Category Archives: family

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water babies

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: river.

Both of my kids are water babies, who love the water. The pictures are from 2005, my daughter and her cousin, loving the slip and slide. A home river and water. My daughter went on to seven years of synchronized swimming, four years of swim team and now is racing sailboats in college.

Slip and slide water joy
puddle joy

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And she’s walking as if her feet hurt

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: crepitus.

I wrote this poem thinking about my sister in 2009. I was writing on everything2.com and they had a “masked poetry ball”. We put up a second identity and part of the contest was guessing who was who. My brother in law and my sister had been on the site for far longer than me. While I was masked, my brother in law sent me a message that the poem reminded him of his wife. Yes, I thought, that poem worked, because I wrote it about her.

And she’s walking as if her feet hurt

And she’s walking as if her feet hurt
Each first metatarsal hits the dirt
Each joint feels like it’s full of grit
Bone on bone and all that shit

And she’s walking as if her feet hurt
Each first metatarsal hits the dirt
It’s no surprise, in fact it grates
To know she carries all those weights

Please rest your feet sometimes my dears
Those silly joints must last for years
One of the many dark deep fears
To walk in pain for years and years

And she’s walking as if her feet hurt
Each first metatarsal hits the dirt
I wish that she could go on home
And put her feet up all alone

I took the picture, of my sister and my son, in 1993 in Portland, Oregon. My sister injured her knee fighting fires when she was 22. Her knee worked after the surgery, but with crepitus within ten years. And her feet started to hurt.

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lumber

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: lumber.

Oh, lumber. Lumber from trees, from forests. Forests make me think of old growth. I have gone to the Hoh Rain Forest twice. The first time it was pouring rain so hard that we abandoned the trip and stayed at a motel in Forks. The second time the sun came out and the wet moss covered trees gleamed and the Roosevelt Elk showed up. It was amazing!

Moss in the Hoh Rain Forest, trailing from the branches.
Moss in the Hoh Rain Forest
Walking under giant fallen trees.
Walking under giant fallen trees.
Lichen in the Hoh Rain Forest.
Lichen.

I took all the photographs except the one with me and the kids: my spouse took that one. These are from 2004.

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spiky

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: spiky.

So this is a beach. Why spiky? The tide is way out. Watch where you step or sit, because these are the spiky bits!

Barnacles! The live ones are closed with the water out, but the dead shells are also sharp and spiky. Bits that aren’t spiky are slick!

I took these on North Beach last May. Wear shoes or at least carry them.

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water doors

For Norm2.0’s Thursday Doors.

We walked on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Park while we were visiting Maryland and Virginia. It is 184.5 miles. I’ve biked it twice, starting at the West Virginia end and ending in Georgetown.

The locks that we went by were not functioning, but you can still see where the gates were. Those are doors to hold water back, aren’t they?

brick work at a lock on the C & O Canal
walls of a lock entry

Chesapeake & Ohio Canal
parts of the canal have water

The stones are worn where tow ropes ran.
lock with part of a gate in place
worn stone where tow ropes ran

Parts of locks are still present and some still are functioning.


This bridge building was used for flood control.

stone work with slot for flood control
bridge building

When the river was flooding into the canal, boards were lowered into the slots that diverted high water away from the canal and back to the river.


It was a beautiful day. We all enjoyed the sun.

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Mundane Monday #191: reflection

For Mundane Monday #191, well, it’s New Year’s Eve: so my theme is reflection.

What are you reflecting on this New Year’s Eve? What photographs have you taken this year that reflect what you love, what you value, what you learned? Or just have a reflection?

Link by message or to this post and I will list them next week. Happy New Year!

______________________________

Last weeks prompt was nature’s patterns. Everyone was busy! Hopefully with family or friends or both, and hooray for that!

Late entry: klallendorfer with a lovely reflection on the end of the year and resolutions.

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grateful

With both my parents dead, I am so grateful to my aunts and uncle for stepping in. My aunts told me “We are your mothers now.” With my son and his girlfriend living in Maryland, both aunts and my uncle are in Virginia.

The beautiful gifts are from my uncle. He makes them in the shop at the retirement community. We got a tour. He’s currently making a cherry headboard for them.

When I took his picture he said, “Watch out, you’ll break your camera!” But I don’t think so. Thank you, uncle.

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cottage

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: cottage.

My family has cabins on Lake Matinenda in Ontario, currently in a trust and jointly owned.

In 2012 my sister died in March. In August my daughter and I went to the lake. No one could bear to stay in the cabin that she had used the most the last few years. My daughter and I spent a day facing the mice and clearing. The mice had made nests in anything they could use.

Mouse nest in an ankle brace.
In Chris’s cabin


Empties.
Recycling.


Shoe nest.
Fabric with potential mouse nests. We had to go through the containers.

My daughter helped me and bless her. I was still feeling paralyzed with grief. We garbaged bagged the mouse nests, went through all the fabric, loaded the trash, recycling and empties into the boat and took them to the dump and to town. Then we bought half a dozen plastic containers and put every fabric thing and shoe that didn’t have a mouse nest into containers.

I went back this summer and a friend and I worked on the roof. The books and the glass containers are sad now, not doing well as no one has used that cabin since 2010. I didn’t think to box up the books, except for the log that my mother started.

Books and canned and bottled supplies.

This summer my daughter and I took four large containers in the boat and then by car to the laundromat. We washed everything and donated most of it to a local second hand shop. I put a wool blanket back in a container and moved some of the dishes my mother made in another container to a cabin that is in better shape.

Our cottages are full of memories.