crossed over to pure spirit on Friday, Feb. 13th, 2009. He had experienced the pain of cancer for some time and it was changing the quality of his life. I received a note today from LH saying he had gone. My heart goes to her and to Chris and to all of you who knew and loved OE.

Death is so much more a part of life, i am learning, than we ever really imagine.

For me personally i have yet to digest the fact that when i arrive in april for another retreat there will be no big bear dog to hug and kiss me. I will miss the walks in the dark with only OE's white smile to lead me. I will miss just being near him.
The consolation for me comes from my great blessing to have had this fellow in my life ~ because once there, he will never leave me.

Earthsprings will seem a very different place without him, but i know my memories will give me solace and, after time, peace.

Merciful spirit, mother, father, creator of all, welcome OE into your pure light with gladness. That light will certainly glow more brightly now.

miracles and "love" notes

joyfully and with a heart full of love i have gotten back to my roots healing-wise. i am doing the work again and had an experience today that i MUST share.

my client does not even know how she fits into this miracle.

i will of course not name names but i want her to know how much she helped me.

i have some medication that is very important to take on a regular basis - doc says do not skip a day. so imagine how i was worrying when i called the pharmacy and found it had been refilled but cost waaaay more than the $11 i have in savings. I had taken the last pill on friday.

with David being so sick and no insurance ... well financially it has not been a picnic.

so yesterday i talked with my co-worker who has become a great friend and confidant. we were brainstorming what i could hock for the $.

finally i decided i could not spend any more energy worrying and just said 'i will go to the pharmacy tomorrow after my HT session and get the meds. God will take care of payment!'

Saturday, after a wonderful session of healing energy, my client handed me the crumpled gift card she had purchased long, long ago +PLUS some cash that was exactly the amount i needed for my medication!!!

i tried to refuse but she would not have it. something that i have finally learned is not only to be brave enough to ask for help but to accept it.

and she had no idea how she was helping - she simply said please take it because i appreciate what you do.

So i did. And i went straight to the store and got the meds and that is the tale of that miracle.

SPIRIT GIVES
Thank you my lovely friend and thank you gracious God.

how i met MaryElizabeth

Mary Elizabeth was waiting for me and i did not know it until my

spirit guide pushed me towards our relationship.

I finished massage school in 2003, and began looking for an office space i could afford plus a part time job to support my 'healing habit'.

I had asked God for a space to rent for a really minimal rate ~ i was very specific about the amount because i had no money. The next day i went to interview for a couple of jobs and driving home on I30 i felt an irresistable nudge to 'get off the freeway'. It was not a voice voice but more of a feeling voice.

I have learned to follow those nudges so i wondered 'where do i get off?' OAKLAND & I 30 was the answer. Now, i had seen the office/school complex called CCL in passing but was unaware of what it held. I had even on occasion thought of going in just to see what it was.

But that day in October i HAD to go...the nudging spirit was pull-pushing me and i had no idea whether i was looking there for work or an office or both or something else.

So i park and go into the office building and stand there looking at the receptionist waiting for words. They did not come - not clearly anyhow.

We looked at each other and finally i blurted out 'i am looking for work'. She said 'we don't have any openings that i know of right now'. I stood there - spirit had not failed me yet. Then i told her part of my story - of how i graduated as an LMT and needed an office, etc. She said oh well we have a massage therapist here.

That was it - the impetus for my words. I asked if she thought the LMT would want to share her office. And her response was well we can see. She called upstairs and i stood watching for who might be coming down. Of course it was Mary Elizabeth! When we saw one another it like " oh well there you are"...like i had been looking for her while she waited for me.

Sounds like a love story huh? It is. It is about the real, deep connection that one can not force but just happens and grows deeper as time goes on. And i do love you MELH!!!

So i told her what i needed and she said she had had several requests before of folks wanting to share her space but it had not felt right. She said this feels right. I told her how i got there and she understood! I asked how much my portion would be in rent - it was only $10 above the amount i had prayed for the night before!

We decided in that moment that this would be a great collaboration and that was pretty much that. We did get a little reality [physical world type] check from ME's hubby. He thought it would be good to do a background check and tell the owners of the place what we intended and maybe a contract...so we agreed that before getting me a key and setting up a sharing schedule ME would do those things that DH suggested.

It was a great little room with so much warm, receiving/giving energy. I loved it there and stayed for a couple of years. And my clients often commented on how the building itself was not much to write home about but once they entered our space in that office it totally changed and they loved being there [almost as much as i did ;)0 ].

I had never guessed from driving past CCL that it would give me what i sought.

I suppose the point of this post is simply to follow your intuition. When spirit speaks be sure to listen. If you close your heart to those whispered nudges you may miss the time of your life. It is up to you to be present enough and open enough to go where God leads and to find there what you need.

The Stones said it well : "...you can't always get what you WANT, but, if you try sometime, you just might find you get what you NEED!"

SHARON ~ part 1

When i was a preteen, i recall noticing that the hole in my heart [which had been there since my dad left when i was7] had grown. for years i had pushed the pain of missing my dad away from me and tried to fill the hole with food. when i was around 10 or 12 i began to realize that the pain there was increasing.. again comfort came from food .

[must do a post on that food thing]

I have no idea why i am not addicted to alcohol and / or drugs actually w/such behavior.

But nothing could fill that vacuum and i had no idea why it was there.
my thoughts were of why i felt so empty when so many my age were out having fun and seemed not to notice how hard it was to just exist.

And to fit in? not likely. but it was more than the requisite teen angst - it was an intuiting that things were not right, not as they might be: in my life, in my family, with my mom.

confused and hurt i became convinced that i was adopted! why? what did i sense? i became absolutely certain when my biology teacher said that 2 blue eyed parents could not conceive a brown eyed child [& of course my mom and dad both had deep blue eyes- in fact i was the only brown eye in the family].
i went home in tears that day & told my mom that i knew i was adopted. she must have totally freaked out in her head because of what she had been thru - what i did not know; she manged to show only anger though.

she took me by the hand back up to school and demanded to see the teacher. He then mentioned the part of the lesson he'd left out = recessive and dominant genes, etc.
reluctantly i accepted it, tho i was suspicious that he might just be saying it because he was afraid of my mom...she was VERY angry.

now ~ warp speed, reader, to early 2005.

mom is in hospital again - broken hip this time. By this point she has been slipping in and out of the alzheimer thing...i believe it was that hospital stay that included strangling the nurse; and my staying up all night with her because we [nursing staff and i - doc would have none of it]discovered she had sleep apnea and i had to reset the alarm each time she stopped breathing.

she had fought so hard when we tried to get the c-pap [an oxygen supply mask] on her that we all gave up on that. she accused me of trying to kill her and the nurse tried to give her an injection ... so she was trying also to kill her.

durng this stay, B had been pickng up her mail and helping with her bills etc, reading cards to her.
had she been able to do it herself we never would have known the TRUTH!

I do not believe in coincidence - i do believe in miracles.

it happened that this one special day - and i mean special- he intercepted a letter and started to read it to her when he says he stopped and wadded it up , put it in his pocket telling mom that it was probably an ad.

when he got home he called and read the letter to me.
it was from a woman searching for her bio-mom. mainly she said she needed to know if there were med/health issues she should be aware of as she had a child & wanted naturally to know.

she said if mom did not want a relationship that it was ok as she understood it was a difficult situation & did not want to cause upheavel in the family.

it sounded sincere. and she had so many details of our lives in 1960, her birth year, that we both knew there was something to it. back in those days, in the 60's, there was no hippa. the doc had given the adoptive parents a lot of info. info that fit us to a t, including where we lived, that the bio-mom had 2 other, older children, that they had a different father, that the mom worked in accounting in dallas...and on.

the delivering doc had taken over for the original OB when he became ill - and, yes, the ob who delivered my bro and me was the original doctor she had used.

Plus she was one of 5 Mary Bartons in FW to whom the letters were sent...but the only Marynell Griffin Barton!

after reading this letter, B asked how i felt and i told him i have no guide for an appropriate response to a news like this but my heart felt great joy, just joy. no fear or anxiety. no apprehension, no resistance.
he said "oh, good, cause that's how i feel too!".

now one might wonder just how unaware were these 2 kids whose mom was pregnant for 9 mos and delivered a baby in july of 60.

As B and i have relived that period in our lives it became clear to us both that we did feel something even more disturbing during that time.
mom had gained and lost weight repeatedly all my life so the size did not tell us anything.

her mood tho was very down - depressed. we picked up on it and took it as our own...B recalls beng called out of class several times to explain why he was crying [he was only 8, i was 11] .. he replied he did not know, he just felt like it.

i recalled a deep sense of some mysterious, secret event, some fear and depression.

also during that time from around september '59 - summer's end '60 we moved many times / went to 3 different elementary schools that one year. mom changed jobs at least 3 times that year. i believe now that she was so intent on keeping the pregnancy from everyone but the dad and doc, that when folks at the job suspected or noted a change in her condition, she changed jobs. and we moved; again.

she cried when she did not know i saw her - and i felt great pain from and for her.

In 1960 having a child 'out of wedlock' carried a real stigma and we think the father [who was the man she 'dated' for several years] convinced her that child services would take all 3 of us from her if she kept the baby. Truth was that he had another family and did not intend on a new one...she did not know he had a wife and kids until after she became pregnant.

she did not want to go along with it. but she did and the result was our little sis was taken from us w/o our even knowing it.

We only felt it ~ the loss, grief.

that is why we had joy in our hearts when we got that letter. we once again had hope and the missing piece from our lives was being replaced.

the doc said mom stayed at the hospital for 3 days crying and begging to have her baby back. i ache to my bones when i think of it.

how hard must that decision have been? keep 2 by giving up 1, or keep the baby and maybe lose all 3 childrenMy God, the depth of despair she must have experienced.

[see next post for the continuing saga]

ask and receive

i re-found this email request that i sent out ~ my sister says it is beautiful so i thought i might re-share it with you. significant as this weekend in April, 2008, was when my mom crossed over.
i certainly received the light for which i asked. campfire at Earthsprings

To all you beautiful lightworkers and prayermakers ~

I am going to a rather intense retreat experience on the
25th (through the 27th) of April at Earthsprings.

I am making a sincere request of you...
you handful of people whose energy
and love i trust...
you who know my heart pretty well -
some more deeply than others...
you who CARE and who, when the need for insightful and serious prayer arises,
are there with that beautiful connection to
remind me of the on-going work of
'soul-making'.

In this retreat, we will be lead by GlendaLittleHawk.
She will serve as guide, counselor,
shaman, conduit to source energy,
psychologist, and
teacher.

I have set many goals, both spiritual and physical, for myself ...
the main thing is to find my way back
to my own peace ~
to feel God again living so blessedly in my heart!

All i ask of you, dear ones, is to find
a moment (or more)
during those 3 days of retreat to
fully think of me, and to send out an affirmation to
universe that i will be strong enough
to let go and give over control
to my Creator.

Quite simply, will you pray for me?

I love you all and my prayer for you is to find that divine place in your own hearts and souls where God is, and has always been, waiting.

Namaste.
Linda, Willow Bear, Mom, Bibi